From flow to mystical experiences: Connecting entropy and fluency along the unifying framework of cognitive continuum

Abstract

ABSTRACT Self-transcendent experiences (STEs) represent profound shifts in cognition and consciousness, possessing significant transformative potential. With growing scientific interest in these phenomena, we propose the cognitive continuum as a unifying framework. Grounded in enactive cognitive science and complex dynamic systems perspectives, this approach takes the embodied person, embedded within their world, as the appropriate unit of analysis. The continuum illustrates how STEs, such as flow states and mystical experiences, reflect an enhancement of relevance realization, the organism’s active engagement with its environment to adaptively frame its world, across increasingly global levels of cognitive organization. We identify destabilization and complexification as central processes in this enhancement and propose entropy as their metric. We introduce the Entropy-Fluency hypothesis, which posits that increased entropy signals destabilization followed by increased fluency, thereby conceptually bridging first-person subjective experiences with third-person scientific observations of STEs. The cognitive continuum reveals STEs as dynamic, person-specific, and context-dependent phenomena emerging from person-world coupling, requiring idiographic and transdisciplinary methodological approaches. This framework provides conceptual tools for understanding these profound experiences, contributing to a comprehensive science of human flourishing.