In his paper, The Science of Consciousness and Mystical Experience: An Argument for Radical Empiricism, author Jason N. Blum writes
The question of the similarity of mystical experiences cross-culturally is intertwined with the potential veridicality of mystical experience: if similarities in contextually unrelated mystical experiences could be found, this could serve as evidence for a shared “mystic object.” This argument—which lies at the heart of the “perennial philosophy” once exemplified by figures such as Aldous Huxley—regards individual mysti-cal experiences as instances of corroborating evidence.
If mystical experiences are always similar independently of the culture in which they occur, then the phenomenon does not depend on the context or the religion but on something else that needs to be defined. Blum's excellent paper should be linked to the research of a man, a physician and a psychologist that is sometimes seen as outdated but who searched the meaning of those experiences for the most part of his career.
Below, I will present C. G. Jung's theory on mystical experiences. But first, we must define what is a "real" mystical experience. Researchers do not always make the proper distinction between all the accounts of mystical experiences and one cannot rely on the sole testimony of the experiencer that describes his experience as "mystical". Even if those researchers use a determining tool such as the Hood Mysticism Scale or a similar one, the content of the experience is rarely studied. It is the content of the experience and not the feeling tone that is important. In addition, some scientists nowadays intensely promote psychedelic mystical experiences as of equal value to the nonpsychedelic ones which is, to say the least, doubtful.
To C. G. Jung, mystical experiences are symbols of conjunction of opposites that enter consciousness for a short moment. A regular occurrence is the conjunction of the particle with the whole. In mystical experience accounts, we see that symbol as the union between the experiencer and the universe, nature, God, the Light, etc. Some people also experience the conjunction of the child with a parent figure, such as in the case of Thomas Merton's first mystical experience. (He felt the presence of his deceased father in his room when he was 18 y. o.). Parent-child are of the same family of particle-whole.
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| Carl G. Jung |
In his lifelong research, Jung found that mystical experiences are part of a process that includes three successive mystical experiences. Evelyn Underhill got to the same conclusion in her 1911 book Mysticism. If the first experience bears the symbol of the conjunction of opposites particle-whole, the second one usually appears as the conjunction of the exterior and the interior where the experiencer feels momentarily the whole world is inside his mind.
In his last important book, Mysterium Conjunctionis, Jung wrote that that third experience was not achievable in our world. However, Thomas Merton realized it in 1968 before his death. Other Christian mystics have included the third experience in their method which implies that this mystical experience was achievable. Although rare, its content seems to be the conjunction of the two previous mystical experiences and appears as "I am God" which is a symbol produced by the mind and not a metaphysical reality.
In his 1921 book Psychological Types, Jung linked mystical experiences to the developement of a new cognitive function. Based on the four elements and the four temperaments of the Ancient Greeks, Jung named his four cognitive functions Sensation, Intuition, Thinking and Feeling. These represents two pairs of opposites. Sensation is the opposite of Intuition and Thinking is the opposite of Feeling. We know from his books and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator that people only develop two cognitive functions. According to Jung, when a third cognitive function is developed, the mind produces a symbol of conjunction of opposites that is extremely numinous and joyful. The same process happens with the differentiation of a fourth cognitive function.
In his book AION (1951), Jung has put together the most advanced knowledge on mystical experiences he had gathered through the years. Prior to dive in that book, the reader must know that Jung was afraid to be tagged a mystic and he buried his teachings under a layer of symbols using Gnosticism and alchemy. He thought this knowledge was an adyton protected by the desidaimonia which means that it was a secret protected by the wrath of the gods.
To Jung, mystical experiences, related to the development of cognitive functions, are always the same around the world and in man's history. They occur when a person, by choice or by obligation, lower the use of a cognitive function in order to develop its opposite. That explains why such phenomena occur more often in monasteries: the detachment from belongings both material and spiritual has the effect to push some person to detach from their cognitive identity, thus provoking the rise of the opposite function. When both functions acquire the same level of developement, the mind produces a symbol of conjunction of opposites.
The shared mystic object of Blum's quote above would be, in Jung's theory, the development of consciousness, a normal yet rare phenomenon. In that case, mystical experiences are only the response of the brain to the restoration of the optimal consciousness. Jung's findings, largely misunderstood by the Jungians, could reorient the researches in that domain.
B. R.
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