There is no observer in realization. Dissociation is having your self be separated from reality. Safe from the trauma, but not whole. Mystic union is more like having seeing the boundaries between self and other as illusory, and fully experiencing.
The deeper you get into dissociation, the more a LOT of mysterious or mystical human experiences start to make sense. The public generally doesn’t understand the mechanism or that our brains can do it, or how far it can go into structural dissociation.
I think you all might be using the wrong terminology here. The Observer Effect is a part of quantum physics. I was shocked to learn there was a psychological phenomenon by the same name and went to read up on it, but there doesn't seem to be such a thing and I'm not really sure what you're referencing.
Is there another name you might know this by? Disassociation is the only thing I can find that sounds similar.
No one but you capitalized it. They are referring to what TFA describes ... it uses the phrase "observer sensation" rather than "observer effect", but it is an effect.
This is a neologism to describe something that is "not in the DSM" and not concretely documented in a particular study. This alleged phenomenon and coinage is the emergent result of some analysis by this journalist, writing for a commercial news site that sells ads but does not launch any astronauts or spacecraft anywhere, much less interview or evaluate them once they've landed and arrived home.
Commenters who are comparing it to a selection in the DSM-IV, or "oh yeah, I felt like this once" anecdotes are projecting subjective experience onto subjective journalism about subjective testimony. Where is our scientific empiricism? Would you like some ketamine? Would you care to take less ketamine?
Therefore, "observer sensation" means just what the journalist chooses it to mean. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Pedant? I was simply trying to be helpful. My point was that "the Observer Effect", a specific thing in physics, is clearly not the same as the "observer sensation" that TFA refers to and that someone here casually referred to as an "observer effect". If anyone is being pedantic it's the person who wrote "I think you all might be using the wrong terminology here".
And elsewhere you accuse someone of "toe[ing] the line of fascist propaganda" based on your own misrepresentation of what they wrote and meant -- wow. And then there's https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022168 ... lots of hostility and trolling.
Fortunately my HN front end has a mute function. Applied.
Even the method of getting there is earily similar to some vipassana techniques, in particular Mahasi Sayadaw style noting.
From the article:
> Astronauts spend half a year in a mode of continuous self-monitoring — checking themselves, narrating their steps.
Mahasi style noting:
> When you look at the tap or water-pot on arriving at
the place where you are to take a drink, be sure to make a
mental note, looking, seeing.
> When you stop walking, stopping.
> When you stretch out the hand, stretching.
> When you touch the cup, touching.
> When you take the cup, taking.
> When dipping the cup into the water, dipping.
> When bringing the cup to the lips, bringing.
> When the cup touches the lips, touching.
> When you swallow, swallowing.
> When returning the cup, returning.
> When withdrawing the hand, withdrawing.
> When you bring down the hand, bringing.
> When the hand touches the side of the body, touching.
If you intend to turn round, intending.
> When you turn round, turning.
> When you walk forward, walking.
> On arriving at the place where you intend to stop,
intending.
> When you stop, stopping.[1]
Six months of noting during ones entire waking experience has certain similarities to being on retreat and doing nothing but the practice. It's remarkable that without any intentional cross pollination, astronauts seemingly arrived at the same place meditators do just by performing the same practices. I wonder if they experienced fruition events during their time in space.