Intellectual visions: a comparison of aphantasia and mystical experience

Intellectual visions: a comparison of aphantasia and mystical experience

When I read Theresa of Avila's Interior Castle, one thing that struck me was her description of what she called "intellectual visions". This refers to the experience of pure conceptual knowing without words or images. Teresa began to have such experiences while practicing a form of meditation called contemplative prayer. In her words:

We see nothing, either interiorly or exteriorly. . . But without seeing anything the soul conceives the object and feels whence it is more clearly than if it saw it, save that nothing in particular is shown to it. It is like feeling someone near one in a dark place" (first letter to Father Rodrigo Alvarez).

This mode of cognition was so unfamiliar to her that, at first, she found it confusing and even frightening. She was unable to produce such experiences voluntarily and believed that they could be obtained only through supernatural infusion.

When I read her account, however, the feeling that it evoked was not one of strangeness but of familiarity. Like many low- or nonimagers, I frequently think in a mode very similar to Teresa's intellectual visions. For aphantastic people, this is a normal, natural form of cognition. In fact, some total aphants think exclusively in silent, formless, conceptual awareness. Some can even recall their autobiographical memories in this modality.

The concept of pure, formless knowing is found in the Eastern as well as Western mystical traditions. It is often held to be the highest form of cognition, closest to the true nature of reality. For most people, it seems that many years of spiritual practice are necessary before a person can reach this mode of knowing. The reason for this is that in neurotypicals, the constant flow of inner speech and imagery tends to drown out the subtler forms of awareness. Therefore, mystical training includes techniques for quieting and stilling of a mind. 

Many aphantastics, by contrast, have minds that are already quiet and still. In my own case, I have no involuntary thoughts. If I don't choose to think consciously, my mind simply remains blank, still and silent. This is not the same thing as being enlightened -- for me, it's just plain boring. But this relative stillness of mind does seem to allow access to subtler forms of mental experience than are typical.

Mysticism involves techniques for consciously altering one's state of consciousness, and cultivating specific inner qualities and attributes. Individual differences in mental imagery are usually inborn, or sometimes acquired by accident. Comparing the two, however, can lead to significant insights about how the mind operates. What one person does naturally, another can learn or acquire, though perhaps by different means. Studying these processes will help reveal the underlying mechanisms.