The Technology Of The Præternatural : An Operational Analysis and Empirical Study of the Psycho-Phenomenology of Mystical, Visionary and Remote Perception Experiences

Mystical experience is defined as a core type of 'praeternatural' experience—visionary or remote perceptions felt to be supernatural. The work develops a method for studying the 'how' of such experiences, free from ontological assumptions, and builds a concept of 'pan-consciousness' as a process without fixed location. A non-random survey at two Australian universities found occurrence rates consistent with the 20–40 percent reported in overseas studies. An in-depth psycho-phenomenological study of 120 cases, using discriminant and principal components analyses, identified two general types of praeternatural experience—Ontic and Perceptual—and found differences from normal, everyday experience across personality, operational, and phenomenological dimensions.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In Part I of this thesis, mystical experience is defined in terms of some of the classical philosophical and psychological issues which surround it. It is also connected to the general class of the ‘praeternatural’ which is defined operationally as those visionary and remote perception experiences which have a quality of ‘supernaturalness’ as defined by Hultkrantz. The psycho-phenomenology of these states, taking mystical experience as the sine qua non of praeternatural experiences, is developed from both religious and secular perspectives and related to issues of psychopathology. This is followed by a discussion of the problems of interpretation and an ontologically neutral, operational and phenomenological method, which emphasizes the ‘how’ rather than the meaning of these experiences, is posited. This approach then is cast in the mould of consciousness studies as the most suitable theoretical position from which to pursue the paradigm of the ‘how’. The next part of this section examines contemporary theories of consciousness and critiques them in terms of their ontological assumptions, epistemological ascriptions and suitability for an empirical, operational, psycho-phenomenological study of human experience. This examination commences with the ‘non-consciousness’ of James’ Radical Empiricism and the phenomenological position as re-interpreted by Sartre in Chapter 3 and continues in Chapter 4 with an analysis of the psychological-cognitive and neurophysiological reductive hypotheses current today. It concludes with the notion of consciousness which arises from the current interpretations of modern physics. Chapter 5 attempts to build a concept of consciousness as ‘pan-consciousness’ which is strictly operational and free of ontological grounding. In this notion, things, objects, states and human ‘observers’ all arise as the reflective processes of ‘pan-consciousness’ as process without the need for a final ‘location’ or ‘object’. This section closes with a suggestion for a method of empirically studying experience within the proposed theoretical context. Part II is an exploratory investigation of the operational and phenomenological aspects of praeternatural experience. The three dimensions of Personality, Operational and Phenomenological as the basis of experience are defined and set in the context of psycho-phenomenological research using verbal reports as data. The first part of the investigation, reported in Chapter 7, is a non-random survey of the populations of Queensland and Griffith universities and it reveals a level of occurrence consistent with the 20-40 percent found in overseas studies such as those of Hay and others. Chapters 8 and 9 detail an in-depth psycho-phenomenological study of 120 cases drawn from the original sample. Using Direct Discriminant Function Analysis and Principal Components Analysis an empirical case is made for two general types of praeternatural experience - Ontic and Perceptual. This exploratory investigation also establishes differences on all three dimensions between praeternatural experience and ‘normal’, everyday, ‘veridical’ experience. It appears, therefore, to extend Tart’s theoretical position as well as confirming some of the preliminary research on mystical experience conducted by Hood and others while opening a new, ‘three-dimensional’, approach to the study of experiential states.