The Varieties of Mystical Experience
bookforum.com
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Critchley puts it nicely: “The mystics are constantly effing the ineffable, for as long as it effing takes.”
P.S. It took me a bit to recognize the obvious riff on William James in the title: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Exp...
https://psychology-tools.com/test/meq-30
Or see the factor analysis based on a study of over a thousand users of psilocybin. The dominant factor is feelings of unity— followed by feelings of positivity, transcendence of space/time, and ineffability (inability to put the experience into words).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-5906...
These feelings have been described across history and culture. These are not merely drug experiences — they are “perennial” mystical experiences.
The notion of unity is central to the experiences— but what does that mean? One can look for understanding in many traditions—I’ve found a lot of value in the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition.
(As a side note, I wonder how the concept of unity compares to the concept of “harmony.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240587262...)
Check out the “Embassy of the Free Mind” in Amsterdam if you are interested in the historical texts associated with mystical experiences. It is a rare book library with roots in the renaissance. https://embassyofthefreemind.com/en/
Also there is nothing perennial about platonism. It has been and continues to be challenged. An overlap in a handful of psychological measurements doesn’t justify conflating intoxicated platonism with all possible varieties of mystical experiences.
this is an uninformed comment. Medical science literature starts out in Chapter 1 with "some kinds of drugs create chemical states that are not possible without the substance, while others change chemical states that are also naturally occurring" .. roughly paraphrased.
A notable thing about this topic is so many people assume they have expert insights?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_selectivity#Example...
Importantly, the mysticism scale is not a “drug induced mysticism scale.”
The Pythagorean-Platonic tradition is rich — and let me be careful to say that I'm not making the claim that all philosophy is the same everywhere. But mystical concepts of unity and harmony are precisely perennial because of the shared nature of mystical experiences. Mystical christianity, mystical judaism, mystical islam, mystical buddhism, mystical taoism, mystical shintoism... The experiences have a lot in common. There are a number of surprising alignments between the Dao De Jing and Presocratic philosophy. I’d be happy to share.
As you note there are many routes to the altered state of consciousness and sometimes people unwittingly stumble across shortcuts that do not require chemicals or intentional manipulation of the mental state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_selectivity#Example...
This accounts for the “alien” character of the psychedelic experience, which is not an attribute normally used for sober mystical experiences.
> Importantly, the mysticism scale is not a “drug induced mysticism scale.”
Yes, hence my argument: while this scale identifies similarities between sober/intoxicated experiences, it doesn’t give an exhaustive description and overlooks that there might be just as many differences.
The same argument goes for the perennialist view of mysticism. Different doctrines might share the end goal, but the chosen path can be experienced very differently. I guess my point is to not stipulate one path as representative of all paths which arrive at the same destination. The end goal in fact lays outside doctrine.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-varieties-of-spi...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Scientific_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Exp...
https://www.amazon.com/Perennial-Philosophy-Interpretation-G...
Welcome to the pathless path.
Maybe Schrodinger's What is Life might also help.
Aleister Crowley said in Magick in Theory and Practice:
"In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them."
So, have you studied and received training and tried your own personal practice in pushing up your cerebrospinal fluid / manipulating your kundalini energy / grounding your root chakra / whatever new-agey terms your chosen method uses? Or are you dismissing the validity of these methods without firsthand experimentation because of how other people in your society have trained you think and because you do not like the terminology that they use?
I don't consider Joe Dispenza a good and experienced meditation teacher, and I don't consider serious his use of pseudoscientific explanations. Still, what he says may be helpful for some people, but I believe that there are much better meditation teachers.
So by definition anything that produces an effect not readily accepted by 'science' is pseudo-science. It doesn't make it wrong it just means consensus hasn't caught up with it.
Maybe it's CSF that's pushed up the spine, maybe it's energy. But multiple traditions practice some form of moving awareness up the spine combined with gentle physical contraction as a primary means of creating the conditions for entering mystical states. Those same traditions describe how this method energises the endocrine system. Furthermore the effects of doing this are now documented in scientific papers (search pubmed for kundalini).
None of this negates the validity of the methods. They require firsthand experience for any real benefit, and more study to understand the exact processes at work.
It is possible to write scientifically about meditation and altered states of consciousness without liberally reinterpreting all of physics. See Sam Harris or John Yates for example (both neuroscientists). What the hell is this guy a doctor of, anyway…? Chiropractic. Why am I not surprised.
Maybe you just prefer to take instructions on blind faith, but for me his claim that feelings cause the body to produce chemicals which influence the cells makes sense, removing my resistance to this meditation.
His logical fallacies etc do not necessarily undermine the meditation.
YMMV.
Then the site offers a recommended reading list, if you wish to go deeper into some of the traditions: https://centerforsacredsciences.org/index.php/Library/recomm...
The book is edited from Shinzen's talks and an earlier version does have some guided meditations that introduce these practices but a newer version narrated by Edoardo Ballerini doesn't. In any case I think one needs significant meditation experience to comprehend the second half of the book.
It is loosely based on the Buddhist 8-fold Path as interpreted by Tim Leary's (yeah, him, sigh) 8-circuit model of consciousness, but also discusses tarot, cabala, alchemy, the Hindu Chakra System, western magickal esotericism, the usual boring stuff everybody gets taught in grade school.
It's better than most, but unfortunately like a lot of other books on the topic, knowledge of all the background material really is required to get a full understanding and appreciation of the content. I've just never found the time to sit down and actually read "Ulysses."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_E...