‘The Universe is Love’: On Spiritual Metaphysics and the Problem of Evil

In spiritual circles, a common metaphysical belief is that ‘the universe is love’, or something to that effect. Another way of phrasing this view is that the fundamental force in the universe is love, the universe is governed by love, or, as the Jesuit mystic Teilhard de Chardin opined, “The physical structure of the universe…

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Beyond Concepts: The Transrational Nature of Mystical Experiences

Mystical experiences are characterised by ineffability – that is, what is subjectively experienced is difficult, or impossible, to adequately put into words. However, we can go a step further and say that such experiences are transrational: their ineffability relates to the fact that these experiences lie outside the scope of reason. While on the one…

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Metaphysical Insight: Psychedelics, Noetic Experiences, and Spinoza’s God

The feeling of gaining direct knowledge of something grand or important about reality is a common aspect of mystical experiences generally and psychedelic mystical states more specifically. This is known as a noetic experience, one of the four defining qualities of a mystical experience, as propounded by the American psychologist and philosopher William James in…

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