From self-transcendent emotions to transcendent experiences: an exploratory study in the continuity between everyday and mystical experiences

Mystical experiences—marked by unity and self-loss—may not be rare and special; they may lie on a continuum with common, everyday experiences. In an exploratory study, participants described past experiences of unity and self-loss. Everyday unity experiences, often triggered by feeling part of a social group, shared many features of mystical experiences, including feelings of unity, insight, and the presence of meaning. Both types of experiences also involved social emotions. These preliminary results suggest that investigating the continuity between mystical and everyday experiences could help reveal the psychological mechanisms and evolutionary origins of mystical experiences.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Mystical experiences are generally considered to be rare and special experiences, characterized by feelings of unity and self-loss. Still, certain researchers have recently proposed that mystical experiences could be placed on a continuum with more common and mundane experiences. In this paper, we present the results of an exploratory study, the goal of which was to identify ordinary experiences that might share (though to a lesser degree) the key characteristics of mystical experiences. To this end, we asked participants to report past experiences of unity and self-loss. Our results suggest that everyday experiences of unity, mainly elicited by the feeling of being part of a social group, share many (but not all) features of mystical experiences, such as feelings of unity, insight, and presence of meaning. Moreover, both mystical experiences and everyday unity experiences were characterized by the presence of social emotions. On the basis of these preliminary results, we argue that investigating the continuity between mystical and everyday experiences might contribute to shed light on the psychological mechanisms underlying mystical experiences and on their evolutionary origin.