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Exceptional
Human Experiences
Surely everyone reading this has
had at least one experience
that seemed to transcend the orderly ebb and flow
of daily life.
| Accelerated
thinking |
Aesthetic
experience |
Meaningful
coincidences |
Conversion
|
| Enlightenment
|
Spontaneous
Ecstasy |
Guru/holy-person
encounter |
Lucid
dreaming |
|
Peak performance |
Serendipity |
Soulmate
experience |
Lucky
hunches |
| Hyper-acuity
|
Inspiration
|
Peace
beyond understanding |
Gaia
consciousness |
| Synchronicity |
Intuition
|
World-Wide
Web experience |
ESP |
It's just as easy to be skeptical about these experiences
-- to shrug them off -- as it is to overvalue them.
There exists a unique organization dedicated to
exploring this neglected body of phenomena lurking
at the edges of normal human perception and experience.
It is called the Exceptional Human Experience Network
(EHEN). S.V. Brown, Director of R&D for the
EHEN, has written a paper describing the mission
of the Network.
With her permission, we reproduce the paper's abstract.(from
Science Frontiers)
"The Exceptional Human Experience Network has
a different approach to anomalous, out-of-the-ordinary
Exceptional Experiences (EEs). By taking the emphasis
off proof, or artificially trying to "cause"
or stage events in the laboratory, or passively
collecting case reports, we are actively trying
to understand what these types of experiences and
the experiencers are telling us as a whole.
Inspection of the data indicates that there
is a distinctive, recognizable patterning or clustering
of inner and outer events: triggers, concommitants,
and aftereffects which are similar across experiencer
reports from over 100 different types of EEs. Preliminary
study shows that those individuals who begin to
explore their EEs and question conventional answers
may undergo a series of similar developmental, predictable,
humanizing, and transformative stages of expanding
conscious awareness, which we call the Exceptional
Human Experience Process (EHE Process).
When EEers begin to comprehend and realize that
their experiences are more than external phenomena
happening "outside" of them and instead
signify a whole inner and outer personally meaningful
experience, the EE becomes potentiated into an EHE.
EHEers report greater numbers of EHEs
including meaningful insights, heightened creativity,
and "lucky coincidences." Over time, or
additional EEs/EHEs, or with a tremendous burst
of insight, a subjective threshold is crossed. The
experiencer's lifeview and whole worldview changes,
and a new perspective (i.e., double vision) is forged.
Fresh transpersonal connections with a new vision
of self and the world become established. In hindsight,
advanced EHEers report that the whole process was
life-changing and somehow felt "destined."
It is at this stage of the EHE Process where the
EHEer has literally transcended everyday "normal
reality" and discovered with clarity and quiet
wisdom his or her unique "calling" in
life, and the calling to an evolution of consciousness
for all life."
REF:(Brown, Suzanne V.; "Exceptional Human
Experiences: Rethinking Anomalies and Shifting Paradigms
-- An Introduction and Background Paper," Exceptional
Human Experience, 15:21, no. 1, June 1997. Journal
and Network address: 414 Rockledge Road, New Bern,
NC 28562)
A Few Potential Ehes: R.A. White, Founder of the
Exceptional Human Experience Network (EHEN),
has spread out a fascinating smorgasbord of some
200 potential EHEs. Here are some of the most common:
| Accelerated
thinking |
Aesthetic
experience |
Meaningful
coincidences |
Conversion
|
| Enlightenment
|
Spontaneous
Ecstasy |
Guru/holy-person
encounter |
Lucid
dreaming |
|
Peak performance |
Serendipity |
Soulmate
experience |
Lucky
hunches |
| Hyper-acuity
|
Inspiration
|
Peace
beyond understanding |
Gaia
consciousness |
| Synchronicity |
Intuition
|
World-Wide
Web experience |
ESP |
(White, Rhea A.; "List of Potential Exceptional
Human Experiences,"
Exceptional Human Experience, 15:41, no. 1, June
1997.)
W.R. Corliss
Comment. Hard-core reductionists may complain that
the listed experiences are "fuzzy."
But are they fuzzier than those "ghost universes"
or the newly predicted "sterile" neutrinos?
From Science Frontiers #122, © 1999-2000 William
R. Corliss
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