Connection Experience

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A Connection Experience (a.k.a. Connection Event) is a discrete, short-term psychological, emotional, and physical experience of Connection that is sufficiently above one's average daily CQ (i.e., Normal Consciousness) as to be perceived as a qualitatively different state of awareness, consciousness, and being.

Related LP Terms

Connection Experience > Authentic Core, Connection Axes, Connection Companion, Connection Experience Type, Connection Practice, Disjuncture, Normal Consciousness, Parable of the Candle, The Flow

Non-LP Related Terms

Connection Experience > Grounding, Numinosity, Womb Room

Syncretic Terms for Connection Experience

Connection Experience > Exceptional Human Experience, Holotropic Consciousness, Mystical Experience, Pure Consciousness Event, Religious Experience, Spiritual Experience, Spiritually Transformative Experience, Transcendental Experience

List of LP Connection Experience Types

Connection Experience Types > Activation Experience, Aesthetic Experience, Birth Experience, Clearing Experience, Completion Experience, Death Experience, Deep Flow, Diminutive Experience, Dream Experience, Flow Experience, Forced Connection, Healing Experience, Nadir Experience, Peak Experience, Plateau Experience, Push Experience, Rebirth Experience, Restorative Experience, Union Experience, Unity Experience, Zenith Experience

List of Connection Outcomes

Connection Outcomes > Connection Pathology, Déjà vu, Emotional Cleansing, Emotional Satisfaction, Enlightenment, Existential Terrors, Healing, Liberation, Perfect Connection, Perfected Connection, Perfection, Physical Sensations, Psychotic Mysticism, Realization of Self, Ritambharapragya, Spontaneous Alignment, The Unity, Transformation, Union

Notes

A mind map of the concept of the LP Concept of Connection Experience
Connection Experience

Thomas Roberts provides a slide that outlines the value shifts brought about by Connection Experience[1]

Grof, after Jung and Otto, note that connection experiences often have the quality of Numinosity

The LP identifies several different Connection Experience Types and many different Connection Outcomes (see below). We also recommend analyzing Connection Experience along five Connection Axes.

Many consider Connection Experience to be the core of human spirituality, at the authentic root of every religion. Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests "Every where the history of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of the Moravian and Quietist; the opening of the Internal sense of the Word, in the language of the New Jerusalem Church; the revival of the Calvinistic churches; the experiences of the Methodists, are varying forms of that shudder of awe and delight with which the individual soul always mingles with the universal soul." [2]

R. A. Naulty: R. A. Naulty[3] says "...there [is] something wonderful and powerful about them [connection experiences]" which places them beyond ordinary experience."

There is an issue with Nomenclature Confusion, many different names for the same experience. Linda Bourque and Kurt Back note there is "descriptive coincidence" between different types of transcendent/"aesthetic" and drug experiences and wonders if this "indicates there may be a complex of phenomena derived from different conditions which have a common expression and which may have a common function in human action."[4]

Shear notes that there is considerable congruence between the connection experiences reported in various cultures and traditions concluding "we now, I think, have good reason to think that these experiential accounts reflect congruent experiences." [5]

Connection experiences may be positive (i.e. zenith experiences) or negative (i.e. nadir experiences). Whether or not a connection experience is a zenith experience or a nadir experience depends in large measure on how the individual receives the revelation/expansion/insight from the experience. Even very glorious truths and insights can be experienced with terror if the physical unit is unprepared or if the thinking processes have been corrupted by indoctrination and Toxic Socialization.

Dreams can be connection events. "It is not denied...that a divine influx could take place in dreams..." (Jung, 1938: 22)

The Q-Scale may be used to estimate the intensity and quality of a connection event.

A connection event may occur spontaneously under conditions of relaxation and deep contentment. R. M. Bucke: "His mind...was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-colored cloud."[6]

A connection experience may be facilitated via Connection Technique, possibly with the help of a Connection Appliance, and often by exploiting naturally occurring Connection Supplements.

Connection Experiences can bring profound Healing and Transformation. As Grof notes, connection experiences (he calls them Holotropic States can, if correctly understood and supported, "have an extraordinary healing, transformative, and even evolutionary potential."[7]

Connection experiences may be understood neurologically, as what occurs when the Default Mode Network (otherwise known as the Bodily Ego of the individual's brain releases control and allows Consciousness to flow into the Physical Unit (Sosteric, SOA1). Release may occur naturally, under conditions of aligned safety, or it can be forced by exploiting powerful Connection Supplements.

TRIGGERS (old research) Hood [8] provides a classification of triggers to mystical experience, including natural triggers (all aspects of nature), sexual triggers (sexual intercourse, note he restricts this to "heterosexual" intercourse), drug triggers, religious triggers (religious settings and religious activities, rituals, and prayer).

'Triggers see Laski [9] for additional conceptualization of triggers.

Hood [10] notes that Self Actualized individuals are more likely to have a connection experience.

Taylor provides a list of triggers that include psychological turmoil (23.6%), nature (18%, meditation (13%) and watching or listening to arts performance (dance, music, play (13%). [11] Notes the majority of triggers are NOT spiritual or religion (only 21.7% in his sample),and over 78% were spontaneous. Only 8% noted a felt encounter with God

Nevertheless, the high incidence of 'spontaneous awakening experiences' strongly discredits the view that awakening experiences are only valid in a religious context. Surely awakening experiences become religious by virtue of post-experiential interpretation, through a conceptual application of a religious interpretation to a non-conceptual experience. As a consequence, the inclusion of such experiences under the umbrella term of 'religious experiences' (e.g., by Alister Hardy and the Religious Experience Unit) is surely misleading and inappropriate.[12]

Causes

Neurological/Biological

Leary: "those aspects of the psychedelic experience which subjects report to be ineffable and ecstatically religious involve a direct awareness of the processes which physicists and biochemists and neurologists measure."[13]. Also "We considered the hypothesis that the human being might be able to become directly aware of energy exchanges and biological processes for which we now have no language and no perceptual training."[14]

Incidence

"Forty-five percent of participants reported experiencing non-pharmacologically induced EP at least once in their lives, including derealization (17%), unitive experiences (15%), ecstatic thrills (15%), vivid perceptions (11%), changes in perceived size (10%), bodily heat or electricity (9%), out-of-body experiences (8%), and perception of non-physical lights (5%). Respondents reported a mix of positive and negative well-being outcomes following EP, with 13% claiming moderate or greater suffering and 1.1% claiming life-threatening suffering. Of those who experienced suffering, 63% did not seek help."[15]


67% of psychotherapists surveyed indicated having seen at least one client during a twelve month period who had reported a Connection Experience.[16]

Sosteric[17] suggests connection experiences are a ubiquitious feature of human existence and that they occur naturally in healthy individuals. 

As researchers have found, a remarkably high number of scholars identify themselves as having spiritual orientations and aspirations. [18]

Bart Ehrman mentions his "born again" experience, which occurs after "asking Jesus into my heart... [19]


Quotes

Aldous Huxley

"The mystical experience is doubly valuable; it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a less self-centered and more creative life."[20]

"Alas, that is quite bad enough. We love ourselves to the point of idolatry; but we also intensely dislike ourselves—we find ourselves unutterably boring. Correlated with this distaste for the idolatrously worshipped self, there is in all of us a desire, sometimes latent, sometimes conscious and passionately expressed, to escape from the prison of our individuality, an urge to self-transcendence. It is to this urge that we owe mystical theology, spiritual exercises and yoga—to this, too, that we owe alcoholism and drug addiction."[21]

"Those who are offended by the idea that the swallowing of a pill may contribute to a genuinely religious experience should remember that all the standard mortifications—fasting, voluntary sleeplessness and self-torture—inflicted upon themselves by the ascetics of every religion for the purpose of acquiring merit, are also, like the mind-changing drugs, powerful devices for altering the chemistry of the body in general and the nervous system in particular. Or consider the procedures generally known as spiritual exercises. The breathing techniques taught by the yogi of India result in prolonged suspensions of respiration. These in turn result in an increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the blood; and the psychological consequence of this is a change in the quality of consciousness. Again, meditations involving long, intense concentration upon a single idea or image may also result—for neurological reasons which I do not profess to understand—in a slowing down of respiration and even in prolonged suspensions of breathing."[22]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ See https://www.academia.edu/98105142/Value_Shifts_During_Nonpsychedelic_Mystical_Experiences_2023_slide
  2. ↑ Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Over-Soul.” In The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralp Waldo Emerson. New York: Modern Library, 1950. p. 170.
  3. ↑ Naulty, R. A. “J L Mackie’s Disposal of Religious Experience.” Sophia 31, no. 1 (July 1992): 2. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02772348.
  4. ↑ Bourque, Linda, and Kurt Back. “Values and Transcendental Experiences.” Social Forces 47, no. 1 (1968): 34. https://doi.org/10.2307/2574709. 34.
  5. ↑ Shear, Jonathan. “Mysticism and Scientific Naturalism.” Sophia 43, no. 1 (May 2004): 83–99. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02782439.
  6. ↑ Bucke, Richard Maurice. Cosmic Consciousness (Kindle Locations 350-351). Book Tree. Kindle Edition. See Talk:Glimpse for the full account.
  7. ↑ Grof, Stanislav. When the Impossible Happens. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2006.
  8. ↑ Ralph W. Hood, Jr. “Differential Triggering of Mystical Experience as a Function of Self Actualization.” Review of Religious Research 18, no. 3 (1977): 264. https://doi.org/10.2307/3510214.
  9. ↑ Laski, M. Ecstasy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 192AD.
  10. ↑ Ralph W. Hood, Jr. “Differential Triggering of Mystical Experience as a Function of Self Actualization.” Review of Religious Research 18, no. 3 (1977): 264. https://doi.org/10.2307/3510214.
  11. ↑ Taylor, Steve. “Spontaneous Awakening Experiences: Beyond Religion and Spiritual Practice.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 44, no. 1 (June 2012): 73–91.
  12. ↑ Taylor, Steve. “Spontaneous Awakening Experiences: Beyond Religion and Spiritual Practice.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 44, no. 1 (June 2012): 73–91.
  13. ↑ Leary, T. “The Religious Experience: Its Production and Interpretation.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 3, no. 1 (1970): 76–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.1970.10471364.
  14. ↑ Leary, T. “The Religious Experience: Its Production and Interpretation.” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 3, no. 1 (1970): 345. https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.1970.10471364.
  15. ↑ Wright, Malcolm J., Julieta Galante, Jessica S. Corneille, Andrea Grabovac, Daniel M. Ingram, and Matthew D. Sacchet. “Altered States of Consciousness Are Prevalent and Insufficiently Supported Clinically: A Population Survey.” Mindfulness 15, no. 5 (May 1, 2024): 1162–75. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-024-02356-z
  16. ↑ Allman, Lorraine S., Olivia de la Rocha, David N. Elkins, and Robert S. Weathers. “Psychotherapists’ Attitudes toward Clients Reporting Mystical Experiences.” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training 29, no. 4 (Win 1992): 564–69.
  17. ↑ Sosteric. “Everybody Has a Connection Experience: Prevalence, Confusions, Interference, and Redefinition.” Spirituality Studies 4, no. 2 (2018).
  18. ↑ Lindholm, Jennifer A., and Helen S. Astin. “Understanding the ‘Interior’ Life of Faculty: How Important Is Spirituality?” Religion & Education 33, no. 2 (2006): 64.
  19. ↑ Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. Harper One, 2007. p. 3.
  20. ↑ Aldous Huxley, “Chapter Thirty-Two: 1961 Letters,” in Moksha (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1999).
  21. ↑ Aldous Huxley, “Chapter Thirty-Two: 1961 Letters,” in Moksha (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1999).
  22. ↑ Aldous Huxley, “Chapter Thirty-Four: 1961 Letters,” in Moksha (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1999).





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