Buried William James’s landmark study, The Varieties of Religious Experience, lies a line with the potential to unlock several still-unanswered questions about the nature of mystical experience. James wrote: “Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.” His question — “How to regard them?” — remains open more than a century later. Dr. David Odorisio, Associate Professor and Chair of the Psychology, Religion & Consciousness program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California, is organizing a conference designed to take that question seriously.
Beyond the Materialist Frame
Contemporary approaches to mystical consciousness often take a reductive or materialist approach. James had the foresight to remain open to other possibilities. He proposed that the brain might function not as a producer of consciousness but as a transmitter — a view later shared by Bergson and Huxley. That proposal has remained largely untapped by academic scholarship. The conference brings together internationally regarded scholars across comparative mysticism, contemplative spirituality, and depth psychology to the popular Institute. At a time when more seekers are pushing beyond the boundaries of established religious traditions, many practitioners are asking questions about the nature of their experience that prevailing paradigms cannot answer. Odorisio and his team aim to address those questions head-on.
Setting the Terms for the Future
The conference explores several intersecting themes: the role the humanities might play in building a more imaginative study of mystical phenomena, how psychotropic compounds relate to the potential for mystical consciousness, how the unconscious is activated in mystical experience, and how trauma may play a role in originating mystical states. It also asks how these findings could ripple outward from individual transformation into the life of local communities. Odorisio and his team intend the conference to take stock of the current academic conversation on mysticism and set the terms for its future direction. The result could be a more robust and interdisciplinary framework for understanding experiences that millions of people report but that mainstream scholarship has struggled to explain.