How Mystical States Reverse the Standard of What Is Real
Where being and ought share a single root
Mystical experiences reverse our usual standard of what counts as real, making people judge ordinary life against the new experience rather than the reverse — a convergence of 'is' and 'ought' called onto-normativity, which can be understood as flow operating at the level of one's total capacity to grip reality.
The Translation
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John Vervaeke's concept of onto-normativity identifies a striking feature of mystical and higher states of consciousness: the collapse of the distinction between what is real and what is normatively binding. Ordinarily, people use the coherent intelligibility of waking life as the benchmark for judging reality — dreams and altered states are dismissed because they fail to meet that standard. In mystical experience, this hierarchy inverts. People enter states largely devoid of ordinary content and yet judge them as more real than everyday life, then undertake profound transformation to bring their existence into conformity with what was revealed. The 'is' and the 'ought' converge at a common origin — the really real is simultaneously the really right.
This onto-normative pull distinguishes the superlative case of Ego transcendence from the privative case of depersonalization or derealization. Neuroscientifically, the superlative case involves radical connectivity (particularly of the insula and default mode network), while the privative case involves radical isolation. Phenomenologically, one carries the sense of enhanced realness; the other carries the sense of unreality. Crucially, only the superlative case drives lasting transformation.
Vervaeke proposes that these states can be understood through the framework of Optimal grip and flow. In ordinary flow, a person achieves simultaneous optimal experience and optimal performance within a bounded domain. The mystical state may represent meta-Optimal grip — flow not within biology or relationships but in the very capacity for optimal gripping as such, the fundamental ability to be well-fitted to reality. Just as local flow reliably co-designates peak experience and peak performance, this meta-flow would reliably designate enhanced contact with reality itself. This explains the functional convergence across traditions: people articulate divergent metaphysical claims, yet the claim that they are genuinely improving their relationship to reality — and becoming measurably wiser — can be independently justified.