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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

Beyond Metaphysical Deflation

A Psychologist of Religion Responds to Brad Reynolds

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

Brad Reynolds' essay Metaphysical Deflation: Frank Visser and the Conflation of “Mystical Oneness” presents itself as a defense of the depth and seriousness of mystical traditions against what he perceives as a reductionistic modern skepticism.[1] Yet the irony is that Reynolds repeatedly mistakes a psychological and phenomenological analysis of mystical experience for a dismissal of spirituality itself.

My argument has never been that mystical experiences are unreal, insignificant, or merely pathological. Such a reading would reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of my position. My academic training is in the psychology of religion, a field that takes religious and mystical experiences seriously precisely because they are among the most profound and consequential dimensions of human life. The psychologist of religion does not begin by denying experience. On the contrary, the starting point is openness: people have visions, revelations, states of unity, encounters with the sacred, experiences of transcendence, and transformations of consciousness. These phenomena deserve careful description and explanation.

The question is not whether these experiences occur. The question is how they should be interpreted.

This distinction is crucial. A psychologist of religion can fully acknowledge the reality and profundity of mystical experience while remaining cautious about the metaphysical conclusions drawn from those experiences. The experience itself and the interpretation of the experience are related but not identical.

Reynolds repeatedly presents this distinction as if it were a form of "deflation." But that is a category error. To ask how a person interprets an experience is not to deny the experience. To examine the psychological, cultural, neurological, and historical dimensions of mysticism is not to reduce mysticism to something trivial. It is to understand it more fully.

The False Choice Between Respect and Criticism

Much of Reynolds' essay depends on an implicit false choice: either one accepts the metaphysical claims of the mystical traditions, or one has failed to appreciate them.

But this is not the only available position.

A scholar of religion can approach mystical traditions with both sympathy and critical distance. Indeed, this is precisely what the academic study of religion requires. The scholar neither dismisses religious experience as meaningless nor automatically endorses the truth claims made by religious communities.

This methodological distinction is not hostility toward religion. It is intellectual fairness.

A Christian mystic may interpret a unitive experience as communion with God. An Advaita Vedantin may interpret it as realization of Brahman. A Buddhist may interpret a similar experience through emptiness and non-self. A neuroscientist may examine its cognitive mechanisms. A psychologist may study its transformative effects.

The existence of multiple interpretations is not an argument against the experience. It is evidence that interpretation plays a central role.

Reynolds' Central Assumption

The deepest problem in Reynolds' argument is that he treats mystical experience as if it contains its own metaphysical interpretation.

When he writes that enlightenment reveals Reality as It Is, or that Divine Recognition discloses the Ground of Being, he has already accepted the conclusion that needs to be demonstrated.

The argument becomes circular:

The mystical experience reveals ultimate reality because people who have mystical experiences say it reveals ultimate reality.

But many different mystical traditions make competing claims about what exactly has been revealed.

The psychological study of religion asks a prior question: why do similar types of extraordinary experience give rise to different metaphysical interpretations?

That question is not answered by simply privileging one tradition's interpretation over another.

The Value of a Critical Perspective

Reynolds accuses me of privileging naturalism, but this misunderstands the role of methodological analysis. The psychology of religion does not require one to adopt a simplistic materialism. It requires attention to evidence, context, development, and interpretation.

One can recognize the transformative power of meditation without concluding that meditation provides direct access to metaphysical truth. One can acknowledge mystical states without assuming that they reveal the structure of reality itself.

Indeed, many contemplative traditions themselves warn against confusing extraordinary experiences with ultimate realization. The distinction between experience and interpretation is not merely a modern skeptical invention; it is found within religious traditions as well.

The mature question is therefore not whether mystical experience is real. It clearly is. The question is whether the human interpretation of mystical experience always corresponds to reality itself.

The Irony of Calling This "Non-Integral"

Reynolds concludes that my position is "not integral enough." Yet a truly integral approach should include multiple perspectives rather than allowing one domain of inquiry to dominate all others.

• First-person experience matters.

• Second-person traditions and communities matter.

• Third-person scientific and psychological analysis matters.

The mistake is to assume that any one of these perspectives can simply absorb the others.

Mystical experience without critical reflection can become metaphysical inflation. Scientific analysis without appreciation for lived experience can become reductionism. The challenge is integration.

My critique is therefore not anti-mystical. It is a call for greater discrimination.

Conclusion: Experience Deserves Respect, Interpretation Requires Justification

Reynolds has written a passionate defense of mystical metaphysics, but he has not answered the central challenge. The existence of profound experiences does not automatically establish the truth of the metaphysical interpretations attached to them.

A psychologist of religion does not stand outside mysticism and declare it meaningless. The task is precisely the opposite: to understand why mystical experiences are among the most powerful, enduring, and transformative phenomena of human existence.

Respect for experience does not require surrendering critical judgment.

The deepest mystical states may indeed reveal important truths about consciousness, selfhood, and existence. But the transition from "this experience transformed me" to "this experience revealed the ultimate nature of reality" remains a philosophical and epistemological step that requires careful examination.

That examination is not metaphysical deflation.

It is intellectual responsibility.

Appendix: Wilber and the Post-Metaphysical Challenge: States, Stages, and the Problem of Interpretation

Reynolds argues that my critique of mystical claims does not sufficiently appreciate Wilber's distinction between states and stages of consciousness. According to Wilber, this distinction is crucial because human beings can experience temporary states of expanded awareness—such as mystical union, nondual awareness, peak experiences, or altered states—without necessarily having reached a corresponding developmental stage of cognitive, moral, or cultural maturity. A person at any stage of development may have access to profound states of consciousness, but the meaning they assign to those experiences will be shaped by their developmental worldview.

Far from undermining my critique, however, this distinction actually reinforces it. If Wilber is correct that states and stages must be carefully distinguished, then mystical experience alone cannot serve as a straightforward source of metaphysical knowledge. The occurrence of an extraordinary experience does not settle the question of what that experience means. The same state may be interpreted in radically different ways depending on the conceptual framework of the experiencer.

A medieval Christian mystic, a Buddhist practitioner, a Hindu Vedantin, a Jungian psychologist, and a contemporary neuroscientist might all report experiences of unity, transcendence, dissolution of the ego, or profound interconnectedness. Yet they may interpret these experiences in mutually incompatible ways. One may describe the experience as communion with God, another as realization of emptiness (sunyata), another as recognition of Brahman, another as contact with the collective unconscious, and another as a transformation in brain states and self-modeling. The experience may be genuine in the sense that something extraordinary occurred in consciousness, but the interpretation is not automatically validated by the experience itself.

This insight was arguably one of Wilber's most important philosophical contributions. His post-metaphysical turn attempted to avoid the traditional perennialist assumption that mystical states provide direct access to a single metaphysical reality. Instead, Wilber argued that all experiences are interpreted through developmental structures. Human beings do not encounter reality in a completely unmediated way; they encounter reality through cognitive, linguistic, cultural, and developmental lenses.

This move placed Wilber closer to modern hermeneutics, developmental psychology, and constructivist approaches. A higher state of consciousness does not necessarily imply a higher epistemic status. A person may experience a profound state of unity while retaining pre-rational beliefs, cultural assumptions, or metaphysical interpretations inherited from tradition. The intensity, beauty, or transformative power of an experience does not by itself guarantee the accuracy of the conclusions drawn from it.

The difficulty with Reynolds' argument is that it seems to move back toward a more traditional perennialist position: the assumption that certain states of consciousness reveal the fundamental structure of reality itself. In this view, mystical realization is not merely a psychological event but a privileged disclosure of metaphysical truth. Yet this is precisely the position Wilber's later philosophy sought to problematize.

The central question is therefore not whether mystical experiences occur. A psychology of religion can readily acknowledge that they do, and their importance for human meaning-making is undeniable. The more difficult question is epistemological: what justifies moving from “I experienced an overwhelming sense of unity” to “therefore the universe is fundamentally a unified spiritual consciousness”?

Wilber's states/stages distinction was designed to prevent exactly that leap. It acknowledges the reality and significance of transformative experiences while cautioning against confusing the phenomenology of an experience with a final theory of reality. In that respect, the distinction does not weaken a critical examination of mystical metaphysics—it provides one of its strongest foundations.

As a psychologist of religion by academic training, one can approach mystical experiences with openness and respect without assuming that every interpretation offered by experiencers—or by spiritual traditions—is literally or metaphysically correct. The study of religion has long shown that profound experiences are real human events, but the meanings attached to them are historically, culturally, and developmentally conditioned. That distinction is precisely where a post-metaphysical approach gains its critical strength.

Appendix 2: What if the highest state meets the highest stage?

Yes, that is precisely the strongest possible reply Reynolds (or a Wilberian defending Reynolds) could make. The argument would be something like this:

It is true that states alone do not guarantee correct interpretation. However, Wilber's point is that the highest states, when stabilized through the highest stages of development, are not merely subjective experiences. An individual who has reached a transpersonal or nondual stage of consciousness is better equipped to interpret those states accurately than someone operating from an earlier developmental structure. Therefore, the testimony of advanced practitioners deserves greater epistemic weight.[2]

This is a sophisticated argument, and it cannot simply be dismissed. The issue is not whether developmental maturity might improve interpretation—it probably does in many domains—but whether it can establish the kind of privileged access to metaphysical truth that Reynolds appears to assume.

The problem is that the claim becomes difficult to evaluate independently. How do we know that someone has actually reached the "highest stage"? If the evidence for reaching the highest stage is largely based on the person's own interpretation of their experiences, their behavior, or recognition by a community that shares the same framework, then the argument risks becoming circular:

• A person who reaches the highest stage can accurately perceive ultimate reality.

• Wilber (or another teacher) has reached the highest stage.

• Therefore Wilber's account of ultimate reality is accurate.

But the crucial second step requires independent justification. Otherwise, the theory becomes self-validating: the framework defines the highest stage, identifies certain people as representatives of that stage, and then uses their interpretations as confirmation of the framework.

This is where Wilber's own post-metaphysical move becomes important. His later writings tried to avoid precisely this problem by arguing that even advanced states and stages remain embedded in interpretive frameworks. A person at a very high developmental level may have greater capacities for perspective-taking, cognitive complexity, emotional regulation, and integrative thinking, but that does not automatically mean they have escaped all forms of interpretation or gained a God's-eye view of reality.

An analogy from science is useful here. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist is certainly more qualified to interpret experimental data than a layperson. Expertise matters. But the physicist does not thereby acquire infallible access to reality. Scientific knowledge advances precisely because even the most sophisticated interpretations remain open to criticism, testing, and revision. Greater cognitive complexity improves inquiry; it does not eliminate the need for inquiry.

The same applies to contemplative experience. A highly developed meditator may have a deeper, more nuanced understanding of consciousness than someone without such experience. But the further claim—that this person has thereby discovered the metaphysical structure of the cosmos—requires additional arguments. The experience itself does not settle the matter because different highly developed contemplatives have arrived at different ontological conclusions.

This is actually where the comparison between traditions becomes problematic for perennialism. If the highest-stage individuals across cultures all arrived at the same metaphysical insight, the argument would be much stronger. But historically we find sophisticated contemplative traditions making divergent claims: Advaita Vedanta emphasizes nondual Brahman; Buddhism rejects an eternal underlying Self; Christian mysticism emphasizes a personal God; some contemporary nondual teachers adopt more naturalistic or psychological interpretations. The existence of highly developed practitioners does not automatically converge on one ontology.

So the critical response to Reynolds would not be: "Mystics are merely having subjective experiences." That would be too simplistic and would ignore Wilber's valuable distinction. The stronger argument is:

Even granting that some individuals have reached exceptional states and stages of consciousness, the epistemic leap from exceptional consciousness to privileged metaphysical knowledge remains unproven. Development may enhance our capacity to interpret reality, but it does not demonstrate that one interpretation has become immune to cultural conditioning, conceptual mediation, or philosophical critique.

Ironically, this is closer to Wilber's own post-metaphysical caution than to the stronger perennialist reading that Reynolds seems to defend.

NOTES

[1] Brad Reynolds, "Metaphysical Deflation, Frank Visser and the Conflation of 'Mystical Oneness'", Substack, July 9 2026.

[2] In The Religion of Tomorrow (2017) Wilber's mansplaining the highest states and stages implicitly suggests he has reached those heights.