Refuting Mystical Experience: Possible?

A thought sprang to mind: Is it truly possible to discredit a mystical experience? For in so doing, are we not asking more from humans than is possible? One cannot disbelieve in what is placed before our very eyes, can one? Unless it is obviously a hallucination (which mystical experiences rarely display) such is true, no?

 

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Well its usually refuted in that same way. They must have been imagining something, hallucinating, pointing out the fact that personal memory does not reflect the objective truth, passing a lie detector test simply means that the person believes something to be true, etc....

Other than that, mystical experiences are subjective, so they don't consitute as real evidence (which is objective).

 

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Funny how it's always the believers who seem to have 'mystical experiences' while the rest of us have daydreams.

 

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Why "must have" they been hallucinating or imagining something? It's not really a refutation; for that, you need to show why it couldn't possibly have been an actual mystical experience. Since you don't have access to the experience, it may be impossible to tell.

Ironically, unless there is some kind of objective basis for the experience, it follows that there is no way to discern its nature. Our brains all do have some similarities, so this is not as hopeless as it sounds. But it is not as simple as explaining it away without collecting some real data.

There's nothing in the definition of empirical evidence which says it has to be objective. For example, my thoughts are evidence of my being, though no one can think them but me.

Then again, how many nonbelievers partake in shamanic rituals?

 

The ones who seek entertainment within their daydreams?

 

That's true.

 

However there are accounts of staunch "disbelievers" becoming "believers" after having a "mystical" experience

 

One cannot disbelieve in what is placed before our very eyes, can one?

I don't think one can believe or disbelieve in a mystical experience. Something truly new has no point of reference for judgement.

 

Yes. If the experience is claimed to be objective then environmental evidence would exist of its occurence. Absence of said evidence means the experience was a result of internal stimulus (i.e. one's own brain). For people whom have spent alot of time making observations about hallucination, finding non-consistent and non-persistent elements are key indicators that the experience is in fact a hallucination... it does however require a very rational mindset to apply to very fantastic experiences.

For some maybe, for others no.

Absolutely. Hyponogogic hallucinations for example are literally integrated with normal conscious perception and while it may not be easy for someone whom rarely experiences such hallucinations to seperate it from normal perception, an experienced hallucinator can.

Nope. Quite the opposite, mystical experiences have never displayed anything beyond being hallucination.

 

Hallucinogenic drugs can give rise to extremely convincing visions. You can have a difficult time telling what is and isn't real after taking them, even with the preconceived notion that the hallucinations are completely imaginary. Further complicating the issue is the fact that there seems to be a common set of hallucinations that every user sees, like an "objective world" of hallucination. It doesn't take much imagination to see how you could begin to interpret these drug-induced sensations as real.

The hallucinations do not represent material objects in physical space. Given the constraints of subjectivity, however, the question of what is real might ultimately be a semantic one.

 

A powerful emotional & subjective experience is 300% more powerful than rational consideration to humans. The people you are describing are merely exercising predictable behavior (I would speculate they might have thought mystical experiences -i.e. the subjectiv experience- didn't even exist).

 

Just because something is emmotional says nothing about whether it is true or not - like for instance if I am happy that my wife gives birth to a child or distressed that my mother dies, does that mean both things never occurred because they evoked emmotional responses?

 

Given that many religions have staunch guidelines regarding intoxication, and even guidelines for controlling the mind and senses (the subtle forms of intoxication like pride, anger, lust etc) its not clear what the connection is (actually drugs and religion are a bad combination - actually drugs and anything is a bad combination, except perhaps for suicidal poetry and abstract expressionistic painting) - just because over 25% (I admit its a figure I pulled out of thin air - btw do you of any links to the stats) of the american population is on prescription drugs doesn't mean that persons engaged in the discipline of religion are (of course you can talk about jungle religions, but then they also have numerous other social practices that would probably make you think twice about going over to their place for dinner)

 

I was just using drugs as an example. Substitute whatever method you wish; sensory deprivation/overload, periodic stimulus, etc.

My point lies more in the common features of all such visions despite the absence of any physical world that they represent. Otherwise, the visions are often indistinguishable from our perceptions of the physical world. Whether you are perceiving something real when you have this vision, then, depends on what reality is. What are your criteria? Does it have to be physical? Just objective? When you try to answer such questions, the meaning of the word 'reality' suddenly seems very arbitrary, making the refutation of mystical experience that much more of a difficult and ambiguous task.

 

Correct. If an immensly positive, emotive, euphoric, and fantastic subjective experience is present, humans tend to evaluate the truth of the experience based on how it felt.

Not at all. And reality would agree with those events occuring; hence, they are true. If 'God' appeared before you, made the trees talk, made the sky fill up with rainbow colored dragons, made gravity go in reverse, and reality didn't agree then you would have hallucinated there bub.

 

Crunchy Cat

Perhaps in the general sense, beacuse people do not have the background knowledge to define phenomena - after all a scientist can be "enthralled" by the mechanisms of a cell, "delighted" by the prospects of examining the solar system, etc etc - the same holds up for a mystical experience by one who has a background of knowledge in scripture (You may be surprised by the details, at least in the vedas, for determining what constitutes a transcendental experience)

Given that the laws of nature are said to be contingent on god, its not clear, at least by logic, why such things could not happen - after all if you had a transcendental experience with an entity who wasn't omnipotent it wouldn't qualify as an experience with god.

You could say however that powers to transgress the laws of nature are beyond mere human capacity.

You could also say that you do not believe in the claims of scripture (that there is a god and that he is omnipotent etc) - but that determines more about your field of perception than whether something is real or not.

Actually if you analyse the (scriptural) instances where god appears it reveals the nature of why he manifests (ie not just for doing party tricks)

BG 4.7: Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion — at that time I descend Myself.

That descent can either be in person or done through an empowered representative

 

baumgarten

With drugs you are hallucinating and without drugs you are halluciniating? What option does that leave us with?

Agreed that a transcendental experience ("Mystical" could mean any number of things, fantastic or real, but generally in the mood of the former) can not be verified by the senses - if it could it wouldn't be transcendental - that is why transcendental experiences are validated by two agencies - saintly persons (ie those who have had transcendental experiences) and scripture (information given by god, who is a transcendental entity) -

in the absence of these foundations anyone could claim anything ("I have seen god - prove that I have not" .... or even better "I am seeing god right now - prove that I am not"), which is, ironically, the state of affairs of many religions (no knowledge of scripture and no knowledge of the qualities of a saintly person) that has enabled cheaters to take the position of spiritual leaders. Out of these two the greatest authority is scripture, which is why the first business of a cheater in the guise of a spiritual leader is to change scripture.

 

The obvious refutation to that is the ability to repeat the workings of a cell and the observations of the solar system. And though many mystical experiences have happened, none can be considered the same. Moses saw a burning bush and Mohammed dreamt that he was talking to God.

The world is always in a mode of strife. Assume the universality of any scriptures. If it is to be universal, then let us assume the total strife of the world at any given point in history. I can guarantee you that there have always been wars - always. War is not good, unless you want to bring up righteous war (Kurukshetra, World War II). And then, we could always talk about how irreligiousness does not necessarily bring about a decline in morality, but I could also attest to the flaw in whatever translation you used for the Bhagavad Gita.

 

It leaves us with that anything could be called a hallucination.

But scripture and testimony alone do not inform us firsthand. We are given accounts of events in the past that may or may not have actually happened. We cannot experience them ourselves. They are mediated through the same faith that is placed in a false prophet; the only reason you have to consider their words true is that their veracity has been corroborated by an authority. Authority is just as arbitrary is any label, though, and so there doesn't seem to be any way to independently verify any of these so-called foundations. That makes them entirely untrustworthy as sources of knowledge if we are to hold ourselves to a standard of critical inquiry.

Our senses are our most intimate link to the external world, much more intimate than the word of a book or a person. Either of the latter could easily be doubted or denied, and we could still form a coherent picture of reality. With the senses, there is no way to be 100% certain that our experiences represent real things. We therefore assume the reality of our experiences, only doubting them when they can be justifiably characterized otherwise. Therefore if we doubt a strange experience that is nonetheless indistinguishable from what we consider reality, we must throw out our notion of reality altogether, and our picture of the world falls apart.

That is the crucial difference. Many of these "hallucinations" seemingly cannot be logically denied without also denying the whole of reality. That is what makes mystical experience special and scriptural authority simple hearsay.

 

I don't agree that knowledge of how to define phenomona is really that important. IMO, it's much more important to think rationally about information.
The scientist may be "enthralled" about making discoveries about objective reality. While someone exploring the subjective may be similarly "enthralled", the moment they claim it to be objective reality is the moment they take their hallucination and choose the path of delusion.

It's all fine and dandy except there is no evidence that exists for this being true.