newolder wrote:Which of those provides the definition of "mystical-type experience" and what is that definition (other than in the form of an anecdote about brain states)? I read the first citation @
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16826400 but the full text is behind a paywall and the definition is not at the link.
I touched on this, before I found the answers unsatisfactory and gave up:
Thommo wrote:Kafei wrote:http://www.atpweb.org/jtparchive/trps-41-02-139.pdf
Like your previous link you're quoting selectively. The very next paragraph explains what the author regards as the scientific version:
For research purposes at Johns Hopkins, we consider a complete experience of mystical consciousness as a state of human awareness that, when expressed and content-analyzed or measured by psychometric instruments, can be found to include all six categories. One also could formulate a category of ‘‘incomplete mystical consciousness’’ that may not include the complete transcendence ofthe ego, or noteworthy noetic content.
That is a mystical experience is one in which a participant reports the following six conditions are met:
(a) Unity, approached either internally with closed eyes or externally through sense perception,
(b) Transcendence of Time & Space,
(c) Intuitive Knowledge (the noetic quality),
(d) Sacredness or Awesomeness,
(e) Deeply-Felt Positive Mood— love, purity,peace, joy, and
(f) Ineffability and Paradoxicality
Depending on the exact experiment they use either a six or seven condition scale, which they typically assess according to a 30 or 43 question subset of a questionnaire, according to this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5203697/The MEQ has been administered in various forms in a number of studies over the past 50 or more years (Bogenschutz et al., 2015; Garcia-Romeu et al., 2015; Griffiths et al., 2006, 2008, 2011; Johnson et al., 2014; MacLean et al., 2012; Pahnke, 1963, 1967; Richards, 1975). The most frequently used version of the MEQ is the 43-item Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ43), also called the Pahnke–Richards Mystical Experience Questionnaire. The MEQ43 contains 43 items that were theoretically derived and qualitatively organized into seven subscales (internal unity, external unity, sacredness, noetic quality, positive mood, transcendence of time and space, and ineffability).
...
The most recently developed version of the MEQ (the 30-item revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire, or MEQ30) was developed and validated through factor analysis of retrospective accounts of profound experiences with psilocybin-containing mushrooms (MacLean et al., 2012). That analysis yielded a four-factor structure of the MEQ30, containing 30 items from the previous MEQ43, which was typically administered within the 100-item States of Consciousness Questionnaire (Griffiths et al., 2006, 2011). The four factors of the MEQ30 are: mystical (including items from the internal unity, external unity, noetic quality, and sacredness scales of the MEQ43), positive mood, transcendence of time and space, and ineffability (all three of which include items from their respective MEQ43 scales).
These pages will tell you what the specific questions associated with the factor scores (in at least some experiments) are:
https://www.ipri.pl/badania-naukowe/nar ... tionnaire/http://www.cupblog.org/2015/12/17/sacre ... tionnaire/At least one of the Johns Hopkins talks mentions that they used an arbitrary (the researcher used that word) 60% score across 6 measures in at least one of their psilocybin experiments to determine what counted as a mystical experience. I cannot be bothered to watch hours of videos to ensure this was the case across all of them.
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