MIRRORS, PORTALS, AND MULTIPLE REALITIES

Portalling, a mystical experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, or aperture, occurs across many cultures. This experience can be triggered by concentrating on devices like mirrors, mandalas, labyrinths, or pools of water in shamanistic and meditative practices. The authors argue that portalling is fundamental to the multiple reality cosmologies found in traditional cultures. They explain it as a radical re-entrainment of the brain's neurological systems that mediate experience. The paper reports phenomenological experiments using mirror portalling devices from both Tibetan and Tsimshian religious traditions.

Study at a glance

Abstract

. A biogenetic structural explanation is offered for the cross-culturally common mystical experience called portalling, the experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, aperture, hole, or the like. The experience may be evoked in shamanistic and meditative practice by concentration upon a portalling device (mirror, mandala, labyrinth, skrying bowl, pool of water, etc.). Realization of the portalling experience is shown to be fundamental to the phenomenology underlying multiple reality cosmologies in traditional cultures and is explained in terms of radical re-entrainment of the neurological systems mediating experience in the brain. Phenomenological experiments with mirror portalling devices from both the Tibetan and the Tsimshian religious traditions are reported.