Taking Mystical Experiences Seriously

[Ella S.]

Put simply, people make spiritual practices such as prayer and meditation a central part of their lives, and have done for millennia, because doing so improves the quality of their lives, brings them inner peace and freedom, a sense of connection with the whole of creation. Some of us would no more do without prayer and meditation than we would do without sunlight or water.

I agree with this quite a bit. Spiritual practice is, in general, often highly beneficial to one's psychological well-being. It doesn't really matter what the practice is because it's more about the individual's contextualization of the practice.

Meditation will probably help those who view it through a religious or spiritual lens, but it's not because meditation itself taps into the healing power of the universe or raises someone's consciousness or whatever. It's because it makes someone feel more connected to something greater than themselves, which is something religions of all stripes excel at evoking.

You don't even really need to be religious or believe in the supernatural to feel these sorts of benefits, either.

 

[RestlessSoul]

The beauty of prayer and meditation is, that anyone can try these things for themselves, and assess the benefits on the basis of their own experience. There's no need to wait for the results of clinical trials, case studies etc. It's not hard to meditate, there's even a thread somewhere on this site where people share their experiences, suggestions etc.

As for prayer, all that's required is to follow the advice of the psalmist and "Be still, and know that I am God."

 

[RestlessSoul]

I agree with this quite a bit. Spiritual practice is, in general, often highly beneficial to one's psychological well-being. It doesn't really matter what the practice is because it's more about the individual's contextualization of the practice.

Meditation will probably help those who view it through a religious or spiritual lens, but it's not because meditation itself taps into the healing power of the universe or raises someone's consciousness or whatever. It's because it makes someone feel more connected to something greater than themselves, which is something religions of all stripes excel at evoking.

You don't even really need to be religious or believe in the supernatural to feel these sorts of benefits, either.

You certainly don't have to believe in a Creator, to believe that we are all part of something greater than ourselves, or that we can benefit from conscious connection with each other and with all of creation. There are strong arguments from both physics and philosophy, for viewing the universe as a fundamental whole, in which "every particle in the universe must eventually become entangled with every other" [Roger Penrose].

A benefit of seeing the physical world not as a series of detached objects interacting through occasional contact, but rather as a vast web of connected phenomena, was described thus by physicist Carlo Rovelli; "It renders lighter, the bittersweet flowing of our lives." Which chimes perfectly with the Dharmic philosophy of detachment.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Given this, is it really reasonable to summarily dismiss the rest of the claims that they have made about what are the experiences, results and conclusions when these paths are practiced intensely and with dedication for a whole lifetime? To call these things are results of self-delusion?

I'm not sure what you are really referring to with "the rest of the claims that they have made", but right out the gates, my instinctive response to that is that every claim falls and stands on their own merit.

Claims aren't correct by association / correlation

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The beauty of prayer and meditation is, that anyone can try these things for themselves, and assess the benefits on the basis of their own experience. There's no need to wait for the results of clinical trials, case studies etc

I disagree. If you want objective results, then clinical trials and analysis are the way to go. While your own experience certainly can have a positive effect on you, you yourself aren't able to distinguish objective real results from say a placebo effect.


As for the actual objective effects of prayer, meditation etc...
It is my understanding that it is not the praying itself or the specific type of meditation that does that. The same can be accomplished in other ways, in other contexts. The real question is what actually objectively underpins the effect. The prayer thing merely seems to be a means to an end. It's the therapeutic component that seems to trigger the effects. Other things can trigger the same thing.

Theists who make this argument like to use it as evidence in support of their religion. They argue that their religion is accurate by association. That's where I disagree.

 

[Elihoenai]

So, I have a proposition to make.

As most of you know that much of Eastern religions (I am thinking of Hinduism, Buddhism etc.) are based on insights that have come from what are called "mystical" experiences of their practitioners. This is also true for the minority mystical traditions in Islam and Christianity which always had a tension with the revelation book based understanding of the scriptures. Now, these mystical experiences had been the outcome of a certain set of meditative practices like yoga, dhyana, mindfulness meditation etc. A typical response of many secular people is to dismiss these experiences as constructs of the mind under these practice regimes and hence devoid of veridicality. However, several decades of research and scientific study has now been made on the impact of these practices on the body and mind of the practitioners and they show, quite unequivocally, that even short period practices of these lead to extremely beneficial effects on the health and mind of the people practicing them...in fact precisely the kind of effects that have been claimed to occur for short term practice of these meditative and yogic practices in the original scriptural traditions on which these are based. The evidence is shown below (from mainstream journals only).

I believe that the minimum thing the current studies establish is that the people who developed and mastered these disciplines knew what they were doing and claiming and today there is a reasonable amount of compelling evidence to back of several of their claims. Given this, is it really reasonable to summarily dismiss the rest of the claims that they have made about what are the experiences, results and conclusions when these paths are practiced intensely and with dedication for a whole lifetime? To call these things are results of self-delusion?

Let's face the fact that our current scientific understanding of how conscious subjective first person experience works is near zero. Yet, here is a set of traditions that have worked on this specific thing for thousands of years with dedication, expertise and effort and have reached some understanding of this using a set of practices that are clearly beneficial to us even in short bursts. So why not take them seriously and look further?

Note: Apologies in advance if I do not respond to everything and immediately. Real life is really busy. I will try to get to them I promise.

Note: This is the second thread on this topic from me. The previous threads responds to some common objections. See here
Defending the Validity of Religious/Spiritual Experiences




A few selected papers

1)
Physiological Effects of Yogic Practices and Transcendental Meditation in Health and Disease
Abstract
Yoga is an ancient Indian way of life, which includes changes in mental attitude, diet, and the practice of specific techniques such as yoga asanas (postures), breathing practices (pranayamas), and meditation to attain the highest level of consciousness. Since a decade, there has been a surge in the research on yoga, but we do find very few reviews regarding yogic practices and transcendental meditation (TM) in health and disease. Keeping this in view, a Medline search was done to review relevant articles in English literature on evaluation of physiological effects of yogic practices and TM. Data were constructed; issues were reviewed and found that there were considerable health benefits, including improved cognition, respiration, reduced cardiovascular risk, body mass index, blood pressure, and diabetes. Yoga also influenced immunity and ameliorated joint disorders.

2)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/gps.3790

Abstract
Background
This study examined the effects of brief daily yogic meditation on mental health, cognitive functioning, and immune cell telomerase activity in family dementia caregivers with mild depressive symptoms.
Results
The meditation group showed significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms and greater improvement in mental health and cognitive functioning compared with the relaxation group. In the meditation group, 65.2% showed 50% improvement on the Hamilton Depression Rating scale and 52% of the participants showed 50% improvement on the Mental Health Composite Summary score of the Short Form-36 scale compared with 31.2% and 19%, respectively, in the relaxation group (p < 0.05). The meditation group showed 43% improvement in telomerase activity compared with 3.7% in the relaxation group (p = 0.05).

3) The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation | Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Conclusions from the paper

• It is proposed that the mechanism through which mindfulness meditation exerts its effects is a process of enhanced self-regulation, including attention control, emotion regulation and self-awareness.
  
  
• Research on mindfulness meditation faces a number of important challenges in study design that limit the interpretation of existing studies.
  
  
• A number of changes in brain structure have been related to mindfulness meditation.
  
  
• Mindfulness practice enhances attention. The anterior cingulate cortex is the region associated with attention in which changes in activity and/or structure in response to mindfulness meditation are most consistently reported.
  
  
• Mindfulness practice improves emotion regulation and reduces stress. Fronto-limbic networks involved in these processes show various patterns of engagement by mindfulness meditation.
  
  
• Meditation practice has the potential to affect self-referential processing and improve present-moment awareness. The default mode networks — including the midline prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex, which support self-awareness — could be altered following mindfulness training.
  
  
• Mindfulness meditation has potential for the treatment of clinical disorders and might facilitate the cultivation of a healthy mind and increased well-being.
  
  
• Future research into mindfulness meditation should use randomized and actively controlled longitudinal studies with large sample sizes to validate previous findings.
  
  
• The effects of mindfulness practice on neural structure and function need to be linked to behavioural performance, such as cognitive, affective and social functioning, in future research.
  
  
• The complex mental state of mindfulness is likely to be supported by the large-scale brain networks; future work should take this into account rather than being restricted to activations in single brain areas.

This is Not Taking Mystical Experiences Seriously. Therefore, the OP is making False Claims about Seriousness.


Two points:

1) The Mystical cannot be Validated by Science.
2) True Religionist embracing the Mystical don't seek Scientific Validation.


Religious Mysticism is Beyond Science and Cannot be Explained by Science. Mysticism and Science are in different Domains. Science is limited to the Physical Domain. Religion is Not Science and Science is Not Religion.


Take for example, a hundred people watching a person Walk on Water with their own eyes. Those hundred people would Not Really believe that the person actually Walked on Water and instead would think that it some sort of Magic trick that you see in shows. They would have to Experience Walking on Water themselves to Really Believe the Phenomenon. The Exception is if a person is Brainwashed by a Religious Cult. In that case the Religious Leader can make a person Really Believe things that are Not Really True.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I disagree. If you want objective results, then clinical trials and analysis are the way to go. While your own experience certainly can have a positive effect on you, you yourself aren't able to distinguish objective real results from say a placebo effect.


As for the actual objective effects of prayer, meditation etc...
It is my understanding that it is not the praying itself or the specific type of meditation that does that. The same can be accomplished in other ways, in other contexts. The real question is what actually objectively underpins the effect. The prayer thing merely seems to be a means to an end. It's the therapeutic component that seems to trigger the effects. Other things can trigger the same thing.

Theists who make this argument like to use it as evidence in support of their religion. They argue that their religion is accurate by association. That's where I disagree.

I don’t argue that my religion - such as it is - is in any way inerrant. And that clearly isn’t what the OP is suggesting either. What I believe with a conviction based on personal experience, is that prayer and meditation has the power to transform lives. And this is as likely to be true for adherents of all religions and none.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I don’t argue that my religion - such as it is - is in any way inerrant. And that clearly isn’t what the OP is suggesting either. What I believe with a conviction based on personal experience, is that prayer and meditation has the power to transform lives. And this is as likely to be true for adherents of all religions and none.

The OP isn't about those things "transforming lives". It's about mere health benefits.

 

[RestlessSoul]

The OP isn't about those things "transforming lives". It's about mere health benefits.

You don’t think health has the power to transform lives?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You don’t think health has the power to transform lives?

If that is what you meant, then you should have said "good health can transform lives".
By extension, anything that benefits health transforms lives.

Praying, meditation, jogging, playing tennis, masturbating, having sex, eating vegetables, having a good sleeping pattern,......

It seems rather silly to just put praying and meditation out there as if there is something exceptionally special about it. So to do so makes me thing there is another agenda in play...

 

[RestlessSoul]

If that is what you meant, then you should have said "good health can transform lives".
By extension, anything that benefits health transforms lives.

Praying, meditation, jogging, playing tennis, masturbating, having sex, eating vegetables, having a good sleeping pattern,......

It seems rather silly to just put praying and meditation out there as if there is something exceptionally special about it. So to do so makes me thing there is another agenda in play...

Frightened of finding God’s under the bed?

 

[PureX]

I think the problem is that these kinds of experiences are very difficult and often impossible to be investigated via science. And we are a VERY science obsessed society. So no one bothers trying to investigate mysteries that can't be investigated via science.

Without the external perspective of scientific observation, how does one investigate these phenomena? By actual practice? That often takes a very long time and a very intense commitment. Not something most people are willing to invest just for the sake of investigating some mysterious psychic phenomena.

 

[Koldo]

So, I have a proposition to make.

As most of you know that much of Eastern religions (I am thinking of Hinduism, Buddhism etc.) are based on insights that have come from what are called "mystical" experiences of their practitioners. This is also true for the minority mystical traditions in Islam and Christianity which always had a tension with the revelation book based understanding of the scriptures. Now, these mystical experiences had been the outcome of a certain set of meditative practices like yoga, dhyana, mindfulness meditation etc. A typical response of many secular people is to dismiss these experiences as constructs of the mind under these practice regimes and hence devoid of veridicality. However, several decades of research and scientific study has now been made on the impact of these practices on the body and mind of the practitioners and they show, quite unequivocally, that even short period practices of these lead to extremely beneficial effects on the health and mind of the people practicing them...in fact precisely the kind of effects that have been claimed to occur for short term practice of these meditative and yogic practices in the original scriptural traditions on which these are based. The evidence is shown below (from mainstream journals only).

I believe that the minimum thing the current studies establish is that the people who developed and mastered these disciplines knew what they were doing and claiming and today there is a reasonable amount of compelling evidence to back of several of their claims. Given this, is it really reasonable to summarily dismiss the rest of the claims that they have made about what are the experiences, results and conclusions when these paths are practiced intensely and with dedication for a whole lifetime? To call these things are results of self-delusion?

Let's face the fact that our current scientific understanding of how conscious subjective first person experience works is near zero. Yet, here is a set of traditions that have worked on this specific thing for thousands of years with dedication, expertise and effort and have reached some understanding of this using a set of practices that are clearly beneficial to us even in short bursts. So why not take them seriously and look further?

Note: Apologies in advance if I do not respond to everything and immediately. Real life is really busy. I will try to get to them I promise.

Note: This is the second thread on this topic from me. The previous threads responds to some common objections. See here
Defending the Validity of Religious/Spiritual Experiences




A few selected papers

1)
Physiological Effects of Yogic Practices and Transcendental Meditation in Health and Disease
Abstract
Yoga is an ancient Indian way of life, which includes changes in mental attitude, diet, and the practice of specific techniques such as yoga asanas (postures), breathing practices (pranayamas), and meditation to attain the highest level of consciousness. Since a decade, there has been a surge in the research on yoga, but we do find very few reviews regarding yogic practices and transcendental meditation (TM) in health and disease. Keeping this in view, a Medline search was done to review relevant articles in English literature on evaluation of physiological effects of yogic practices and TM. Data were constructed; issues were reviewed and found that there were considerable health benefits, including improved cognition, respiration, reduced cardiovascular risk, body mass index, blood pressure, and diabetes. Yoga also influenced immunity and ameliorated joint disorders.

2)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/gps.3790

Abstract
Background
This study examined the effects of brief daily yogic meditation on mental health, cognitive functioning, and immune cell telomerase activity in family dementia caregivers with mild depressive symptoms.
Results
The meditation group showed significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms and greater improvement in mental health and cognitive functioning compared with the relaxation group. In the meditation group, 65.2% showed 50% improvement on the Hamilton Depression Rating scale and 52% of the participants showed 50% improvement on the Mental Health Composite Summary score of the Short Form-36 scale compared with 31.2% and 19%, respectively, in the relaxation group (p < 0.05). The meditation group showed 43% improvement in telomerase activity compared with 3.7% in the relaxation group (p = 0.05).

3) The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation | Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Conclusions from the paper

• It is proposed that the mechanism through which mindfulness meditation exerts its effects is a process of enhanced self-regulation, including attention control, emotion regulation and self-awareness.
  
  
• Research on mindfulness meditation faces a number of important challenges in study design that limit the interpretation of existing studies.
  
  
• A number of changes in brain structure have been related to mindfulness meditation.
  
  
• Mindfulness practice enhances attention. The anterior cingulate cortex is the region associated with attention in which changes in activity and/or structure in response to mindfulness meditation are most consistently reported.
  
  
• Mindfulness practice improves emotion regulation and reduces stress. Fronto-limbic networks involved in these processes show various patterns of engagement by mindfulness meditation.
  
  
• Meditation practice has the potential to affect self-referential processing and improve present-moment awareness. The default mode networks — including the midline prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex, which support self-awareness — could be altered following mindfulness training.
  
  
• Mindfulness meditation has potential for the treatment of clinical disorders and might facilitate the cultivation of a healthy mind and increased well-being.
  
  
• Future research into mindfulness meditation should use randomized and actively controlled longitudinal studies with large sample sizes to validate previous findings.
  
  
• The effects of mindfulness practice on neural structure and function need to be linked to behavioural performance, such as cognitive, affective and social functioning, in future research.
  
  
• The complex mental state of mindfulness is likely to be supported by the large-scale brain networks; future work should take this into account rather than being restricted to activations in single brain areas.

Since I don't even know what the "the rest of the claims" consists of, I have little idea of what exactly you are talking about.

Are you talking about supernatural claims or is it something else entirely?

 

[Koldo]

I think the problem is that these kinds of experiences are very difficult and often impossible to be investigated via science. And we are a VERY science obsessed society. So no one bothers trying to investigate mysteries that can't be investigated via science.

Without the external perspective of scientific observation, how does one investigate these phenomena? By actual practice? That often takes a very long time and a very intense commitment. Not something most people are willing to invest just for the sake of investigating some mysterious psychic phenomena.

Not to mention how easy it is to dismiss divergent experiences with sentences such as: "You are not doing it the right way.", "You haven't tried it long enough.", "You are not doing it as I do, therefore you can't use your experience to discredit mine.", "Your interpretation of the experience is wrong.", and so on....

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Frightened of finding God’s under the bed?

This comments seems to confirm that "agenda" I was talking about.

By focusing on just one of the means by which something can accomplished, you are attempting to sneak in the baggage that comes with it, while it has nothing to do with it.

You essentially just made my point for me.

 

[sayak83]

Since I don't even know what the "the rest of the claims" consists of, I have little idea of what exactly you are talking about.

Are you talking about supernatural claims or is it something else entirely?

Let us say the claim is that further exploration of meditative experiences and yogic experiences appear to show that
1) The I in here and the world out there way of thinking about the world is an artificial construct. There is no static entity usually considered to be the "me" that exists within us
2) The physical world itself is also not fundamental and has the same evanascent feature as the ego self.
3) The true reality lies beneath (or beyond) both the physical and mental ego selves that we encounter in our normal experience. This reality is not amenable to linguistic descriptions but can be experienced or known through the meditative (or allied) practices, and when experienced, they fundamentally alter the way we approach the world and ourselves.

 

[sayak83]

I think the problem is that these kinds of experiences are very difficult and often impossible to be investigated via science. And we are a VERY science obsessed society. So no one bothers trying to investigate mysteries that can't be investigated via science.

Without the external perspective of scientific observation, how does one investigate these phenomena? By actual practice? That often takes a very long time and a very intense commitment. Not something most people are willing to invest just for the sake of investigating some mysterious psychic phenomena.

Given the extent of scientific illiteracy, I do not think we are very science obsessed society.
On the broader point, I will agree.

 

[Quintessence]

The beauty of prayer and meditation is, that anyone can try these things for themselves, and assess the benefits on the basis of their own experience. There's no need to wait for the results of clinical trials, case studies etc. It's not hard to meditate, there's even a thread somewhere on this site where people share their experiences, suggestions etc.

Reading through this thread and your reply here reminded me of a problem. The desire to constantly seek validation of something through science, while understandable, is problematic and unrealistic for living our lives. It also risks falling into the ironically non-scientific ideology of scientism.

 

[Koldo]

Thanks for the specific claims.

Let us say the claim is that further exploration of meditative experiences and yogic experiences appear to show that
1) The I in here and the world out there way of thinking about the world is an artificial construct. There is no static entity usually considered to be the "me" that exists within us

I am not sure how to interpret this. Whose artificial construct is this way of thinking then? What distinction are you making between static 'me' and fluid 'me'?

2) The physical world itself is also not fundamental and has the same evanascent feature as the ego self.

I think the greatest problem here is: How do we establish that?
I honestly don't see the pathway.

3) The true reality lies beneath (or beyond) both the physical and mental ego selves that we encounter in our normal experience. This reality is not amenable to linguistic descriptions but can be experienced or known through the meditative (or allied) practices, and when experienced, they fundamentally alter the way we approach the world and ourselves.

How would we distinguish between someone that has truly managed to experience a deeper reality from someone that has merely experienced an altered state of consciousness? In other words, where is the falsifiability?

At the end of the way, I mostly dismiss those points because neither do I see how they could be proven to be true nor do they seem to be true considering my own experiences.

 

[sun rise]

I can't answer as I'm not sure what you mean by "mythical experiences" or how they are related to meditative practises.
I do know about the measurable benefits of meditation and I do know that meditation can lead to altered states of mind, similar to some drugs. Is that what you mean? If so, I take them as serious as experiences under drugs.

Avatar Meher Baba indicated:
"The experiences derived through the drugs are experiences by one in the gross world of the shadows of the subtle planes and are not continuous. The experiences of the subtle sphere by one on the subtle planes are continuous, but even these experiences are of illusion, for Reality is beyond them..." ("God in a Pill")