science-and-religion, psychologyClaims of experiencing [X] frequently litter stories of people who convert from one religion to another, refresh their faith, or otherwise come to accept some new (to them) theistic notions. In these scenarios, [X] can range from things specific like ‘I felt the Holy Spirit come into me’ to ‘I had an experience where suddenly I escaped the trappings of my individuated self, and took on a cosmological state of mind.’ They can also be more generalized experiences of non-ordinary consciousness, feelings of spontaneous well-being, or epiphany-type episodes (i.e. in a case where some bit of gnosis is mystically understood). How does an atheist approach the following:
While the dubiousness and veracity of these claims can be held to scrutiny, I am not asking that question. I would like to know, based on exposure to the spectrum of these kinds of accounts, what categorization method is coherent within atheism to encapsulate this spectrum in order to classify it and explain it to the person who underwent the experience.
Although these experiences are generally held in a religious context, they are quantifiable episodes that correlate with actual stimuli and the person’s organism and play into the psychology/pathos of a person. As such, I am interested in a secular, non-god approach to explaining where the grandiose sense of meaning comes from in these circumstances. It can borrow theistic archetypes, as they are embedded in our consiousness, but must remain atheistically coherent. (i.e. Where an atheist may disdain ‘mysticism’ generally, is pursuit of those experiences without value?)
This may sound like a question about these experiences, but essentially I am looking for a very sober approach to deconstructing non-ordinary states of consciousness and mystic experiences.
I don’t have any sources to cite, but as far as the “I became one with the universe” experience, I think that’s a function of a brain state where the part of the brain (sorry, I can’t remember which; not a doctor :) ) which distinguishes the edges of the self gets turned off. This state of mind occurs during drumming, chanting, repetitive dancing, and meditation, among other activities, many of which are associated with the sensation of “joining the cosmos.” When you literally can’t determine where “you,” your “self,” ends, then it feels like you are part of the great big everything.
Unfortunately I can't offer a taxonomy of unusual experiences. However, there is a personality trait which may be relevant, called schizotypy. The trait encapsulates the tendency to have experiences on the diverse spectrum of phenomena associated with psychosis. And while unpalatable to many people who have such experiences, they are associated with psychosis. But it's important to remember that those experiences in and of themselves do not mean someone is insane. Those experiences can be as tame as every thought immediately and automatically suggesting an enormous number of ideas, to having the feeling of gaining or losing energy when people look at or touch you, to full-blown hallucinations and delusions. At the milder end of the spectrum are experiences that everyone might have a some point in their life.
The construct of schizotypy is used in a lot of psychological research as a measure of individuals' tendency to have those experiences. In particular, I (and many others) have used the scale developed by Mason and colleagues. It's divided into 4 parts. The most pertinent is called, suitably, the Unusual Experiences subscale, describing "perceptual aberrations, magical thinking, and hallucinations."
While schizotypy isn't a taxonomy of unusual experiences, the literature on schizotypy does provide some insight into the psychology and phenomenology of such experiences. Part IV of this book in particular may be relevant. while schizotypy is independent of mental health, most of the book discusses schizotypy in the context of illness. However part iv focuses on schizotypy in the general population. Chapter 11 deals specifically with spiritual experiences.
John Searle has an interesting discussion of ontic vs. epistemic subjectivity in “The Mystery of Consciousness” and other works. According to his views, which I share, science and the naturalistic worldview are capable of dealing with subjective phenomena as long as they are epistemically objective. Holy, supernatural and other similar experiences are, under this classification, epistemically subjective, although ontologically objective (assuming the perceiver is not lying about them).
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