Introduction

Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us. I don't know of any deeper spiritual feeling than what that brings upon me.

– Neil DeGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and atheist

4.1 Introduction

In this chapter I present a framework of transcendent experiences (TXs), constructed from the analysis of data from interviews with 24 people from a variety of spiritual and religious backgrounds and perspectives. I do this to build an understanding of the characteristics of such experiences, to lay the ground for building a grounded theory of how artefacts support the experiences and how design might contribute to that support. This chapter covers the experiences only; Chapter 5 completes the grounded theory by adding the use of artefacts in transcendent experiences as well as people’s desires for TX enhancements and artefact support for them.

As I explained in Chapter 2, I use “transcendent experiences” to denote experiences of deep connection with something greater than oneself. The participants in my interviews described TXs that, on the surface, may appear to differ dramatically. Let us consider four examples.

Barika

Barika senses in the rain the comforting presence of her late grandfather returning to participate in her life. Her Nannan died when she was 14, on a rainy day:

And then every time there was a birthday in the house, or a marriage, or some kind of celebration, it would rain. … My grandfather died and went to God, but every time we celebrated he came back…through rains, to celebrate with us. …that’s how he communicated or showed me that he was still there. …now I think it’s security, that he’s there protecting me. He’s there to give me what I need, to get me to what I want; and all that I achieve, I do believe that he has a part to play in it.

The sense of her grandfather’s presence on rainy days has remained with Barika for two decades, providing her great comfort.

Sangmu

Sangmu had an experience of unity whilst skinny-dipping alone in the North Sea:

…suddenly the sort of sense of being immersed in the ocean — difficult to put into words, but I just felt a complete oneness with the whole ocean, covering the whole

planet…as if the ocean was one thing, that it was conscious. There was something alive about it. And that it wasn’t separate from me.

Sangmu continues to have occasional experiences of “a sort of intimacy with the world”, which he says are related to his Buddhist practice and most likely to occur in conjunction with certain types of contemplative meditation. These experiences reinforce his sense of being connected to

something greater than himself, which is very important in his daily life.

Susan

Susan heard her late mother’s voice during a time of crisis in her health. Awake in the wee hours of the night, suffering from pain and insomnia caused by chemotherapy, Susan was doing a healing visualisation to aid her treatment. A small lamp beside her recliner provided a bit of light.

The scene changed abruptly:

…all of a sudden everything went black. I mean, just Bam! like a…“pwt!” in a movie. And I heard Mom’s voice. It was as clear as if she was standing there.

I didn’t see her, but I heard her voice. And I said to her, “No, no, not now — I’m not ready. Not now.” {crying} And she said “OK. OK, I’ll be here when you are.

OK. Not now.” And then it went away. And I was like, “Oh boy, that was scary!”

And so, you know, now it was very comforting, because I know that when my time comes, Mom’s going to come get me.

Susan got up, switched on all the lights on the ground floor, and walked around “touching things and getting water and assuring myself that I was still alive.” After that fright, she felt immensely relieved to have things back to normal.

This experience changed Susan’s life. Although as a Christian she has always believed in life after death, her sense of experiencing it herself, by way of communicating with her late mother, has given her a certainty that reinforces her faith:

…you say you believe in life after death, because that’s what we [Christians] do.

But to have actually experienced that personally, that was a really big deal, to me, because that was the first time.

Because of this experience, Susan no longer has any fear of death. She worries about the people she will leave behind, but she’s not afraid for herself: she takes great comfort in knowing that her mother will accompany her when she dies.

Danielle

Danielle had gone to her bedroom to pray after a day of free-lance writing at home:

…I was just praying, and then I got up from my bed… and I got to the door handle…

Suddenly she heard a voice in her head speaking a friend’s name, and she felt herself physically weighed down by her friend’s desolation:

…I just heard Anne’s name in my head… I couldn’t stand up any more; it was like I felt this weight on me. …I was stooped over and I had to go to the bed and lean on something. And it was just weird because — I was OK in myself; I could just feel… this dark weight… these feelings like there’s no point, there’s nothing.

…I wasn’t feeling them [myself], but I could feel the weight of them.

Danielle responded by praying desperately for her friend:

I got back to the bed…and I said “God, you have to help Anne!” and I was just praying. And I hadn’t spoken to her for…months; I didn’t know what was going on in her life. … And then in the end I just hadn’t got anything else to say ’cause I didn’t know what the situation was, and I was just crying and crying and crying, and saying “Please help me” and “Please help her”.

For some time, all Danielle could do was cry and pray — until the mood shifted:

And then suddenly the weight just lifted, and I forgot about it. I actually went downstairs to eat.{smile} I was like, “Yeah, food.” And…later that

evening…I tried to call her, and it just went to her voicemail. … And it was a few weeks later that…she called me, to say she had seen this missed call on her phone, and she said that she’d been in hospital, and she’d taken an overdose and tried to kill herself. And it was the same day that that happened…

After an unsuccessful attempt to reach Anne, Danielle let it go and resumed her life. But when Anne called and disclosed that she had attempted suicide that day, Danielle knew immediately what her experience was about:

I do believe that that was God telling me and wanting someone to pray for [Anne], because…someone found her and got her to the hospital in time… I believe that prayer…might have brought that person to find her…

God, she understood, was urging her personally to pray for her friend. Danielle mused about how strange the experience was:

…but that was so mad to me, because that had never happened to me before; it’s never happened to me since. But that feeling of just feeling what she was going through, and you know, that was just strange; I’ve never had anything like that happen before.

Danielle has described a major transcendent experience, an intimate connection with her God that she understood to have helped save a friend’s life. She found the experience so odd and so meaningful that it has remained present with her for many years: “…it never leaves me because it was so weird.”

Commonalities

The four experiences described above appear at first glance to have little in common; and certainly the way the experients understand them differ substantially. What links the experiences, besides the connection with something beyond themselves, is the composition of the three phases that

constitute them. The rest of this chapter details these phases and their subcomponents, and explores their inter-relationships.

The analysis of the interview data, informed by the literature, produced three major categories of concepts about TX: (1) a TX occurs in a context, (2) it involves the person’s perceptions and reactions as it unfolds, and (3) it can have a lasting and even transformative effect on the person.

These categories by themselves are no surprise; in fact, they align closely with the findings of existing studies of similar experiences (Garcia-Romeu, Himelstein, et al., 2015; Wardell &

Engebretson, 2006) and with McCarthy & Wright’s (2004a) observation: “Any description of an experience…is constituted of things and events, what they did to those involved, and how they⁶⁶ responded” (p. 50). My interview analysis, however, shows a richer picture of the three categories in terms of their composition and their inconnections. I summarise the categories as follows:

Creating the context. Experiences do not occur in a vacuum, and TX contexts exhibit some features specific to transcendent experience. People create the context of a TX not only by putting together the immediate

elements — such as where they are, what they are doing, what time of day and time of year it is, who is with or around them, if anyone, and what is going on in their lives — but also by bringing to the experience long-term influences such as how they have developed mentally, emotionally, and spiritually throughout their lives, up to the beginning of the experience.

Living the experience. People live an experience by means of perceiving phenomena and reacting to them at the time. Perceptions form the experiential part of a TX, as Stace (1960) labelled it; reactions include thoughts (Stace’s “interpretive factor” (ibid.)), emotions/ feelings, and immediate effects and actions, all occurring while the experience is unfolding.

Integrating the experience. People integrate a TX into their lives after they have lived it. They may communicate parts of the experience with others, reflect on its meaning and importance, have

66 The first “they” in this sentence from McCarthy & Wright (2004) refers to things and events; the second refers to the people who have the experiences.

continuing feelings about it, and/or make life changes to respond to their understanding of its meaning. The life changes can include adjustments to their beliefs, their spiritual practices, their environments or other contributors to their spirituality.

After the categories and their inter-relationships became clear, I realised that the top-level categories occur in sequence, for the most part, and thus that they constitute broad phases of TX.

Figure 5 depicts the TX phases at a high level, showing their basic sequence. It indicates the overlap in the subcomponents of Living the Experience :— although any perception precedes the person’s reaction to it, a single experience may involve multiple perceptions related to

transcendence, and later perceptions may occur after the person begins reacting to earlier ones.

The figure is not to scale with respect to time, if there even is a scale; and in any case, times differ across people and across experiences.

The remainder of this section details the phases and their subcomponents.