Measuring the reflective self and experiential self in self-transcendent experiences

Self-transcendent experiences—such as those induced by psychedelics, meditation, or awe—can be understood through a distinction between the reflective self and the experiential self. The reflective self involves conscious, narrative self-referential processing, while the experiential self involves affective processing and bodily awareness. Self-transcendence involves a decrease in the reflective self (ego dissolution) and an increase in the experiential self (immersion), supported by affective salience processing and associated with meta-awareness, leading to feelings of connectedness. This framework reconciles the paradox of feeling “smaller yet larger” during such experiences and offers a pragmatic model for researching the phenomenology of self-transcendence across different practices and cultural contexts.

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Abstract

This chapter proposes that self-transcendent experiences can be usefully understood through the distinction between the reflective and experiential self, originally articulated by William James and developed in contemporary philosophy and neuroscience. The reflective self involves conscious, narrative self-referential processing, while the experiential self refers to affective processing and meta-awareness which typically follows bodily consciousness. Drawing on evidence from psychedelics, meditation, and awe research, it is suggested that self-transcendence involves a decrease of the reflective self state (ego dissolution) and a corresponding increase in experiential self state (immersion), supported by affective salience processing and associated with meta-awareness, leading to feelings of connectedness. In doing so, the framework reconciles the paradox of feeling “smaller yet larger” in self-transcendental experiences. This dual-self framework offers a pragmatic model for researching the phenomenology of self-transcendence in PRSM experiences, encouraging a building block approach by delineating the processes which together form the complex phenomenon of self-transcendence and which can be measured individually through psychological scales, but the extents of which can vary across different types of PRSM experiences and cultural contexts.