That's called an objective verification.
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Are Mystical Experiences Intersubjectively Verifiable?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
I gathered you were being sarcastic. I was just curious, though, what a mystical experience was to you?
I suppose some people call it that. Is there some reason you prefer to call it "an objective verification"?
Haha. Because it is.
'
Why use a big word when a diminutive one will do?
The phrase, "intersubjectively verifiable", does not assume a metaphysics. The phrase, "objective verification" does assume a metaphysics, doesn't it?
okay, okay i see you are going to force me to be serious:
a mystical experience to me would be one in which the experiencer perceives, what to them, appears to be a supernatural event, that is to say something for which the experiencer has no logical/rational/'scientific' explanation, but which the experiencer cannot dismiss as having been hallucinatory in nature.
this would run the gamut from seeing objects flying across a room to apparent demonic possession to encounters with angelic beings to near death and out of body experiences. any of those experiences can be imbued with a spiritual meaning for the experiencer (or not).
Subjective experience is unqiue, personal, and contemporaneous with a moment of consciousness. It is not repeatable by virtue of being subjectively observed.
An objective experience is the above made "true" for an individual. It may be made "true" through a sharing of understanding with another individual, through repetition of similar experiences, or simply by being cast across the divide by belief.
I'm not sure what "assuming a metaphysics" entails.
okay, okay i see you are going to force me to be serious:
a mystical experience to me would be one in which the experiencer perceives, what to them, appears to be a supernatural event, that is to say something for which the experiencer has no logical/rational/'scientific' explanation, but which the experiencer cannot dismiss as having been hallucinatory in nature.
this would run the gamut from seeing objects flying across a room to apparent demonic possession to encounters with angelic beings to near death and out of body experiences. any of those experiences can be imbued with a spiritual meaning for the experiencer (or not).
Thanks for the clarification!
I should have made clear in the OP that a mystical experience in this thread occurs when there is a sudden end to object/subject perception while the continuum of experience remains. That's quite different from seeing objects flying across the room, etc.
doppelganger
Through the Looking Glass
"Verifiable" assumes a metaphysics though, too, doesn't it?
oh oh okay, now i get it. you are describing what I have always called a transcendental spiritual experience. thanks for clearing that up.
doppelganger
Through the Looking Glass
"Metaphysics" is the branch of philosophy that examines thought through the window "which symbols represent the fundamental description of the nature of 'reality'?" Ontology is often regarded as part of metaphysics in the taxonomy of philosophy. "Verifiable" implies an ontology to me. So does "objective."
Scarlett Wampus
psychonaut
Using Wilber's four quadrants there would be the direct experience itself, the secondary behavioural effects, recognition from others that such a thing is possible and has likely happened (the intersubjective part) and there is also understanding the phenomenon in terms of knowledge of its mechanisms and how the experience may match up with that. All of these can and are used as verification but none of them alone nor even all of them together are infallible.
Taking something like romantic love there is a great deal of personal, behavioural, cultural and scientific knowledge of it. Taken all together we can be fairly certain about what it is and also dismiss some of the myths about it. It is likewise with non-dual mind but it is rarer and not of much interest to most so isn't so well understood. Nevertheless there are many personal accounts of it, behavioural changes that are known to coincide with it, cultural mores that actively acknowledge and work with it and nowadays we have neurophysiology including numerous forms of fancy neuroimaging that have shown just how different the brain functions when people experienced in meditation are practising it (meditation is linked to non-dual mind).
I have so say though, verifying non-dual mind intersubjectively is probably only worth something if the other involved has sufficient understanding of it themselves. When trying to get someone to accept strange information they're unfamiliar with its likely they'll respond in a way that seems strange or disingenuous on the one hand or flat out deny it on the other.
Something like the above occurred with someone close to me. She has had, to my view, unusual mystical experiences that fall outside those I myself am familiar with. After a couple of months of comparing and contrasting, much of which I did while very sceptical about what I was being told, I came to the conclusion that some of the things she'd been through were genuine but neither equivalent nor similar to what was familiar to me. I also realised that speaking about my own experiences, how they fit in with some mystical traditions and how I'd come to interpret/understand them in other ways, was uncomfortable for her because she wanted to join in but could not. Not only that but some of my ideas were threatening to her world view. *sigh*