Professor Claims Mystical Experiences are Delusions

[SQAAD]

I want some feedback about this. This is the video and a quote. 

"Similar to the narcissist's shared fantasy, mystical experiences and religions founded on these experiences are delusional regressions to an infantile phase prior to separation-individuation from god/cosmos/nature and merger/fusion/oceanic feeling/enmeshment/engulfment (no self-object or object representations)."

 

I don't know why but I got angry at this quote . I think this argument comes from Froyd. 

Edited April 2, 2022 by SQAAD

[aetheroar]

This has lined up to my direct experience completely. Mystical experiences appear to be caused by belief systems becoming so immeasurable that they extrapolate toward infinity until flipping back in on themselves, causing the beliefs to be briefly overlaid onto reality. It’s why all mystical experiences are experienced and can be retained by the ego-self, because they unclude subtle duality. If you gave psychedelics to someone that has truly cleared their beliefs out, they would give no effect, as all beliefs came from the source, which is literally the world as it appears to everyone...

What I’m pointing to is that reality as it appears is already is a mystical vision.

[Carl-Richard]

Yeah he is just recycling Freud. "Everything is negative and bad" is Freud in a nutshell. William James and Abraham Maslow have more positive views on the mystical experience.

[Carl-Richard]

27 minutes ago, aetheroar said:

Mystical experiences appear to be caused by belief systems

This is called the constructivist view of mysticism, and it's completely inconsistent imo. For one thing, it doesn't explain spontaneous awakenings like Eckhart Tolle.

[Leo Gura]

Lol

Stop listening to idiots.

[Michael Jackson]

Bro everybdy has opinions...

Why do you care?

Truth is, and forever will be, that you are God. Let people think what they think.

[vizual]

5 minutes ago, Michael Jackson said:

Bro everybdy has opinions...

Why do you care?

Truth is, and forever will be, that you are God. Let people think what they think.

We care because some opinions are better and more truthful than others. There's a word for if you always consider your own opinion the best opinion, it's called ignorance

 

Nice alt account btw "Michael Jackson"

Edited April 2, 2022 by vizual

[Michael Jackson]

2 minutes ago, vizual said:

We care because some opinions are better and more truthful than others. There's a word for if you always consider your own opinion the best opinion, it's called ignorance

It's not that I consider some opinion better. It's just that there exists an absolute truth which is beyond opinions, namely that I am God. And what some random professor claims seen from that context is just utterly laughable. God is beyond opinion.

[aetheroar]

13 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

This is called the constructivist view of mysticism, and it's completely inconsistent imo. For one thing, it doesn't explain spontaneous awakenings like Eckhart Tolle.

This is not called anything, it’s my direct experience.

Spontaneous awakenings could be explained as concepts overpowering other concepts which causes the momentary experience of disillusionment. For instance, if someone was utterly depressed yet they really yearned for mystical experiences, they could be on the brink of suicide (the edge of releasing the self and all beliefs) and the awakening would be the actual experience of the dropping of beliefs. The belief that death would bring a mystical union with God would trigger an extrapolation of that idea the moment it was prioritized over continued life in the body.

All awakenings, mystical or otherwise, can be explained by the release of belief systems and a restructuring of perception. If one has no belief systems to begin with, there’s only the delimited mind (infinite space/consciousness/sound/etc.) with nothing to extrapolate towards infinity.

This is why Enlightenment has always been the case and why God Realization is not full awakening.

[RMQualtrough]

Quite a good video I thought. Obviously he does not know what the experience entails, as he keeps discussing deities like he's talking about Christians. But some of the psychological breakdowns were quite enjoyable to listen to.

Obviously if your metaphysical position is that external material is producing mental objects (as opposed to material, including the brain he mentioned, being what the mental objects appear like), then you would take such a stance from brain imaging and such.

Bernardo Kastrup actually words it well. As soon as you prove why naive realism is definitively impossible, then you open the door to the person trying to think about what objects actually ARE like out there. And eventually if they obsess enough they will realize there can't be any "thing" out there. Unless math and so on is made of little "math atoms" etc haha.

[Carl-Richard]

27 minutes ago, aetheroar said:

This is not called anything, it’s my direct experience.

...which is why I left out most of your post from the quote  

Anyways, I feel your use of words is very idiosyncratic. What do you mean by "concepts", "dropping beliefs" and "restructuring perception"?

[Girzo]

51 minutes ago, Michael Jackson said:

Bro everybdy has opinions...

Why do you care?

That's not an opinion, that's bad science. The professor is clearly not trying to tell his personal opinion but frames that as scientific knowledge.

Scientific discourse has different standards than normal discussion. Saying religion is a psychological delusion is a bold claim not supported by evidence.

[Gesundheit2]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

This is called the constructivist view of mysticism, and it's completely inconsistent imo. For one thing, it doesn't explain spontaneous awakenings like Eckhart Tolle.

As far as I know, Tolle's awakening was not mystical, rather just a sudden radical shift in awareness that didn't include any visions or encrypted insights, kind of like mine.

My point is that the label you suggested here seems like a misdiagnosis.

[SQAAD]

@Michael Jackson

1 hour ago, Michael Jackson said:

Bro everybdy has opinions...

Why do you care?

Truth is, and forever will be, that you are God. Let people think what they think

Yes you are right. I just get easily annoyed by people who are so convinced and sure of things that they have never experienced. 

It drives me mad at times. Sometimes I may intellectually know that an opinion is Bs but it still bothers me lol. 

Edited April 2, 2022 by SQAAD

[Gesundheit2]

To OP, in order to distinguish truth from delusion, first there must be an objective truth or reality that we can anchor our distinction in. It seems like the dude in the video is super immersed in materialism, so it's no surprise he has such views. On the flip side, a person who is super immersed in idealism like Leo have exactly opposite views, so of course to Leo this dude is stupid. From my detached perspective, I can see both perspectives and discard them at the same time. And I hope this posts will allow some people to have the same ability.

[SQAAD]

@Girzo

31 minutes ago, Girzo said:

That's not an opinion, that's bad science. The professor is clearly not trying to tell his personal opinion but frames that as scientific knowledge.

Scientific discourse has different standards than normal discussion. Saying religion is a psychological delusion is a bold claim not supported by evidence.

@Carl-Richard

 

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

Yeah he is just recycling Freud. "Everything is negative and bad" is Freud in a nutshell. William James and Abraham Maslow have more positive views on the mystical experience.

The problem with Freud and many other scientists is that they have never had an awakening experience. 

It all boils down to this i think. Of course they are closed minded materialists bc they have never seen anything else. 

I would be a materialist too without the use of psychedelics. 

Most scientists are very closed minded. They almost all subscribe to materialism. 

Edited April 2, 2022 by SQAAD

[SQAAD]

@Gesundheit2

13 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

To OP, in order to distinguish truth from delusion, first there must be an objective truth or reality that we can anchor our distinction in. It seems like the dude in the video is super immersed in materialism, so it's no surprise he has such views. On the flip side, a person who is super immersed in idealism like Leo have exactly opposite views, so of course to Leo this dude is stupid. From my detached perspective, I can see both perspectives and discard them at the same time. And I hope this posts will allow some people to have the same ability.

OK but what is your perspective then? I don't understand. 

If you are not a materialist then what other choices are there except for idealism? 

[gettoefl]

this was an excellent nuanced well researched balanced presentation ... even though i disagree with his stated conclusion

i just watched an enjoyable presentation about the 7 story castle of teresa avila another great mystical heavyweight so all this information was most pertinent and synchronous 

what i know is this, mystical experiences are superfluous consolations, you should ignore them and not strive for them, they are not the goal and have to be dropped, if anything they are for others so they say hey maybe i need to get my act together

mystical experiences are nothing but detours distractions diversions

you need to keep going deeper

 

[Carl-Richard]

26 minutes ago, Gesundheit2 said:

As far as I know, Tolle's awakening was not mystical, rather just a sudden radical shift in awareness that didn't include any visions or encrypted insights, kind of like mine.

Mystical experiences per the psychological literature can either be perceptual (visions/speech from God) or pre-perceptual in nature (the experience of being God, of no self, Oneness, samadhi etc.). Tolle had the latter. Awakening is a mystical experience.

[Jodistrict]

Look at how many years it took to convince Western science that meditation is real.   The pundit pretends to have knowledge of something he doesn't understand.