[Perspective] On the autonomy of mystical perception

While fleeting mystical encounters have been described in the literature, these experiences were hardly considered in the cognitive sciences appropriately once they culminated into a permanent state of consciousness, the mystical mind. In general mystical accounts were either interpreted as impermanent subjective feelings or mystical experiences are discussed within and mixed with religious belief systems rather than external to religion. In the following I will present evidence that the mystical mind is a genuine, distinct, permanent mental state separate from the well known and more or less well characterized mental states coma, dream, dreamless sleep, athletes "flow", five-sense-perception, deep meditation, normal daytime awareness. The fully transformed mystical mind is not average consciousness plus some features, but another kind of consciousness. Its achievement has deep philosophical ramifications in finding the purpose of life. I will collect mystical mind characteristics from literature usually not considered within the natural sciences and show that these characteristics have been described again and again with great coincidence over the last 4000 years, in particular in asian cultures. It is a mental state of non-verbal, non-rational awareness, a particular form of permanent intuition. Compared to five-senses perception and rational thinking, this form of intuition delivers another, but not necessarily inferior, picture about ourselves, our relations with other people and what constitutes reality, therefore representing an autonomous state of perception. I will argue that the mystical mind can and should be investigated separate from religious belief and ordinary five-senses perception.