The UTC Graduate School is pleased to announce that Jonathan Dinsmore will present Master’s research titled, Let There Be Light: Developing the Mystical Luminosity Experience Construct and Scale on 03/24/2023 at 1:00 pm in McCallie Building, Room 394. Everyone is invited to attend.
Psychology
Chair: Ralph Hood
Co-Chair:
Abstract:
Transcendental light is widely described in various mystical and religious traditions, and light with mystical qualities is reported in many nonordinary experiences studied today, most notably near-death and mystical experiences. Those who report experiencing this light generally take it to be of great religious or spiritual import and often describe it as transformative of themselves and their views on spiritual matters. Yet despite its significance to contemporary experiencers and much of religion and mysticism, empirical investigation of this phenomenon has been scant and scattered. Its quantitative measure has consisted of small numbers of items on a few scales measuring more general constructs, such as a single item on the near-death experience scale, and its qualitative study has similarly only examined it in the context of particular types of experience where it frequently occurs. While the concept that this may be a unified phenomenon in different experiential contexts has been discussed in theoretical and philosophical work, no empirical investigation has as yet explored it. This study aims to solidify mystical luminosity experience as a psychological construct for scientific study, by synthesizing existing theory and empirical findings into a working theoretical model and developing and validating a scale for its measurement.