Cosmopsychism attributes subjectivity to the universe as a whole. What might that subjectivity be like? There are differing opinions in the philosophical literature, ranging from ?simply a mess? to highly advanced. Mystical experience, if it genuinely brings unity or identity with the universe, could provide some insight. The evidence points to conscious mind of extraordinary quality and...
Mystical experiences can bring an overwhelming sense that deeper realities have been contacted or that the everyday world has been apprehended as it truly is. Philosophical study of the experiences has not given much attention to their metaphysical significance, especially to the insights they may offer on fundamental issues such as the nature of reality, self, consciousness, and time. There...
This study compared acute (15 min) yoga posture and guided meditation practice, performed seated in a typical office workspace, on physiological and psychological markers of stress. Twenty participants (39.6 ± 9.5 yr) completed three conditions: yoga, meditation, and control (i.e., usual work) separated by ≥24 hrs. Yoga and meditation significantly reduced perceived stress versus control, and...
Abstract The study of explanations in Part II commences with some notable transpersonal approaches to extrovertive mystical experience from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. R. M. Bucke and Edward Carpenter put forward evolutionary theories of cosmic consciousness, and Carpenter’s theory of race-consciousness and the Ideas anticipated C. G. Jung’s theory of the collective...
Abstract The focus here is naturalistic explanations that put great weight on the functioning or malfunctioning of the brain or mind. R. C. Zaehner turned against nature mysticism and put forward several unflattering explanations. He likened extrovertive experience to the mania of manic-depressive illness, but his most promising explanation calls upon an inner mental model of the world. Freud...
Abstract This chapter classifies mystical epistemologies into five types (direct contact, post-Kantian, mediatory, radical contextualist, naturalistic), and examines two competing perspectives on mystical experience. On the one hand, radical contextualists such as Bruce Garside and Steven Katz have claimed that mystical experience is largely a product of indoctrination and enculturation and is...
AbstractKey questions about mystical experiences of the natural world are addressed.What are the experiences like? Some detailed accounts of extrovertive experience, and a feature list of their common or notable characteristics are provided. Are extrovertive experiences necessarily sense-mediated? Unlike many theorists, the author does not assume that extrovertive contact with the world is...
Abstract The classic characterizations of extrovertive mystical experience by R. M. Bucke, Rudolf Otto, W. T. Stace, and R. C. Zaehner are summarized and their limitations exposed. The author proceeds to give a more nuanced description of extrovertive phenomenology, based on his study of a large number of mystical accounts. Several kinds of extrovertive unity are distinguished, and details are...
AbstractAlthough empty of contents, pure consciousness formed the basis of W. T. Stace’s explanation of content-rich extrovertive mystical experience, an explanation in which spirit and nature were radically separated. However, Stace’s approach is complicated by his borrowings from philosophical ideas that are not entirely harmonious, empirico-phenomenalist, Kantian, and Hegelian. The result is...