P.D. Ouspensky as a Russian Follower of W. James and His Classification of the “Mystical”

This article examines one of the least studied representatives of Russian pre-revolutionary philosophy, P.D. Ouspensky. To this day, the legacy of this unusual, original thinker remains little explored in Russian thought, whose interests included the ideas of “superman”, “eternal return”, “fourth dimension”, “third organon”, as well as the study of consciousness taken in unusual, religious states. This article explores one such little-known aspect of P.D. Ouspensky’s philosophy – an attempt to develop research into mystical experience, claiming to continue the tradition established by W. James. The aim of the article is to present P.D. Ouspensky’s teachings in the context of the history of rational understanding of mystical experience. It is shown that P.D. Ouspensky’s approach to the sphere of the “mystical” is characterized by the requirement of experimental verification of the phenomenon under study, as well as the interpretation of mystical experience as a phenomenon of a psychological nature.