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Experience and Belief: an Empirical Study of Human Response to Mystical Experience

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Experience and Belief: an Empirical Study of Human Response to Mystical Experience EXPERIENCE AND BELIEF: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF HUMAN RESPONSE TO MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE Emma Nattress Bachelor of Arts, in South-East Asian Studies Master of Philosophy in Theology This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Murdoch University 2014 I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree in any tertiary education institution. _______________________________ Emma Nattress ABSTRACT This thesis presents the findings of an investigation into contemporary experience of mystical and or psychospiritual phenomena. Thirty-six interviews were conducted with adults who consented to discuss personal experiences that they perceived to be of a supernatural nature. The research methodology involved a modified form of grounded theory that was used in conjunction with the study’s strongly phenomenological approach. Analysis of the data revealed that, subsequent to the experience and mediated by each individual’s personal circumstances and ontology, the experience acted as a catalyst or change agent. This core category, which was noted in all narratives as a sense of forward movement and energy, was termed Catalysis. Catalysis was discernable in three merging phases: (i) engagement and reaction (often affective), involving identification or non- identification of the phenomenon; (ii) a period of inquiry (sometimes referred to as ‘a journey’) leading to change in the individual’s religious praxis and spirituality; and (iii) the reverberation of the experience into society in the form of changes within religious institutions, direct actions based on altruism; and social action. Accordingly, the thesis argues that apprehension of mystical and/or psychospiritual phenomena is a catalytic, progressive and empowering experience that has capacity to enable individuals in ways that bring about tangible outcomes not only for themselves, but also for the wider community. Furthermore, that the continuity of the Catalytic Process Model (CPM) offers a possible template for authentication of human response to the mystical as a spiritual and evolutionary process. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In acknowledging my gratitude for scholarships that I received from the Australian Postgraduate Award and Murdoch University, I would like to thank a number of people for their assistance and support in the completion of this thesis. Firstly, and most importantly, I wish to thank Dr. Nancy Ault and Dr. Alex Main. I am indebted to them for their supervision, guidance and consistent encouragement throughout this investigative journey of human response to the mystical. I know that I will miss our regular symposiums. A debt of gratitude is also owed to those generous individuals who participated in the interview process. This study could not have proceeded without your vital input. Thanks again, for your trust and continuing interest in the study’s outcome. Thanks to Ian MacPherson for his support and the gift of a rare publication, to Kay Ogden for her encouragement, to Nell Morgan and Sussan Shave for editorial assistance and to my sister Pat for always being a tower of strength and a patient listener. Finally, this thesis was inspired by the Reverend David Merriman and is respectfully dedicated to his memory. Emma Nattress, November 2014 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract i Acknowledgements ii Chapter 1: Setting the Scene 1 Section 1.1: Introduction 1 Section 1.2: Consideration of Mystical Phenomena in the Twentieth 6 Century and Onwards Section 1.3: Rationale for the Current Study 41 Section 1.4: Thesis Structure 43 Chapter 2: Research Procedures 45 Section 2.1: Introduction 45 Section 2.2: Methodology 45 Section 2.3: Research Design 53 Section 2.4: Locating the Sample 56 Section 2.5: Data Collection 62 Section 2.6: How the Data were Treated 65 Section 2.7: Conclusion 69 Chapter 3: Research Findings 70 Section 3.1: Introduction 70 Section 3.2: About the Participants 71 Section 3.3: Phase I – The Experiences and First Reactions 80 Section 3.4: Phase II – The Experience as a Catalyst for the Individual 92 Section 3.5: Phase III – The Individual as a Potential Catalyst for 121 Society Section 3.6: Summary of Findings 136 Chapter 4: Recapitulation and Discussion 139 Section 4.1: Introduction 139 Section 4.2: Catalysis and the Catalytic Process 139 Section 4.3: Scholem’s Stage Theory of Religion 148 Section 4.4: Ranson’s Cycle of Spirituality 155 Section 4.5: The Pastoral Cycle 168 Section 4.6: Quantum Change 171 Section 4.7: Catalysis, Quantum Change and Conversion 191 iii Section 4.8: The Added Contribution that the CPM makes to the 198 Existing Models Section 4.9: Further Comments 202 Chapter 5 – Conclusion 205 Section 5.1: Introduction 205 Section 5.2: What Has Been Said 205 Section 5.3: Practical Implications of the Research 211 Section 5.4: Future Research 215 Section 5.5: Concluding Remarks 217 Appendix A ― Survey 219 Appendix B ― Letter of Information 220 Appendix C ― Consent Form 221 Appendix D ― Website Addresses Provided by Participants 222 Appendix E ― Steven 223 Appendix F ― Karen 224 Appendix G ― James 232 Appendix H ― Mystical and Psychospiritual Phenomena: An 239 Overview of their Nature and Incidence Glossary 268 Bibliography 270 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Mystical Experiences Recorded by 14th Century Nuns 13 Table 2: Comparison between British and American Surveys of the 15 Experience of a Sense of Presence Table 3: Distinguishing Extrovertive Experience 21 Table 4: Feature List of Extrovertive Mystical Experience 36 Table 5: Source of Initial Contact 61 Table 6: Biographical Overview of the Participants 72 Table 7: Awareness of Religious Terminologies 78 Table 8: Phenomena Experienced as Reported by the Participants 81 Table 9: Awareness of an Unseen Presence 83 Table 10: Twelve Most Highly Valued Personal Characteristics 177 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: The Influence of James Varieties 8 Figure 2: The Overlapping Phases of Grounded Theory 50 Figure 3: The Journey 94 Figure 4: The Catalytic Process Model (CPM) 147 Figure 5: Ranson’s Cycle of Spirituality 158 Figure 6: Similarities between Ranson’s Cycle and the CPM 166 Figure 7: The Pastoral Cycle 169 Figure 8: Green’s Pastoral Cycle 170 Figure 9: The Landscape of Quantum Change 178 Figure 10: Comparative Diagram of the Catalytic Process Model 194 Figure 11: The Merging Stages of Catalysis 209 v Chapter One SETTING THE SCENE What we have to do is to present such a weight of objective evidence in the form of written records of these subjective spiritual feelings and of their effects on the lives of the people concerned, that the intellectual world must come to see that they are in fact as real and as influential as the forces of love. (Alister Hardy, The Spiritual Nature of Man) 1.1: INTRODUCTION The present study is a follow-up to an earlier study1 that reported on the findings of two identical surveys. These surveys, which were administered in order to test for the scientific criterion of repeatability,2 took the form of a medical diagnostic model.3 Using this model, a series of class characteristics or symptoms that had initially been presented to a group of 100 participants, primarily from the helping professions (social workers, psychologists, teachers and nurses) was presented to 135 postgraduate students from Murdoch University. The chosen characteristics or symptoms were those associated with six experiences generally recognised as being of a psychic nature: the out-of-body/near-death experience, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, the seeing of auras/photism. 1 Emma Nattress, Psychic Phenomena: Meditation, Perception, Actuality ― An Australian Study, M.Phil Dissertation, Murdoch University, Western Australia, 2007. Available online: http://www.murdochrepository.murdoch.edu.au 2 Repeatability/replication: The principle that that any experiment if carried out correctly, should always generate the same result. In the West the inability of experiencers of transcendent experiences to repeat their experiences on demand has been a stumbling block to belief in the existence of mystical and psychospiritual experiences. 3 For the purpose of this study examples of diagnostic models included the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention: ‘Toolkit for Health Care Professionals Diagnosing CFS’, Available online: http//www.cdc.gov.cfs and Communicable Disease Directorate, Department of Health Government of Western Australia and the Meningitis Information Centre ‘Information Package’, 2006. 1 The object of the study was to discover how many individuals within the group evinced the above specific characteristics. This proactive approach, in seeking information from people irrespective of their experience of psychic phenomena, is comparable with that of Kenneth Ring.4 Ring’s systematic collection of accounts from adults who had come close to death (there was no stipulation that they had to have had any experiences) played an important role in validating Kübler-Ross5 and Moody’s6 near-death experience (NDE) research. In the initial survey, 60% of the participants reported having experienced one or more of the listed characteristics. These findings were quantitatively and qualitatively compared with the findings of the second survey, in which 64% of the postgraduate participants reported that they had personally experienced one or more of the listed class characteristics. Intriguingly, in both survey findings, a number of participants perceived their experiences as having spiritual and/or religious connotations. The commonality of these findings was further supported by comparison between the Australian surveys’ qualitative reports of contemporary psychic phenomena and detailed descriptions of psychic and/or mystical phenomena included in four British, religious studies7 and one American secular8 study. Examination of these studies 4 Kenneth Ring, Life at Death: Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1980). 5 Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, On Life After Death (Berkley, CA: Celestial Arts, 1991).
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