Where Mysticism Meets Metaphysics: Situating Unitive Mystical Experiences in the Philosophy of Mind

Abstract

There has been a recent resurgence of both cultural and scientific interest in altered states of consciousness. Among the most puzzling and widely reported are mystical experiences—anomalous events where one’s ordinary sense of self is replaced by an overwhelming and transcendent feeling of connectedness or unity. These ‘unitive’ mystical experiences challenge many of our common intuitions about the nature of consciousness. At the same time, the intractability of the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’ has renewed philosophical interest in non-physicalist theories of mind. In particular, panpsychism—the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality—has re-emerged as a legitimate theory of mind, often presented as better equipped than physicalism to account for subjective experience. This thesis explores how these independent trends—cultural and scientific curiosity in mystical experiences and increased philosophical engagement with non-physicalist theories—may converge and inform one another. In Chapter 2, I examine and critique Miri Albahari’s “Perennial Idealism,” a contemporary successor to panpsychism that draws on unitive mystical experiences to motivate a monistic idealism which posits that there is a single, undifferentiated, asubjective, and aperspectival cosmic consciousness. I argue that unitive mystical experiences entail minimal subjectivity and thus cannot be understood as instances of subject-less consciousness or be used to support a subject-illusionist ontology. In Chapter 3, I address potential objections, defend the importance of maintaining world-affirming ontologies, and advocate for a William James-inspired spirit of open-mindedness in our philosophical approaches to unitive mystical experiences. I hope to demonstrate that by applying careful philosophical analysis to unitive mystical experiences and teasing apart their ontological implications, we can gain real mileage in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics of consciousness.