Spontaneous Spiritual Awakenings - Jessica Corneille & David Luke

Spontaneous spiritual awakenings (SSAs) are characterised by a sudden sense of direct contact, union or communion with the universe, ‘God’ or the divine. 

In this ‘enlightened’ or 'nondual’ state, the experiencer transcends their ordinary sense of self, ‘knowing’ or ‘re-membering’ their true essence as part of a greater truth or reality, in perceived oneness and self-realisation. The scientific community is only just beginning to acknowledge the healing potential of mystical experiences mediated by psychedelic drugs and spiritual contemplative practices, yet awakening experiences of a sudden, spontaneous nature have scarcely been explored within the scientific framework, despite a vast amount of anecdotal evidence pointing to their long-term impacts on perception, cognition, behaviour, and well-being. 

To date, mainstream psychology has tended to pathologise these experiences by default, and the topic is still largely misunderstood and misinterpreted in the West. In this talk, we will discuss these experiences in more depth, and present our research on the phenomenological variances, individual differences, and well-being implications of spontaneous awakening experiences, as well as how these compare with other altered states, such as those produced by strong doses of psilocybin and DMT. 

We will then discuss the importance of ‘de-mystifying’ mystical experiences within mainstream psychology, and conclude by sharing our thoughts on how these experiences (and their research) might help facilitate humanity’s progress towards a more compassionate, understanding and united world

Event In-Person and Online

If you are in London there is now also the option to join us in-person, we will be hosted by Universtiy College London - exact address to be confirmed. 

About Jessica Corneille, MSc

Jessica is a Research Psychologist specialising in spontaneous spiritual awakening experiences. She graduated with a Masters Degree in Psychology (Distinction) from the University of Greenwich, where she focused her studies on altered states of consciousness. With a passion to bridge the worlds of science and spirituality, her mission is to challenge the default pathologisation of awakening experiences by helping to inform and encourage mainstream psychology to look beyond the current designated spectrum of ‘normality’, to encompass the transpersonal as something that is intrinsic to the human experience. Jessica recently published her research on the phenomenology, individual differences and well-being effects of spontaneous spiritual awakenings with Dr David Luke, and has given a number of talks on her work, including with the British Psychological Society (BPS). She works for the Scientific and Medical Network and Galileo Commission, is a collaborator of the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium and Spiritual Crisis Network, and is a certified Kundalini Yoga teacher.

You can read our recent publication here: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.720579 

About Dr David Luke 

David is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich.
His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience. When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness.

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