If you've had an unusual mystical experience which is the core of your beliefs in the supernatural...?

Question

Why haven't you consider that you might have jumped to the conclusion that this experience is religious and not chemical/biological, and also jumped to the conclusion that this event relates to your particular religious upbringing?

Calling me "sweets" is a demeaning insult and I view that as proof of the immorality of mysticism.

I assume a physical explanation first because a mystical explanation opens up a can of worms that undermines all of human experience (science). Being reasonable, one always assumes the simplest solution until presented with contrary evidence, which we are not.

Bohdidave: "Radical form of honesty..." Sounds like mumbo jumbo to me? What, you face your impending oblivion and get a little frightened thrill and think you've had an epiphany. I had one of those watching "1408." Meditation is known to cause unusual brain activity so I wouldn't be surprised you had achieved altered states. Then you contradict yourself saying it's mysticism when it's been quantified. That ain't mysticism, it's altered states. Taking LSD isn't mysticism either.

Answer 1

I am currently doing a PhD in philosophy using meditative techniques to directly study consciousness. There are no experiences I've seen reported, much less corroborated by intersubjective agreement, that would support a claim that these experiences necessarily suggest anything outside of the nervous system. Several of these experiences are used in traditions worldwide to support theological claims, which is simply unreasonable. The descriptions of the experiences themselves seem to agree from tradition to tradition, but the metaphysics used to explain the experiences diverge greatly; and they can't all be correct.

Answer 2

have you considered that while some people may have had the point your trying to make, that some, might have a continual, repeated "mystical" experiences, that can not be rationally explained by science or anything other than the spiritual/metaphysical reason?


one could ask the same thing. why do you jump to the conclusion its a physical event and not a metaphysical one?

some of the arguments I've heard people use to try to explain how some metaphysical event or another was really just a regular scientifically explainable mundane thing, are really silly. I mean their explanation is more far fetched than simply recognizing its metaphysical meaning!

edit: there is more to human experience than science. you may not have personally experienced anything beyond that which science can explain, but others have.
some things that DO happen and DO exist, the simplest explanation *IS* the metaphysical one.

Answer 3

The question is rife with over-generalizations and inaccurate assumptions.

I've had a great number of mystical experiences. I do not have beliefs in the supernatural, and I have not jumped to the conclusion that such experiences are not biochemical. They have made me realize what I had assumed the teachings of my particular religious upbringing meant was incomplete and off the mark.

Religion means re-connection. For me, that's reconnection with a sober, direct, self-evident and powerfully valuable experience that is matter-of-factly before words. Anything I might say about that mode of experience will necessarily draw on cultural forms -- anything anybody says about anything does that, as that's the definition of shared language. But I am very well aware that my language is poetic in that instance.

Mystical experiences are born of a radical form of honesty, frequently cultivated through empirical contemplative practices designed to help get us out of our prejudicial cognitions and into something much more immediate and direct. They are, in other words, about not being opinionated and about stopping judgmentalism and about not jumping to conclusions.

You should try it some time. It tends to clear up dogmatically held inaccurate opinions.


ADDED: It's hard to know whether it's worth the effort to respond to someone who regards "radical honesty" as "mumbo jumbo," and who furthermore appears to know rather little about contemplative practices or the history of mystical traditions. I've studied them for over 30 years, in places like Harvard (comparative religions M.A.) and Berkeley (theology M.A.; psychology Ph.D.), and several of this continent's better known Zen monasteries.

But I'll offer this much -- I have seen my "impending oblivion"; I have been through what it is like to die (drowning). And what I saw on the other side of that encounter with the cessation of consciousness has deeply informed my appreciation for the practices that are so thoroughly investigated in mystical traditions, namely, an unspeakably simple and utterly wondrous experiential realization of the fact that existence is, in and of itself, immeasurably beautiful.

There are many, many forms of meditation and contemplative exercise conducted by the world's so-called mystics. But that sort of naked encounter with "suchness," arrived at precisely through paying radically careful attention to how our minds operate -- especially, how it is our intellective processes habitually DISTRACT us from what is always already empirically there before our opinions and theories and distorted percepts -- that is the kind of honest sobriety and mindful presence that is the living heart of mysticism.
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Answer 4

1. Because if such experiences were merely chemical / biological, they would occur at times other than during meditation or ritual.

2. Chemical / biological events usually require some sort of trigger / catalyst in order for them to occur, such as a particular type of stimulation or ingestion of a substance.

3. My religious upbringing has little bearing on my current faith / spiritual technologies.

4. Internal chemical / biological experiences alone cannot typically affect outside situations such as do some spiritual experiences.

Just a few thoughts.

Answer 5

By the way you have worded your question, it is you who has jumped to the conclusion that I might have not considered my supernatural experiences to be chemical/biological rather then from God. It is you who has jumped to the conclusion that I had a religious upbringing when I was raised atheist. It is you who can not believe that God is watching each and everyone on this planet because you can not understand something outside the realm of yur own perspective. In other words, I know whats up.

Answer 6

The very wording and tone of this question indicates that you are in no way interested in any answer that does not agree with your current position. I wonder why you even ask. The question is purely rhetorical in my opinion.

Answer 7

What makes you assume I did not rule other causes out and seek independent verification?

...and my religion is not even close to the way I was raised, sweets.