Ego Dissolution and Spiritual Experience (Part 4)
In entry 4 in our series on ego dissolution (pulled from my graduate research on the phenomenon) we explore why counselors and mental health professionals should care about ego dissolution, starting with examining the relationship between ego dissolution and mystical/spiritual experience.
This section will outline why ego death is an important research topic for counselors. First, ego death seems to have a deep connection to mystical and spiritual experience, and culturally competent counselors need to be aware of these experiences to understand clients to whom they are relevant.
Though we must be mindful of conceptual distinctions, ego death seems to be a core component of mystical and spiritual experience. Though this relationship is too complex to be unpacked here, we can say that research on spiritual and mystical experiences is highly relevant to our discussion about ego death, since the constructs seem to involve each other.
The term “mysticism” is relatively young in the Western canon, but it has come to describe dramatic, nonordinary experiences which often include a felt sense of relationship with God or the Absolute (Wulff, 2014, p. 370). Definitions vary, but there is some agreement that mystical experiences involve a radical shift from ordinary consciousness which leaves an impression of having encountered an alternative, but significant reality (Wulff, 2014, p. 370). Of course, whether this impression is accurate is a matter for philosophers, and thus is outside the scope of this research. The features of mystical experiences are diverse, with examples containing experiences of imagery, perception of voices, the felt presence of divinity, immense energetic sensations or emotions, euphoria, terror, or a significant alteration in the felt sense of self (Wulff, 2014, p. 370-374). This alteration in the sense of self, though not the sole feature of these experiences, does appear in discussions about mystical experiences with enough regularity to suggest a relationship.
Current research in religious studies and psychology often accepts that these mystical experiences are sui generis and linked by a common essence across times and cultures (Taves, 2020). This idea, like the perennial philosophy of transpersonal psychology, rests on shaky philosophical foundations, and the constructs that have stemmed from it have not only been untestable, but inadequate at differentiating the highly diverse range of variables contained in nonordinary or mystical experience (Taves, 2020). Still, ego dissolution does appear with regularity in this type of experience, and even Dr. Ann Taves, who is leading the charge to increase conceptual sensitivity to these distinctions, argues that “positive experiences of undifferentiated unity,” which is a construct frequently used to denote the essential experience of mystical, spiritual, and psychedelic experiences, may be better understood as a type of ego dissolution (Taves, 2020, p. 3).
Like mysticism, spirituality does not enjoy a single definition. Regardless, the American Psychological Association (APA) defines the term as “a concern for or sensitivity to things of the spirit or soul, especially as opposed to materialistic concerns,” or “a concern for God and a sensitivity to religious experience, which may include the practice of a particular religion but may exist without such practice” (APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2020). When compared with the APA definition of “mysticism,” the relationship between the two terms seems clear. The definition for “mysticism” includes: “the belief that an immediate knowledge of, or union with, the divine can be achieved through personal religious experience” (APA Dictionary of Psychology, 2020). Though there may be reason to differentiate spiritual and mystical experiences, their formal definitions in psychology alone reveal just how much they overlap.
The relationship between ego death and spiritual experience is clearly suggested in famous religious texts. The Bhagavad-Gita makes note of the “false ego,” which is transcended when one recognizes that their real identity as “part and parcel of the Supreme” (Bhaktivedanta, 2014, p. 111-112). Texts from the 13th century Zen master Eihei Dōgen explore a similar idea: “To learn about oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to experience the world as pure object. To experience the world as pure object is to let fall one’s own body and mind and the ‘self-other’ body and mind.” (Genjo Koan, 1233/2000). Coming to deep understanding of the nonexistence of the personal self (the ego) is argued to be the central goal of Buddhist meditation (Albahari, 2014). These are a few of a vast number of examples, and though the perennial philosophical approach of early transpersonal psychology is not able to establish that various models of spiritual/mystical experience are fundamentally in agreement, noting their similar claims about ego death and spiritual/mystical experiences only lends evidence to the argument that there is a strong relationship between them.
It is beyond the scope of this literature review to make an extensive analysis of the relationship between ego death and spiritual or mystical experience, but it is sufficient for our purposes to point out that there does seem to be a strong relationship. In a later section, recent qualitative research will be presented that further supports this claim. This point is made so that our discussion about ego death can be expanded to include research on spiritual and mystical experiences, and to highlight that counselors attending to spiritual diversity should have some knowledge about how ego death may appear in a client’s spiritual background or direct experience.
In the next entry, we’ll examine how ego dissolution can be inaccurately pathologized by mental health professionals.
