---
title: "Spiritual Rationality (minimal edition), part 7 of 8"
canonical: "https://spiritual-rationality.org"
pages: 4
---

*Part 7 of 8, minimal (headings, emphasis and prose only) edition — “Content, Healing, and Integration” through “Mysticism and Awakening”. Previous: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms-min-6.txt. Next: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms-min-8.txt. Whole edition in one file: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms-min.txt. Index: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms.txt*

# Content, Healing, and Integration

I present here a somewhat opinionated cross-section of reports and models in this space.

I'll describe a critique of these perspectives in the next section, after that I'll contrast them with other perspectives. I'll also discuss models that I endorse more strongly later.

*See also: Trauma, The Structure of Trauma, Trauma Smells, and Culture, Taboo, and Trauma.*

I defined trauma earlier as something like "pathological changes in psychology as a result of adverse experiences." In this section I'll talk about broadly something to the effect of the *ceasing* of dysphoria and dysfunction, and centrally of the *removal* or *resolution* of their generators.

This of course already relies on some assumptions about a. the identification of some pattern as undesirable and usually pathological, and b. its etiology. There's nuance with each of these which I leave implicit here, I discuss some of this more later re "introspective epistemology."

## Psychological content

Most models here use some notion of *generators* (never by that name), namely usually of some disruption or intrusion which is regarded as causally upstream of some psychological changes. I'll refer to the generators involved in sustaining traumatic changes, at least in my own conception, as *psychological content*, sometimes *material*, and especially just *content*.

So, "content" here presumes a model, though thankfully it's wildly less laden than 'trauma.' The stereotyped story goes like this:

- Alice has a traumatic experience, eg. has an abusive relationship.
- She is disturbed in general for some time, and continues to feel fearful towards men indefinitely.
- She "processes" these experiences, this is stereotypically cathartic and emotive, especially including revisiting specific memories and feelings associated with her disturbance.

- Her previous disturbance has ended, and she is able to hold a more "mature" relationship to herself, male peers, and potential future partners.

In this kind of story, Alice's ongoing disturbance is *due to* some content which needs to be "processed," and the disturbance ceases once that content is "worked through."

The reports of the phenomenology associated with this kind of story align nicely with this notion of content. In particular, these reports often describe that some feeling, or bolus of feeling-and-belief, was lurking underneath the surface level traumatic responses, which can eventually be relatively cleanly excised, resolving the entire traumatic pattern. (See more below re metabolism and releases.)

To be clear, reports of this kind of "underlying clump of content" often don't mean that a person is continuously in distress, or that there's continuously available loud sensations in that clump. Often some cluster of feeling might only be available when elicited or triggered, or might be available to introspection usually only as a blockage. In any case, in these reports and models, there is a generator which *persists*, agnostic of the specific phenomenology, or how sensationally active the somatic correlates of the generator are.

Note that often the surface level presentation of some psychological content might be fairly subtle, and that the metabolism of content, while *often* intensely emotive, can also be progressive and relatively gentle.

This is not the only kind of story one encounters being called "healing," and many stories about trauma and healing will take features a la carte from various models in the broader culture. I'll discuss various different models in use and in the discourse throughout this section, and ones I'm less sympathetic to separately. Note also that these sorts of "models" are much more like intuition pumps for practitioners (and often for eg. therapists) rather than nice predictive causal models in the sense we would use ordinarily in "science."

## Metabolism

Most of these models refer implicitly or explicitly to a notion of psychological or emotional *metabolism*, also commonly eg. "processing emotions."

Indeed, let's say, one has a varied palette of emotions or moods, and correlated clusters of perception and behavior. And, distinctly, emotions pass! Emotions and "psychological states" clearly have something to do with external circumstances, but also with our relationship to them. In any case, most often, emotions arise in response to some circumstance, and then decay or are replaced, variously organically, smoothly, abruptly or chaotically.

This sort of process is stereotypically glaring when observing children, who can be inconsolable one minute, and peaceful or excited literally the next minute. Adults still have this basic pattern of arising-and-decay, and it's very difficult to imagine what a person would be like if they were missing either half of that cycle.

Besides someone being *aroused* more readily or more intensely, some people often *hold on* to emotions for longer than others. As well, some emotions are more intense or sustained, and decay with greater difficulty.

Many modern western theories of trauma and healing make claims along the lines that trauma is due to *interruption* in the natural process of emotional metabolism. The claim here often goes like: "when things are going well, disturbance, regardless of how intense, passes through the system with enough time. What distinguishes trauma is that for whatever reason this process fails or stops, and the disturbance forms a cyst of dysphoria which festers and inflames the rest of the body-mind."

Often in these sorts of models, emotional metabolism is believed to require some appropriate social-emotional context; stereotypically this is described from the perspective of a child, and so the corresponding "healthy" context is connection with a warm and compassionate caregiver.

(See also briefly re some empirical critiques of this sort of perspective.)

Also common here then are claims that this context can be reenacted (in some sense) with a therapist performing some narrow subset of the role of a caregiver, or of a person being able to "reparent themselves," simulating this kind of social-energetic quality "internally." Similarly there are reports from eg. fairly traditional religious adherents of getting this quality from eg. worship of Mary, or Guan Yin.

A common claimed causal history for these interruptions is parental absence, or weak or absent parental attunement, but interruptions to emotional metabolism are meant to be possible under a variety of other circumstances. Commonly reported here are:
- Cases where emotional expression is restricted or punished in a household or broader culture
- Cases of social rejection more broadly, especially when not "offset" by an open and welcoming social context for that person elsewhere
- Cases where a trauma is unspeakable or is refused by a person's family or local community, eg. very often in cases of rape
- Acute trauma otherwise, especially under chaotic circumstances where there is no stable safety to be found for some time

Furthermore, a very popular claim in some pop-therapy circles, as well as among western meditators and broadly "spiritual" types, is that modern western culture is ~uniquely bad with respect to affording metabolism. First off, this smells more like an instance of the "Garden of Eden," (see an appendix) rather than a plausible empirical claim about the distribution of emotional health and robustness in historical or "traditional" cultures. Still, this touches on a central theme of this whole book, about the relationship between culture, "health," and spirituality. I'll discuss later some specific aspects of this question.

Some common reports of the phenomenology of emotional metabolism:

- Nebulously felt relief
- Energy (in sense #2 linked) moving
- Sometimes reported as moving through specific or predictable contours of sensation
- Sometimes, releases or movement of qi (see link above)
- "Catharsis"
- This is the term I'm using for the standard stereotyped loudly emotive, often vulnerable, kind of metabolism.
- Sometimes reported as moving through a specific *sequence* of emotions or views, at least when metabolizing whatever specific emotion etc.
- Nebulously felt or perceived *reorientation* of meaning and social-energetic posture (see below)
- Often this is present as a feature, but by itself I wouldn't quite call this metabolism.
- Specific images or memories being elicited, and arousing strong emotions associated with them
- Bigger or more intense releases (see below)

"Catharsis" stereotypically is not just about vulnerable and loud emoting, but usually distinctly about emoting which results in relief and satsifaction. Sometimes "healing" gets used to mean this sort of catharsis *without* reference to any model of the ceasing of generators of dysphoria, or else with a very weak sense of such a model. Broadly I think this is basically not an appropriate use of the word 'healing.'

Often in this context people will talk about "processing emotions," I'll say this is used to mean at least half a dozen different things, some of which I wouldn't call metabolism at all, and usually used without any clarity as to the phenomenology it's supposed to refer to. In any case, *often* it means some combination of the above. Also, often "processing emotions" means something more focused or deliberate, rather than passive or ambient.

It's also not clear to me what the relationship is between catharsis in this sense and metabolism more broadly. I've occasionally encountered claims that metabolism *requires* loud catharsis, though my sense is that this isn't even clearly true for small children, let alone for adults—though this might be directionally true, or helpful as a prescription relative to the ordinary *performance* of adult emotional regulation.

## Releases and openings

*See also Somatic Phenomenology, especially the sections on dissocation and blockages and releases.*

*Release* and *opening* have somewhat overlapping usage; the former broadly speaking refers to somatic releases, whereas the latter can refer to the same but more centrally refers to shifts in behavior and felt affordances or optionality in behavior, life choices, etc.

I won't mostly repeat descriptions of the phenomenology of somatic releases, see sections linked above. For "openings", reports that use this language often revolve around energetic, "psychological," and behavioral shifts downstream of a variety of kinds of "healing" (often also not using a "healing" frame, however.) Most often this involves specific ways of seeing and ways of being becoming available where they were previously flat, thin, aversive, or absent. Common features of reports of openings include, again overlapping with the reports of releases:

- Discovering and disrupting somatic patterns, sometimes described as eg. "contraction" or "collapse," which block off the normal or desirable flow and expression of some energy, eg. confidence and verve, sexual desire, vulnerability, etc.
- Some domain of meaning or swath of emotions which had been made *under*-salient or overly thin (something like, "phenomenally dereified"), newly becoming richly available
- Changes in the weighting or salience of various domains or affordances in one's life and experience; very often softening some previously hyper-salient domain, eg. specific work relationships, expectations of achievement, or burdensome responsibility to family
- Local or global relaxation of chronic somatic tension, both gross muscular tension and subtle energetic tension
- Changes in affect and manner perceptible to ordinary friends and family, often described as eg. gentler, richer, more confident, or *brighter*

Behavioral changes associated with openings, in reports which use that language, are generally not associated with some discrete "decision" or verbal reflection, but are often indirect, unexpected, and progressive. While some of the most popularly advertised healing systems often claim clean and simple stories of metabolism and openings, many reports from practitioners who I take seriously are *much* more complicated, indirect, messy, and unpredictable. I'll discuss this in much more detail later.

Often both openings and releases come with a step down in dissociation, whether local or global; sometimes changes in dissociation can either precipitate openings or conversely can be caused by them. Changes in dissociation can be pleasant or painful, ranging from soft, gentle, lovely (if often still sad), to chaotic and violent, eg. reports fairly often describe screeching, blood curdling pain, or wracking sobs. Openings are also sometimes chaotic *and* pleasurable, and many other surprising variations.

Releases and openings are often reported to be disruptive to a person's relationships and general functioning, at least for periods of time. Where some pattern of restriction and dissociation was load-bearing, perhaps because it eg. held some intense negative emotions at bay, or because it allowed a person to remain amenable to people in their existing relationships, removing it can add chaos to that person's life or lead to the collapse of some relationships.

(This is a more common report than one would expect just based on the, uh, "marketing materials" for spiritual and transformative practice. I discuss this in more detail later.)

Even when not expected to be disruptive to this extent, many models which make reference to "openings" prescribe that a person has to capitalize on an opening, and something like *actualize* it in their relationships and agency in the world. Actualization can be more or less functional and healthy, but even healthy cases can still be disruptive, and healthy cases are broadly contiguous with those of major disruptive openings.

At least sometimes reported here are things getting very intense, and often very weird. Among these:

- Revealing, at least to oneself, long-held snarls of motivation, or tucked away obsessions with some taboo
- Bizarre and horrifying imagery of violence or body horror, eg. of violence done to oneself or others
- What's sometimes called "shamanic sickness"—prolonged pseudo-physical illnesses caused or at least *opened up* by healing practices, rather than resolved by them
- "Critters," energies or extra-personal psychologies found implanted or lodged in one's body-mind system
- (Adjacent, also "entities," AFAICT this refers to what are reported as "external minds" found in a person's body-mind)

See more on this cluster specifically later.

While this domain seems like it must be "native" for humans, this whole broad *flavor* of report (openings in general, and maybe weird stuff especially) feels pretty modern, in my mind dating maybe to the 80's. Still I think it's right in broad strokes, and not a coincidental innovation of whatever recent culture. While conceived of very differently, IIRC I've found many of these contours reported, at least here and there, in traditional and historical sources cutting across traditions.

### Energy work and "energy healing"

*Again, see also on energy.*

Reports of releases are *stereotypically* intense, and indeed the easiest experiences to tell stories about are the intense ones, but many releases and movements of energy are subtle or even quite faint. Much of the work leading up to and surrounding big releases is described as more like subtle and intricate. As well, some people report that their practice is basically progressive and gentle with no major hiccups, or at least *mostly* so. See more later on gradualism and suddenism.

This sort of "intricate" healing practice is distinctive of what's most often known as *energy work*; also adjacent here is *energy healing*. Energy work generally includes practices, both "internal" (by one person on, or *in* themselves), and "external" (by a healing practitioner on a client or, ugh, *patient* or whatever), working with phenomena under both qi and subtle somatics (see link above for energy).

External energy healing practices most often involve touch, sometimes massage, sometimes with application of a good deal of force, but most often with just very gentle and light touch. These are generally reported to be mostly about movement and interaction of energy in the healer's body-mind with the client's, and indeed some schools teach healing practices which involve no touch at all, and may be practiced anywhere from a distance of a few inches from the client's body, to across a continent.

Internal practices are usually explained to work on similar principles, and often with similar or tightly aligned reports. Many schools teach some combination of both, usually with a healing practitioner being required to be adept in internal practices in order to practice *on* clients.

Most centrally, at least to my mind, both internal and external energy healing practices feature qualities phenomenologically of spacious attention and "coaxing." The former means something like "co-attention," or eg. there's commonly claims that the attention and energetic *space* of a healer affords a client's system to soften or move as needed. The latter means something like gently inclining the system to unravel or release—even when applying a fair amount of physical force via massage, my sense is there's generally here a quality of gentleness or "careful energetic attunement," eg. as opposed to "energetic contradiction" etc.

There are some claims here that the energetic system of a healing practitioner can convey some information to a client about what energetic/somatic affordances exist, or a way of being with energy already arisen, *or* to impart a specific energy which is absent or unavailable for the client. Any of these will sometimes get called "transmission," or "a transmission," which unfortunately means a few other things in other contexts as well.

Unfortunately, "energy work" also refers to healing practices with something of the opposite quality, namely purposefully, forcefully moving energy, or adding some energy to the system in an effort to budge the configuration this way or that. See also here briefly re energy practices, in that context moreso with respect to "meditation." The extreme end of this I would describe as trying to *blast* the system with energy, reports of these sorts of practices (eg. many kinds of "breathwork") describe being overwhelmed with energy, pushing out or rapidly clearing most other sensations or emotions present.

Adjacent to this category are also practices to the effect of purposefully putting the system under "energetic stress," so adding some energy that's intense or difficult to be with, or in physical postures which are energetically challenging, and working with those. There's a wide range here, most of which I'm not that familiar with.

### Releases and verbalization, "nominal content"

*See also on introspection and verbalization.*

Releases and openings often have a complicated relationship with nominal content, and especially verbal expression. Again, the stereotyped Hollywood image of cathartic healing involves some very straightforward correspondence between felt emotion, emotional expression, "underlying generators" (usually implicit), verbal introspection, and verbal *expression*. In practice, in the reports *I* take seriously, every linkage in this network can be distorted, opaque, inverted, or completely obfuscated, including to the person introspecting.

By my sense, often verbal expression is confabulated, larped, or improv'd in the moment, and some expression might be resonant partially, but still felt strongly. More generally, very very commonly in the therapy literature, and in reports from modern solo "healing" practitioners, the presenting symptoms and reports can have fairly little to do with the content of the underlying generators, as evaluated much further along in some healing journey. Correspondingly, the same is true for someone's apprehension of some disturbed or dysfunctional pattern, as well as both their private stories about it *and* their expressions about it, regardless of how emotive or strongly felt.

Separately, there's also often a feedback loop between openings and expressions: in many reports, openings will lead to shifts in self-understanding, which might precipitate some big verbal expression, and conversely there are surprising or momentous verbal expressions which precipitate big releases. (All of this is agnostic of the "accuracy" or truth value of any particular verbal expression.)

## Integration

*Integration* refers to processes oriented towards, and relative outcomes of, something like psychological robustness, maturity, and non-compartmentalization. I feel actually a bit unclear about this concept and more sparsely read here, but it's still pretty fundamental, and I have some useful to say.

Most often I see this term used to refer to what I might very loosely want to distinguish as four features:

1. Somatic integration
2. Mature relationship with traumatic experiences
3. Mature and robust relationship with taboo subjects
4. Lack of inner conflict

Related to all of these, 'to integrate' often gets used to mean, very generally, "to allow psychological/emotional learnings to percolate," or "to synthesize new perspectives and orientations from something one has learned."

More centrally, integration is used in the context of reports of discovering and reworking "dys-integration" (my term), or "dyscoordination" (oy, sorry) across the body-mind. Reports here often describe unraveling the compartmentalization or even shunning of parts, swaths of the body, domains of meaning, etc.

The claim usually made by practitioners making these reports is that harmonious, functional behavior, social relating, and existential grounding all rely on communication and coordination throughout and across parts of the mind. Often the claim is that proper integration causes parts and emotional patterns to re-cohere, contributing to a fluent, "whole" experience of self and being.

#### Somatic integration

*Somatic integration* broadly is used to mean a. somatic healing, mostly the same as the kinds of practices and experiences described above in releases and openings, and b. re-embodiment, most often in the context of a., with a priority on integrating somatic phenomena with the rest of attention and experience.

Sometimes this means a variety of different kinds of body practices, which might be explicit "bodywork" or energy work, or might mean explicit attentional + physical embodiment practices, eg. Tai chi etc. More broadly the notion here is usually about developing the relationship between attention, emotion, and somatics to be more "whole," more cooperative, fluent, etc.

#### Mature relationship with traumatic experiences

This often means largely something like "healed," but with a specific priority on again something like robustness and maturity, often a gloss here might be "robustly and thoroughly healed." The claim here is often something like, "there exists incomplete healing which still has distinctive trauma smells, as distinct from a completed healing process (which we call 'integrated.')"

Usually the trauma smells here would be a very exaggerated sensitivity to the possibility of harm in some domain, or a disgust or rejection of that domain in general, or a tendency to have one's hackles raised with respect to that domain or with respect to one's relationship with it. In contrast, an "integrated" relationship with some trauma is often depicted as "grounded" or "clean," even if there's a much deeper sensitivity and care for that specific kind of harm.

This is sort of presumptive of the answers to some spiritual questions, and often these claims are overstated as far as I'm concerned, but I think this is directionally right.

#### Robust relationship with taboo

*(Again see some context on taboo in general.)*

The take here is usually something like, taboos in general create a kind of internal flinch or censorship, and that while relatively functional, especially for a society as a whole, this is still in a way "incomplete" or "brittle." Eg., taboos against feces often both track real concerns re disease risk, but also construct a reified cordoned-off domain of the world, at least for many people in many cultures. So then the claim is that this is psychologically distortive, and that even if one still practices hygiene re eg. disease transmission from feces, the structure of taboo around it "needs to" be integrated, in this sense.

And then, the claim here is broader, so feces is easier to explain because the taboo is relatively weaker and simpler, but I've seen many claims from practitioners about similar harmful knots psychologically/​spiritually/​somatically with respect to eg. a variety of kinds of taboos against sexuality, politicized taboos, etc.

More "dys-integrated" here would include reports, which are common from at least some kinds of practitioners, of exaggerated, contorted, or inverted relationships with taboos. The central example here (if contentious) would be at least some kinds of kink/BDSM, which I'll discuss later.

This kind of integration is also often connected to other kinds of internalized censorship (regardless of my using the word 'taboo' for this subsection.) Eg., many cultures strongly censure both gross physical violence but also overt aggressive verbal expression, and there are many reports of people needing to unravel and "integrate" trauma-smelly patterns around controlling impulses to anger and violence. This type of practice, very broadly, is often known as "shadow work."

#### Lack of inner conflict

There are many reports of practitioners coming to serious contemplative practice due to intense internal conflicts, or discovering these in the course of their practice. Reports here look like:

- Being one's own slavedriver, especially to strenuous internal objection
- Persistently punishing oneself for some undesired behavior
- Struggling with some undesired behavior and constantly falling off the wagon
- Feeling trapped in a relationship and wanting to express discomforts or objections, but always holding back
- (This could be understood as more of an internalization of the punishments of an abuser or abusive dynamic, but is still relevant here.)

And then integration in this sense means the relative absence of this quality. Note while they're sort of contiguous, this kind of pattern is meaningfully separate from ordinary negotiation of competing goals and desires. Snarls involving internal conflict can get seemingly arbitrarily weird, see some context on partswork, and more later on weird patterns discovered in practice.

# Criticizing Somatics-and-Trauma Models

# Other Models of Healing

## Secular western therapy

## Content in traditional systems

## Misc.

### "Positive" healing

### Somatics *only*

# Mysticism and Awakening

I'll use the term *mysticism* to refer primarily to traditions and practices of transcendence and gnosis, and secondarily to contact with the supernatural. There isn't quite a consistent definition in the broader discourse, so this definition is very slightly opinionated.

More on the term *mystic*

The term 'mystic' comes from the Ancient Greek *mystikós*, probably from *mýstēs*, originally referring to an intiate in ancient "mystery religions," which were secret (at least in the sense that their practices were secret) cults in Ancient Greece and Rome. *Mýstēs* itself is from a word meaning "shut," and further both "hidden" and "secret." The term was used by Pseudo-Dionysius, an early church father writing in the 6th century, in describing a theology and practice of union with God, drawing on an earlier Greek pagan mystical tradition.

In practice, both in academic work and in modern mystical writing, 'mystical' is used in varied enough ways that it doesn't communicate a lot narrowly, out of context. This is obviously letting alone the colloquial usage which doesn't mean a lot more than "magical" and "spooky." In general it tends to mean something like "union with God," or "gnosis of ultimate reality beyond ordinary apprehension", but this bleeds into what's more often known as "occultism" which usually revolves around ritual magic and interpretation of symbols. "Mysticism" is also often used to refer generically to the practices and experiences of altered states or even just unusual perception, achieved by religious or spiritual practice, or psychedelics.

Unfortunately, "mysticism" gets invoked variously explicitly by name, or by vibes, in a variety of contexts, to describe a variety of experiences with messy or dubious relationships to one another. Agnostic of the use of the term 'mystical,' especially by someone making a given report, what characterizes experiences in this cluster is, in my view, basically the interpretation of some experience as disclosing otherwise hidden knowledge about reality, the sacred, or the nature of value.

In particular, I've encountered lots of reports of similar experiences of eg. being profoundly moved by beauty or connection, which some people experience as mundane, and others as *transcendent*, or as *more real than normal reality*. These latter reports tend to bring in qualities common of eg. ecstatic religious experience, and tend to cluster with reports of mystical experiences otherwise, agnostic of the specific inciting experience.

More broadly, there are a variety of reports where a person has an experience which is profoundly resonant, which they will reify and sacralize, and which in turn they will interpret as a kind of *gnosis*.

## Gnosis

*Gnosis* refers to experiences of attaining "direct knowledge" of hidden spiritual truths, most centrally those of fundamental existential import. Some smattering of reports here:

- "Union with the divine"
- Direct apprehension of the causal structure of phenomena and experience
- "Sacred geometry"
- (Something like, perceiving existentially fundamental and divine truths in certain geometric diagrams)
- Non-duality
- Modern reports here describe this as experiencing the phenomenal field as contiguous and undifferentiated, so that there is no separation between "me" and "that," but traditional sources I believe construed this differently.
- "Infinite love"
- Apprehension of one's "self" as thin or fabricated, or the self disappearing temporarily or permanently

(Note of course that I'm trying to construct a category for experiences reported across a wide variety of traditions, most of which don't originate in the West, and certainly don't use the term 'gnosis.' That said, there are western monks in eastern lineages who gladly translate traditional texts and formulas using 'gnosis,' so it's hardly an innovation or overreach on my part.)

A distinction which some authors make here surrounds the phenomenal quality of these experiences, in particular with respect to how *fabricated* the experience is. "Fabrication" in this context refers to relative qualities of something like *phenomenal construction*. The way this would be explained by some Buddhist authors is that ordinary experience involves many strata of perception, interpretation, and reaction, and that even beneath many layers of fabrication, the experience of eg. visual sensation whatsoever still contains or is convolved with a substantial degree of *intention*.

Note that this sort of model of fabrication as presented is distinctly Buddhist, but that distinctions not unlike this are still present in the work of many authors who don't make reference to "fabrication" explicitly whatsoever.

So, to elaborate, the feature here that's often understood to distinguish true gnosis is something like being "phenomenally rarified," namely, that gnosis is only of something directly present (sometimes "immanent") in reality and experience, rather than something theorized which someone has elaborate thoughts about, regardless of how convincing.

There are a variety of reports which are sometimes touted as gnosis, or of some similar degree of mystical profundity, which I largely don't take seriously because they smell too much like "I had some really cool thoughts in some altered state, and it felt gobsmacking and sacred." Certainly those experiences are marvelous, having had some myself, but I'm prioritizing gnosis as among other things having a specific phenomenal quality, because I think that's probably a decent signal for its quality as evidence about the true structure of experience and value. I'll discuss considerations re mystical and introspective epistemology later.

There's a wider swath of altered states and peak experiences also reported as a kind of gnosis. By my sense, these tend to be more contiguous with both ordinary religious practice and "secular" peak experiences, and distinguished mostly by intensity *or* by the story which a person tells about the experience afterwards.

*Very* often, reports of gnosis claim that the gnosis itself is "ineffable," where they explain further they'll usually say that the experience is completely nonverbal but moreso often that it cannot be understood *in words*, or even can't be *understood* at all, because it exists in a realm of experience outside of thought or human apprehension.

I'll toss in here that I think this is partially because of a lack of shared language, but also that partially what they're tracking is probably that they can't communicate the phenomenology of the experience to someone who hasn't had the experience themselves. Based on my sparse reading of primary sources in a few schools of Buddhism, *even in Zen* it seems like they totally can build up language around this stuff, but that the descriptions are inscrutable to a person without the gnosis.

One kind of failure mode which you'll hear about from traditional masters, maybe most distinctly in Zen, is something like "*imagining* oneself into false gnosis." So the claim here is that some naive practitioners will read about what some mystical experience is supposed to be like, imagine what that experience would be like, and then end up fabricating an experience with that shape, which doesn't correspond at all to the original referent.

A friend of mine claims that upon achieving two specific attainments in the Theravada "four-path" model, both times he returned to the standard formula for that attainment in the canonical texts, and where the depiction previously seemed poetic and sort of meaningless, it then seemed like a clear and precise depiction of the experience he had just had.

To be clear, I'm slicing things up here in a somewhat opinionated way, with respect to my sense of what traditions and what *kinds of experiences* are "reliable" or "trustworthy," but still largely aligned with claims made by traditional masters and described in various traditions' mystical texts. Still, there are reports that are relatively similar to the ones I hold up as reliable but don't quite qualify, and contiguous with reports that I think are basically horseshit and hardly more meaningful than reverie.

## Spirits, visions, and communion

There are vanishingly few traditional mystical and contemplative lineages from which we don't have reports of meeting with spirits, angels, ghosts, demons, etc. Even in modern western lineages with very secular branding, among those which actually teach awakening (see below), there are still reports shared about such phenomena, here and there in hushed tones and oblique references.

Sometimes contact with spirits is reported as mostly energetic, sometimes they appear as a stable visible figure who speaks clearly, sometimes they speak *through* a person, sometimes they're visible only in glimpses, or sometimes their presence is inferred indirectly.

Relevant here of course would be pervasive reports of encounters with God (*gods*, as well), in prayer and otherwise. These reports are often less clear about the phenomenology, or even keep quiet about the details of the phenomenology. In any case, sometimes these encounters are reported as clear visions with a moving and speaking figure, sometimes a quiet *knowing* in response to some question, or sometimes distinctly heard speech from no visible physical source, among other kinds of reports. Specifically reports where God communicates mostly by speech sometimes describe the quality of the voice as liminal between "internal audiation" and the quality of a normal physical voice heard in person.

Third here, and of course overlapping with the first two, are what I'll loosely refer to as *visions*. Sometimes I might want to distinguish visions as something like "vivid and intense visual scenes, usually understood not to be causally entangled with one's presence and physical body," as opposed to eg. hallucinations, reverie, astral projection, dreams, or visualizations—but in practice there's flow between most of these, and I'll use the word 'vision' to refer to all of them.

Each of these three tend to be highly stereotyped within a culture and tradition, but often also with idiosyncratic and bespoke spins, or fairly novel. It's not clear to me if more generally there's convergence across human cultures, or if apparent convergence is due to cultural contact, or that when you dig into the details, specific practices and institutions are much less similar. Eg. my impression is that with "shamans" (a modern term, regardless of the etymology) the broad outline of "spiritually attuned healer who can contact the supernatural world" is convergent across cultures, but the details of the metaphysics or the form or behavior of spirits doesn't seem to be.

Some traditions view it as a spiritual gift or attainment to gain access to the supernatural world, whereas others seem to view it as by default available to all classes. This is variously reified, so some traditions are all-in on contact with spirits, often with those specially spiritually initiated (eg. African-derived syncretic religions in the Caribbean and Brazil, probably some South American shamanic traditions), while others view it as interesting but peripheral (Buddhism) or usually evil (Christianity, somewhat Judaism and Islam).

Some western hippies also make a big deal about contact with both spirits and ancestors, these tend to be more often of the "pure energetic presence" type. Secondarily here are also some kinds of "soul journeying" (cf. also western neo-shamanism), these are stereotypically extended visions induced by trance or drugs.

These obviously interface with and feed back into the rest of the culture, as well as ordinary "superstitions" (such as this is a meaningful distinction).

It's unclear to me to what extent western culture has lost access to the supernatural, or to altered states, compared to premodern cultures in Europe, or to "traditional" cultures cross-anthropologically. More specifically, I probably want to distinguish between something like a. more pervasive or vivid superstition, in the sense of "beliefs about the supernatural, in an otherwise humdrum life," vs. b. more pervasive experience of actual "contact" with the supernatural and altered states, etc. I often though find claims of the latter, that life in some documented cultures was teeming with enchantment, most people spoke to spirits, etc.

In any case, in the modern West, altered states and the supernatural mostly only fall in the cracks of hearsay and "belief," rather than day-to-day experience. I'm also unclear about this re contact with God in prayer, part of my uncertainty here is that I haven't heard of (though haven't really looked for) evidence about how vivid and alive lay prayer really was in say the 17th century, let alone the 7th; today it seem to be on average mostly perfunctory and rote, even for the relatively devout, and where it is alive it's moreso deeply resonant rather than enchanted and mystically salient.

## Awakening

*Awakening* is a calque of the word *bodhi* from Pali/Sanksrit, literally "the event of waking from sleep." 'Awakening' is used in a variety of discourses to refer to experiences of large changes in one's spiritual and existential apprehension of the world, as well as the persistent changes downstream of these experiences.

In the context of the various Buddhist canons and traditions, *bodhi* is understood to refer to the final goal of spiritual practice (usually, but not always, "freedom from suffering"), or proximal degrees or stages towards that goal, in a variety of specific models. The term "awakening," in the context of Buddhism, among other traditions, is used because upon awakening, it's as though a person has "woken up," where previously they were asleep.

In the context of, let's say, "western post-traditional contemplative spirituality," especially in English, this term is pretty overloaded, and used in reference to a bunch of different experiences under very different models which only overlap or rhyme. Related to this overloading, there's a substantial diversity of claims made by different traditions about what kinds of spiritual achievement are possible, and what the goal of intensive spiritual practice should be.

(Related here also is obviously the word 'enlightenment,' which many contemporary teachers avoid because it brings in some inappropriate intuitions, but which is also often used to refer to many of the same experiences in these traditions.)

One more difficulty here: at this point it become really cumbersome to mark explicitly each of a. reports from practitioners (and maybe to separate say, those that I believe vs. those I think are real but exaggerated or overinterpreted vs. those I think are hogwash), b. both myths and concrete claims presented by traditions, and c. practice *instructions*, including where the instructions come bundled with a view. (I talk about the last kind later.)

Unfortunately I'm going to mix these together, so the descriptions below should be taken somewhat more lightly than usual. I'm also at best a peripheral fan of these traditions rather than attained in any lineage or even an amateur scholar of any tradition, and I'm piecing things together haphazardly, but I believe the gestalt here is correct.

Some evocative sweep of claims and reports of awakening across traditions:

- Permanent freedom from all kinds of suffering and dissatisfaction
- Apprehension of one's phenomenology as entirely fabricated
- (Sometimes this really is presented as "fake and un-real," but usually the metaphysics here is more subtle or else much wackier.)
- *Apprehension* of the world as flawless and divine
- Many variations on this, eg. "as an emanation of the godhead"
- A variety of flavors of theistic awakenings, eg. residing in love and communion with God
- "Realization of one's true self"
- *Energetic* "awakenings"
- Freedom from all kinds of illness, or even immortality
- Spacious, plastic vividness amid unreality

Obviously there's quite a bit of overlap here with gnosis, and often gnosis is understood as the actual direct achievement of awakening, or of an intermediate stage.

Broadly speaking awakenings are distinguished as a. comprising some fundmental shift in one's existential posture; b. being *unmistakeable*, that is, being basically discrete, irrevocable, and certain; and c. being robust and generally not degrading or rolling back.

The main outlier in this list, which I included partly just for completeness under the term "awakening," is "energetic awakenings." Some traditions, many of them variously called "yogic," conceive of the goal of practice specifically in terms of large changes in energetic phenomenology, with *downstream* changes in perception and behavior. (Note also that most "yogic" traditions, insofar as they contain a concept of awakening, mostly have a more stereotypical south-asian-dharmic-religion meditation-and-transcendence schtick.)

Sometimes eg. orthodox Buddhist awakening reports describe major energetic shifts as well, though not with a *ton* of overlap with reports from the energy-first yogic schools. Some lineages and schools, which don't situate awakening as centrally energetic, still view the *training* regime leading up to awakening as centrally somatic, and sometimes make heavy use of energy cultivation practices. Also, some Hindu contemplative lineages include intense mystical-somatic initiations, either narrowly as part of initiation into an order, or as a distinct stage toward awakening.

Some western hippies will also use language like "erotic awakening," some of this is explicitly couched in mystical and especially spiritual-emancipatory language. I'm not enough clear on the details of the practices but from what I can tell this *probably* doesn't belong under "awakening," though I assume it's profoundly transformative for some people, etc. etc.

Awakening, across traditions, generally includes or causes major changes in perception, affect, and behavior. Most often it's claimed that awakening confers outstanding virtue, in particular the claim usually being that either access to transcendent joy/love/etc., or freedom from the burdens of ordinary human *experience*, allow one to give and work intensely, and adapt easily to exceedingly difficult circumstances. Many traditions also specifically refer to or frame awakening as *liberation*.

(This claim is not unsubstantiated but is at best very mixed, which I discuss later. Separately, it's not clear how much of this is just due to ordinary extreme tails in piety and discipline, *before* awakening, and indeed anyway many hagiographies describe masters as already in the tails before their awakenings.)

Many traditions also maintain that upon awakening, or at least auxiliarily to it, one gains various supernatural powers. It's interesting to me that the set of powers is *relatively* consistent across traditions, though very likely this is just convergence for "what sorts of magical powers sound cool to humans in general." Commonly these are clairvoyance, clairaudience (hearing at a distance), bilocation, walking through walls, various healing powers, and some kinds of telepathy. Similarly, variously awakening or progress towards it is often regarded to result in the spontaneous arising of visions, and to confer the ability to communicate with spirits, etc. Some traditions also maintain that *complete* awakening confers omniscience.

More broadly, weaker claims of transformational effects from a variety of traditions often include (generally in accordance with the theology and soteriology of the tradition) unwavering faith, unusual degrees of compassion and care for others, and either imperturbable positive affect, or the absence of negative affect.

The "no negative affect" schools broadly claim variations of a. that the structure and fundamental relationship to phenomenology has changed, such that no dysphoria arises, b. that as a direct consequence of a., the generators of dysphoria wither and cease, and c. that healing occurs more organically as part of practice generally (see next section). One particular variant of interest here are schools which claim that the *generators* of negative affect and unwholesome motivation don't necessarily cease, but that because of a. above, they are not dysphoric and therefore do not affect motivation or cognition. This point is somewhat of a crux for questions about how spiritually upright and integrated masters are, and which again I'll discuss later.

In many traditions, awakening is understood as (or, in some cases at least, *I see it as*) a change in relationship to views, both in the abstract and at a fundamental phenomenological level. However, among these traditions there's quite a lot of variation, with different schools, even within Buddhism, sometimes holding opposite views, and *sometimes* reporting ~opposite phenomenology from awakening. In some cases this looks something like achieving a *specific* view (a very common shape, especially for fringe schools, or innovators outside of a lineage), whereas others explain awakening as being about freedom *from* views. The latter often still implicitly or explicitly contain a packet of specific views, however.

Some examples from prominent schools:

- Viewing the world as fundamentally depraved, or without value
- Viewing the world as fundamentally perfect and beautiful
- Viewing the world as fundamentally neither-pure-nor-impure
- Again, viewing all phenomena as contiguous, and often inter-permeating
- (Many variations on this, but views like this are often called *non-dual* in English.)
- Again, viewing the self as phenomenally constructed
- Experiencing one's choices as impersonal, or out-of-one's-control
- Again, viewing all phenomena as unreal or something like "phenomenologically contingent"
- (Sometimes *all phenomena* in the sense of "all features of experience," and sometimes in the sense of "all things," taken ontologically)
- Experiencing the world "unmediated" by views, or somewhat separately "without fixed views"
- Mostly separately, also, "directly experiencing the unfabricated"
- Experiencing oneself as the same as or contiguous with God
- Viewing each phenomenon as mutually containing all other phenomena

*See more in the next section about the phenomenology of awakening, and paths and stages of spiritual development in different traditions.*

There are many recurring motifs, or at least *rhyming* claims, across traditions—these are interesting both when attested across different established traditions (say, reports from Judaism or Christianity aligning with those from Buddhism) but also from independent practitioners outside of any lineage. Some of these seem to me very clearly like at least closely related experiences, but others I'm confused how to categorize. Note that some of these traditions don't construe these experiences as quite "awakening," and may have no comparable concept, but seem them as ("just") deep mystical experiences.

Interestingly also, some traditions present some state as the completion of the spiritual path, which aligns (from what I can tell, and IIRC) very very closely with states which other traditions see as valuable, but only *proximal* attainments.

### Briefly on awakening and metaphysics

Referring to the list of views above, note that these are mostly from different schools of Buddhism. Already it's interesting to notice that there's this much diversity within the at least nominal structure of awakening across different schools. My impression here is that historically there's been combinatorially many weird variations of both metaphysics and mystical views, which of course go hand-in-hand.

In certain ways, if you squint, perhaps the actual underlying theology is the same and these schools just vary in the superficial metaphysics through which that liberation is accessed. If this is true, then the core that remains seems pretty sparse. (Some people I think overstate how much there really is in common across traditions, cf. "the perennial philosophy.") I'll discuss some re diverging traditions more in an appendix.

In general, awakening will be construed under some metaphysics, and in general almost all awakenings are shaped with respect to, or perhaps *of*, the metaphysics under which a person was practicing. (This point is opinionated on my part but I stand by it.)

The most central example here for me is gnosis of dependent origination in various schools of Buddhism: the meditator is meant to perceive the underlying causal structure of the arising of phenomena, understand it and its faults, and thereby attain liberation. Saliently, these reports, at least in the Pali canon, but somewhat also in modern reports, *also* come with knowledge/visions of past lives, sometimes of oneself and of others.

My impression is that similar reports, with respect to the alignment of some apparent gnosis with the metaphysics that a practitioner was *taught*, are basically the norm in traditional religious mystical lineages. So (vibereads, and not very well read), same is true for a variety of monastic/contemplative Hindu lineages, same for Orthodox Christianity, and same for Teresa of Avilon I *think* (but *not* for Saint John of the Cross, who was her student). Not sure about Kabbalists here though I've never heard of (well, when would I have?) some wisened rebbe having some serious ass deconstructive gnosis and then being like "whoah, fuck the orthodox metaphysics actually."

(This is *somewhat* of an opinionated take on my part, but I'll stand by it. I continue to be confused by people saying that the metaphysics either doesn't matter much or that different awakenings are basically the same, this just seems plainly false on the basis of the actual reports from masters identified as such within the various traditions, as well as the theologies presented as definite by traditional teachers. Note also, this is *at least* partly about transmitting a view *along with* a set of practice instructions, which I discuss later, as part of the whole chapter trying to make sense of varying mystical theologies.)

One last point here: some traditions have "awakening" type stuff, and treat it as holy and perhaps supreme as practices and attainments, but *meanwhile* have a separate soteriology which doesn't require mystical practice to satisfy or achieve. This is in contrast with the East Asian and South Asian mystical mold, where the soteriology is usually the same as the satisfaction of the contemplative path.