Notes for 11/6/2025

 

11/6/2025

[Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")]

[Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.]

 

Ask and answer your own question.

 

"When I was ten or eleven years old and lived in Kamapukur, I first experienced samadhi. As I was passing through a paddy-field, I saw something and was overwhelmed. There are certain characteristics of God-vision. One sees light, feels joy, and experiences the upsurge of a great current in one's chest, like the bursting of a rocket." (Ramakrishna)

 

"While sitting alone in a moss field, it was like a switch had flipped and a curtain dropped and I suddenly saw everything not as I had seen it, but as it really was: like a single painting where everything was there all at once. And there was no 'I' no 'moss'. It was like my soul had left my body and was covered up by the moss. And later when it came back into my body, it brought the moss with it and the moss became part of me. Words and conceptual boundaries didn't exist. There was no time and no space." (L. Sotnak - paraphrased)

 

A CELL, POLICE STATION, IN ENGLAND

September 3, 1941

“I have just had a wonderful experience. I cannot adequately describe it. I have gradually been becoming aware of a Presence in the cell, and suddenly the whole room was charged with infinite Power. I was as if in the midst of a vast congregation, yet utterly intimate. The place was illuminated and yet not physically so. The emotion of my happiness was so powerful that it struck me through and through, and I had a very storm of weeping in my weakness. Yet through it I have gained a profound strength. How shall I describe what is beyond words? This cell is now a holy place to me, and I am overcome with an impulse to glorify and worship. I have had no difficulties yet, but I know now how the saints were upheld whatever their condition. In the words of George Fox 'I had great openings.' Only those will understand who have been through it themselves.” (unknown)

 

"I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not. I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there. I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not. Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else". (Rumi)

 

"It seemed to me there came the thought of how a sponge absorbs and is saturated with water; so, I thought, was my soul which was overflowing with that divinity and in a certain way rejoicing within itself and possessing the three Persons. I also heard the words: 'Don't try to hold Me within yourself but try to hold yourself within Me'". (St. Teresa of Avila)

 

"I was alone upon the seashore as all these thoughts flowed over me, liberating and reconciling... I was impelled to kneel down, this time before the illimitable ocean, symbol of the Infinite. I felt that I prayed as I had never prayed before, and knew now what prayer really is: to return from the solitude of individuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is, to kneel down as one that passes away, and to rise up as one imperishable". (Malwida von Meysenbug)

 

"Suddenly, without warning, I felt that I was in Heaven—an inward state of peace and joy and assurance indescribably intense, accompanied with a sense of being bathed in a warm glow of light... a feeling of having passed beyond the body, though the scene around me stood out more clearly and as if nearer to me than before, by reason of the illumination in the midst of which I seemed to be placed". (J. Trevor)

1. Mystical experiences are not significantly correlated with either mental illnesses or drug-inducement.

2. If (1), then mystical experiences are "natural."

3. If mystical experiences are "natural," then it is likely that they are veridical.

4. Therefore, it is likely that mystical experiences are veridical.

 

Where a veridical experience is one that forms the basis for a true representation of how things are.

 

Two broad types of mystical experiences:

1.          Noetic (or having content expressible as “I experienced THAT….”)

2.          Non-noetic (expressible as “I had a feeling of…”)

 

 

 

Here are some different attempts to classify mystical experiences:

 

5 characteristics of MEs (David Lukoff):

1. Ecstatic mood (which he identified as the most common feature)

2. Sense of newly gained knowledge, which includes a belief that the mysteries of life have been revealed

3. Perceptual alterations, which range from “heightened sensations to auditory and visual hallucinations

4. Delusions (if present) have themes related to mythology, which include an incredible diversity and range

5. No conceptual disorganization; those with mystical experiences (unlike psychotic persons) do not suffer from disturbances in language and speech

 

 

Walter Stace:

1. The mystical experience is noetic. The person having the experience perceives it as a valid source of knowledge and not just a subjective experience.

2. The mystical experience is ineffable; it cannot simply be described in words.

3. The mystical experience is holy. While this is the religious aspect of the experience, it is not necessarily expressed in any particular theological terms.

4. The mystical experience is profound yet enjoyable and characterized by positive affect.

5. The mystical experience is paradoxical. It defies logic.

 

Further analysis of reported mystical experiences suggests that the one essential feature of mysticism is an experience of unity (Ralph Hood, 1985). The experience of unity involves a process of ego loss and is generally expressed in one of three ways (Hood, 1 976a): The ego is absorbed into that which transcends it, or through an inward process the ego gains pure awareness of self, or a combination of the two.

 

 

William Wainwright defines MEs as having a noetic quality, involving a sense of objective reality and a conviction of being apprehended by an overwhelming supernatural good.

 

 

Mine:

- Mystical experiences are profound: They are meaningful, significant, transformative, often (but not always) highly emotional.

- Non-ordinary

- Beyond description/language/concepts

- Eclipsing of the self (self is either greatly diminished or vanishes altogether)

- Boundless: things are experienced as unlimited, infinite, or indefinite

- Unity: The object (or content) of the experience is one or experienced as “wholly present” without differentia

- Positivity: there is a feeling (either in or after the experience) of gratitude, love, acceptance, or positive 'meaningfulness'

 

Whichever classificatory framework one applies, there always seem to be cases where it is unclear whether or not it should count as a mystical experience.

 

For example, the Buddha’s enlightenment is sometimes described in ways that make it seem to be a mystical experience but is also sometimes described in ways that make it seem not to be.

 

The enlightenment experience does have a noetic quality: The Buddha realized THAT the root of karmic rebirth is selfish-grasping, and THAT all things are dependently-originated, and THAT the Buddhist Path is the way to nirvana, ….

 

But (especially in later Buddhism) it is also described as “nothing special.” It isn’t that the Buddha experienced reality as extraordinary or had an extraordinary experience of reality. Rather, the Buddha had an ordinary experience of ordinary reality but with knowledge of the limitations imposed by language and conceptual structuring.

 

In many Zen communities, extraordinary experiences are dismissed as delusion (makyo) – efforts by the unconscious mind to impose some kind of grandiosity of the false self in experience (I’m special because I had this special experience).

 

A similar caution is found in Sufism (despite Sufism being generally described as “Islamic mysticism”).

Students who become hungry for transformative experiences thereby lose sight of their instrumental value (which is mainly to highlight the limited scope of ordinary cognition and thereby point to the possibility of veridical mystical experiences).

 

A significant problem for the veridicality of mystical experiences is the presumption that experiences produced in the “wrong” ways are thereby probably not veridical.

 

Here is the argument I presented earlier:

1. Mystical experiences are not significantly correlated with either mental illnesses or drug-inducement.

2. If (1), then mystical experiences are "natural."

3. If mystical experiences are "natural," then it is likely that they are veridical.

4. Therefore, it is likely that mystical experiences are veridical.

 

 

A number of people have rejected the presumption at the heart of this argument that only “natural” mystical experiences are likely veridical. (e.g., William James, Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, Walter Stace, Ram Dass)

Some have treated induced mystical experiences as inferior to natural ones, but others have rejected any such comparisons.

 

The main motive for emphasizing the naturalness of some mystical (or religious) experiences is to respond to the dismissal of these as “mere artifacts” of mental illness or messing up the brain’s normally-adapted chemistry.

 

There is abundant evidence for the non-veridical character of many experiences rooted in drugs and mental illness, so in general the following seems true:

Pr(Veridicality/Drugs-Illness) < Pr(Veridicality/Normal)

 

 

 

But not only are mystical experiences relatively “normal”, they also have significant positive features:

 

"Those who experience mystical consciousness score higher on measures of self-actualization. They prove to be happier, better-adjusted, more confident, more successful, find life more meaningful and are more content in their work than those who do not experience these phenomena." (Joe Hinman)

 

That is, mystical experiences appear to provide emotional, psychological, and cognitive advantages.

It looks like all else being equal, people are better off if they have a mystical experience than if they don’t.

 

What explains this?

 

Joe Hinman's argument for theism from mystical experiences:

1. Mystical experiences have significant positive features (PF).

2. Pr(PF/Theism) > Pr(PF/Naturalism)

3. Therefore, God probably exists.

 

(Disclaimer: Joe was a non-traditional (Tillichian) theist – details lacking)

 

 

A problem here is a recurrence of one we encountered earlier in the course:

How is Pr(x/Theism) to be determined?

 

More generally where there are no known instances of y, Pr(x/y) seems undeterminable.