We argue that the powerful transformative effects of mystical-type experiences can be understood using the same machinery that underlies insight problem solving, and that both mystical experiences and insight are species of a genus of “realization experiences”: experiences wherein some phenomenon or piece of information becomes suddenly experienced as real or true. Specifically, we argue that understanding both in this way allows us to model mystical experiences through the same combination of behavioral entropy and graph theory that have successfully been used to model insight problem solving. Starting from tension between novel information and prior representations, the agent destabilizes its representational network to allow it to enter a state of altered salience and enhanced associations to update the network.
