John Woolman's light in the night

This is an analysis of a religious experience in the night recorded in the journal of John Woolman, a colonial Quaker. As a basis for analysis, I try to clarify the data of Woolman's experience without presuppositions about causes, states of consciousness, three-dimensional space, or meaning. I then study the phenomena in the light of what we know about perception, dreaming, hallucinatory geometric forms, light, and other people's comparable experiences. Because different modalities of his experience appear to be in different states at the same time, I examine each part of his experience separately. There is discussion of the relationship of dreams to visions and hallucinations, the concept of discrete states of consciousness, and the distinction between simulation and authentic experience while dreaming. The article is both an analysis of a religious experience recorded in 1757 and a discussion of methods of analysis

Psychoanalysis · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Astronomy and Related Studies · Psychology

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