Portalling, a mystical experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, or aperture, occurs across many cultures. This experience can be triggered by concentrating on devices like mirrors, mandalas, labyrinths, or pools of water in shamanistic and meditative practices. The authors argue that portalling is fundamental to the multiple reality cosmologies found in traditional cultures. They explain it as a radical re-entrainment of the brain's neurological systems that mediate experience. The paper reports phenomenological experiments using mirror portalling devices from both Tibetan and Tsimshian religious traditions.
Consciousness and the brain can be modeled as intelligent complex adaptive systems (ICAS) that consume metabolic energy, share information, and adapt to their environments. Evolution of such systems produces emergent properties, including advanced brains. Two key processes integrate experience and knowledge: the effort after meaning and the effort after truth, mediated by direct sensory input and higher cognitive modeling. Viewing consciousness as an ICAS has significant implications for how anthropology understands culture.
This essay offers an anthropological perspective on a neuroepistemological account of mystical experience. It first describes features of mystical experience, such as distortions in time- and space-consciousness. It then examines the epistemology of mystical experience, focusing on the debate between constructivists and decontextualists. The authors develop a neuroepistemological framework and show how it might inform that debate. Finally, they discuss methodological challenges—like phenomenological naiveté—that can impede such an account, and outline the attributes needed in researchers to address these challenges.