Mystical, Spiritual, and Religious Experiences

1
Mystical, Spiritual, and Religious Experiences
2
The religion/spirituality debate and its
empirical consequences for experience

• Scientific definitions of both spirituality and
  religion must include a sense of, a belief in, or
  a search for the transcendent (Hill et al.,
  2000).
• While most religious persons define themselves as
  spiritual there is an emerging group of people in
  the U.S. who define themselves as spiritual but
  not religious (Hood, 2003).
• When religion is defined so broadly as to exclude
  the necessity for a sense of the divine the term
  loses its analytical power.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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Experiences of being both religious and spiritual

• The majority of persons identify themselves as
  both religious and spiritual (Hood, 2003).
• For these people, being spiritual identifies a
  largely experiential component of their faith.
• Hufford (1982) demanded that social scientists
  pay careful attention to the richness of
  experience to see precisely what aspects of
  experience their theories can and cannot explain.

4
Key Papers

• Francis, L.J., ap Siôn T., Lewis, C.A., Barnes,
  L.P., Robbins, M. (2006). Attitude toward
  Christianity and religious experience
  Replication among 16- to 18- year-old adolescents
  in Northern Ireland. Research in Education, 76,
  56-61.

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Sectarian experiences of being both religious and
spiritual

• Reflexive ethnography (Davies, 1999) is a term
  that unites methodological approaches to
  understanding the conditions under which
  experiencing religion occurs
• For example, Polomo (2003) documents the shift in
  Pentecostalism from an emphasis on glossolalia to
  holy laughter that serves to revitalise
  religious feelings suppressed by
  institutionalization

6
Web Site

• Glossolalia (http//youtube.com/watch?vcQ4114XO-X
  o)
• Holy Laughter during a church service
  (http//youtube.com/watch?vXSCuY7jyoTs)

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Experiences of being spiritual but not religious

• 25-30 of individuals in U.S. identify themselves
  as spiritual but not religious.
• For some spirituality is a fierce rejection of
  religion.
• Those who identify themselves as spiritual but
  not religious have high rates of spiritual
  experiences, including mystical experiences
  (Hood, 2003).
• Fuzzy (Spilka, 1993) is a fluid term allowing
  for a wide range of genuinely spiritual
  experiences that many conservative religions
  reject (Hood, 2003).

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Experiences of being spiritual but not religious

• Elkins (2001) has proposed a humanistic model of
  the scared focusing upon its more secular
  (horizontal) psychological expressions.
• Wondrous events can occur in cultures and
  traditions that have no term for the supernatural
  (McClenon, 1994).

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Paranormal claims of UFOs and alien abductions

• The APA defines anomalous experiences as those
  that while common are nevertheless believed to
  deviate from ordinary experience or from the
  usually accepted definitions of reality (Cardena
  et al., 2000).
• Examples include hallucinations, near death, past
  life, mystical and paranormal experiences.
• Anomalous experiences contradict
  institutionalized knowledge, both scientific and
  religious.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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Paranormal claims of UFOs and alien abductions

• Some define paranormal events in a fashion that
  denies them religious importance (Spickard,
  1993).
• However, the Bible is a mine of information on
  ESP or psi phenomena (Kelsey, 1972).
• For Pentecostals, the experience or the
  paranormal is normal (Poloma, 1989).
• Alien abduction experiences have begun to
  generate a considerable body of scientific study.
• Some investigators have suggested that certain
  chemicals that effect receptor sites for
  serotonin may elicit awareness of dimensions of
  reality in which reports of alien abduction
  become possible as actual events (e.g.,
  Strassman, 2001).

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Paranormal claims of UFOs and alien abductions

• As fantastic as alien abduction claims appear to
  be, pathological processes cannot explain them
  (Williams Fallconer, 1994).
• Among the most plausible and least controversial
  explanations for these reports are fantasy
  proneness caused by using cultural available
  scenarios derived from film and other media
  sources.
• If military authorities evaluate UFO reports then
  psychology too has the duty to investigate this
  problem (Jung, 1958).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

12
Web sites

• Abductees (Alien Abduction Interviews)
  (http//youtube.com/watch?v8TjwB0_I-DQ)

13
Psychedelics or entheogens

• It has long been recognised that many religions
  employ various naturally occurring mind-altering
  substances in their religious rituals.
• There is an obvious similarity between various
  religious experiences and some chemically
  facilitated experiences.
• Leuba (1986) argued that religious experience in
  advanced traditions should be invalidated because
  it was similar to drug-induced states in less
  advanced traditions.
• However, one can no more invalidate an experience
  because its physiology is known than one can
  invalidate physiology because its biochemistry
  has been identified.

14
Psychedelics or entheogens

• Empirical studies indicate that more dogmatic
  persons will reject as genuine religious
  experiences triggered by drugs, despite the fact
  that outside of mainstream religions one of the
  most commonly cited triggers of mystical
  experience is entheogens.
• With an appropriate set and setting, psychedelic
  drugs can facilitate religious experiences
  insofar as someone under the influence of these
  drugs may for the first time see the world in
  terms appropriate to a particular system of
  meaning.

15
Psychedelics or entheogens

• The use of sacramental or religious metaphors was
  common among participants using entheogens
  (Masters Houston, 1996).
• Two churches have a history of sacramental use of
  entheogens that demonstrate that drugs can be
  incorporated into religious frameworks and used
  to facilitate experiences whose meaning is
  accepted as religious (Bergman, 1971 LaBarre,
  1969).
• Multilevel interdisciplinary methodological
  approaches extend the range of material that
  psychologists must consider as they explore the
  conditions under which individuals experience
  their religion or spirituality.

16
Mystical, spiritual, and religious experiences

• Social expression (as opposed to social
  construction) suggests an open conceptual and
  empirical possibility that there are fundamental
  experiences that are inherently mystical,
  religious, or spiritual and that become only
  partially expressed through language.

17
Numinous and mystical experiences

• A numinous experience is an awareness of a holy
  other beyond nature and a sense that one is in
  communion with this holy other.
• Ottos (1917) phenomenology of religious
  experience includes the essential fact that for
  him religious experience includes a non-rational
  component that is characterized psychologically
  by a numinous consciousness.
• As social scientists we can study the response to
  the numinous by noting that from the believers
  perspective it is a response to a transcendent
  object experienced as real
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

18
Numinous and mystical experiences

• The numinous consciousness is both compelled to
  seek out and explore this transcendent object
  (mysterium fascinans) and to be repelled in the
  face of the majesty and awfulness of this object
  (mysterium tremendum)
• Staces (1960) categories of introvertive and
  extravertive mysticism are derived from Ottos
  (1932) mysticism of introspection and unifying
  vision.
• Empirical studies use measurements that tend to
  emphasize either experiences of a sense of
  presence favouring numinous experiences or a
  sense of unity favouring mystical experiences.

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Numinous experience as a sense of presence

• The empirical study of numinous experiences has
  largely focused upon responses to surveys and
  questionnaires.
• The most common word used to describe numinous
  experiences was awesome (Pafford, 1973).
• 72 of respondents answered yes to the question
  have you ever as an adult had the feeling that
  you were somehow in the presence of God (Glock
  Stark,1965).
• Both children and adults report numinous
  experience whether they identify themselves as
  religious and spiritual or simply as spiritual
  but not religious.
• Williamson and Froese (2001) developed a measure
  of awe based on Ottos work, which links the
  empirical study of awe to classic works in the
  phenomenology of awe.

20
Mystical experiences

• Hood (1975) based his measure of mysticism on the
  phenomenological work of Stace (1960).
• The Staces unity thesis suggests that mystical
  experience has a common core that is universal
  despite variations in the language in which this
  experience is expressed.
• Stace (1960) identified introvertive,
  extravertive, and interpretive factors.
• In a series of factor analytic studies Hood has
  replicated Staces phenomenology.

21
Key Books / Papers

• Hood, R. W. Jr. (2001). Dimensions of mystical
  experiences. Empirical studies and psychological
  links. Amsterdam Rodopi.
• Belzen, J. A. Geels, A. (Eds.) (2003).
  Mysticism. A variety of psychological
  perspectives. Amsterdam Rodopi.
• Hood, R. W., Jr. (1975). The construction and
  preliminary validation of a measure of reported
  mystical experience. Journal for the Scientific
  Study of Religion, 14, 29-41. 
• Hood, R. W., Jr. (1976). Conceptual criticisms of
  regressive explanations of mysticism. Review of
  Religious Research, 17, 179-188. 

22
Mystical experiences

• Thalbourne and his colleagues suggested that
  mysticism is best identified by a single factor
  associated with other phenomena such as
  creativity, belief in the paranormal, and
  psychopathology.
• Transliminality is a concept to describe the
  ability, likely genetically based, to attend to
  inner psychological states and processes
  (Thalbourne et al., 1997 Thalbourne Delin,
  1994).
• Thalbourne and his colleagues counter Hoods claim
  that mysticism is a universal experience with
  ontological ramifications.
• Rather, mysticism is part of a purely natural
  psychology rooted in the tendency to be sensitive
  to internally generated states of consciousness.

23
Mystical experiences

• Both Hood and Thalbourne suggest that mystical
  experiences are associated with reports of
  paranormal phenomena.
• When controlled for unconventional religious
  beliefs, church attendance was strongly
  associated with lower paranormal belief
  (Orenstein, 2002).
• Spiritual but not religious believers likely
  account for the substantial proportion of
  believers in the paranormal.
• Paranormal experiences are reported by over half
  the population in all countries where samples
  have been taken (Targ et al., 2000).