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Many historical mystical experiences are triggered by asceticism. Restricting food, water, social contact, sex, oxygen — engagement in extreme darkness, extreme

Many historical mystical experiences are triggered by asceticism. Restricting food, water, social contact, sex, oxygen — engagement in extreme darkness, extreme cold, fatigue, meditation. In short, one could argue, there is no such thing as "sober mystical experiences." They are an altered state of consciousness. Importantly, the mysticism scale is not a “drug induced mysticism scale.” The Pythagorean-Platonic tradition is rich — and let me be careful to say that I'm not making the claim that all philosophy is the same everywhere. But mystical concepts of unity and harmony are precisely perennial because of the shared nature of mystical experiences. Mystical christianity, mystical judaism, mystical islam, mystical buddhism, mystical taoism, mystical shintoism... The experiences have a lot in common. There are a number of surprising alignments between the Dao De Jing and Presocratic philosophy. I’d be happy to share.

buildsjets 2y ago
There are also accounts of mystical experiences being triggered by aesthetic rapture in completely untrained and unprepared individuals, for example by seeing a beautiful view in nature or hearing a beautiful song. As you note there are many routes to the altered state of consciousness and sometimes people unwittingly stumble across shortcuts that do not require chemicals or intentional manipulation of the mental state.
xk_id 2y ago
You are playing with the semantics of sober/intoxicated. Intoxicated (in this context) refers to exogenous modulators of neurochemistry, which activate distinct signalling pathways compared to endogenous ligands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_selectivity#Examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_selectivity#Example... This accounts for the “alien” character of the psychedelic experience, which is not an attribute normally used for sober mystical experiences. > Importantly, the mysticism scale is not a “drug induced mysticism scale.” Yes, hence my argument: while this scale identifies similarities between sober/intoxicated experiences, it doesn’t give an exhaustive description and overlooks that there might be just as many differences. The same argument goes for the perennialist view of mysticism. Different doctrines might share the end goal, but the chosen path can be experienced very differently. I guess my point is to not stipulate one path as representative of all paths which arrive at the same destination. The end goal in fact lays outside doctrine.

buildsjets 2y ago

There are also accounts of mystical experiences being triggered by aesthetic rapture in completely untrained and unprepared individuals, for example by seeing a beautiful view in nature or hearing a beautiful song. As you note there are many routes to the altered state of consciousness and sometimes people unwittingly stumble across shortcuts that do not require chemicals or intentional manipulation of the mental state.

xk_id 2y ago

You are playing with the semantics of sober/intoxicated. Intoxicated (in this context) refers to exogenous modulators of neurochemistry, which activate distinct signalling pathways compared to endogenous ligands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_selectivity#Examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_selectivity#Example... This accounts for the “alien” character of the psychedelic experience, which is not an attribute normally used for sober mystical experiences. > Importantly, the mysticism scale is not a “drug induced mysticism scale.” Yes, hence my argument: while this scale identifies similarities between sober/intoxicated experiences, it doesn’t give an exhaustive description and overlooks that there might be just as many differences. The same argument goes for the perennialist view of mysticism. Different doctrines might share the end goal, but the chosen path can be experienced very differently. I guess my point is to not stipulate one path as representative of all paths which arrive at the same destination. The end goal in fact lays outside doctrine.