Ontonormativity

Ontonormativity is the phenomenon where higher states of consciousness are seen as more real than other states

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Quote
"So I call this... So we have a higher state of consciousness. I call this the problem of the "Ontonormativity." Remember that "ontology" has to do with the structure of reality. Normative is when things are placing a demand on you to be better, to improve. So these higher states of consciousness are precisely 'experiences-higher' because they're challenging you to change because they're presenting you more-realness, and they're triggering those platonic meta-drives.

Now as I mentioned, these states are historically important and they're pervasive. So you can read Taylor's book "Waking from sleep". He has about one hundred and fifty interviews. You can read many of them. He presents a lot of first person narratives of these people and these experience[s]. You can take a look at Newberg's book "how enlightenment changes your brain". He did an online survey of fifteen hundred people in 2016. As I mentioned there's just larger general surveys of how often people have these kinds of experiences and they range in intensity but it's around 30 to 40 percent of the population. So we have to take these experiences seriously. We know that from the work at the Griffiths lab that what's happening in a subset of psychedelic experiences - so here's (drawing) all the psychedelic experiences; you have a subset of which people have a mystical experience; and some of those people, the mystical experience is deeply transformative - It triggers that kind of quantum change.

OK, so why is the Ontonormativity of higher states of consciousness problematic? Well here's why... The transformative experience that people undergo, the radical transformations they're willing to make, seems to be driven and justified by this (HSA -> Ontonormativity). They say/ ..."Why are you doing this?" [they say] "I'm doing this because I had this experience and it was more real and I've got to stay in touch with more real!" They justify this transformation... I mean, sorry... I don't mean to be reductive and I'm not being disrespectful but, you know, Buddhism and Taoish and Vedanta and the core of aspects of Judaism and the mystical traditions in Christianity and Islam come down to this claim: "I had this (HSC -> Ontonormativity) and it justifies what I'm telling you. It explains and motivates the changes that I underwent". But why is that problematic? Look, because it's, like I said, it is in contrast to how we treat most of our altered states of consciousness. We go into dreaming, we come back and we say that's not real. We go into these, we come back and say that was more real and this is less real."

- John Vervaeke