Philosophical Definition Of A Mystical Experience?

Philosophical interest in mysticism has shifted towards distinctive, knowledge-granting “mystical experiences” under the influence of William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience. R.C. Zaehner identified three types of mystical consciousness: a “panenhenic” extrovertive experience, an experience of oneness, and Hermes Trismegistus’ Poimandres, which recounts a mystical experience of Nous, or the Divine Mind, providing true knowledge about reality. Mystics believe that their experiences reveal the existence of an extrasensory dimension of reality, phenomena whose existence cannot be detected.

In modern usage, “mysticism” refers to mystical experience and practices, discourse, institutions, and traditions associated with it. Mysticism is a spiritual, experiential, and transcendental concept that involves the cultivation of altered states of consciousness called “mystical experiences”. Those who undergo mystical experiences often feel bliss, ecstasy, unconditional love, and interconnectedness.

Mysticism is best thought of as a constellation of distinctive practices, discourses, texts, institutions, and experiences aimed at human beings. Mysticism describes a concept or experience of a transcendental unity at the core of existence, which can include a unity between various aspects of existence. Spiritual phenomena may appear ultimate, self-existent, and divine during mystical experiences, or may be experienced as contingent.

W T Stace’s mystical experience is an example of extrovertive mystical experiences, where the plurality of objects in the world are transfigured into a single living entity. Mysticism is characterized by belief in union with the divine nature through ecstatic contemplation and the power of spiritual access to ultimate reality.

What are the qualities of the mystical experience?

The Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) is a tool developed by Pahnke to evaluate single mystical experiences occasioned by hallucinogens. It covers major dimensions of classic mystical experience, including unity, transcendence of time and space, noetic quality, sacredness, positive mood, and ineffability/paradoxicality. The MEQ has been administered with distracter items that assess other phenomenological content, such as visual imagery, emotion, memories, fantasies, and thoughts.

Psilocybin-Occasioned Mystical Experiences have been studied, showing the sensitivity of the MEQ to the effects of psilocybin and other classic hallucinogens. Recently, the MEQ was used in conjunction with the Mysticism Scale to characterize the mystical-type effects of psilocybin using double blind, placebo-controlled methods. In an initial study, mystical-experience scores on the MEQ and the Mysticism Scale were higher for psilocybin sessions than for active placebo sessions.

Recent psilocybin studies have also reported mystical-type subjective effects such as feelings of unity, spiritual experiences, insight, positive mood, and an altered sense of time and space following psilocybin administration. Scores on the MEQ at the time of the psilocybin session predict ratings of personal meaning, spiritual significance, personal well-being, life satisfaction, and positive behavior change at short-term and long-term follow-up assessments.

Retrospective ratings on the MEQ at follow-up do not differ from ratings made at the end of high-dose psilocybin sessions. A recent analysis of personality change following high-dose psilocybin sessions suggests that the MEQ predicts some long-term outcomes better than the Mysticism Scale or other measures of positively experienced hallucinogen effects. These findings suggest that the MEQ may have broader relevance as a tool in the empirical study of mysticism, particularly for characterizing single, hallucinogen-occasioned mystical experiences.

What is the difference between a mystical experience and a psychotic experience?

The mystical experience enhances a person’s connection, love, and service, leading to a greater appreciation of life’s beauty and miracles. It also fosters reverence for all aspects of life and death. However, psychosis often leads to self-centeredness, limiting connection with the world and reducing love capacity due to the need to protect oneself from anxiety. This can result in a lack of psychic energy for love and survival. While some argue that Agosin’s distinctions between psychosis and mysticism are overly clear, his ideas provide a starting point for understanding the topic.

Susan Mitchell suggests that scholarly attempts to distinguish between psychotic and spiritual beliefs have been unsuccessful, suggesting that it may not be about what people believe but how they believe.

What is the epistemology of mystical experience?

Mysticism is a broad term that encompasses various phenomena involving personal encounters with a transcendent reality, often considered divine. These experiences can be characterized by feelings of union, ecstasy, love, or contemplation, but they also possess the property of knowledge. Mystical experience and knowledge are seen as two sides of the same coin, as they cannot be divorced. Mystical knowledge is unique in being non-discursive, non-conceptual, and experiential.

It occurs in certain states of consciousness that are unmediated by mental processes or sense perception, and cannot be communicated due to its inability to be expressed in language or concepts. In Sufism, experiential knowledge is called “taste” (thawq), which serves as an analogy for the taste of an apple. To receive the latest articles, sign up for our Free Weekly Newsletter.

Is a mystical experience a religious experience?

Religious experience is also to be distinguished from mystical experience. Although there is obviously a close connection between the two, and mystical experiences are religious experiences, not all religious experiences qualify as mystical. The word ‘mysticism’ has been understood in many different ways.

1. Types of Religious Experience. Reports of religious experiences reveal a variety of different kinds. Perhaps most are visual or auditory presentations (visions andauditions), but not through the physical eyes or ears. Subjects report”seeing” or “hearing,” but quickly disavow anyclaim to seeing or hearing with bodily sense organs. Such experiencesare easy to dismiss as hallucinations, but the subjects of theexperience frequently claim that though it is entirely internal, likea hallucination or imagination, it is nevertheless a veridicalexperience, through some spiritual analog of the eye or ear (James1902 and Alston 1991 cite many examples).

In other cases, the language of “seeing” is used in itsextended sense of realization, as when a yogi is said to”see” his or her identity with Brahman; Buddhists speak of”seeing things as they are” as one of the hallmarks oftrue enlightenment, where this means grasping or realizing theemptiness of things, but not in a purely intellectual way.

A third type is the religious experience that comes throughsensory experiences of ordinary objects, but seems to carry with itextra information about some supramundane reality. Examples includeexperiencing God in nature, in the starry sky, or a flower, or thelike. Another person standing nearby would see exactly the same sky orflower, but would not necessarily have the further religious contentto his or her experience. There are also cases in which the religiousexperience just is an ordinary perception, but the physical object isitself the object of religious significance. Moses’s experienceof the burning bush, or the Buddha’s disciples watching himlevitate, are examples of this type. A second person standing nearbywould see exactly the same phenomenon. Witnesses to miracles arehaving that kind of religious experience, whether they understand itthat way or not.

What is the noetic quality of a mystical experience?

The concept of mystical experiences is characterized by ineffability, transiency, and passivity. Ineffability refers to the inability to explain the content of an experience, making it more like states of feeling than intellect. Transiency means that the state is short-lived, making it challenging to stay in a mystical state for prolonged periods. Passivity is another aspect of mystical experiences, as the onset may come from actions like focusing attention or taking psychedelic drugs. The subject remains passive while fully engulfed in the mystical state.

The noetic quality, a state of fundamental knowing, is similar to states of feeling but also states of knowledge. These states carry significance and importance, often carrying a sense of authority and realness that remains long after they end. The term “noetic” was coined by James, who was one of the first to discuss it in psychology. The term has recently gained prominence in discussions about the therapeutic value of psychedelic drugs. Best-selling author Michael Pollan also discusses the noetic quality in his book “How to Change Your Mind”, which became a Netflix series in 2021.

What are the criteria for mystical experience?

Mystical experience is a profound feeling of unity or interconnectedness, characterized by a core experience of unity. Stace provided one of the first comprehensive characterizations of mystical experience by analyzing religious texts and historical accounts, including personal narratives and biographical descriptions. He observed that mystical experiences were generally characterized by a profound feeling of unity or interconnectedness, with the core experience of unity being “the essence of all mystical experience”.

Stace proposed an organizational framework that included characteristics specific to either introvertive or extrovertive mystical experience, as well as characteristics that were common to both types of experiences. The nine characteristics identified by Stace included internal unity (undifferentiated awareness, unitary consciousness), external unity (a sense of unity with the surrounding environment), nontemporal and nonspatial quality (feelings of infinite time and limitless space), inner subjectivity (a sense of life or living presence in all things), objectivity and reality (a sense that the experience was a source of objective truth), sacredness (worthy of reverence, divine or holy), deeply felt peace and joy, paradoxicality (needing to use illogical or contradictory statements to describe the experience), and ineffability (difficulty of communicating or describing the experience to others).

Modern empirical study of mysticism has focused on characterizing mystical experiences that individuals have had across their lifetime. Hood’s Mysticism Scale, developed according to Stace’s framework, is the most widely used quantitative measure of mystical experience. However, recent reports suggest some cultural variation in the specific structure of mystical experience.

Mystical experiences can occur spontaneously or be generated or elicited through various rituals, substances, and induction methods. A modified single-experience version of the Mysticism Scale has been used to quantify mystical experiences that occur under naturalistic conditions, such as solitary wilderness expeditions.

What does mystical mean in philosophy?

Mysticism is a belief in union with the divine nature through ecstatic contemplation and spiritual access to ultimate reality. It is often applied to theories that assume occult qualities or agencies that cannot be empirically or rationally explained. There are numerous definitions of mysticism, all referring to intense and direct religious experiences, such as Jewish mysticism, where the mind encounters God directly.

Mysticism and religious experience are closely related but should not be considered identical. Mysticism is distinguished from numinous experiences, as described by Rudolf Otto, and from ordinary experiences of God, as illustrated by John Baillie. William James characterized mystical experience by four marks: transiency, passivity, noetic quality, and ineffability. Mysticism often involves an altered state of consciousness, such as trance, visions, suppression of cognitive contact with the ordinary world, loss of the distinction between subject and object, and weakening or loss of the sense of the self.

Not all religious experiences are mystical, and not every mystical experience includes all of these features. However, there is a large body of individual testimonies and descriptions from major religious traditions that involve many of these features.

What is the difference between a mystical experience and a religious experience?

Ecstasy, enthusiasm, and mystical experiences are all forms of religious experiences that can be experienced by individuals. Ecstasy involves the belief in a soul or spirit that can leave the body, while enthusiasm involves God being outside the believer’s grasp. Shamans, for example, may appear to be possessed by spirits and act as their mediums, losing their mastery over them.

Mystical experiences, on the other hand, involve the disappearance of “otherness” and the believer becoming one with the transcendent. Natural mystical experiences, such as the “deeper self” or oneness with nature, are not considered religious experiences due to their lack of connection to a particular tradition. However, they can have a profound effect on an individual.

Spiritual awakening, on the other hand, involves a realization or opening to a sacred dimension of reality, often involving religious experiences. It can refer to various experiences such as being born again, near-death experiences, liberation (moksha), and enlightenment (bodhi).

The term “religious experience” was first used by William James in his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, which distinguished between institutional religion and personal religion. Institutional religion refers to the religious group or organization, while personal religion, where an individual has mystical experience, can be experienced regardless of culture.

The origins of the term can be traced back to influential figures in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries who believed that religion and its beliefs can be grounded in experience itself. Kant believed that moral experience justified religious beliefs, while John Wesley believed that religious experiences in the Methodist movement were foundational to religious commitment as a way of life.

What is a mystical experience in psychology?

A new article in the journal Psychology of Consciousness explores the concept of a “mystical experience”, suggesting that experiencing a sense of being part of a higher force or temporarily losing touch with time and space can indicate healthy psychological functioning, despite being associated with psychological illness. The researchers, Daiga Katrīna Bitēna and Kristīne Mārtinsone, psychologists at Rīga Stradiņš University in Riga, Latvia, conducted the research to understand the unknown and the contradictions in science. Mystical experiences are evaluated in psychology in two ways: some attribute it to its pathological nature, while others attribute it to its spiritual component.

What is an example of a mystic experience?

Mystical experiences are a collection of unique practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions, and experiences aimed at human transformation. They can be either extrovertive or introvertive, with extrovertive experiences focusing on the unity of nature and non-unitive experiences like “cosmic consciousness”. Introvertive experiences, on the other hand, are not extrovertive but involve the experience of “nothingness”.

Philosophers have explored the classification, nature, and conditioning of mystical experiences by a mystic’s language and culture. Some philosophers have questioned the emphasis on experience in favor of examining broader mystical phenomena.

Mystical experiences are often referred to as nonsensory or transcendent unitive experiences, where the subject is able to experience realities or states of affairs that are not accessible through sense-perception, somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection. Examples of unitive experiences include “union with God”, the realization that one is identical to the Brahman of Advaita Vedanta, experiencing oneness to all of nature, and the Buddhist unconstructed extrovertive experience devoid of a sense of multiplicity of realities.

A more inclusive definition of “mystical experience” includes experiences of “contact” with God, where the subject and God remain ontologically distinct, or a Jewish Kabbalistic experience of a single supernal sefirah.

What is a mystical type experience?

Mystical-type experiences (MTEs) are unique phenomenological experiences that can significantly and persistently change an individual’s worldview. These experiences are often reported to induce significant and persisting changes in the experiencer’s worldview. Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B. V., its licensors, and contributors. All rights reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.