Mysticism

Scholars and religious notables have offered many definitions of “mysticism.” In 1899 Inge(1) provided an Appendix with 26 different definitions. Wikipedia(2) cites more recent definitions and definitional clarifications. Here are a selection (Wiki sources in parentheses):

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• . . . the term “mysticism” has become a popular label for “anything nebulous, esoteric, occult, or supernatural.” (Moore, Peter (2005), “Mysticism (further considerations)”, in Jones, Lindsay (ed.), MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religion, MacMillan, p. 6355.)

• The mystic experience can be defined by the mystic’s purported access to “realities or states of affairs that are of a kind not accessible by way of ordinary sense-perception structured by mental conceptions, somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection.” (Jones, Richard (2022). “Mysticism”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University. Retrieved November 3, 2024.)

• Deriving from Neo-Platonism and Henosis, mysticism is popularly known as union with God or the Absolute. (McGinn, Bernard (2005), “Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity and Islam”, in Jones, Lindsay (ed.), MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religion, MacMillan. Moore, Peter (2005), “Mysticism (further considerations)”, in Jones, Lindsay (ed.), MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religion, MacMillan.)

• William James (1842–1910), who stated that “in mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness.” (Harmless, William (2007), Mystics, Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780198041108, archived from the original on 2023-07-02, retrieved 2020-05-21)

• McGinn argues that “presence” is more accurate than “union”, since not all mystics spoke of union with God, and since many visions and miracles were not necessarily related to union. He also argues that we should speak of “consciousness” of God’s presence, rather than of “experience” (McGinn, Bernard (2005), “Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity and Islam”, in Jones, Lindsay (ed.), MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religion, MacMillan)

• In a strict sense, “mystical experience” refers specifically to an ecstatic unitive experience, or nonduality, of ‘self’ and other objects, but more broadly may also refer to non-sensual or unconceptualized sensory awareness or insight, while religious experience may refer to any experience relevant in a religious context. (Jones, Richard; Gellman, Jerome (2022). “Mysticism”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)

• According to William James, mystical experiences have four defining qualities, namely ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, and passivity. (Harmless, William (2007), Mystics, Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780198041108)

• R. C. Zaehner (1913–1974) rejected the perennialist position [mystical experience is common across religions], instead discerning three fundamental types of mysticism following Dasgupta, namely theistic, monistic, and panenhenic (”all-in-one”) or natural mysticism. (Paden, William E. (2009), Comparative religion. In: John Hinnells (ed.) (2009), “The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion”, pp. 225–241, Routledge, ISBN 9780203868768)

• Walter Terence Stace criticised Zaehner, instead postulating two types following Otto, namely extraverted (unity in diversity) and introverted (’pure consciousness’) mysticism. [No source given, but this point is made in Stace(3)]

Given the definitional confusion around the term “mysticism,” you may ask why you should put time into reading an essay on such a nebulous topic. Despite its ambiguity, mysticism is a vital aspect of religion, and some claim that it is the foundation of all religion. Moreover, as the section on psychological research will show, a substantial number of people in the general population, especially those who have tried psychedelics, have had experiences that one might call “mystical.”

Fortunately, popular usage of the term is more specific than the scholarly responses listed above. Merriam-Webster online gives three definitions:

1: the experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality reported by mystics

2: the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (such as intuition or insight)

3a: vague speculation : a belief without sound basis

b: a theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or power(4)

In this essay, let us dismiss definition 3a as too broad, for it alludes to what Moore in the top bullet above calls “anything nebulous, esoteric, occult, or supernatural.” The other definitions suggest that mystical experience reveals the fundamental reality, the godhead. This is a consequential claim. If true, it suggests that the cultivation of mystical experience may bring us closer to God. If false, mystical experiences may lead us away from God, if He indeed exists, and/or into a hyper-subjectivity that distances us from fellow human beings.

Before analyzing mystical phenomena, let us first get a “phenomenological feel” from selected quotations of several notable mystics. Keep in mind, however, that experts in this field will often write about dozens of mystics in detail, so what I present here is but a taste.

What Some Mystics Say

Plotinus

Born in Egypt around 205 C.E., Plotinus was the chief Neoplatonist of that era. In his view, God, the Absolute, is an undifferentiated unity. He was not a Christian, but his writings influenced many Christians, including St. Augustine. This selection is from The Ascent to Union with the One.

We may believe that we have really seen, when a sudden light illumines the Soul; for this light comes from the One and is the One. And we may think that the One is present, when, like another god, he illumines the house of him who calls upon him; for there would be no light without his presence. Even so the Soul is dark that does not behold him; but when illumined by him it has what it desired, and this is the true end and aim of the Soul, to apprehend that light, and to behold it by that light itself, which is no other than the light by which it sees. For that which we seek to behold is that which gives us light, even as we can only see the sun by the light of the sun. How then can this come to us? Strip thyself of everything.(5)

Dionysius the Areopagite

Little is known about Dionysius. The name is a pseudonym of a mystic in the fifth century or later who wanted to associate himself with St. Paul. Plotinus influenced him, but he was a Christian. He emphasizes the via negativa, the negative side of mystical consciousness: Emptiness, the Void, Nothingness. The following excerpt is from his Mystical Theology.

Once more, ascending yet higher we maintain that It is not soul, or mind, or endowed with the faculty of imagination, conjecture, reason, or understanding; nor is it any act of reason or understanding; nor can It be described by the reason or perceived by the understanding, since It is not number or order, or greatness, or littleness, or equality, or inequality, and since It is not immovable nor in motion, or, at rest, and has no power, and is not power or light, and does not live, and is not life; nor is It personal essence, or eternity, or time; nor can It be grasped by the understanding, since It is not knowledge or truth; nor is It kingship or wisdom; nor is It one, nor is It unity, nor is it Godhead or Goodness; nor is it a Spirit, as we understand the term, since It is not Sonship or Fatherhood; nor is It any other thing such as we or any other being can have knowledge of; nor does it belong to the category of non-existence or to that of existence . . .(6)

The semi-colon clauses continue for another 117 words. I expect the reader gets the drift of Dionysius’s via negativa, which Stace says is “the essence of the technique of all mystics, namely the emptying oneself of the positive content of consciousness, first sensation, then imagery, then thought, desire, etc.”(7)

Hindu Mysticism

The Vedanta school that was derived from the eighth century philosopher Shankara fascinated many 19th and 20th century intellectuals, most notably Alduous Huxley. For this reason, many associate Hinduism and Hindu mysticism with this non-dualist school.(8) However, there are other major schools of Hinduism. Samkhya’s atheistic philosophy was dualistic, dividing the world between matter (prakriti) and eternal spirit (Purusha).(9) The thirteenth century Madhva’s Dvaita school distinguished individual souls from God and advocated devotion to God (bhakti).(10) The Mimamsa system provides rules to interpret the Vedas and philosophical justifications for Vedic ritual.(11) The Vedanta schools are based on the Upanishads, written around 800 B.C.E., the Brahma-sutras, which are brief interpretations of the Upanishads, and the Bhagavadgita (“Song of the Lord”), a poem based on the Upanishads. The various schools of Vedanta accept the notions of karma (the law of cause and effect in the moral sphere), reincarnation (which is necessary for karmic accountability), and Brahman’s being the Absolute Reality. Shankara’s non-dualistic version of Vedanta, Advaita, argues that the individual soul, the Atman, sees itself as distinct because it identifies with Maya (illusion, ignorance), and, upon liberation from the cycle of rebirths (Moksha), recognizes itself as Brahman.(12) Ramanuja’s theistic, qualified non-dualism, on the other hand, maintains the distinction between the individual soul and the godhead (Brahman) and provides an intellectual rationale for devotional worship of God (bhakti), which has remained the major force in Hinduism.(13)

This long introduction is necessary because the mystical experiences associated with Hinduism emerge from religious disciplines (e.g., the various schools of yoga) based on the different religious philosophies within Hinduism. Indeed, one might argue that the experiences derive from the intellectual framework of the particular philosophy, rather than the opposite, as some like Stace suggest. (Perhaps, however, the founders of various schools had experiences that led to the philosophy.) The tie between philosophy and experience becomes clear in Swami Akhilananda’s quotation from Brahmananda, who describes the process leading up to the supreme experience:

This mind cannot know Him. He is beyond this mortal mind and far beyond the human intellect. This apparent universe which you see is within the domain of the mind. The mind is its author, the mind has conjured it up. It cannot go beyond its own domain.

Behind the mind of which we are aware is a subtle, spiritual mind, existing in seed-form. Through contemplation, prayer, and japan [repetition of the name of God], this mind develops and with its unfoldment a new vision opens. The aspirant realizes many spiritual truths. However, this is not the final experience. This subtle mind also cannot reach God, the Supreme Atman. But it leads you nearer to Him. At this stage the world loses all its charm for the aspirant. He remains absorbed in the consciousness of God.

Next comes samadhi. The experience of samadhi is indescribable–beyond is and is not. In this blessed experience there is neither happiness nor misery, neither light nor darkness. All is Infinite Being–inexpressable.(14)

Because the Upanishads were the source of the philosophies that were developed over three millennia, let us examine an excerpt from The Svetasvatara Upanishad to appreciate the degree of continuity that has existed in Vedanta:

What is the cause of this universe?--is it Brahman? Whence do we come? Why do we live? Where shall we at last find rest? Under whose command are we bound by the law of happiness and its opposite?

Time, space, law, chance, matter, primal energy, intelligence–none of these, nor a combination of these, can be the final cause of the universe, for they are effects, and exist to serve the soul. Nor can the individual self be the cause, for, being subject to the law of happiness and misery, it is not free.

The seers, absorbed in contemplation, saw within themselves the ultimate reality, the self-luminous being, the one God, who dwells as the self-conscious power in all creatures. He is One without a second. Deep within all beings he dwells, hidden from sight by the coverings of the gunas [qualities]–saatwa [goodness], rajas [passion], and tamas [darkness]. He presides over time, space, and all apparent causes.

This vast universe is a wheel. Upon it are all creatures that are subject to birth, death, and rebirth. Round and round it turns, and never stops. It is the wheel of Brahman. As long as the individual self thinks it is separate from Brahman, it revolves upon the wheel in bondage to the laws of birth, death, and rebirth. But when through the grace of Brahman, it realizes its identity with him, it revolves upon the wheel no longer. It achieves immortality.(15)

Buddhism

Knowledge of the Buddha’s life comes from texts written several centuries after his birth, which some place around 563 BCE and others a century later. He was a prince named Siddhartha Gautama, sometimes known as Shakyamuni, the sage of the Shakya clan. At 29 he left his family “to discover the cause of human suffering and its spiritual cure.”(16) After years of experimenting with ascetic and other paths, it is said that he attained Enlightenment while meditating under the Bodhi Tree. He was given the honorific title “the Buddha,” which means the awakened one, or the enlightened one. Buddha offered the Four Noble Truths: (1) life is suffering, (2) suffering results from desires or cravings, (3) the cessation of desire will end suffering, (4) following the Noble Eightfold Path will end desire and suffering. This path includes: right views, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right contemplation. The “final three concern the meditative training needed for contemplative or mystical knowledge of the ultimate truth and for the serenity that goes with it. This attainment of peace and insight is called nirvana.”(17) Unlike Vedanta, which sees Enlightenment, or Moksha, as the Atman’s recognition that it is Brahman, Buddhism’s no-self doctrine rejects Atman and Brahman; instead, it talks of anatta, or not-self. “For Buddhists, Nirvana is the emptying of ideas of self and ultimately realizing that there is no self; this is how one comes to free oneself from the cycle of death and rebirth.’(18)

Buddhism accepts karma and reincarnation. The doctrine of no-self, however, raises the question of what experiences rebirth? Buddhists will typically respond to this seemingly insoluble problem by using “the analogy of fire, which maintains itself unchanged in appearance and yet is different in every moment—what may be called the continuity of an ever-changing identity.”(19)

Stace quotes a Buddhist text in which the Buddha (here referred to as Gotama or Tathagata) responds to a wandering ascetic named Vaccha (I indent the Buddha’s replies to make clear who is speaking):

Does Gotama hold that the saint exists after death?

Nay, Vaccha. I do not hold that the saint exists after death.

But how is it, Gotama? Does Gotama hold that the saint does not exist after death/

Nay, Vaccha. I do not hold that the saint does not exist after death.

But has Gotama any theory of his own?

The Tathagata, O Vaccha, is free from all theories . . .

But Gotama, where is the priest reborn who has attained to this deliverance for his mind?

Vaccha, to say that he is reborn would not fit the case.

Then, Gotama, he is not reborn.

Vaccha, to say that he is not reborn would not fit the case.

When I say to you, “But, Gotama, where is the priest reborn who has attained to this deliverance for his mind?” you reply, “Vaccha, to say that he is reborn would not fit the case.” And when I say to you. “Then, Gotama, he is not reborn,” you reply, “Vaccha, to say that he is not reborn would not fit the case.” . . . Gotama, I am at a loss what to think in this matter, and I have become greatly confused, and the faith in Gotama, inspired by a former conversation has now disappeared.

Enough, O Vaccha! Be not at a loss what to think in this matter, and be not greatly confused. Profound, O Vaccha, is this doctrine, recondite, and difficult of comprehension, good, excellent, and not to be reached by mere reasoning, subtle, and intelligible only to the wise.(20)

Meister Eckhart

Born Eckhart von Hochheim, Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a Dominican priest who held administrative and teaching positions in the Church. He is perhaps most famous today for the statement, “The Eye with which I see God is the same Eye with which God sees me.”(21) His mystical views have been compared to non-dualist Vedanta and Buddhism because he talks about the emptying of consciousness and the godhead as “a desert” or a “barren wilderness,” much as Buddhism speaks of the Void or the Emptiness. (22) The following excerpt is from Sermon 21:

. . . we, too, should be baptized by the Holy Spirit and thus experience what it is to live beyond time in eternity. We do not get the Holy Spirit in temporal things. When a person turns from temporal things inwards, into himself, he becomes aware of a heavenly light. . . . The human spirit can never be satisfied with what light it has but storms the firmament and scales the heavens to discover the spirit by which the heavens are driven in revolutions and by which everything on the earth grows and flourishes.

Even then, the human spirit takes no rest. It presses on further into the vortex, the source in which the spirit originates. There, the spirit, in knowing, has no use for number, for numbers are of use only within time, in this defective world. No one can strike his roots into eternity without being rid [of the concept] of number. The human spirit must go beyond all number-ideas, must break past and away from ideas of quantity and then he will be broken into by God. As God penetrates me I penetrate God in return. God leads the human spirit into the desert, into his own unity, in which he is pure One and self-creating.(23)

Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi was born in 1182 into a wealthy merchant family. He took part in a war against Perugia and later, while on a journey to join the papal forces against Emperor Frederick II, he had a vision or a dream that told him to return to Assisi, where he dedicated himself to solitude and prayer. He ministered to beggars and lepers. In 1206, while praying in the ruined chapel of San Damiano outside Assisi, he heard the crucifix above the altar say, “Go, Francis, and repair my house which, as you see, is well-nigh in ruins.”(24) He took this statement literally and repaired the chapel. He then embraced a life of poverty and began preaching. In 1209 he had a following of twelve friars. They successfully sought recognition from the pope. By the time of his death 17 years later, in 1226, there were three to five thousand Franciscan friars. “By 1250 there were thirty thousand.”(25) Francis was a major influence in the renewal of the Church, and many interpret the voice he heard in San Damiano as a command to “repair” the Church, not just the chapel at San Damiano.

Francis was an example of what Stace calls “extroverted mysticism,” seeing unity in the diversity of the world, not introverted mysticism, which is a turning inward to experience pure consciousness. Theologians who followed Francis, most notably Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and William of Occam, expressed in philosophical terms the spirituality that made Francis such a magnet to people.

“The spiritual vision of Francis encompasses two realities: the humility of the incarnation and the love of the passion.”(26) Unlike theologies that view Jesus’s suffering as a consequence of our sins, Franciscans emphasize that “Jesus loved us so much that he even suffered and died to show us how much God loves us.”(27) Francis sees this love in the entire creation, for everything points beyond itself to the Creator. “Bonaventure writes: ‘He would call creatures, no matter how small, by the name of brother or sister because he knew they shared with him the same beginning.’”(28) “Each unique created being radiates the light of God.”(29)

We see Francis’s sacramental view of the universe in a famous poem, “Canticle of the Creatures,” which he wrote near the end of his short life:

Most High, all-powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory, the honor, and all blessing.
To You alone, Most High, do they belong,
and no human is worthy to mention Your name.

Praised be You, my Lord, with all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
Who is the day and through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor;
and bears a likeness of You, Most High One.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather,
through which You give sustenance to Your creatures.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water, who is very useful and humble
and precious and chaste.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night
and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Mother Earth,
who sustains and governs us,
and who produces varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Praised be You, my Lord, through those who
give pardon for Your love,
and bear infirmity and tribulation.
Blessed are those who endure in peace
for by You, Most High, shall they be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those whom death will find in Your most holy will,
for the second death shall do them no harm.

Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks
and serve Him with great humility.(30)

Francis’s mysticism is not pantheistic, as is the case with other extroverted mystics. For Francis, God transcendent is fundamental, but the love of God immanent in His Creation reveals that transcendence to creatures. A saintly sensitivity to this love is what made Francis unique and what draws so many to him. “Trees, worms, flowers by the side of the road–all were for him saints gazing up into the face of God.”(31)

Teresa of Ávila

Born in 1515 (died in 1582), Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada is also called St. Teresa of Jesus and more commonly Teresa of Ávila. She became a Carmelite nun at age 20. She read mystical authors and St. Augustine, with whom she had an affinity “for he was a sinner too.”(32) Later in life, she was instrumental in reforming the Carmelites, along with John of the Cross, 27 years her junior. Carlos M. N. Eire, the T. L. Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University, has written extensively about Teresa and levitating saints.

Teresa began to experience visions and raptures in her forties. As these intensified quickly and dramatically, she naturally came under suspicion of being either demonically influenced or a brazen fraud. At the same time, however, many around her were convinced that her experiences were genuinely divine in origin. Consequently, her superiors ordered her to write a detailed account of her life and her ecstasies, under the watchful eye of the Inquisition. That text, which came to be known as her Vida, or “autobiography”, is an attempt to convince everyone that her remarkable experiences are truly supernatural. And an essential part of the narrative is Teresa’s constant emphasis on her own humility and on the pain and embarrassment caused by the ecstasies she experienced in public, or which became public knowledge, especially those ecstasies in which she levitated.(33)

Eire also says that Teresa’s raptures, or ecstacies, paradoxically intertwine “pain and bliss, both bodily and spiritual.” Teresa initially told the nuns under her not to talk about her levitations, but her superiors ordered her to write her autobiography because so many doubted her claims and the reports of her levitations. In another article, Eire states:

Nonetheless, gaining a reputation as a mystic or a saint—especially one who falls into trance-like states, or floats in the air miraculously, or claims to commune with God—was somewhat perilous in mid-sixteenth-century Spain, where suspicions of heresy, fraud, or demonic activity ran high.(34)

As examples of levitation reports, Eire cites the following:

Teresa’s efforts to control her levitations were much more than purely verbal or limited to prayer. According to eyewitnesses, there was a brute physicality to her resistance. Domingo Bañez, a prominent Dominican theologian who served as one of Teresa’s spiritual advisors, said he and many other people once saw Teresa levitate immediately after receiving communion and that she clung to a grille in the church, “greatly distressed”, and begged God, out loud: “Lord, for something that is as unimportant as putting an end to these favors with which you shower me, do not allow a woman as wicked as me to be mistaken for one that is good.” Others, too, would testify that they saw her clinging to the mats on the choir floor and rising up in the air with them in her hands, which she did to signal the other nuns to pull on her habit and bring her back down.(35)

Teresa describes her struggles with the levitations that she resisted:

I have wanted to resist many, many times, and have put all my strength behind it, especially with raptures in public, and often also with ones in private, when I feared I was being deceived. Sometimes I could resist somewhat, at the edge of exhaustion. Afterwards I would be completely worn out, like someone who has fought against a powerful giant. At other times resisting has been impossible, and my soul has been carried away instead, and quite often my head too, along with it, without being able to stop it, and sometimes my whole body too, which has even been lifted off the ground.(36)

Naturally, such reports of levitation are hard to believe. Adam Blai, however, defends the quality of the Church’s investigative procedures. He briefly describes the case of St. Francis of Assisi’s levitations, which Franciscan theologian Bonaventure wrote about:

The difficulty is that in 1245 (nineteen years after he [Francis] had died), a detailed investigation into Francis’s life had been made by the Church. Authorities interviewed many people who knew him, and none of them mentioned levitation. So, either St. Bonaventure had access to materials that have not survived, or the stories of levitation were an invention that Bonaventure heard and repeated as fact. We are often led to believe that people before the modern era, especially in the Church, were easily duped or indifferent to facts, but the Church has, throughout her history, applied the best methods available to her to get at the truth of miracles.(37)

Eire says that Teresa’s levitations are unique for three reasons.

First, no other Christian levitator has provided as full a first-person account or described and analyzed the experience in as much detail as Teresa. Second, no other levitator has complained as often and as loudly about levitating as Teresa. And third, few other levitators have brought about an end to levitations as suddenly and dramatically as Teresa.(38)

Stace says little about Teresa’s levitations. He is more interested in the subjective experience. He says that Teresa is much less articulate and specific than her younger colleague and partner in reforming the Carmelites, John of the Cross, whom Stace considers a genuine introvertive mystic.

She was, in fact, a wholly unintellectual person. This, of course, involves no derogation of her saintliness and of the depth and importance of her mystical consciousness. . . . Nor again should we look in her writings for any understanding of the distinction between the mystical experience itself and its interpretation. The experience for her is simply “union with God,” and that is enough. Naturally, therefore, she cannot be quoted as a witness that the cognitive core of the experience is the undifferentiated unity.(39)

Nevertheless, Teresa at times seems to hint at the core mystical experience that Stace views as central to mysticism. The following is from her autobiography:

I was wondering what it is the soul does during that time, when the Lord said these words to me: “It dies to itself wholly, daughter, in order that it may fix itself more and more upon Me: it is no longer itself that lives, but I. As it cannot comprehend what it understands, it is an understanding which understands not.” One who has experienced this will understand something of it; it cannot be more clearly expressed, since all that comes to pass in this state is so obscure. I can only say that the soul feels close to God and that there abides within it such a certainty that it cannot possibly do other than believe.(40)

We might say that union is as if the ends of two wax candles were joined so that the light they give is one: the wicks and the wax and the light are all one; yet afterwards the one candle can be perfectly well separated from the other and the candles become two again, or the wick may be withdrawn from the wax.(41)

Alan Watts

Alan Watts (1915-1973) was a chain-smoking, hard-drinking, adulterous, child-neglecting writer about eastern mysticism. He helped fuel the cultural revolution of the 1960s. Watts’s international best-selling book, The Way of Zen, and the hallucinogen craze that began in that period enabled Watts to present himself as a mystic. In reviewing Watts’s The Joyous Cosmology, which I read many years ago, I realized that a combination of drugs and intellectual knowledge about eastern religions can generate experiences that on the surface appear to be indistinguishable from what established mystics describe, especially those that Stace would categorize as introvertive. If this is so, drug-induced experiences may fail to deliver the fruit of the mystical experience, namely a holy life. “In the last years of his life, Watts fell into a deep depression and episodes of heavy drinking,” and “died in his sleep in a cabin at Druid Heights, a bohemian community in Muir Woods, near San Francisco Bay.”(42) Here is an excerpt from The Joyous Cosmology:

It is this vivid realization of the reciprocity of will and world, active and passive, inside and outside, self and not-self, which evokes the aspect of these experiences that is most puzzling from the standpoint of ordinary consciousness; the strange and seemingly unholy conviction that “I” am God. In western culture this sensation is seen as the very signature of insanity. But in India it is simply a matter of course that the deepest center of man, atman, is the deepest center of the universe, Brahman. Why not? Surely a continuous view of the world is more whole, more holy, more healthy than one in which there is a yawning emptiness between the Cause and its effects. Obviously, the “I” which is God is not the ego, the consciousness of self which is simultaneously an unconsciousness of the fact that its outer limits are held in common with the inner limits of the rest of the world. But in this wider, less ignor-ant consciousness I am forced to see that everything I claim to will and intend has a common boundary with all I pretend to disown. The limits of what I will, the form and shape of all those actions which I claim as mine, are identical and coterminous with the limits of all those events which I have been taught to define as alien and external.(43)

Scientific Research on Mysticism

Hood, Spilka, Hunsberger, and Gorsuch(44) distinguish between “‘mystical experiences proper’ when experiences of unity are emphasized” and “‘numinous experiences’ when a sense of a holy other’s presence is emphasized.” These religious experiences are “so important to study” because “they are the strongest claims that people can experience foundational realities.”(45)

Historically, psychologists expressed diverse opinions about mystical and/or numinous experiences. William James viewed these experiences as a heightened awareness of a transcendent reality that cannot be reduced to psychological or physiological processes. Bucke wrote about a cosmic consciousness that was evolving among humans. Jung advanced the notion of archetypes, which are shared religious symbols in human consciousness. Freud, on the other hand, dismissed these experiences as a return of infantile states of mind that projected onto the world a child’s feelings of unity with mother. A 1976 report on mysticism by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry reflected psychoanalytic thought on mysticism:

Confronted with an unacceptable reality–intrapsychic, personal or social–the subject [the mystic] turns his back on that reality, excluding it from his consciousness and psychically destroying it. He replaces it with a new inner reality which he has so designed that it gratifies rather than frustrates him. This process represents a rebirth, a return to a state of mind characteristic of his infancy, when he was able to deal with frustration and disappointment by retreating to a world of fantasy and when he also enjoyed a firm and intimate union with his parents. Achieving this union once again in fantasy, he now feels vigorous and powerful, no longer dependent upon the whims of other people.(46)

Such psychodynamic formulations do not characterize psychological research. According to Hood et al., many early studies used open-ended responses to questions. This is a methodologically limited but phenomenologically rich source of information on mystical experiences. Laski,(47) a novelist, obtained compelling accounts from subjects drawn from her literary world to the question: “Do you know a sensation of transcendent ecstasy.” Thomas and Cooper,(48) whose subjects came from colleges and religious and civic organizations, asked the question, “Have you ever had the feeling of being close to a powerful spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself?” Those responding “yes” elaborated in an open-ended description, which raters coded. Close examination of the responses indicated that “no more than 2% of the 34% who responded to the survey question presumed to be a measure of mysticism actually described mystical experiences in an open-ended description.”(49) Pafford(50) asked university and grammar school students to write about personal experiences that resembled a selection from Wordsworth’s poetry with a mystical theme. He found that solitude in the middle-teens was most likely to be associated with transcendental experiences. Klingberg(51) asked 273 boys and 357 girls to complete the statement, “Once when I thought about God.” Not surprisingly 566 of 630 compositions described religious experiences, many of which could be classified as mystical, supporting claims that children can have mystical experiences. Hood(52) divided 123 college students into two groups based on Allport’s Religious Orientation Scale. Raters scored those high on the intrinsic religiosity scale as higher on mysticism than those high on the extrinsic scale (15 mystical, 5 nonmystical among high intrinsic vs. 3 mystical, 18 nonmystical among high extrinsic). Hay and Morisy(53) asked 266 randomly sampled residents of Nottingham, England to respond to, “Have you ever been aware or influenced by a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your everyday self?” Researchers’ classification of the answers indicated that a wide variety of religious experiences were described, none of which were coded “mystical.”

Hood et al. describe a famous study in the psychology of religion, Pahnke’s Good Friday experiment.(54) In a double-blind study [neither the participants nor the researchers know which treatment participants receive], 20 volunteer seminary students received a placebo (nicotinic acid) or the hallucinogen, psilocybin (experimental group). After receiving the drug or placebo, subjects listened to a broadcast of a Good Friday service. They then completed a questionnaire based on Stace’s common-core criteria of mysticism. They also completed the questionnaire 6 months later and 25 years later (a study completed by another researcher who tracked down the subjects in the Pahnke experiment(55)). Experimental subjects scored much higher in all eight of Stace’s criteria immediately after the experiment, six months later, and 25 years later. Stace’s criteria are: unity, transcendence of space/time, positive affect, sacredness, noetic quality, paradoxicality, ineffability, transience.

To improve the quality of psychological research in this area, Hood constructed the Religious Experience Episodes Measure (REEM),(56) which relied on William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience. Hood later developed a theory-driven measure based on Stace’s phenomenological work, the Mysticism Scale (M Scale),(57) which has been widely used in the study of mysticism. Hood et al. say that Stace is:

The central figure in the debate between what we call the “common-core theorists” and the “diversity theorists.” Common-core theorists assume that people can differentiate experience from interpretation, such that different interpretations may be applied to otherwise identical experiences. . . . Diversity theorists. . . argue that no unmediated experience is possible, and that in the extreme, language is not simply used to interpret experience but in fact constitutes experience.(58)

What Hood et al. call “diversity theorists” are also known as “constructivists” because they believe that language and culture shape the mystical experience and are not merely a framework for interpreting an experience detached from a person’s cultural and psychological context. Stace rejects this view. He claims that the mystical experience is an experience of “core consciousness,” of consciousness without cognitive, affective, sensory, or imagistic content.

Wulff’s(59) review of prevalence surveys indicated that approximately 30 to 40 percent of people will give affirmative answers to questions such as, “Have you ever felt as though you were very close to a powerful spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself?” However, further exploration in some studies suggested that a much smaller percentage had full-mystical experiences. Wulff’s review of literature pertinent to psychopathology and mysticism suggests that there is no relationship, although one study did find a correlation between mysticism scores and measures of manic and depressive experience.

A number of studies have looked for neural correlates to mystical experiences. In the 1980s Persinger(60) stimulated the temporal lobes with a magnetic field and claimed to have produced mystical experiences; however, his “evidence is not compelling. The phenomenology of seizures does not closely match the phenomenology of mystical experiences.”(61) Moreover, neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick

found that pathology or brain damage is only one of many possible causal mechanisms for these experiences. He questioned the earlier accounts of religious figures with temporal lobe epilepsy, noticing that “very few true examples of the ecstatic aura and the temporal lobe seizure had been reported in the world scientific literature prior to 1980.”(62)

Neuroimaging studies have implicated a number of brain regions, including the limbic system, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, superior parietal lobe, and caudate nucleus, although they are most likely mediated by interacting neural mechanisms.(63)

Newberg and d’Aquili arrive at less reductionistic neuroscientific conclusions. They “scanned the brain blood flow patterns during. . . mystical transcendence, using SPECT-scans, [and found] unusual [sharply reduced] activity in the top rear section of the brain, the ‘posterior superior parietal lobe,’ or the ‘orientation association area (OAA)’. . . This area creates a consistent cognition of the physical limits of the self.” The researchers concluded that “the mind’s machinery of transcendence may in fact be a window through which we can glimpse the ultimate realness of something that is truly divine.”(64)

Psychedelics

Researchers began studying psychedelics and mystical experiences in the 1950s and 1960s, when LSD became a cultural phenomenon. In these early trials, “50 - 80% of participants claimed lasting beneficial changes in personality, values, attitudes and behavior.”(65) A recent meta-analysis of 34 studies found that clinical improvement correlated positively with psychedelic intensity and that the correlation was higher for mood disorders than for addiction.(66) The relationship between drug and therapeutic efficacy, however, depends to some extent upon the specific drug.

Ketamine, first studied as an anesthetic, has since demonstrated rapid-acting antidepressant effects and promise for treating substance use disorders and other conditions. The entactogen MDMA has shown positive results with structured therapy for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Psilocybin, found in ‘magic mushrooms,’ has shown rapid-acting antidepressant and anxiolytic effects and potential for other conditions including substance use disorders.(67)

Given these differential drug effects, one must ask whether therapeutic benefits depend upon the hallucinogenic effects of the drugs or upon strictly biological/chemical factors. Some researchers argue that the insights stimulated by the powerful subjective experiences are crucial,(68) perhaps because they may alter basic personality characteristics such as openness.(69) Determining the precise role of biological and subjective factors, however, is complicated by the fact that the different drugs produce different subjective experiences.

Dissociative anesthetics like ketamine have been characterized as inducing out-of-body and dreamlike states. Entactogens like MDMA can produce heightened social connection, empathy, and positive emotions. Classic psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD can promote states described as ego dissolution, oceanic boundlessness, mystical-type experience, and emotional breakthroughs [3]. To date, the literature is mixed on whether subjective effects of ketamine and classic psychedelics are associated with therapeutic benefits [4]. However, meta-correlation of available data indicates that for ketamine, an estimated 5–10% of variance in therapeutic outcomes may be predicted by specific subjective effects such as a sense of unity, awe, or insight, meaning the degree to which people experience these under ketamine accounts for roughly this much improvement in symptoms like depression and substance misuse afterwards. For psilocybin, this is closer to 24% [5], congruent with recent psilocybin clinical trial data [6]. Notably, MDMA has not shown associations between acute subjective effects and persisting therapeutic benefits, though this has not been studied systematically and may reflect differences in mechanism or targeted conditions. Although these associations suggest some modest relationship between subjective effects and mental health improvements, it has been posited that such effects may be unnecessary and perhaps undesirable adverse effects [7]. Preclinical data implicates neuroplasticity-enhancing and anti-inflammatory effects of psychedelics as potential biological mechanisms driving therapeutic benefits [8]. Researchers are now developing and testing novel compounds to assess whether these biological effects can be leveraged to exert therapeutic efficacy in absence of hallucinogenic effects [9].(70)

Mosurinjohn, Roseman, and Girn(71) question the necessity and even utility of the religious language that has usually been associated with mystical experiences in psychological research. First of all, they criticize the existing research for not appreciating the variety of religious experiences, e.g., reports of contact with demons, visits to hell, etc. The website Erowid, which contains a public repository of thousands of “trip reports,” shows much greater variety than researchers such as Stace acknowledge.

Mosurinjohn et al. also note that assessment research reveals linguistic problems:

Notably, this validation approach was conducted with independent samples in the United States and India, in English and Hindi, respectively. This revealed significant differences in interpretations of items across cultures and the need for distinct wordings to convey similar concepts. Moreover, this validation procedure revealed that many of the items, including those drawn from widely-used mysticism scales, were inconsistently interpreted across participants and required multiple iterations of refinement to more uniformly convey the intended meaning.(72)

In an attempt to deal with the language issues and the theological bias of much research in this area, researchers, according to Mosurinjohn et al., are developing measures that do not rely on the theories underlying existing mysticism scales. These new measures include the Watts Connectedness Scale and the Ego Dissolution Inventory.

Future research may shed light on whether the subjective experiences associated with psychedelics are or are not necessary for therapeutic effect. That outcome, however, would merely affect how psychedelics, treatment outcome, and mysticism are related, not whether or not mystical experiences point to aspects of reality that our five senses do not detect.

Analysis

Proponents of mystical experiences claim that they reveal aspects of a fundamental reality that our five senses cannot perceive.

If this proposition is false, questions arise, including:

• What causes these illusory mystical experiences?

• Is belief in these illusory experiences harmful or beneficial?

If the proposition is true, other questions arise, including:

• Are the essentialist and perennialist conceptions of mystical experience correct? Essentialists maintain that there is a common core to mystical experience and that the cultural/theological descriptions of the experience are a tradition-specific shell. Perennialists go further and affirm that the mystical experience reveals a universal metaphysical truth underlying all religions. Some opponents of these schools of thought believe that mysticism reveals a transcendent reality but divide mystical experiences into different categories.

• Do proponents of the revelatory power of mystical experience overvalue its importance and undervalue the wisdom inherent in less dramatic religious experiences and religious belief systems?

Mystical Experiences Are Illusory

Neuroscientific speculations about mystical experiences say nothing about whether the experiences reveal truth, for all mental experiences, including the contemplation of scientific facts, presumably have brain correlates. For this reason, focusing on the phenomenology of conscious experience may be a more fruitful line of speculation in skeptically deconstructing mystical experience.

To review briefly, Stace proposed to distinguish introvertive from extrovertive mysticism, with introvertive mysticism associated with the core mystical experience of contentless, pure consciousness. Zaehner suggested monist and theist varieties of religious mystical experience, “with the soul in isolation and with the loving, transcendent God, respectively.”(73) Stace’s introvertive experience and Zaehner’s monist type both point to a form of pure, contentless consciousness, which is associated with the fundamental reality, the godhead. Stace sometimes uses the term “no-thingness” to describe pure consciousness. Eckhart spoke of a “desert.” Dionysius the Areopagite considered the “Void,” “Nothingness,” “Emptiness” to be the ultimate reality. In Buddhism, nirvana is “the passing away,” the recognition that there is no self. But Plotinus says that the One is the light by which the soul sees. And the earlier excerpt from Swami Akhilananda’s quotation from Brahmananda said the experience is ineffable and that there is “neither light nor darkness.”

How can the common core experience be “inexpressable” yet described in contradictory ways, e.g., “Void” and “Light”? Stace and others would argue that the commonality comes from what John of the Cross called the shedding of all images, sensation, forms, and figures.(74) These paths all lead to a consciousness without content, the post-experience description of which can vary depending upon the pre-existing religious or philosophical ideas of the experiencer. Monism fits most easily with this experience. However, theists can squeeze the experience into their theologies by likening it to union or communion with God, rather than the unity of identification that monists describe.

At this point the skeptic might say:

First of all, if the core mystical experience is one of nothingness, what is there for mystics to remember and describe when they return to normal consciousness? Hence, there must be at least a wisp of content in the experience, something to remember and recount.

Secondly, let’s accept that some have indeed experienced a consciousness without content. Why conclude that it is the ultimate reality? Maybe it is merely consciousness stripped of all content and later falsely described as unity with the godhead by a consciousness that has returned to content steeped in religious ideas. Researchers have written about a “minimal self,” which is distinguished from the autobiographical self of sensations, images, ideas, memories, etc.(75) Perhaps the minimal self is the “pure observer,” a “pure consciousness,” without content or object. Maybe someday neuroscientists will discover how the brain produces this minimal self. Perhaps post-experience interpretations describe this minimal self as the ineffable, infinite, godhead because a minimal self aware of nothing but itself may mistakenly be “remembered” as all there is, the ultimate reality. The experience of “nothing,” then, will be an experience simultaneously of unity and infinity. The experience seems like unity because there is nothing besides nothing. And it seems like infinity because nothing is all there is when one is in that peculiar state of mind. Thus, the religiously inclined, when back in normal consciousness, might mistakenly interpret the experience as one of unity with the infinite godhead.

Moreover, experiencing the minimal self nullifies the laws of logic, for such laws are cognitive content, which is incompatible with a minimal self. Hence, later reflection on the experience of pure consciousness, of the minimal self, may produce paradoxical statements, such as Buddha’s conversation with Vaccha. These paradoxical statements, however “reasonable” sounding to those who believe in the revelatory power of pure consciousness, sound specious to those who still value logic. Even made-up, nonsensical paradoxes can take on an air of profundity, if we listen to them with a “reverent” frame of mind. Here are a few paradoxical statements off the top of my head for the reader to meditate on slowly–with reverence of course(!):

• See Nothing and understand Everything.

• The One is in the Many as the Many are in the One.

• Touch Eternity by letting go of Here and Now.

• Nowhere can be found Everywhere, and Everywhere is found Nowhere.

• The Circle is the Square when the Square is the Circle.

Enough with pure consciousness. What might the skeptic say about the other types of mysticism? What about Francis’s extrovertive mysticism and Teresa of Avila’s language of love and union?

Perhaps these varieties of mystical experience depend upon the mind’s capacity for absorption and fantasy, which I discussed in the post, “Hallucinations, Delusions, and Religious Visions.” It is well known that little children sometimes create a fantasy friend who seems quite real to the child. Perhaps some adults retain and refine this capacity. Combine that with an outlier-level ability for absorption (extreme concentration) and a deep religious faith. All kinds of religious experiences may then occur that are no more real than the young child’s fantasy friend. A Franciscan, for example, believes that God immanent means that God is in everything and everything is in God. He looks at a lilac bush in full bloom. With intense concentration he tries to “experience” God immanent in the lilac bush, perhaps the way St. Francis did. Suddenly an epiphany. Scotus’s statement comes alive: “Creation is not a window, but a lamp, and each unique created being radiates the light of God.”(76) By altering his mental perspective, he no longer conceives of God immanent; he experiences God immanent in the lilac bush.

But his profound experience, according to this argument, is an illusion, an invention of his mind. Other religionists may produce different mental inventions, different experiences, because they begin with different ideas. For example, somebody contemplating the biblical notion that we are caretakers of nature may look at the lilac bush and, with profound piety, feel a deep ethical obligation to tend to the garden, not to imagine God immanent in the bush. (Of course, using the imagination to “experience” a concept, such as the immanence of God, does not invalidate the concept, much as “experiencing” a rocket launch in a simulation at Disney World does not invalidate the reality of rocket launches.)

Are such illusory experiences harmful or beneficial? Certainly they may be harmful when carried to an extreme that causes people to neglect their duties to loved ones. But they can also be beneficial, if benefit is defined as adjusting well to one’s surroundings and contributing to the welfare of others, such as is evident in the lives of saints. Myths and illusions, including religious myths and illusions, are part of life–sometimes helpful, sometimes harmful. The myth of Santa Claus, for example, has certainly brought much happiness to the lives of young children. But if a 15-year-old with normal intelligence still believes in Santa Claus, the child’s parents would be concerned.

The 15-year-old might retain belief in Santa Claus because he has noetic feelings about Santa Claus’s existence. Noetic feelings are the feelings associated with a confident sense, a certainty, that one knows something. We’ve all experienced having a name (e.g., of a celebrity) on the “tip of the tongue.” We “know” the name, but we cannot retrieve it. That is a harmless and innocent example of a noetic feeling. But we can have the feeling of knowing in many other situations. Someone suffering from delusional disorder, for example, may “know deep in his gut” that people inside a car in front of his house are spying on him, despite evidence to the contrary (e.g., they are talking to a jogger who stopped to chat), and despite counterarguments a family member might make. A 15-year old might have noetic feelings about Santa Claus, perhaps because a brain abnormality stimulates these feelings. And, of course, a mystic might have a powerful feeling of knowing that he has experienced unity with God.

Unfortunately for such people, noetic feelings do not make true the belief that they feel so strongly about. Many years ago, when I was stoned on unusually powerful marijuana, I contemplated the Vedantist notion that we are all God but do not realize it. I thought, “If I am God and God is infinite, then at some point in my reincarnations ‘I’ must experience all the joys of heaven and all the terrors of hell; otherwise I wouldn’t be infinite.” The noetic feelings accompanying this thought were frightening. My destiny seemed so clear and certain: “I” would experience great joy and immense pain. But when I came down from the marijuana “trip,” I thought something like, “Stupid! The set of even numbers is infinite, but includes not a single odd number. Therefore, God can be infinite without ‘experiencing’ everything that a stoned philosopher can imagine!” The logic that was absent during the experience invalidated the noetic feelings that made the experience seem revelatory. Perhaps the mystical experience involves a similarly false certainty that arises from the mere feeling of knowing.

Mystical Experiences Reveal a Transcendental Reality

The skeptical argument of the previous section, like much philosophical and religious argument, is plausible. But as I said in a previous post, plausibility is a low bar. The skeptic’s argument, then, is not compelling to those who adhere to a religious worldview, although aspects of the skeptical perspective may fit into some religious frameworks.

Some dualists, for example, agree that pure consciousness is not a union or an identification with the godhead; indeed, they may view it as an arrogant elevation of the self. For example, “Abu Yazid of Bistam (d. 875) was so convinced of his identity with God in the experience of ma’rifa [direct knowledge of Allah] that he could say ‘Glory to me–how great is my majesty.’”(77) Such a statement is antithetical to orthodox Islam, and even to Sufi mysticism. “In Sufism, when one’s sense of self passes away (fana), one is filled with the presence of Allah (baqa), although the orthodox Sufis insist that the soul does not cease to exist but only that one is unaware of it in the blinding light of the presence of Allah.”(78) As noted earlier, Teresa of Avila reports that the Lord said something similar to her: “It dies to itself wholly, daughter, in order that it may fix itself more and more upon Me: it is no longer itself that lives, but I.” Such statements of union/communion imply a God-creature distinction, not the pure consciousness of monism. which, especially today, is associated with eastern monism (or “nondualism”), specifically Advaita Vedanta.(79)

For Christians, the goal is not to empty the mind. “Medieval Christian mystics generally interpreted the biblical claim that ‘it is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me’ (Galatians 2:20) to mean the Holy Spirit was filling their mind or spirit resulting in a complete alignment of one’s will with God’s.”(80) For many Christians, then, the turning inward of introvertive mysticism is a form of prayer, a way to get closer to God, not a way to identify oneself as God.

Denver Seminary philosopher Douglas Groothuis writes about Martin Buber’s experience of the One, of what Advaita Vedantists might call the Atman’s recognizing itself as Brahman:

From his own “unforgettable experience” Buber sought to understand a “state in which the bonds of the personal nature of life seem to [fall] away from us [and] we experience an undivided unity.” But Buber’s Jewish theological commitment to the inescapable I-Thou relationship between man and God prompted him to avoid the One. He interpreted the experience as revealing the unity of his own soul, but not the soul (the One) of all. Buber viewed his soul as “existing but once, single, unique, irreplaceable, this creaturely one; one of the human souls and not the ‘soul of the all’; a defined and particular being and not ‘Being.’” Buber assessed his experience as being beneath the joy and responsibility of dialog (the meeting of two individuals), not above it, as being farther from God and not nearer to him. Buber met the One and called it a liar.(81)

In direct opposition to Buber, the monist views I-thou as an inferior spiritual experience, for persons continue to view themselves as separate from the godhead. For the monist, the challenge is to find the set of instructions (usually in the person of a guru) and meditation techniques that will enable the individual soul to get free of the imperfect material world, to experience pure, contentless consciousness and to realize that the individual soul is the godhead, is Brahman.

Essentialists like Stace claim that this experience is the mystical experience and that all contrary views are misinterpretations caused by pre-existing religious beliefs. Christians, Jews, Muslims, and dualist Hindus, e.g., Ramanuja (Bhakti Vedanta), Madhva (Dvaita Vedanta), disagree, for they view the individual’s worship of the divine to be superior to the experience of pure, contentless consciousness. Some conceive of this experience as an evil retreat from God, that the experience of the One, as Groothuis says, is a “lie.” Madhva of Dvaita Vedanta seems to agree. He suggested that the powers of evil had sent Shankara, a proponent of monism.(82) Islamic philosopher Al-Ghazali (1058-1111) is more conciliatory, but remains a dualist:

He held that the mystic, in experiencing the vision of God, is so overwhelmed that he imagines he is united with him. However, this is a sort of illusion . . . In such ways, Al-Ghazali tried to do justice both to the actual experience of the contemplative and to a religion’s requirements of worship, which presupposes a dualism between the worshiper and the object of worship.(83)

Like Al-Ghazali, Catholic teaching respects the mystical experience, but subordinates it to the revelation of Jesus Christ. In a 1989 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation,” which was prompted in part by the popularity of eastern meditative techniques among Christians, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict) and Titular Archbishop Alberto Bovone said:

In order to draw near to that mystery of union with God, which the Greek Fathers called the divinization of man, and to grasp accurately the manner in which this is realized, it is necessary in the first place to bear in mind that man is essentially a creature, and remains such for eternity, so that an absorbing of the human self into the divine self is never possible, not even in the highest states of grace. However, one must recognize that the human person is created in the “image and likeness” of God, and that the archetype of this image is the Son of God, in whom and through whom we have been created (cf. Col 1:16).(84). . . .

Therefore, one has to interpret correctly the teaching of those masters who recommend “emptying” the spirit of all sensible representations and of every concept, while remaining lovingly attentive to God. In this way, the person praying creates an empty space which can then be filled by the richness of God. However, the emptiness which God requires is that of the renunciation of personal selfishness, not necessarily that of the renunciation of those created things which he has given us and among which he has placed us.(85) . . .

While he raises us up, God is free to “empty” us of all that holds us back in this world, to draw us completely into the Trinitarian life of his eternal love. However, this gift can only be granted “in Christ through the Holy Spirit,” and not through our own efforts.(86) . . .

Finally, the Christian who prays can, if God so wishes, come to a particular experience of union. The Sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist, are the objective beginning of the union of the Christian with God. Upon this foundation, the person who prays can be called, by a special grace of the Spirit, to that specific type of union with God which in Christian terms is called mystical.(87)

Monists (or qualified non-dualists), such as Shankara, view the mystical identification with the godhead as the endpoint of a long, disciplined journey in which the aspirant actively seeks the state of consciousness that enables him to feel one with the godhead because he has dispelled the ignorance that caused him to think that he was separate from the godhead. Dualists, on the other hand, view the mystical union as a communion of God and creature, not an identification of the two as one. The disciplined journey of prayer is the active contemplation that prepares the mystic for a passive and higher contemplation(88) in which the Holy Spirit fills his soul.

The mysticism associated with religion, eastern and western, is steeped in traditions of discipline. Aspirants do not go to their local place of worship and order up a mystical experience. They pursue a rigorous and disciplined path of prayer and/or meditation, which may lead some of them to the heights of mystical experience. This discipline, whether consummated or not in a mystical experience, also tends to make the aspirants more virtuous, more holy.

There are, however, “mystical” experiences that do not necessarily produce fruits of virtue and holiness, specifically psychedelics and experiences associated with certain cults. Cults are about control and compliance. Because it is impossible to control the effects of drugs and “mystical” experiences, most cult leaders oppose both. But there are exceptions.

Most notable is the copyrighted Transcendental Meditation (™), founded by the late guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. There are multiple levels to Transcendental Meditation. The largest number of practitioners are people who have learned the meditation technique, which involves silently repeating a mantra or sound, twice per day for 15–20 minutes. Probably millions of people practice this meditation. “A 2012 meta-analysis of the psychological impact of meditation found that Transcendental Meditation had a comparable effect on general wellbeing as other meditation techniques.”(89)

Other practitioners devote much more time to meditation–six or more hours per day among the most dedicated. Certain courses supposedly teach advanced meditators how to “levitate.” I watched a videotape of several dozen advanced practitioners in lotus positions in a large room. They were all hopping, often with much grunting or screaming. Sometimes the hops were remarkable, e.g., two feet in the air, but they were still obviously hops. Patrick Ryan, an exit counselor who participated in this training when he was a member of the organization, told me that when he was practicing “levitation,” in his mind he experienced himself lifting off the ground and flying across the room. But the observer of the videotape does not see a single person actually levitate and float across the room. The inner experience can be very different from the objective action.(90)

Patrick also showed me a videotape of himself sometime after he left Transcendental Meditation. The person on the tape, which he calls “spiritual botox,” was remarkably calm, with a flat affect. This was nothing like Patrick Ryan before entering the movement or Patrick Ryan several years after leaving the organization. That Patrick is lively and humorous, not flat, dull, and monotone.

Some might argue that monotone Patrick is an improvement, a more “spiritual” person. That argument gets to the heart of the difference between the monist view that the goal of spiritual discipline is to become absorbed into the godhead and the theist view that the goal is to order one’s relations with other people and with God in accordance with God’s revelation. The former perspective views monotone Patrick as good because emotion is part of the illusory world that must be left behind; the latter perspective sees emotion as part of a person, a creature who reflects the light and love of God and part of whose challenge is to rightly order his/her emotions, not obliterate them.

Like Transcendental Meditation, some large group awareness trainings (LGATs) aim at inducing an altered state of consciousness that one might call “mystical-light.” The spiritual granddaddy of LGATs was Erhard Seminars Training (est), whose founder, Werner Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg), worked at various sales and management jobs before founding est in 1971. In the 1960s Erhard studied Zen with Alan Watts and Zen rōshi Yamada Mumon in Japan.(91) The est training was a highly structured series of events that took place over a two-week period. The goal of the training was to transform participants’ lives by first breaking them down and then putting them back together. Implicit in the training was the mystical idea that you are god in your universe. When you realize that you are God in your universe, you understand that you are the cause of your discomfort and can freely choose to have it happen or not. There is no external reality affecting you. You are no longer distinguishable from anyone or anything else because you have created it all. I remember talking to friends who had been “ested” saying that they drove down streets of Manhattan trying to “create” parking spaces with the mind, which they should be able to do if they fully grasped that they are god in their universe.(92)

People marinated in psychedelics can exhibit similarly odd behaviors. Dozens of hallucinogenic trips might make them “mellow” when sober [though a small percentage become psychotic(93], but those trips do not make them holy. Dozens of trips may make them think they have paranormal powers; but they do not. The drugs may give them mystical or mystic-like experiences, but their lives and the way they relate to other people do not change much, except perhaps in certain exceptional cases, e.g., the seminarians in the Good Friday Experiment (who were already committed to a pursuit of Christian betterment).

Other than a handful of remarkable saints, perhaps the bulk of people in today’s world having mystical experience, especially that of contentless, pure consciousness, do not become holy. Alan Watts’s life is a case in point. Recall also the research that suggests that new chemicals might be able to produce the benefits of hallucinogens, e.g., with manic depression, without the subjective affect. There is still much to learn.

Now, let us examine the second question I proposed for religious believers at the beginning of this essay. Do proponents of the revelatory power of mystical experience overvalue its importance and undervalue the wisdom inherent in less dramatic religious experiences and practices? My response to this question is twofold. First, I think ideas about mystical experience, and eastern religions in general, have had a deleterious effect on Christians. Second, if one looks at the behavior of religious persons, mysticism is only a minor factor that may appear to be important because of the attention given to eastern religions during the past 70 years.

Our fast-paced, consumerist, and media-obsessed culture has magnified the deleterious impact of hallucinogen use and the profusion of books, articles, and videos extolling eastern religions. Madison-Avenue hype can persuade people that they can eat the mystical fruit without prolonged effort and discipline, which all theologies of mysticism demand. The psychological services industry is full of programs that promise rapid and comparatively effortless “transformation” that will supposedly make their customers happy and fulfilled. Some of these programs promote mystical or “mystical-light” experiences. If any program truly delivered on these lofty promises, it would quickly come to monopolize the field. That there are so many established and newly created programs of “transformation” suggests that the hype is more substantial than the outcome.

This “spiritual” movement is often categorized as “new age.” A series of studies by Dole and colleagues concluded that

The New Age movement is an alternative religious paradigm that is rooted in Eastern mysticism, eclectic in its practices and beliefs, tolerant (or undiscerning, depending upon one’s perspective) of nontraditional practices and beliefs, and optimistic about humanity’s capacity to bring about a great evolutionary leap in consciousness.(94)

One indicator of the New Age movement’s influence on American culture is belief in reincarnation. Pew surveys found that the following percentages of people believed in reincarnation: 33% of all U.S. adults; 30% of Christians (26% Protestant, 38% Catholic); 40% ages 18-49.(95) That nearly one-third of Christians believe in reincarnation reveals how much eastern religious ideas have seeped into the culture and how ineffective Christian educational authorities have been in teaching the fundamentals of their faith.

The diffusion of eastern religious beliefs, including those related to mysticism, obscures the fact that mysticism is a relatively minor factor in the religious beliefs and behavior of most people. Though there are a number of bible verses that seem to describe or at least point toward mystical experiences, most of the Bible addresses how people should live and worship. Few church sermons consider mystical experiences. Church members are much more likely to volunteer at a food bank than to pursue mystical experience.

Indeed, I agree with McGinn, who suggested that

“presence” is more accurate than “union”, since not all mystics spoke of union with God, and since many visions and miracles were not necessarily related to union. He also argues that we should speak of “consciousness” of God’s presence, rather than of “experience.”(96)

McGinn’s terminological preference for “consciousness” runs counter to the modern zeitgeist, which treats “experiences” as valued commodities that one purchases. Ordinary religious folk, who are not twisted by hype about transformation and mystical experience, are quite satisfied, elated even, with being conscious of God’s presence now and then.

I quote the late Father Benedict Groeschel again, as I did in a previous essay:

Do you want to know the certain and direct revelation of God? Pick up a Bible and read it! Do you want to be speedily and mysteriously in the presence of Christ? Reverently and prayerfully visit the Blessed Sacrament! Do you want to see and touch Jesus Christ? Serve the poor! These means are available to all, and they are incontrovertibly true.(97)

Conclusions

At the beginning of this essay, I wrote that the mystical experience, if true, may bring us closer to God, and if false, may lead us away from God, if he exists, and/or into a hyper-subjectivity that distances us from fellow human beings.

The problem with this formulation is that it presumes that the essentialists are correct, and that there is a mystical experience. My review strongly suggests, however, that the essentialists are only partly correct. Some people may experience pure, contentless consciousness, as essentialists like Stace maintain. However, I agree with the skeptical position offered above that pure consciousness does not constitute unity with the godhead. It may be nothing more than a very deep trance state, an experience of awareness stripped of sensory, intellectual, and imagistic content. Martin Buber, Madhva, and other adherents of dualist religious faiths may agree with this claim. Others may see the pure consciousness state as a temporary self emptying, which God then fills with light in loving communion with His creature. But no dualist would claim that pure consciousness is God.

Some dualists caution that the pure consciousness state is one that “the evil one” could exploit.(98) Others warn that an unhealthy focus on inner experience can draw one toward self-importance or sterile abstractions and away from the brotherly love that is central to Christ’s teachings. Luther, for example,

states that Dionysius [the Areopagite] “taught that humans can converse and deal with the inscrutable, eternal majesty of God in this mortal, corrupt flesh without mediation,” and he warns his listeners to avoid reading books like Mystical Theology. Luther’s “alternative was the theology of the Cross.” Luther also comments, “Dionysius is most pernicious; he Platonizes more than he Christianizes.”(99)

Ratzinger and Bovone echo Luther’s admonition by citing Augustine:

On this topic St. Augustine is an excellent teacher: if you want to find God, he says, abandon the exterior world and re-enter into yourself. However, he continues, do not remain in yourself, but go beyond yourself because you are not God: He is deeper and greater than you.(100)

It is important to remember that there are different varieties of mystical experience and that all mainstream religions offer much more than the possibility of a mystical experience someday. They offer meaning, fellowship, guidance, and the safety of traditions. The average young person probably has a higher probability of becoming an all-star baseball player than a saint. So, maybe we should be humble and keep our focus on our backyard, rather than dream of the lofty heights of mysticism.

I live in Florida, where we have stunning sunsets. I imagine myself sitting on a beach admiring one of our wondrous displays of sun and cloud and sky. I think of St. Francis, and I say to myself, “I don’t need mystical experiences. I have Brother Sunset to bring the light and love of God into my life.”

Notes

1 Inge, W. R. (1899). Christian mysticism. London: Methuen & Co. Available through Google Scholar: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Christian_Mysticism/zyI1AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=William+Inge+Christian+Mysticism&pg=PA3&printsec=frontcover

2 Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystical_or_religious_experience

3 Stace, W. T. (1960). The teachings of the mystics. New York: New American Library.

4 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mysticism

5 Stace, pp. 114-115.

6 Stace, p. 137.

7 Stace, p. 133.

8 Smart, N. (1967). Hinduism. In P. Edwards (Editor in Chief), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 4. New York: Collier MacMillan, pp. 2-3.

9 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Samkhya

10 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dvaita

11 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mimamsa

12 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vedanta

13 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ramanuja

14 Akhilananda, S. (1948/1965). Hindu psychology: Its meaning for the West. London: Routledge & Kagan Paul Ltd., pp. 154-155.

15 Stace, pp. 39-40.

16 Fellows, O. (1967). Buddhism. In P. Edwards (Editor in Chief), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 1. New York: Collier MacMillan, p. 416.

17 Fellows, p. 417.

18 Carmona, R. N. (2021, February 21). Philosophy of Religion Series: A brief exploration of Ātman in Hinduism and Anattā in Buddhism. https://naturalistphilosophy.wordpress.com/2021/02/21/philosophy-of-religion-series-a-brief-exploration-of-atman-in-hinduism-and-anatta-in-buddhism/#:~:text=In%20Buddhism%2C%20there%20is%20no,immutable%2C%20essential%20soul%20or%20consciousness.

19 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism. Section: Karma.

20 Stace, pp. 76-77.

21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meister_Eckhart. Section: Modern Spirituality.

22 Stace, p. 141.

23 Stace, pp. 154-155.

24 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Francis-of-Assisi. Section: Early Life and Career.

25 Osborne, K. B. (2003). The Franciscan intellectual tradition. St. Bonaventure University: The Franciscan Institute, p. 31.

26 Osborne, p. 33.

27 Osborne, p. 40.

28 Delio, I. (2003). A Franciscan view of creation. St. Bonaventure University: The Franciscan Institute, p 14.

29 Delio, p. 36.

30 Franciscans Celebrate 800th Anniversary of Canticle of the Creatures. https://friars.us/article/2025/01/11/franciscans-celebrate-800th-anniversary-of-canticle-of-the-creatures#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20Canticle%20of,)%20at%20La%20Verna%2C%20St

31 Delio, p. 12.

32 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_%C3%81vila. Section: Religious Life.

33 Eire, C. M. N. (2023, November 8). The reluctant levitator: Teresa of Avila’s humble raptures. The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-reluctant-levitator/

34 Eire, C. (2023, September 19). Altered states. The Lamp. https://thelampmagazine.com/issues/issue-19/altered-states#:~:text=%E2%80%9COrdinarily%2C%20she%20was%20so%20elevated,of%20these%20reports%20were%20very

35 Eire, The reluctant levitator.

36 Eire, The reluctant levitator.

37 Blai, A. (2021, May 24). The saints who levitated: Extraordinary and concrete miracles. Catholic Exchange. https://catholicexchange.com/the-saints-who-levitated-extraordinary-and-concrete-miracles/#:~:text=There%20are%20similar%20anecdotes%20told,For%20her%20part%2C%20St. Section: Did St. Francis of Assisi Levitate?

38 Eire, The reluctant levitator.

39 Stace, pp. 175-176.

40 Stace, p. 180.

41 Stace, p. 184.

42 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alan-Watts

43 Watts, A. W. (1962). The joyous cosmology: Adventures in the chemistry of consciousness. New York: Vintage Books, p. 63, 65.

44 Hood, R., Spilka, B., Hunsberger, B, & Gorsuch, R. (1996). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach (second edition). New York: The Guilford Press, p. 227.

45 Hood et al., p. 227.

46 Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. (1976). Mysticism: Spiritual quest or psychic disorder? New York: Mental Health Materials Center, 781.

47 Laski, M. (1961). Ecstasy: A study of some secular and religious experiences. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Cited in Hood et al.

48 Thomas, L. E., & Cooper, P. E. (1978). Measurement and incidence of mystical experiences: An exploratory study. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 17, 433-437. Cited in Hood et al.

49 Hood et al., p. 239.

50 Pafford, M. (1973). Inglorious Wordsworths: A study of some transcendental experiences in childhood and adolescence. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Cited in Hood et al.

51 Klingberg, G. (1959). A study of religious experience in children from nine to thirteen years of age. Religious Education, 54, 211-216. Cited in Hood et al.

52 Hood, R. W., Jr. (1973) Religious orientation and the experience of transcendence. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 12, 441-448. Cited in Hood et al.

53 Hay, D. & Morisy, A. (1985). Secular society, religious meanings: A contemporary paradox. Review of Religious Research, 26, 213-227. Cited in Hood et al.

54 Pahnke, W. N. (1966). Drugs and mysticism. International Journal of Parapsychology, 8, 295-320. Cited in Hood et al.

55 Griffiths RR, Richards WA, McCann U, Jesse R. (2006). Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology, 187, 268–83. doi: 10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5, PMID: [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar] Cited in Hood et al.

56 Hood, R. W. Jr. (1970). Religious orientation and the report of religious experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 9, 285-291. Cited in Hood et al.

57 Hood, R. W., Jr. (1975). The construction and preliminary validation of a measure of reported mystical experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 14, 29-41. Cited in Hood et al.

58 Hood et al., p. 256.

59 Wulff, D. M. (2000). Mysticism. In E. Cardena, S. J. Lynn, & S. Krippner (Eds.), Varieties of anomalous experience: Examining the scientific evidence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

60 Persinger, Michael A. (1987). Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs. New York: Praeger. [Google Scholar] Cited in Hood et al.

61 Marshall, P. (2022). Does mystical experience give access to reality? Religions, 13(10), 983. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100983

62 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystical_or_religious_experience. Section: Neuroscience.

63 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystical_or_religious_experience. Section: Neuroscience. (See Wikipedia for references.)

64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystical_or_religious_experience. Section: Neuroscience. Citation: Newberg, A. B., d’Aquili, E. G., & Raise, V. (2002). Why God won’t go away: Brain science and the biology of belief. New York: Random House.

65 McLean, K. A., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2011). Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(11), 1453–1461. doi: 10.1177/0269881111420188. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3537171/#:~:text=In%20participants%20who%20had%20mystical,one%20year%20after%20the%20session.

66 Romeo, B., Kervadec, E., Fauvel, B., Strika-Bruneau, L., Amirouche, A., Bezo, A., Piolino, P, & Benyamina, A. (2025). The intensity of the psychedelic experience is reliably associated with clinical improvements: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 172. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106086. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40031999/#:~:text=Meta%2Dcorrelations%20were%20performed%2C%20and,the%20therapeutic%20potential%20of%20psychedelics.

67 Garcia-Romeu, A. (2025). Deconstructing the trip treatment: are hallucinogenic effects critical to the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics? NPP—Digit Psychiatry Neurosci 3, 22 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44277-025-00043-y. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44277-025-00043-y. Section: History.

68 Kugel, J., Laukkonen, R. E., Yaden, D. B., Yücel, M., & Liknaitzky, P. (2025). Insights on psychedelics: A systematic review of therapeutic effects. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106117. Yaden, D. B., & Griffiths, R. R. (2020). The subjective effects of psychedelics are necessary for their enduring therapeutic effects. ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, 4(2). doi: 10.1021/acsptsci.0c00194.

69 MacLean et al.

70 Garcia-Romeu, Section: Associations between subjective effects and therapeutic outcomes.

71 Mosurinjohn, S., Roseman, L., & Girn, M. (2023). Psychedelic-induced mystical experiences: An interdisciplinary discussion and critique. Frontiers of Psychiatry, 14. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1077311. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1077311/full.

72 Mosurinjohn et al. Section: Cultural sensitivity and the need for psychometric meta-data.

73 Marshall, Section: 3. Mystical Experience as Ontically Irrelevant: Radical Contextualism.

74 Stace, p. 185.

75 Mosurinjohn et al.

76 Delio, I. (2003). A Franciscan view of creation: Learning to live in a sacramental world. St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Heritage Series, Volume Two.

77 Smart, N. (1967). Mysticism. In P. Edwards (Editor in Chief), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: MacMillan, p. 427.

78 Jones, R., & Gelman, J. (2022). Mysticism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mysticism/

79 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Shankara

80 Jones & Gelman. Section 2.2.1 Union with God.

81 Groothuis, D. R. (1986). Unmasking the New Age. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 165.

82 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dvaita

83 Smart, p. 428.

84 Ratzinger, J., & Bovone, A. (1989, Oct. 15). Letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church on some aspects of Christian meditation. Vatican City: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, paragraph 14. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19891015_meditazione-cristiana_en.html

85 Ratzinger & Bovone, paragraph 19.

86 Ratzinger & Bovone, paragraph 20.

87 Ratzinger & Bovone, paragraph 22.

88 Poulain, A. (1912). Mystical Theology. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14621a.htm.

89 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation#cite_note-Sed12a-9. Reference: Sedlmeier, Peter; Eberth, Juliane; Schwarz, Marcus; Zimmerman, Doreen; Haarig, Frederik; Jaeger, Sonia; Kunze, Sonja; et al. (May 2012). “The Psychological Effects of Meditation: A Meta-Analysis”. Psychological Bulletin. 138(6), 1139–1171. doi:10.1037/a0028168. PMID 22582738

90 Personal communication with Patrick Ryan.

91 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Erhard

92 Personal communication with Vanessa Weber.

93 Sabe, M. et al. (2025, March). Reconsidering evidence for psychedelic-induced psychosis: an overview of reviews, a systematic review, and meta-analysis of human studies. Mol Psychiatry, 30(3):1223-1255. doi: 10.1038/s41380-024-02800-5. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39592825/#:~:text=Meta%2Danalysis%20of%20nine%20studies,developed%20long%2Dlasting%20psychotic%20symptoms.

94 Dole, A. A., & Langone, M. D. (1994). Strongly held views about the new age: Critics versus Experts. Cultic Studies Journal, 11(1). https://sites.google.com/site/michaellangonephd/article-mdl/strongly-held-views-about-the-new-age.

95 Pew Research Center. (2021, November 23). 2. Views on the afterlife. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/11/23/views-on-the-afterlife/#:~:text=Whereas%20younger%20Americans%20are%20less,those%20ages%2050%20and%20older.

96 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism. Citation: McGinn, Bernard (2005), “Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity and Islam”, in Jones, Lindsay (ed.), MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religion, New York: MacMillan.

97 Groeschel, B. (1993). A still, small voice: A practical guide on reported revelations. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, pp. 24-25.

98 Poulain, A. (1912). Mystical Theology. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14621a.htm.

99 Strom, B. (2022, June 24). Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, iInfluence of Neo-Platonism on mystical Christianity. Catholic Middle Ages and Beyond. https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite-influence-of-neo-platonism-on-mystical-christianity/#:~:text=Luther%20also%20comments%2C%20%E2%80%9CDionysius%20is,more%20than%20he%20Christianizes.%E2%80%9D%5B

100 Ratzinger & Bovone, paragraph 19.