Ross Douthat's five varieties of mystical experience

I'm finding Ross Douthat's book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, less interesting now that I've gotten past the reasons Douthat offers for being religious, and have started to read how one goes about choosing a religion to believe in.

However, in his "The Myth of Disenchantment" chapter, which is within the why believe section, his description of five varieties of mystical experience struck me as both fairly unique and mostly valid. I'll use Douthat's own words to describe those varieties rather than attempting a paraphrase.

(1) Generic mystical experience. 

The first is what you might call the generic mystical experience -- "generic" not because it is boring or predictable but because it seems to be most commonplace and the most readily accessible through certain kinds of spiritual technique, common to religious traditions in both the East and West.

This is an experience in which the self's relationship to reality undergoes a dramatic transformation, and some deeper pattern of reality is apparently revealed. The revelation may take the form of a sense of oneness with the universe, of dissolving boundaries between the self and the world, of interconnection rather than separation within creation, with the ego and the individual personality seemingly evaporating. 

(2) Encounter with something absolutely other.

The second kind of mystical experience... involves a sense of encounter with something absolute and absolutely other. The first kind of experience can turn into the second kind; the line I'm drawing is hardly a clean one, but you see a definite difference when that transition happens, and the person having the experience is left with no doubt that Something is looking at them or pressing into and through them.

Here is an example...

"All at once I felt the presence of God... as if his goodness and his power were penetrating me altogether... I think it well to add that in this ecstasy of mine God has neither form, color, odor, nor taste... God was present, though invisible, he fell under no one of my senses, yet my consciousness perceived him."

(3) The supernatural condenses to a particular being.

...The third category of mystical experience [is] in which the supernatural condenses to a person, a particular being, a face, words. In these cases the sense of otherness doesn't go away; these are still encounters with the numinous, unsettling and eerie or just seemingly impossible in their nature and effects.

But what's experienced is made manifest in a singular figure, a personality or group of personalities, a voice giving instructions, not just a harrowing or joyful experience of divinity or mystery. A vision of Jesus or Krishna would fall into this category; so would the innumerable encounters with gods and saints and angels, departed relatives and the Virgin Mary; so would the external voice speaking to you suddenly at some crucial moment in your life.

(4) The experience involves effects on material reality. 

This brings us to the fourth kind of mystical experience, from the point of view of Official Knowledge the most disreputable of all -- the kind of mystical experience that actually has apparent effects in material reality, whether miraculous, uncanny, or simply really, really weird.

...The most consistently attested example of the mystical interacting with the material is the phenomenon of miraculous healings -- seemingly impossible recovery after intercessory prayer. That attestation takes many different forms, with the simplest being the share of contemporary people who claim to have experienced or witnessed a miraculous healing.

It's about a third of Americans, according to survey data, with higher shares in other parts of the world, meaning that hundreds of millions of people around the globe believe that they witnessed a concrete supernatural intervention in their lives.

(5) Encounter with a being or force that has agency.

But the religious worldview assumes that these [miraculous] happenings are, at least in the more dramatic cases, the results of the free decisions of nonhuman persons with whom we can interact through prayer or magic -- God Himself, the gods, angelic or demonic beings, the holy dead, unclassifiable forces.

The most common kinds of mystical experience, the ones that just involve the self's experience of its relationship to the cosmos or to its own mortal flesh, can be reproduced to some degree under laboratory conditions. You can put the meditating monk in the MRI machine, you can get general replications of experiences (the details are another matter) among people going on an ayahuasca-mediated spiritual trip.

But the encounter with something entirely other, in which the other being or force or personality has agency as well, is just not the kind of thing that the scientific method is designed to measure or test, nor is the kind of event to which it makes sense to assign definite probabilities.

...The miracle or the vision of the demonic reaching-in is supposed to be specific to the individual; your own internal conditions play some unmeasurable role; and likewise the external agents can't be subjected to normal scientific forms of scrutiny because they're agents and not just impersonal forces -- and their own purposes and interests, for our good or ill, involve not being subjected to the rules that govern our material existence.

Now, I didn't include Douthat's mention of arguments against the validity of reports of mystical experience. That's a whole other subject, whether it makes sense to believe in any or all of the five varieties.

The probability of 1 through 5 being a genuine reflection of reality clearly seems to be in inverse relationship to their number. Meaning, a sense of being in touch with a deeper dimension of reality seems so commonplace, it's hard to argue that something real isn't going on in the mind of the person having the first kind of mystical experience.

Just standing on the top of a mountain, looking out upon the majesty of nature, often stimulates an experience of unity with everything in existence. I've had that sort of experience. Most people have. 

However, being in touch with a supernatural being that has agency, the ability to act and intervene in the lives of humans, this is much less common -- and also much less likely to be true. Yet its rarity makes such an experience more memorable when it happens to someone.

That's why a book about sitting on a beach feeling one with the cosmos while watching the sun set over the ocean won't be of much interest to people, while a book about meeting Jesus and getting a tour of heaven stands a good chance of being a best seller.

Comments

[Ron E.]

I’m afraid I’m going to sound a bit of a reductionist on this one – or, on second thoughts, more a case of Occam’s Razor. I think Douthat is using a simplistic approach to ‘mystical experiences’, no doubt trying to add credence to his ideas of ‘Why everyone should be religious’. But as I mentioned on February 12th at the beginning of these blogs on Douthat: “He may have a point regarding Christianity being a binding force for society. There are numerous advantages in such cohesive organisations.” [Or in any religion or community grouping]

And, there are also advantages in so-called mystical experiences as explained by K. Nelson: In fact, there is already a growing amount of information gather by neuroscience on such matters as OEB’s, NDE’, experiences of unity, oneness, ESP etc. Kevin Nelson, a neurologist with three decades' experience examining the biology behind human spirituality. His research offers the first, comprehensive, empirically tested, peer-reviewed examination of the reasons we are capable of NDE's, OBE's and other mystical states.

I quote Nelson (from The God Impulse) as he does not decry spiritual states, regarding them as a valuable aspect of human life and possibly, for some at certain times, helpful. The difference is that such research does not suggest such spiritual experiences are other worldly. They are viewed as normal happenings and part of the rich tapestry of the workings of the human brain.

Regarding Douthat’s interpretations (and perhaps reasons for embracing religion) I wouldn’t decry them and I realise many would prefer the more supernatural explanations, but for me it’s more a case of being honest, or embracing reality and why Brian’s last paragraph states: - “That's why a book about sitting on a beach feeling one with the cosmos while watching the sun set over the ocean won't be of much interest to people, while a book about meeting Jesus and getting a tour of heaven stands a good chance of being a best seller.”

For me, the only more valid experience is to live the reality of being here now. After all, this present moment, what’s occurring right now, is the only thing we can ever know for sure, all else is conceptual thought - like the above, just views and opinions.

[Appreciative Reader]

This is interesting, actually.

Douthat’s schema is interesting. There could be other ways of classing mystical experiences, as well --- but this works too, I guess.

Except: All of these are essentially “dual” experiences. Non-dual experiences are a thing, and many have reported such. I personally know a few who have, including a venerable old lady, a long-retired professor, whom I met with only a couple months back, back during Christmas week. For that matter, our Osho Robbins reports such as well --- and, for what that is worth, although I completely disagree with his interpretation of such, and indeed find it nonsensical (and believe I have convincingly demonstrated it to be nonsensical), but, again for what that is worth, I think the man is honest in his reportage of his experience.

My point being, any schema of mystical experiences that does not also include complete absorption, to the point of non-duality, is probably an incomplete one.

It might be interesting to see what Douthat’s based his classification on. Does he claim it is rigorous and exhaustive, or is that just his general take? Fair enough if the latter, as long as he makes that clear.

----------

“The probability of 1 through 5 being a genuine reflection of reality clearly seems to be in inverse relationship to their number.”

Sure. And in any case, to even consider such a possibility directly, to imagine simply basis the felt experience that this might be “a genuine reflection of reality” is, quite simply, halfwittery --- at least in this day and age, as opposed to in times past.

Like I spelled out in a comment the other day --- that I can’t find now, because that exchange was at the end of a blog post and thread dating back from long back, and that comment is no longer in the recent comments list, and I’m too lazy to search back for it! --- an experience like this can be no more than just a data point, and the starting point of long patient investigation, strictly following the scientific method. To even imagine, directly, that any of this might speak to reality --- and to base one’s belief in God on such --- is simply, to use that word again, halfwittery. It betrays a mentality that is out of touch with reality, that is to say deluded. And ignorant of, or at any rate unmindful of, reason and rationality and science.

[October]

IMHO
It's useless to go after experiences in one's spiritual journey.Then that will shape your
reality of which there is no realty.
It's the experience one should go after as it's genesis of all experience.

RS provides a clear way.You are in your ocean. Do it yourself.My ocean??

Let it fly