Item Details

Absorption, Mentalizing, and Mysticism: Sensing the Presence of the Divine

Issue: Vol 5 No. 1 (2017) (2017/2019) Special Issue: Imagination & Religion

Journal: Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion

Subject Areas: Religious Studies Cognitive Studies Linguistics

DOI: 10.1558/jcsr.37551

Abstract:

Research suggests trait absorption, individual differences in Theory of Mind (ToM), and orthopraxical training are important for explaining a variety of extraordinary experiences typically associated with religion. However, no studies exist quantifying ToM ability or testing its relationship with trait absorption in the prediction of what is arguably the most ubiquitous type of extraordinary experience-the mystical experience. To address this, two exploratory studies were conducted using a sample of meditators (N = 269) and undergraduate students (N = 123). In study one, regression analyses revealed weekly religious/spiritual practice, absorption, and mentalizing predict increased mystical experiences. Moreover, moderation analysis indicated the absorption-mysticism relationship is stronger among individuals with lower mentalizing ability. Study two only replicated the relationship of absorption and weekly practice with mysticism. These studies highlight the robust contribution of absorption in mystical experiences and suggest a more dynamic role for mentalizing than is accounted for in the current literature.

Author: Thomas J. Coleman III, James E. Bartlett, Jenny M. Holcombe, Sally B. Swanson, Andrew Atkinson, Christopher F. Silver, Ralph W. Hood

View Original Web Page

References :

“About Isha Foundation.” 2019. Isha Yoga. http://www.ishayoga.org/en/about-isha

“Adiyogi: The Abode Of Yoga.” 2019. Adiyogi: The Abode Of Yoga. http://adiyogi.org/

Andersen, Marc, K.L. Nielbo, U. Schjoedt and J. Sørensen. 2014. “Mystical Experience in the Lab.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 26(3): 217–245. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-12341323

Baguley, Thomas. 2012. Serious Stats: A Guide to Advanced Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Barrett, Justin L. 2004. Why Should Anyone Believe in God? Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Beauregard, Mario and Vincent Paquette. 2006. “Neural Correlates of a Mystical Experience in Carmelite Nuns.” Neuroscience Letters 405(3): 186–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2006.06.060

Boyer, Pascal. 1992. “Explaining Religious Ideas: Elements of a Cognitive Approach.” Numen 39(1): 27–57. https://doi.org/10.2307/3270074

Boyer, Pascal. 2013. “Why ‘Belief’ Is Hard Work.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(3): 349–357. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau3.3.015

Boyer, Pascal and Brian Bergstrom. 2008. “Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion.” Annual Review of Anthropology 37(1): 111–130. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085201

Brezis, Rachel. 2012. “Autism as a Case for Neuroanthropology: Delineating the Role of Theory of Mind in Religious Development.” In The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology, edited by Daniel H. Lende and Greg Downey, 291314. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9219.003.0015

Caldwell-Harris, Catherine, Caitlin Fox Murphy, Tessa Velazquez and Patrick McNamara. 2011. “Religious Belief Systems of Persons with High Functioning Autism.” In Expanding the Space of Cognitive Science. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Boston, Massachusetts, July 20-23, 2011, edited by Laura Carlson, Christoph Hoelscher and Thomas F. Shipley, 3362–3366. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Charles, Sarah J., James E. Bartlett, Kyle J. Messick, Thomas J. Coleman III, and Alex Uzdavines. In press. “Researcher Degrees of Freedom in the Psychology of Religion.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 29(4): 230–245 . https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tx5gd

Coleman III, Thomas. 2016. “The Social Brain in Human and Religious Evolution: Elucidating the Role of Theory of Mind In (Non)Religious Belief.” Master’s thesis, Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Coleman III, Thomas J., Ralph W. Hood Jr., Jenny M. Holcombe, Sally B. Swanson, Juan Cao, and Derek Giamundo. 2016. “When Shiva Talks Back: Absorption, Mentalizing, and Mysticism.” Presentation, 6th biennial meeting of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion.

Coleman III, Thomas J., Jonathan Jong, and Valerie van Mulukom. 2018a. “Introduction to the Special Issue: What Are Religious Beliefs?” Contemporary Pragmatism 15(3): 279–283. https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-01503001

Coleman III, Thomas Joseph, James E Bartlett, Jenny Holcombe, Sally Beatrix Swanson, Andrew Ross Atkinson, Christopher Silver, Ralph Hood. 2018b. “Absorption, Mentalizing, and Mysticism: Sensing the Presence of the Divine.” Center for Open Science (OSF). 4 June. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/k5fp8

Coleman III, Thomas Joseph, Ann Swhajor-Biesemann, Derek Giamundo, Christopher Vance, Ralph W. Hood Jr., and Christopher F. Silver. 2016. “‘Experimenting with Ideologies...’ – A ‘More Spiritual than Religious’ Zen Buddhist.” In Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality – A Cross-Cultural Analysis, edited by Heinz Streib and Ralph W. Hood, Jr., 339–353. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21245-6_21

Cristofori, Irene, Joseph Bulbulia, John H. Shaver, Marc Wilson, Frank Krueger, and Jordan Grafman. 2016. “Neural Correlates of Mystical Experience.” Neuropsychologia 80: 212220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.
2015.11.021

Dahl, Cortland J., Antoine Lutz, and Richard J. Davidson. 2015. “Reconstructing and Deconstructing the Self: Cognitive Mechanisms in Meditation Practice.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19(9): 515–523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.07.001

Edman, Laird, Chris Sietstra, Molly Townsend, Corey Kundert, Hope DeRuyter, Rebekah Muilenberg, Virgina Kjer, and Riley Harder. 2018. “Mentalizing, Personal Prayer, the Presence of God, and Evil.” Northwestern Review 3(1). https://nwcommons.nwciowa.edu/northwesternreview/vol3/iss1/7

Faul, Franz, Edgar Erdfelder, Axel Buchner, and Albert-Georg Lang. 2009. “Statistical Power Analyses Using G*Power 3.1: Tests for Correlation and Regression Analyses.” Behavior Research Methods 41(4): 11491160. https://doi.org/10.3758/brm.41.4.1149

Gervais, Will M. 2013. “Perceiving Minds and Gods.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 8(4): 380394. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691613489836

Granqvist, Pehr, Mats Fredrikson, Patrik Unge, Andrea Hagenfeldt, Sven Valind, Dan Larhammar, and Marcus Larsson. 2005. “Sensed Presence and Mystical Experiences Are Predicted by Suggestibility, Not by the Application of Transcranial Weak Complex Magnetic Fields.” Neuroscience Letters 379(1): 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2004.10.057

Granqvist, Pehr, Berit Hagekull and Tord Ivarsson. 2012. “Disorganized Attachment Promotes Mystical Experiences via a Propensity for Alterations in Consciousness (Absorption).” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 22(3): 180–197. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2012.670012

Greenway, Tyler S. 2018. “Mentalizing Domains and Belief in God.” Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 4(1): 91–110. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.31063

de Groot, Adrianus D. 1954/2014. “The Meaning of ‘Significance’ for Different Types of Research.” [Translated and annotated by Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Denny Borsboom, Josine Verhagen, Rogier Kievit, Marjan Bakker, Angelique Cramer, Dora Matzke, Don Mellenbergh and Han L. J. van Der Maas.] Acta Psychologica 148: 188–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.02.001

Hlavac, Marek. 2018. stargazer: Well-Formatted Regression and Summary Statistics Tables. R package version 5.2.1. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2407759

Holm, Sture. 1979. “A Simple Sequentially Rejective Multiple Test Procedure.” Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 6(2): 65–70.

Hood, Ralph W. 1977. “Eliciting Mystical States of Consciousness with Semistructured Nature Experiences.” Journal for The Scientific Study of Religion 16(2): 155–163. https://doi.org/10.2307/1385746

Hood, Ralph W. 2001. Dimensions of Mystical Experiences. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Hood, Ralph W. 2013. “Theory and Methods in the Psychological Study of Mysticism.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 23(4): 294–306. doi:10.1080/10508619.2013.795803

Hood, Ralph W, Peter C Hill and Bernard Spilka. 2018. The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. Fifth edition. New York: Guilford.

Jack, Anthony Ian, Jared Parker Friedman, Richard Eleftherios Boyatzis and Scott Nolan Taylor. 2016. “Why Do You Believe in God? Relationships between Religious Belief, Analytic Thinking, Mentalizing and Moral Concern.” PLOS ONE 11(3): e0149989. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149989

James, William. 1985 [1902]. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Jamieson, Graham A. 2005. “The Modified Tellegen Absorption Scale: A Clearer Window on the Structure and Meaning of Absorption.” Australian Journal of Clinical & Experimental Hypnosis 33(2): 119–139.

Kapogiannis, Dimitrios, Aron K. Barbey, Michael Su, Giovanna Zamboni, Frank Krueger and Jordan Grafman. 2009. “Cognitive and Neural Foundations of Religious Belief.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(12): 4876–4881. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0811717106

Katz, Steven T. 1978. Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kelley, Ken. 2017. MBESS: The MBESS R Package. R package version 4.3.0. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412961288.n234

Klein, Constantin, Christopher F. Silver, Heinz Streib, Ralph W. Hood Jr. and Thomas J. Coleman. 2016. “‘Spirituality’ and Mysticism.” In The Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality – A Cross-Cultural Analysis, edited by Heinz Streib and Ralph W. Hood, Jr., 165–187. Dordrecht: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21245-6_11

Laidlaw, Tannis M., Prabudha Dwivedi, Akira Naito and John H. Gruzelier. 2005. “Low Self-Directedness (TCI), Mood, Schizotypy and Hypnotic Susceptibility.” Personality and Individual Differences 39(2): 469–480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.01.025

Lakens, Daniël. 2014. “Performing High-Powered Studies Efficiently with Sequential Analyses.” European Journal of Social Psychology 44(7): 701–710. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2023

Lewis-Williams, David. 2010. Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion. London: Thames & Hudson. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003598x00067661

Lindeman, Marjaana and Jari Lipsanen. 2017. “Mentalizing: Seeking the Underlying Dimensions.” International Journal of Psychological Studies 9(1): 10–23. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijps.v9n1p10

Long, Jacob. 2018. jtools: Analysis and Presentation of Social Scientific Data. R package version 1.0.0. https://cran.r-project.org/package=jtools

Lüdecke Daniel. 2018. sjPlot: Data Visualization for Statistics in Social Science. R package version 2.4.1. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=sjPlot

Luhrmann, Tanya M. 2012. When God Talks Back. New York: Vintage.

Luhrmann, Tanya M. 2013. “Building on William James: The Role of Learning in Religious Experience.” In Mental Culture: Classical Social Theory and the Cognitive Science of Religion, edited by Dimitris Xygalatas and William W. McCorkle, Jr., 145–163. Durham: Acumen. https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012-02201002

Luhrmann, Tanya M., Howard Nusbaum and Ronald Thisted. 2010. “The Absorption Hypothesis: Learning to Hear God in Evangelical Christianity.” American Anthropologist 112(1): 66–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01197.x

Luhrmann, Tanya M., Howard Nusbaum, and Ronald Thisted. 2013. “‘Lord, Teach Us to Pray’: Prayer Practice Affects Cognitive Processing.” Journal of Cognition and Culture 13(1–2): 159–177. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342090

Maij, David. L. R., Frenk van Harreveld, Will Gervais, Yann Schrag, Christine Mohr and Michiel van Elk. 2017. “Mentalizing Skills Do Not Differentiate Believers from Non-Believers, but Credibility Enhancing Displays Do.” PLOS ONE 12(8): e0182764. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182764

McCauley, Robert N. 2011. Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mitchell, Jason P. 2009. “Inferences about Mental States.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364(1521): 1309–1316. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0318

Norenzayan, Ara, Will M. Gervais and Kali H. Trzesniewski. 2012. “Mentalizing Deficits Constrain Belief in a Personal God.” PLOS ONE 7(5): e36880. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036880

Partridge, Christopher H. and Theodore P. C. Gabriel. 2003. Mysticisms East and West. Carlisle: Paternoster.

R Core Team. 2017. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/

Reddish, Paul, Penny Tok, and Radek Kundt. 2016. “Religious Cognition and Behaviour in Autism: The Role of Mentalizing.” The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 26(2): 95–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2014.1003518

Revelle, W. 2017. psych: Procedures for Personality and Psychological Research, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=psych Version = 1.7.5

Roche, Suzanne M. and Kevin M. McConkey. 1990. “Absorption: Nature, Assessment, and Correlates.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59(1): 91–101. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.59.1.91

Rosenkranz, Patrick and Bruce G. Charlton. 2013. “Individual Differences in Existential Orientation: Empathizing and Systemizing Explain the Sex Difference in Religious Orientation and Science Acceptance.” Archive for the Psychology of Religion 35(1): 119–146. https://doi.org/10.1163/15736121-12341255

Rossano, Matt J. 2006. “The Religious Mind and the Evolution of Religion.” Review of General Psychology 10(4): 346–364. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.10.4.346

“Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s Wife’s Death: Controversy and Truth.” 2019. Hindu 2.0. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/hindu2/2016/08/sadhguru-jaggi-vasudevs-
wifes-death-controversy-truth/

Schaap-Jonker, Hanneke, Bram Sizoo, Jannine van Schothorst-van Roekel and Jozef Corveleyn. 2013. “Autism Spectrum Disorders and the Image of God as a Core Aspect of Religiousness.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 23(2): 145–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2012.688005

Schjoedt, Uffe, Hans Stødkilde-Jørgensen, Armin W Geertz, and Andreas Roepstorff. 2009. “Highly Religious Participants Recruit Areas of Social Cognition in Personal Prayer.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 4(2): 199–207. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsn050

Spanos, Nicholas P. and Patricia Moretti. 1988. “Correlates of Mystical and Diabolical Experiences in a Sample of Female University Students.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 27(1): 105–116. https://doi.org/10.2307/1387405

Stace, W. T. 1960. Mysticism and Philosophy. Philadelphia: Lippincott.

Tan, Tobias. 2018. “William James and Embodied Religious Belief.” Contemporary Pragmatism 15(3): 366–386. https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-01503006

Taves, Ann. 1999. Fits, Trances, & Visions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Tellegen, Auke and Gilbert Atkinson. 1974. “Openness to Absorbing and Self-Altering Experiences (‘Absorption’), A Trait Related to Hypnotic Susceptibility.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 83(3): 268–277. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0036681

van Elk, Michiel. 2015. “An EEG Study on the Effects of Induced Spiritual Experiences on Somatosensory Processing and Sensory Suppression.” Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 2(2): 121–157. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.v2i2.24573

van Elk, Michiel and André Aleman. 2017. “Brain Mechanisms in Religion and Spirituality: An Integrative Predictive Processing Framework.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 73: 359–378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.12.031

Van Leeuwen, Neil and Michiel van Elk. 2018. “Seeking the Supernatural: The Interactive Religious Experience Model.” Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599x.2018.1453529

Visuri, Ingela. 2012. “Could Everyone Talk to God? A Case Study on Asperger’s Syndrome, Religion, and Spirituality.” Journal of Religion, Disability & Health 16(4): 352–378. https://doi.org/10.1080/15228967.2012.731888

Wakabayashi, Akio, Simon Baron-Cohen, Sally Wheelwright, Nigel Goldenfeld, Joe Delaney, Debra Fine, Richard Smith and Leonora Weil. 2006. “Development of Short Forms of the Empathy Quotient (EQ-Short) and the Systemizing Quotient (SQ-Short).” Personality and Individual Differences 41(5): 929–940. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2006.03.017

Wickham, Hadley. 2017. tidyverse: Easily Install and Load the ‘Tidyverse’. R package version 1.2.1. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=tidyverse

Wickramasekera, Ian E. 2015. “Mysteries of Hypnosis and the Self Are Revealed by the Psychology and Neuroscience of Empathy.” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 57(3): 330–348. doi:10.1080/00029157.2014.978495.

Wiebe, Donald. 2013. “The Significance of the Natural Experience of a ‘Non-Natural’ World to the Question of the Origin of Religion.” In Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture, edited by Armin W. Geertz, 140–159. Durham: Acumen.

Wilke, Claus. 2017. cowplot: Streamlined Plot Theme and Plot Annotations for “ggplot2.” R package version 0.8.0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=cowplot

Willard, Aiyana K. and Ara Norenzayan. 2017. “‘Spiritual but Not Religious’: Cognition, Schizotypy, and Conversion in Alternative Beliefs.” Cognition 165: 137–146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.018

Wlodarski, Rafael and Eiluned Pearce. 2016. “The God Allusion.” Human Nature 27(2): 160–172. doi:10.1007/s12110-016-9256-9