Mysticism
Jerome Gellman · 2024 · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This source is used as context evidence across 4 linked claims and 4 related evidence hubs. Its citation record is marked verified; that verifies the source trail, not the truth of any linked claim.
Summary
Detailed entry on mystical experience, including extrovertive and introvertive types, cross-cultural similarities, ineffability, noetic quality, constructivist objections, and arguments about whether mystical states can be veridical.
How this source is used on the map
Use this as the conceptual anchor for non-dual, unitive, and psychedelic-mystical claims. It supports the seriousness of the experience category without treating the metaphysical interpretation as settled.
Citation record
- Authors
- Jerome Gellman
- Year
- 2024
- Publication
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Source type
- Philosophy reference
- Map role
- context
- Credibility level
- primary
- Citation status
- Verified
- DOI
- Not recorded
- PubMed
- Not recorded
- Not recorded
Linked claims
The encounters are reliably induced and structurally consistent. Whether the 'machine elves' exist independently is a separate enormous claim.
Buddhist bodhi, Hindu moksha, Christian unitive states, Sufi fana — a remarkably consistent endpoint described across traditions, with growing neuroscience confirmation. The 'what it actually is' is the open question.
Reports of self-less, choiceless awareness are remarkably consistent across traditions and now well-documented in contemplative neuroscience.
Modern clinical trials confirm psychedelics reliably induce mystical experiences with measurable lasting benefits. Whether the experience is 'true' is a separate question.
Related evidence hubs
Psychedelic, contemplative, and out-of-body experiences and what they may reveal.
Psychedelic, contemplative, out-of-body experience.
World religions and traditions, scored as systems.
The nature of subjective experience.
Related research reports
A source-linked synthesis of mystical experience, meditation, psychedelics, DMT entities, out-of-body experiences, lucid dreams, and synchronicity.
A balanced synthesis of the strongest and weakest evidence across afterlife, consciousness, reincarnation, mystical, psi, and practice claims.
Related sources
Academic frame for first-person mystical and psychedelic experience reports, especially when users ask whether an experience can justify a metaphysical belief.
Useful background for claims involving God, religious figures, or traditions because it clarifies what counts as a religious claim before evidence is weighed.
Useful background for entity-encounter claims because it anchors the experiences in known pharmacology before evaluating metaphysical interpretations about independent beings or alternate realms.
Primary tradition-side reference for the enlightenment claim; pair with wiki-moksha for the parallel Hindu framing and the SEP mysticism entry for the philosophical analysis.
Companion to wiki-enlightenment-buddhism — covers the Hindu / Jain / Sikh side of the same cross-tradition claim.
Adds qualitative depth to the DMT entity record without treating subjective encounter structure as evidence that the entities exist independently.