Constructivism and Mystical Experience (original) (raw)
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This paper uses key constructivist ideas to link with accounts of mysticism that prioritise wonder, insight and coming to know when previously acquired concepts are at a loss to capture experience. Mystical experiences include timeless moments, the not-said, recognising and renewing ourselves through searching for harmony between the past, present and future.
Integral Review, 2019
In one sense, this book is about the contemporary dialogue between science and spirituality, and more specifically, ways in which they do not "talk" well to each other—I offer a remedy for bridging that gap. One approach is to explore how metaphysical/mystical thinking and rational/logical thinking manifest as modes of meaning-making within human consciousness—within your consciousness. That is, by getting to know these two modes of thinking within the individual psyche and within mundane experience, we find an opening to supporting society's dialogue between, and integration of, these modes of discourse. There have already been many attempts to integrate these two domains. For example: using quantum mechanics to explain consciousness; showing how stale science can be re- enchanted through a captivating story of the evolution of the cosmos; doing a statistical analysis of religious beliefs in a population; or fMRI measurements of the brains of meditation adepts. Yet spiritual thinking and scientific thinking are rarely integrated. Or to put it another way, the metaphysical claims and esoteric experiences of spirituality have an uneasy relationship with logical or "rational" modes of meaning-making. It is a given that science and rationality are important, both in their proven products in a technologically advanced society, and also in their ability to critique and sanitize the "irrationality" within metaphysical, religious, dogmatic, and emotion-laden thought. But the role of pre-rational making-making is less well appreciated; and when it is acknowledged, it is through its more romantic characteristics. One thing I will argue is that the pre-rational mind (its magical and mythical layers) is actually an essential foundation upon which all rational (including scientific) thought is built. The pre-rational layers, often maligned in modernity, contain life-and-meaning generative capacities that are sorely need. But that is getting ahead of our story. Here what I want to point out is what scientific (or hyper-rational) and spiritual (or religious and metaphysical) modes of discourse tend to have in common: the certainty or confidence of their claims. This text is, in one sense, a deep critique of how certainty is performed in both spiritual (or metaphysical) and scientific (or modern hyper-rational) circles—actually in all realms of thought and belief. I will argue for the increasing importance of "negative capability"—i.e. for humility, tolerance for uncertainty, and openness to multiple perspectives. —And for an appreciation of the (now proven) fundamental limitations of reason, logic, theoretical models, and even the foundational flaws in the ability for language and concepts to capture reality. That knowledge is incomplete and fallible and that beliefs tend to be biased—these are well-oiled aphorisms. But to develop a transformative and actionable understanding of personal meaning-making and social knowledge-building processes one needs a deep understanding of exactly how belief and knowledge are fallible. And it is a transformative or radical understanding that is called for. For most of humanity's history the main social "project" was about understanding and taming nature. We have entered a new era wherein the vast majority of human problems are caused by human nature, and so the most important inquiries now should be into self-understanding to allow the self- transformation and self-liberation that might, if we are lucky, reverse, or at least adapt to, the ultimately tragic ends that human "reason" has wrought through modern technologies and social structures. "Know thyself" has become more than a philosophical and ethical imperative—it has become a species-existential one. And our focus here will be on knowing how and what we don't know—i.e. on unknowing. In another sense our exploration will be about the importance of reducing or releasing complexity in the psyche and in socio-cultural structures—at a time in which it might seem that we cannot avoid increasing complexity.
Integrated Inquiry: Mystical Intuition and Research1
The Open Information Science Journal
The purpose of this paper is to initiate a broader dialogue on the use of integrated intelligence (or INI) in formal research. The application of INI in research is referred to as integrated inquiry. The idea of integrated intelligence, and its specific applications, can be viewed as genuine cognitive processes, or for the more skeptical, as provocations to inspire the researcher toward greater creativity. The first part of this paper briefly defines important terms and situates the idea of integrated intelligence within a historical and civilisational perspective. Finally, the most important section of this paper outlines specific and practical ways that INI can be used by the modern researcher. The five INI tools are the Intuitive Diary, Free-form Writing, Meditative States, The Feeling Sense, and Embracing Synchronicity. The essential argument of this paper is that integrated inquiry can greatly enhance research.
The Philosophy of Mysticism: Perennialism and Constructivism
Journal of Consciousness Exploration and Research (JCER), 2010
Recent academic research on mysticism is entrenched in an ideological clash between two schools of interpretation of mysticism: perennialism (essentialism, or decontextualism), on the one hand, and anti-perennialism (constructivism, intentionalism, or contextualism), on the other. The former upholds the universality of the mystical experience, while the latter takes it to be—like any other human experience, they say— completely conditional. I will begin by explaining what ‘mysticism’ means. I will then proceed to define and illustrate the two schools of interpretation— perennialism and anti-perennialism—by the arguments of their representative pupils. My point is that the two schools of interpretation commit the disjunctive fallacy, or the fallacy of exclusive alternatives. Then, assessing the relation between mystical experience in practice, and systematic metaphysical theory, I will propose process philosophy (i.e., from Heraclitus to Peirce and Whitehead) as a framework for the debate, and my theoretical solution. In the end, upon reviewing two strong alternatives called, respectively, a “Middle Way” (Jackson, 1989), and a “middle ground” (Forman, 1993), I will suggest my own metaphysical understanding which is akin to the proposed alternatives to perennialist and anti-perennialist interpretations of the purity of mystical experience.
Epistemological Uncertainty and Immediacy
Constructivist Foundations , 2019
• The commentaries have provided an opportunity to clarify claims about the synergy between constructivism and mystical experience. The agnosticism of radical constructivism is shared with mysticism. Not all gaps are associated with cognitive change and wonder. Moments of profound insight that follow uncertainty have mysterious origins that affirm the argument concerning a synergy between constructivism and mystical experience.
The article considers whether, and how, current scientific studies of consciousness might benefit from insights of mystical traditions. Although considerable effort has been expanded towards introducing mysticism into mainstream cognitive science, the topic is still controversial, not least because of the multifariousness of meaning associated with the term (from "illogical thinking" through "visions" and "raptures" to "paranormal" and "psychopathological phenomena"). In the context of the present article, mysticism is defined as a set of practices, beliefs, values etc. developed within a given religious tradition to help the practitioner realize the experiential and existential transformations associated with mystical experiences, i.e. experiences characterized by the breakdown of the subjectobject dichotomy. It is then examined in which areas mysticism so defined might provide beneficial for consciousness studies; broadly, three such areas are identified: phenomenological research (mysticism as a repository of unique experiential material and practical know-how for rigorous phenomenological analyses), the problem of the self (mysticism as a repository of experientialexistential insights into one's fundamental selflessness), and the so-called hard problem of consciousness (mysticism as a unique experiential-existential answer to the mind-body problem). It is contended that, contrary to popular belief, cognitive science could benefit from insights and practices found in mystical traditions, especially by way of grounding its findings in the lived experience and thereby (potentially) demystifying some of its self-imposed abstract conundrums.
Mystical Experience and Radical Deconstruction Through the Ontological Looking Glass
2016
Knowing is that moment to moment reflexive, retrospective activity of awareness that we engage as we navigate the waters of consciousness. It is both the act of immediate experiencing as well as the experience of that experiencing. In its immediacy it appears to be our way of “touching” reality—of directly accessing the who, what, where, and when of our existential worlds. For most of us, most of the time, knowing has a consistency and constancy that allows us to feel and believe that there is an ontologically solid and unchanging world “out there” that we access through our senses. However, on some occasions the regularity and certainty of this daily style of knowing undergoes a radical transformation—such as when one has a mystical experience. To those of us who have had such encounters, mystical experiences appear to be a radically altered way of knowing, where reality is experienced afresh, illusions are penetrated, and self and other seem to lose their rigid boundedness. The wo...
Mysticism and Meaning: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Alex S. Kohav
Three Pines Press, 2019
A collection of essays that explores the many dimensions of the mystical, including personal, theoretical, and historical. Kohav, a professor of philosophy at the Metropolitan State College of Denver and the editor of this collection, provocatively asks why mysticism is such an "objectionable" topic and considered intellectually disreputable. Borrowing from Jacques Derrida's distinction between aporia (or unsolvable confusion) and a solvable problem, the author suggests mystical phenomena are better understood through the lens of mysterium, that which is beyond the categories of reason and can only be captured by dint of intuition and personal experience. In fact, the contributors to this intellectually kaleidoscopic volume present several autobiographical accounts of precisely such an encounter with the mystically inscrutable. For example, in one essay, Gregory M. Nixon relates "the shattering moment in my life when I awoke from the dream of self to find being as part of the living world and not in my head." The religious dimensions of mystical experience are also explored: Buddhist, Christian, and Judaic texts, including the Bible, are examined to explicate and compare their divergent interpretations. Contributor Jacob Rump argues that the ineffable is central to Wittgenstein's worldview, and Ori Z. Soltes contends that philosophers like Socrates and Spinoza, famous for their valorization of reason, are incomprehensible without also considering the limits they impose on reason and the value they assign to ineffable experience. The collection is precisely as multidisciplinary as billed. It includes a wealth of varying perspectives, both personal and scholarly. Furthermore, the book examines the application of these ideas to contemporary debates. Richard H. Jones, for instance, challenges that mysticism and science ultimately converge into a single explanatory whole. The prose can be prohibitively dense--much of it is written in a jargon-laden academic parlance--and the book is not intended for a popular audience. Within a remarkably technical discussion of the proper interpretive approach to sacred texts, contributor Brian Lancaster declares: "For these reasons I propose incorporating a hermeneutic component to extend the integration of neuroscientific and phenomenological data that defines neurophenomenology." However, Kohav's anthology is still a stimulating tour of the subject, philosophically enthralling and wide reaching. An engrossing, diverse collection of takes on mystical phenomena. - Kirkus Reviews The volume investigates the question of meaning of mystical phenomena and, conversely, queries the concept of “meaning” itself, via insights afforded by mystical experiences. The collection brings together researchers from such disparate fields as philosophy, psychology, history of religion, cognitive poetics, and semiotics, in an effort to ascertain the question of mysticism’s meaning through pertinent, up-to-date multidisciplinarity. The discussion commences with Editor’s Introduction that probes persistent questions of complexity as well as perplexity of mysticism and the reasons why problematizing mysticism leads to even greater enigmas. One thread within the volume provides the contextual framework for continuing fascination of mysticism that includes a consideration of several historical traditions as well as personal accounts of mystical experiences: Two contributions showcase ancient Egyptian and ancient Israelite involvements with mystical alterations of consciousness and Christianity’s origins being steeped in mystical praxis; and four essays highlight mysticism’s formative presence in Chinese traditions and Tibetan Buddhism as well as medieval Judaism and Kabbalah mysticism. A second, more overarching strand within the volume is concerned with multidisciplinary investigations of the phenomenon of mysticism, including philosophical, psychological, cognitive, and semiotic analyses. To this effect, the volume explores the question of philosophy’s relation to mysticism and vice versa, together with a Wittgensteinian nexus between mysticism, facticity, and truth; language mysticism and “supernormal meaning” engendered by certain mystical states; and a semiotic scrutiny of some mystical experiences and their ineffability. Finally, the volume includes an assessment of the so-called New Age authors’ contention of the convergence of scientific and mystical claims about reality. The above two tracks are appended with personal, contemporary accounts of mystical experiences, in the Prologue; and a futuristic envisioning, as a fictitious chronicle from the time-to-come, of life without things mystical, in the Postscript. The volume contains thirteen chapters; its international contributors are based in Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States.