Human Development
Deautomatization and the mystic experience
Description:
1. [Sense of realness]. The sense of a reality which is greater than that felt in ordinary consciousness arises in all mystic experiences. However, this sense of reality is also typical in some psychoses and in depersonalization and derealization. Meditation and renunciation together are said to cause a disruption of the normal psychological relationship to the world. Through [reality transfer], stimuli of the inner world - thoughts and images - become real.2. [Unusual sensations]. Perceptions of all-engulfing light, energy, visions, incommunicable knowledge, although claimed to be from another world or a different dimension, may equally well be due to an unusual mode of perception rather than an external stimulus. Through the mode of [sensory translation], illumination is not simply a metaphor but an actual sensory experience. In a state of [perceptual concentration], the person is aware of intra-psychic processes normally outside the range of awareness. Because reality transfer makes real the amorphous sensation which is the vehicle for this perception, it is misinterpreted as originating from outside.
3. [Unity]. The experience of oneness with God or with the universe is common to mystic experience in whatever culture. This may be explained in terms of regression. It may also be perception of one's own psychic structure or of the real structure of the world. Since the substance of perception is probably electrochemical activity, the contents of awareness are homogenous. Turning awareness back on itself, as in sensory translation, this homogeneity or unity would be interpreted as pertaining not to the thought process but to the external world.
The perception of unity may, in fact, evaluate the external world correctly. Deautomatization, although requiring more attention than under normal perception, does allow [perceptual expansion]. One aspect of the real world not normally experienced, but experienced under the broader basis of perceptual expansion, may indeed be unity. This explains the experience of those versed in meditation and renunciation but not the fleeting experience of untrained persons.
4. [Ineffability]. Because mystic experiences are all indescribable they tend all to be included in one category as though they were all similar. However, there are definite differences. For example, that based on memories and fantasies of pre-verbal childhood could not be described in speech. Mystic training may increase recall and vividness of such memories. Again, revelations such as drug-induced experiences may be too complex for speech - simultaneous levels of meaning, understanding of the totality of existence - whether or not they are actual or illusory. Sudden expansion of consciousness to encompass a large number of concepts, or vertical organization of concepts instead of all in one consciousness plane, would be equally indescribable.
5. [Trans-sensate phenomena]. This is a third kind of ineffable experience, which goes beyond habitual sensory paths, ideas and memories. It is described by many mystics as not containing any familiar sensory or intellectual elements and yet being filled with a profound perception which is regarded as the goal of the mystic path. Here, renunciation has weakened and temporarily removed ordinary objects of consciousness from the focus of awareness while meditation has undone the logical organization of consciousness. However, there is a strong motivation to perceive something. Supposing undeveloped or unutilized perceptual capacities to exist, then these conditions are just those in which they might be expected to be mobilized and come into operation. Because such experience would be outside normal frames of reference it would be unidentifiable and therefore indescribable. This appears to have a different scope from normal consciousness, and high value, meaning and intensity are ascribed to it. Trans-sensate experience is associated with loss of "self" and is therefore not associated with reflective awareness, the "I" of normal consciousness is in abeyance.
Related:
Deautomatization