## 1. Mystical Experiences



Because of its variable meanings, a definition of "mystical
experience" must be partly stipulative. It is common among
philosophers to refer to "mystical experience" in a
narrow sense: a purportedly nonsensory or
extrovertive *unitive* experience by a subject of an
object granting acquaintance of realities or states of affairs that
are of a kind not accessible by way of sense-perception, somatosensory
modalities, or standard introspection. A unitive experience
involves the eradication of a sense of multiple discrete entities,
and the cognitive significance of the experience is deemed to lie
precisely in that phenomenological feature. Examples are experiences
of "union with God," the realization that one is identical to the
being shared with God or that one is identical to the
Brahman of Advaita Vedanta (i.e., that the self/soul is identical
with the one eternal, absolute reality), experiencing a oneness
to all of nature, and the Buddhist unconstructed extrovertive
experience devoid of a sense of any multiplicity of
realities (see Smart 1958, 1978; Wainwright 1981, chap. 1).
However, as discussed in Section 2.2.1, few classical
mystics refer to their experiences as the *union* of
two realities: there is no literal "merging" or
"absorption" of one reality into another resulting in only
one entity. Excluded from the narrow definition are, for example,
experiences of "contact" with God in which the subject and
God remain ontologically distinct, even if there is a lessening of
boundaries, or a Jewish Kabbalistic experience of a single
supernal *sefirah*.



A more inclusive definition of "mystical experience" is:



> 
> A purportedly nonsensory awareness or a nonstructured
> sensory experience granting acquaintance of 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.
> 



"Experience," "consciousness," and "awareness" are
notoriously difficult to define and will be left unanalyzed here, but
the other key terms in the definition can be understood as
follows:


1. "Purportedly" allows the definition to be accepted without
necessarily accepting that mystics ever really do experience realities
or states of affairs in the way they described.
2. "Nonsenory awareness" includes content of a kind not appropriate
to sense-perception, somatosensory modalities (including the means for
sensing pain and body temperature, and internally sensing body, limb,
organ, and visceral positions and states), or standard introspection.
Some mystics have referred to a distinct "spiritual" means of
knowing appropriate only to a non-physical realm (*nous*,
*intellectus*, *buddhi*). A super sense-perceptual mode
of experience may accompany sense-perception as in the cases of
"nature mysticism" or "cosmic consciousness" (Bucke 1901),
as when, for example, a person has an awareness of God while
watching a setting sun.
3. "Nonstructured sensory experience" consists of phenomenological
sensory content but lacks the conceptualization normally
structuring sense-perception.
4. "Acquaintance" of realities in mystical experiences means the
subject is putatively aware of one or
more realities in a way that overcomes the normal subject/object
duality: the "acquaintance" is "knowledge by
participation" or "knowledge by identity" (Forman 1990,
Introduction). Mystical experiences are allegedly
"direct," "unmediated" insights in that sense.
5. "States of affairs" include the impermanence of all reality and
that God is the ground of the self. "Acquaintance" of states of
affairs comes in two forms. In one, a subject is aware of either
(one or more) realities on which (one or more) states of affairs
supervene. An example would be an awareness of God (a reality)
affording an awareness of one's utter dependence on God (a state
of affairs). In its second form, acquaintance of states of affairs
involves an insight directly, without supervening on acquaintance, of
any reality. An example is coming to "see" the
impermanence of all that exists in the phenomenal world.



Hereafter "mystical experience" will be used in the broader
sense, unless otherwise noted, not merely for unitive
experiences. Correspondingly, the term "mysticism" will refer to
practices, discourse, texts, institutions, and traditions associated
with these experiences. The definition excludes paranormal
experiences such as visions, voices, out-of-body experiences,
and powers such as telepathy. All of these are
"dualistic" acquaintance of subjects with objects or qualities of
a kind accessible to the senses or to ordinary introspection.



The subject may not have the mental separation *at the time of the
experience* by which she could tell herself, as it were, what
realities or state of affairs were then being disclosed to her. The
realization may arise following the experience.



Mystical experiences occur within all world religions and
probably all primal religions. In some traditions, the experiences are
allegedly of a supersensory reality, such as God or Brahman. Many
Buddhist traditions, however, make no claim for an experience of a
supersensory reality but instead cultivate an experience of
"unconstructed awareness" involving an awareness of the world on
a completely or partially non-conceptual level (see
Griffiths 1993). The non-conceptual experience is thought to
grant knowledge of the true nature of phenomenal reality, such
as the impermanent nature of all things. Prajnaparamita and
Madhyamaka Buddhists refer to this as the experience of the
"thusness" (*tathata*) or
"thatness" (*tattva*) of reality that
is accessible only in the absence of ordinary
sense-perceptual cognition that is structured by cultural
conceptions.



It should be emphasized that mystics value achieving *enduring
states* of consciousness over
transient *experiences* -- in particular, they value
the personal transformation leading to the enlightened state free of a
sense of a phenomenal "self" in which they are aligned with the way
things really are (as defined by their tradition). Mysticism is a
matter of practices and ways of life, not episodic experiences.



Care should also be taken not to confuse "mystical experience" with
"religious experience." The latter refers to any experience
having significance appropriate to a religious context. This includes
many instances of mystical experiences but also religious visions
and voices, and various religious feelings, such as religious awe
and sublimity. Also included is what Friedrich Schleiermacher
identified as the fundamental religious experience: the feeling of
"absolute dependence" (Schleiermacher 1963). Rudolf
Otto reserved the term "numinous" (from Latin "*numen*"
meaning "divine" or "spirit") for experiences allegedly of a reality
perceived of as "wholly other" than the subject, producing a
reaction of dread and fascination before an incomprehensible mystery
(Otto 1957). In the sense of "mystical" used here,
Otto's numinous experience is a dualistic experience
and not thus mystical. Your garden-variety sense of God's
"presence" would count as a numinous experience. A
"secular" mysticism is also possible (see Section 12). 


## 2. Classifying Mystical Experiences



Mystical experiences can be classified through various
dichotomies. (See Wainwright 1981, 33-40 and Jones 2016, 31-34
for detailed typologies.) The most common are these:


### 2.1 Extrovertive and Introvertive



Walter Stace (1960) fixed the distinction between
"extrovertive" and "introvertive" mystical experiences in
philosophy of mysticism (also see Otto 1932, 57-72). When
an experience includes sense-perception, it is an "extrovertive"
experience. Mystical extrovertive experiences include consciousness of
the unity of nature overlaid onto one's sense-perception of the
world, as well as non-unitive extrovertive experiences such as
"cosmic consciousness." When not extrovertive, an experience is
"introvertive." Examples include the experience of
"nothingness" -- an awareness lacking all
differentiated content -- and an awareness of God
lacking sense-experiences.



Extrovertive mystical experiences are not merely stunted
introvertive ones but complete experiences in their own right
(see Jones 2016; contra Stace 1960). Paul Marshall (2005) has
developed a detailed phenomenology of these experiences.


### 2.2 Dualistic and Monistic



A favorite distinction of Western philosophers is between dualistic
and monistic experiences. A dualistic experience maintains
some distinction, however tenuous, between the subject and what
is disclosed. Thus, theistic mystical experiences typically are
dualistic, retaining, at some level, a distinction between God and the
mystic. Monistic experiences are the extreme of unitive
experiences in that they dissolve all duality (Merkur 1999). They
are either experiences of the absolute ontological oneness of
everything, free of our conceptual distinctions, or are pure
consciousness experiences.


#### 2.2.1 Union with God



Classical mystics did not usually speak of a true "union with
God." The term "*unio mystica*" was devised in the
thirteenth century, but few Christian mystics used that term before
the modern era (McGinn 2001, 132; Jantzen 1995) -- only
in the modern study of mysticism has *unio mystica* received a
central place (McGinn 2006, 427). When Abrahamic mystics
do use the language of union, it involves a falling away of the
separation between a person and God short of identity: the
idea is more of "communion" with God than union.
"Deification" means becoming God-like. All mystical
experiences involve overcoming a sense of "self," but usually not
a sense of becoming another reality. In theisms, this is an
alignment of spirits, not an ontological union of different substances
that were once distinct. Christian mystics used various metaphors.
Henry Suso (1295-1366) likened union with God to a drop of
water falling into wine, taking on the taste and color of the wine
(Suso 1953, 185); Jan van Ruysbroeck (1293-1381)
described union as "iron within the fire and the fire within the
iron;" Teresa of Avila (1515-1882) likened the soul
that absorbs and is saturated with God to a sponge and
water. (See Pike 1992,
chap. 2; Mommaers 2009.) A "spiritual marriage" of
the soul (the bride) and Christ (the bridegroom) is common. Bernard of
Clairvaux (1090-1153) described unification as "mutuality
of love." Overall, classical Christian mystics usually
treated "becoming one with God" as a loving union of wills
with God's or even a fusion of the mind with God's (McGinn
2006, 427-429). 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. 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
(Schimmel 1975).


#### 2.2.2 Identity with God



Theistic mystics sometimes speak as though they have the awareness of
being fully absorbed into God or even becoming identical
to God. Examples are the Islamic Sufi mystic al-Husayn al-Hallaj
(858-922) proclaiming "I am the Real" (see
Schimmel 1975, chap. 2) and the Jewish Kabbalist Isaac of
Acre (b. 1291?) who wrote of the soul being completely absorbed
into God "as a jug of water into a running
well" (Idel 1988, 67). The Hasidic master
Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812) wrote of a
person as a drop of water in the ocean of the Infinite with an
illusory sense of individual "dropness." The Christian
mystic Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327/8) claimed that we and
God share the same being (*esse*) supplied by a
transcendent Godhead (Eckhart 2009, 109). It is still controversial,
however, as to when such declarations are to be taken as assertions of
true identity and when they are hyperbolic variations on descriptions
of union-type experiences. Shankara's Advaita gives a nontheistic
example: our "essence" (*atman*) is identical to the only
reality there is (Brahman) -- there is a nonduality
(*a-dvaita*) of all essences.


### 2.3 Theurgic and Non-Theurgic Mysticism



In theurgic (from the Greek "*theourgia*") mysticism a mystic
intends to activate the divine (e.g., God's grace) in a mystical
experience (Shaw 1995, 4). Nonetheless, theistic
mystics typically claim that experiences of God's activity do
not result from their own endeavors. So too, most mystics are not
involved in theurgic activity. The Jewish Kabbalah is the most
prominent form of theurgic mysticism. In it, the mystic aims to bring
about a modification in the inner life of the Godhead (see
Idel 1988).


### 2.4 Apophatic and Kataphatic Mysticism



Apophatic mysticism (from the
Greek "*apophasis*," meaning negation or
"saying away") is contrasted with kataphatic mysticism (from the
Greek "*kataphasis*," meaning affirmation or
"saying with"). Apophatic mystics claim that nothing positive can
be said about objects or states of affairs that they experience. These
are absolutely indescribable, or "ineffable." Thus,
apophatic theology typically will be negative theology -- that we
can say only what God is not. Kataphatic mysticism does make claims
about what a mystic experiences. Pertaining to God, this means
that God can be described by positive terms. Analytic philosophers of
mysticism have mainly dealt with kataphatic conceptions. (For an
exception see Alston 2005 in the Other Internet Resources.)



Shankara's Advaita Vedanta is apophatic: nothing describing phenomenal
features can be applied to Brahman. Even discussing Brahman without
qualities (*nirguna-brahman*) is still a form of the formless
Brahman (*Brahma-sutra-bhasya* III.2.14). So too, Plotinus
stated that no name applies to the One (*Enneads* IV.9.5).
In a remark echoed by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas about God, he
wrote that we can only state what the One is not, not what it is
(*Enneads* V.3.14). 



The two approaches can represent two stages in mystical contemplation
with the apophatic approach usually treated as higher. Theologians
also may utilize the apophatic approach (and ineffability) in contexts
unrelated to mystical experiences. Even the theologian who introduced
the *via negativa* to Christianity, Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite (c. 500), also wrote works in the affirmative
kataphatic approach on religious symbolism and the names of God,
while still stressing that God cannot be fully captured by any
name. 


## 3. The Attributes of Mystical Experience



Three purported features of mystical experiences are of special
interest to philosophers:


### 3.1 Noetic Quality



Mystical experiences, both introvertive and extrovertive, are
alleged to be "noetic," i.e., giving knowledge of what a subject
apprehends (see James 1958). As Chris Letheby puts it: "Noetic
quality refers to a strong sense of gaining a genuine and unmediated
insight, or of encountering ultimate reality; the mystical experience,
by definition, is felt to be 'more real than real'" (Letheby 2021,
25). To what extent this knowledge could come from the experiences
alone will be discussed in Section 9.


### 3.2 Ineffability



When classical mystics invoke "ineffability," it is typically to
affirm that there is more to what was experienced that can be
expressed in any language, not to deny anything can be said about that
reality. But William James (1958, 292-93) deemed absolute
ineffability or indescribability to be an essential mark of
mysticism. Even indirect depictions of what is experienced through
analogies, metaphors, and art turn it into something like a
phenomenal object and thus must ultimately be denied. Moreover, it is
not always clear whether it is the experience or its alleged
object or both that is considered ineffable by a given
mystic.



A logical problem with ineffability was noted long ago by Augustine:
God should not be said to be ineffable, for to say that *X* is
ineffable is to say *something* about *X*, which
contravenes ineffability (Augustine 1958, 10-11). This
problem has been raised by Alvin Plantinga (1980, 23-25) and
Keith Yandell (1975).



Several responses to this problem are possible. One is to avoid speech
altogether and remain silent about what is revealed in experience.
Mystics, however, have not been very good at this. A second is to
distinguish first-order from second-order attributions, where
"ineffability" is a second-order term solely about all
first-order phenomenal descriptive terms (Jones 2016, 204-208).
That is, to say that something is ineffable would be to assert
that it could not be described by any first-order terms, including
"ineffable." A third possibility is to say that "*X* is
ineffable" is really a statement about the
*term* "*X*," saying about it that it fails to
refer to any describable entity.



A fourth possibility lies in the ongoing negation of whatever is
said about *X* *ad infinitum* in an infinite
"unsaying" or taking back of what has been said (Sells 1994,
chap. 1). An example of unsaying can be found in the endless negations
in some Zen Buddhist meditative exercises. Since the truth about
reality "as it is" lies outside of our conceptualizations of it,
we cannot *say* that truth, only *experience* it. Hence,
when we say, "Reality is not reality" (i.e., that reality as
it is differs from what we take it to be conceptually), we must also
say that "Reality is not not-reality" to counter an affirmation
of its nature as not-reality. We must then negate the latter by saying
"Reality is neither not-reality nor not-not-reality." And so on. (See
Nhat Hanh, 1994, chap. 5.) But classical mystics typically affirmed,
as Shankara did with Brahman, that a reality lay behind all
negations. So too, Eckhart prayed to God to make him free of God
(Eckhart 2009, 424, 531) -- it is not a denial of God but an
attempt to get to the Godhead behind God and creation.



William Alston (1991) offers a fifth possibility: when mystics
talk about "indescribability," they refer only to the difficulty
of describing in literal terms rather than by metaphor, analogy,
and symbols.



A sixth solution comes from Richard Gale and Ninian Smart each of
whom have argued that "ineffability" is merely an honorific
title marking the value and intensity of an experience a mystic
considers profound (Gale 1960; Smart 1958, 69). 



As another possibility, Wayne Proudfoot (1985, 125-27)
argues that invoking ineffability is not to
describe but to prescribe that no language shall be
applicable, and so serves to create and maintain a protective sense of
mystery. However, experiences of ineffability occur in art
and music (Gallope 2017) and in everyday experience. Think of the
impossibility of describing the taste of coffee to someone who has
never tasted it (King 1988). This diminishes the "protective
strategies" argument.



Some philosophers think that a stress on ineffability signifies an
attempt to consign mysticism to the irrational, thus excluding it
from more sensible human pursuits, or consign them to the realm of the
emotions (Jantzen 1995, 344). Others have staunchly defended the
rationality of mysticism against charges of irrationalism
(Staal 1975; Jones 2016, chap. 7).


### 3.3 Paradoxicality



Scholars of mysticism sometimes stress the alleged
"paradoxical" nature of mystical experiences. Four senses of
"paradoxical" are relevant. (1) According to its etymology,
"paradoxical" refers to what is surprising or "contrary to
expectation." (2) Language can be intentionally
"paradoxical" in using a logically improper form of words to
convey what is not intended to be logically absurd. This may be for
rhetorical effect or because of difficulty in conveying a thought
without resort to linguistic tricks. (3) A "paradox" can involve
an unexpected logical contradiction, as in the "Liar
Paradox." (4) "Paradoxicality" may be an
*intended* logical contradiction. Walter Stace sees this as a
universal feature of mystical experiences (Stace 1960,
212). 



Insofar as mystical experiences are out of the ordinary, and the
unitive quality strange to most of us, reports of them may very well
be surprising or contrary to expectation. Hence, they may be
paradoxical in sense (1). Reports of mystical experiences may be
paradoxical also in sense (2) because at times mystical language
does assume logically offensive forms when actual absurdity may
not be intended. Frits Staal argued that paradoxical mystical language
has been used systematically to make logically respectable claims
(Staal 1975). However, paradox in this sense occurs less
frequently in first-hand reports of mystical experiences and more in
second-order mystical systems of thought (Moore 1973).



There is no good reason for thinking that reports of mystical
experience must imply logical absurdity, as in (3) or (4). As noted
above, while there do occur forms of expression that are
contradictory, the contradiction is often removed by the device of
"unsaying" or canceling out that propels the discourse into
a non-discursive realm.



The attempt to designate mystical experiences as paradoxical in senses
(3) and (4) may result from being too eager to take logically deviant
language literally. For example, Zen Buddhists speak of
reaching a state of mind beyond both thought and "no-thought" and
perception and "no-perception" -- i.e., having thoughts but
not projecting our conceptual distinctions onto reality, thereby
avoiding the fabrication of a false world of discrete
objects. Labeling mental activity ceases. No logical
absurdity infects this description. While mystics use much literal
language in describing their experiences (see Alston 1992,
80-102), the literality need not extend to paradox in senses (3)
or (4).



But paradox is only natural in mystical discourse: mystics want to
affirm something of the nature of what they experienced, but they must
utilize language originally designed for phenomenal realities and
so must then deny the ascriptions as not actually applicable. Thus,
the paradox of affirming something and then denying it is not
irrational or nonsense. But we would need to have a mystical
experience to see why the features were affirmed and why they are
denied as not truly applicable.


## 4. Pure Consciousness Events



Is the content of mystical experiences "given" to
a mystic, or is it constructed by the mystic in accordance
with the mystical, religious, and cultural tradition in which he or
she is embedded? First consider the possibility of "pure
consciousness events" (PCEs) -- mental events
that allegedly involve an "emptying out" by a subject of
all phenomenological qualities and content (including concepts,
thoughts, sense-perception, and sensuous images) and yet remaining
awake, thereby leaving only unconditioned consciousness. Do such
events occur? And if they do, how significant are they in
mysticism?


### 4.1 Defenders of Pure Consciousness Events



Defenders of PCEs depend on alleged references to pure consciousness
in the mystical literature. One example is the Buddhist
philosopher Paramaartha (499-569) who stated
explicitly that all of our cognitions were "conditioned"
by our concepts save for the
"unconditioned" experience of the emptiness of
phenomena (Forman 1989). Another example is Meister Eckhart
who described a "forgetting" that abandons concepts and
sense-experience to sink into a mystical
"oblivion" (Forman 1990, 121-159). In addition, Robert
Forman has testified to a PCE he himself underwent (Forman 1990,
Introduction).


### 4.2 Denial of Pure Consciousness Events



Criticisms of the possibility of PCEs include: (1) Reports
of PCEs found in the literature may not be decisive in establishing
the occurrence of PCEs. We should suspect an
"idealization" in these reports in which an ideal goal is
presented as achieved when in fact it wasn't. Mystics
thereby remember an experience with content *as* pure
consciousness only because of a "confirmation bias" of what
was expected. (2) Reports of "emptying out" and
"forgetting" may refer only to an emptying of ordinary
experiential content, thereby making room for an extraordinary
content. This accords well with the conception of *ayin*
(nothingness) in Jewish mysticism, which is positively saturated with
divine reality (Matt 1997). For a theist such as Eckhart,
emptying the mind by "unknowing" is to empty the mind of all
content other than the being that we share with God (Eckhart
2009, 34-36, 42-43), not an absolute emptiness of content.
(3) Even if a subject honestly reports on a pure consciousness
episode, there may have been conceptual events the subject either
repressed or experienced in a nebulous way (Wainwright 1981,
117-119). The latter simply do not remain for memory. (4)
Some argue that because of the way our brain has evolved for our
survival, all experience or awareness is necessarily
*intentional*. Consciousness is always consciousness
*of* something to a subject and hence necessarily contains some
dualistic content. Thus, because of our nature, there can be no
experiences free of any content (Katz 1978). Defenders of the
possibility of PCEs reply that it is the *interpretation* of
the experience's content a mystic gives after the experience
that reflects cultural ideas, but the *experience*
itself is only a pure consciousness.



But even if PCEs occur, PCE defenders may be exaggerating the
centrality in mysticism of complete emptying out. The goal of
classical mysticisms is to align oneself with reality (as defined by
one's tradition) -- e.g., attaining the selflessness of nirvana
or aligning one's will with God's. It is questionable if a PCE is
central in mainstream theistic mysticisms where a mystic forgets
all else usually only to better contemplate God. Typical is the
Christian mystic Jan Ruysbroeck who wrote that emptying oneself is but
a prelude to the mystical life of contemplating God through an act of
divine grace (Zaehner 1957, 170-171). Likewise, the
"shedding of corporeality" in early Hasidism was meant to
enable the mystic to contemplate the unified supernal structure of the
divine *sefirot*. And the Zen master Dogen
(1200-1253) wrote about "wrongly thinking that the nature
of things will appear when the whole world we perceive is
obliterated" (Dogen 1986, 39).


## 5. Essentialism



"Essentialists" claim that there is a "common core" to all
mystical experiences independent of culture. That is, the common
low-ramified accounts of mystical experiences in different cultures
and eras reveal that a universal mystical consciousness
-- the PCE -- grounds all the different cultural
expressions. Alternatively, at least there is a shared
commonality of certain phenomenological features in all mystical
experiences that is invariant from culture to culture and era to era
even if all mystical experiences are constructed and so each mystical
experience is flavored differently by a particular
culture. This universal state of consciousness is
independent of any religion or culture and produces some
common phenomenological features in all types of mystical experiences.
The common core is always culturally mediated in the
expressions of each mystic's culture, but this does not erase
the experiential uniformity since experience and interpretation can be
distinguished.



Thus, essentialists argue there is only one type of
mystical experience or that all types of mystical experiences
share common phenomenological features. For many essentialists
today, the common physiology or neurology of all people regardless of
culture is responsible for this commonality, not any alleged
objects of mystical experiences.



Stace's essentialism has generated much discussion
(Stace 1960). He proposes two mystical experiences found "in all
cultures, religions, periods, and social conditions." First,
he identifies a universal extrovertive experience that apprehends
the One or the Oneness of all in or through the multiplicity of the
phenomenal world that is the inner life or consciousness of the
world. The Oneness is experienced as a sacred objective
reality in a feeling of "bliss" or "joy." This universal
extrovertive experience (or the experienced reality, it is not always
clear which) is paradoxical, and possibly ineffable (Stace 1960,
79). Second, Stace identifies a
universal monistic introvertive experience that "looks
inward into the mind" to achieve "pure consciousness" --
i.e., an experience phenomenologically not of anything but
consciousness (Stace 1960, 86) -- i.e, a PCE. Stace calls
this the "unitary consciousness" or the "void and empty unity"
that is left when all empirical content is excluded (Stace 1960,
110). Like his extrovertive experience, Stace's universal
introvertive experience involves a blissful sense of sacred
objectivity and is paradoxical and possibly ineffable. Stace
considers the universal introvertive experience to be a ripening of
mystical awareness beyond the halfway house of the universal
extrovertive consciousness.



Stace assimilates theistic mystical experiences to the PCE by
distinguishing between experience and interpretation: theistic mystics
are conditioned (perhaps subconsciously) by their surroundings to
put a theistic interpretation on their empty introvertive experiences.
Ninian Smart (1965) concurs: descriptions of theistic mystical
experiences reflect an interpretive overlay upon an experiential base
common to both theistic and non-theistic experiences.



The psychologist Ralph Hood (2006 and 2017)
argues that psychometric studies provide "strong empirical
support" for the common core thesis. Does the fact that
neuroscientists have found different patterns in the brain for
different types of mystical experiences and meditative practices (see
Section 9.7) mean that the experiences must be different? Even if
there is a common neural basis to all mystical experiences, does it
mean that the phenomenology of the experiences must be identical?



Stace has been strongly criticized for simplifying or distorting
mystical reports (see Moore 1973 for a summary) and for failing
to properly articulate the differences between extrovertive and
introvertive experiences (e.g., Almond 1982, chap. 4). Nelson
Pike (1992, chap. 5) criticized the Stace-Smart position
because in Christian mysticism union with God is divided into
discernible phases, which finds no basis in Christian theology. Thus,
these phases plausibly reflect experience, not a culturally-controlled
interpretation.



In contrast to Stace and essentialism in general, R. C. Zaehner
identified three distinct types of mystical consciousness: (1) a
"panenhenic" extrovertive experience in which
one experiences the oneness of nature, one's self
included; (2) a "monistic" experience of an undifferentiated unity
transcending space and time; and (3) the "theistic" experience
where there is a duality between the subject and the object of the
experience (Zaehner 1957). Zaehner thought that theistic
experiences are an advance over the monistic since the latter, he
thought, express a self-centered interest of the mystic to be
included in the ultimate. But in his typology he had to tell
Buddhists what their experiences really were (type 2) despite their
explicit rejection of that position. He later admitted that Zen
mystical experiences did not fit his typology.


## 6. Perennialism



Essentialists make a claim about mystical *experiences*, not
*doctrines*. The term "perennial philosophy" has been a
matter of doctrines since Leibniz. In the twentieth century,
philosophers dubbed "perennial philosophers" or "perennialists"
claimed that there are universal mystical doctrines about what is
allegedly experienced that transcend all cultures and religions
-- a common core of esoteric doctrines that are expressed
differently in different religions and cultures (Huxley
1945; Schuon 1975; Smith 1976 and 1987). That is,
perennialists argued for a universalism of
"esoteric" mystical doctrines lying beneath the "exoteric"
expressions of each salvific religion, not of mystical experiences.
Scholars today who are labelled the "new perennialists" such as
Kenneth Rose (2016) and Steve Taylor (2017) are more properly labelled
"essentialists." (Constructivists unnecessarily confuse
philosophical issues by mislabeling essentialism as perennialism [see
Jones 2020].)


## 7. Constructivism



The approach that opposes both essentialism and perennialism is
"contextualism." Under this approach, all mystical phenomena,
including the mystics' own understanding of their experiences
and of what they experienced, must be understood in term of each
particular mystic's culture and era.
"Constructivists" assert the conceptual
"construction" of mystical experiences by cultural influences
-- i.e., beliefs, memories, expectations shaped by a mystic's
cultural structure the experiences. There are cultural, social,
psychological, and linguistic influences. Thus, context
penetrates mystical experiences themselves and not merely the
post-experiential understanding given by mystics. There is no way to
separate mystical experiences completely from their
interpretations since our conceptual apparatus shapes our very
experience. (See Jones 1909, introduction; Katz 1978
and 1983; for criticism, see Evans 1989; Forman 1990
and 1999; Stoeber 1992).



"Soft constructivism" is the view that there are no mystical
experiences without at least some structuring from the
conceptualizations provided by the mystic's culture. "Hard
constructivism" is the view that a mystic's specific
cultural background completely determines the alleged cognitive content
of all mystical experiences, not merely shapes or influences an
independent experiential element. On the assumption that mystical
traditions are widely divergent, hard constructivism entails the
denial of both essentialism and perennialism. Soft constructivism
is consistent with essentialism, however, since it is consistent with
there being some transcultural mystical experiences involving
conceptualizations common across mystical traditions.
"Nonconstructivism" is the view that some or all mystical experiences
are in fact free of any cultural influence, and the divergence in
understanding their content comes from post-experiential
interpretations.



Constructivism is based on prevailing philosophical theories of the
nature of consciousness. Nonconstructivists, as noted below, can
invoke some suggestive work in neuroscience. But the principal
difficulty in resolving the issue of constructivism is that we only
have mystics' post-experiential accounts, which all parties agree are
shaped by a mystic's culture -- we can never get to the
experiences themselves to see if they are constructed or not.


### 7.1 Soft Constructivist Arguments Against Pure Consciousness Events



Both soft and hard constructivist arguments have been mobilized
against the possibility of PCEs. Here is a sampling of soft
constructivist arguments:


1. PCEs are impossible because of the "kind of beings" that we are
(Katz 1978, 59). It is a fact about being human that we can
experience only with the aid of memory, language, expectations, and
conceptualizations. Thus, we cannot have a
"pure" awareness empty of all content. (Also see
Section 4.2).
2. We should distinguish an "experience" from an "event"
(Proudfoot 1985, chap. 4; Bagger 1999, chap. 4). That
*X* has an experience *E* entails that *X*
conceptualizes *E during the event*. Hence, even if pure
consciousness events happen to occur, they do not count as
"experiences" until the subject conceptualizes them, and
at that moment they cease to be "pure
consciousness."
3. A survey of mystical literature shows that mystical experiences always
have conceptual content and thus are not empty of
conceptualizations.
4. Subjects could not know they had undergone a PCE if the
experience were truly empty of all conceptual content
(Bagger 1999, 102-103) since there would be nothing to
observe while it is going on, and hence nothing to retain later. Nor
could a subject surmise that a PCE had transpired by remembering a
"before" and an "after" with an unaccounted for middle. This
would fail to distinguish a PCE from plain unconsciousness.
5. Suppose a PCE has occurred and that a subject somehow knows that.
Still, there is a problem of the relationship of a PCE to the
subsequent claims to knowledge: if a PCE were empty of all
experiential content, the experiencers could not claim to have
had acquaintance of anything (Bagger 1999,
102-103). Nothing could be retained from the experience to
shape a mystic's beliefs or values.
6. So too, if PCEs were empty of everything but a featureless
consciousness, they could not have an impact on the life of a
mystic, and yet the experiences do have an impact.
Thus, the state must have some differentiated content.


### 7.2 Criticism of Soft Constructivism



Several objections can be raised against soft constructivism:


1. While our cultural sets shape our ordinary experience, there is no
good reason to believe that we could not enjoy experiences on a
pre-conceptual level of awareness, especially through a regimen of
training. The constructivist Steven Katz notes our "most
brutish, infantile, and sensate levels" of experience when we
were infants (Katz 1988, 755). It is hard to see why in principle
we could not retrieve such an unconceptualized level of
experience.
2. It makes little difference whether a PCE is called an
"experience" or an "event." A PCE occurs within a wider
experience of the subject, including the subject's coming out of
the PCE and assigning it meaning. Let this wider experience be the
"experience" under discussion, rather than the PCE alone.
3. Neuropsychological studies of mystical experience point to the
possibility of a state of pure consciousness. For example,
a theory by Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg (1999)
accounts for PCEs by reference to occurrences in the brain that cut
off ordinary brain activity from consciousness. (Also see Hood 2006
and Section 9.7 below.)
4. There may be no problem about mystics knowing they had PCEs. If
we accept a reliabilist account of knowledge, a belief is knowledge if
produced by a reliable cognitive mechanism (perhaps with some further
conditions). In order to have knowledge, a person does not have to be
aware of and judge evidence, nor be cognizant of the reliability of
the mechanism that produces the knowledge. Hence, "awakening" from
what is in fact a PCE, if it produces the belief that one has
"awakened" from a PCE, could be a reliable cognitive mechanism
sufficient for knowing one had had a PCE. If we stick to an
evidentialist conception of knowledge, mystics might be able to have
evidence they had undergone a PCE, though not at the time of its
occurrence, since a conscious event can have elements that one
does not note at the time but recalls afterward. This is
especially possible when the recall immediately follows the event.
That is, some content was retained and the experience was not truly
empty, even if the content is only a nondual consciousness.
Therefore, it should be possible for a mystic who undergoes a PCE to
recall immediately afterward the awareness that was present in the
PCE, even though that awareness was not an object of consciousness at
the time of the PCE.
5. Defenders of PCEs can champion their epistemological significance,
although PCEs are not experiences *of* anything. The
noetic quality of a mystical experience can come from an acquaintance
of states of affairs involving an insight directly, without
supervening on acquaintance of any reality. Nor need the insight be
simultaneous with the occurrence of the experience but may arise
later. Hence, a person could undergo a PCE that granted acquaintance
of states of affairs by a direct insight. The PCE plus the insight
would constitute a complex mystical experience that afforded awareness
of a state of affairs not otherwise accessible.


### 7.3 Hard Constructivism Against Essentialism



Hard constructivism's main argument against essentialism and
PCEs is as follows (Katz 1978):



> 
> 
> Premise A: The conceptual scheme a mystic possesses completely
> determines the nature and content of the mystical experience.
> 
> 
> 
> Premise B: Mystics from different mystical traditions possess
> pervasively different conceptual schemes.
> 
> 
> 
> Conclusion: Therefore, there cannot be a common experience across
> cultural traditions. That is, essentialism is false.
> 
> 
> 



Regarding Premise B, Katz (2013) has edited a massive volume on
mysticism with the aim of displaying the stark differences between
mystical experiences of different traditions, due to linguistic,
cultural, religious, and sociological factors.



So too, theistic experiences are theory-laden and even their
interpretation as theistic is the result of being embedded in a
propensity to think theistically. That is why, allegedly, such
experiences are rarely reported by those not already theists or in
theistic communities. Such experiences, then, are "polluted" by
theory (Oppy 2006, 350).


### 7.4 Criticism of Hard Constructivism



Some objections to hard constructivism are not objections to soft
constructivism:


1. It seems quite possible for subjects in the first instance to apply
"thin" descriptions to experiences, involving only a small
part of their conceptual schemes. Perhaps only on second thought will
they elaborate on their experience in terms of the richness of their
home culture. This would be like a physician with a headache, who
experiences pain in the first instance just like ordinary folk and
only subsequently applies medical terminology to the headache (compare
King 1988). If so, there is a possibility of common
first-instance mystical experiences across cultures, contrary to
Premise A.
2. Premise A is thrown into further doubt by expressions of surprise by
mystics-in-training about what they experience (Gellman
1997, 145-146 and Barnard 1997, 127-130).
So too, constructivists have trouble accounting for why some mystics
become heretics (Stoeber 1992, 112-113) -- under
constructivism, their mystical experiences should *reinforce*
their orthodoxy. These illustrate the possibility of getting out from
under one's cultural background to have new experiences.
Likewise, hard constructivism's inherently conservative take on
mysticism will struggle to explain transformations within mystical
traditions, and cannot easily account for innovative geniuses within
mystical traditions.
3. Two people walk together down the street and see an approaching dog.
One experiences the dog as "Jones's pet black
terrier" while the other experiences it as "a stray mutt that the
dog-catchers should take away." Because of the excessive
conceptual differences in their experiencing, constructivist must
insist that there was no worthwhile sense in which both observers had
the same experience. However, there is a valuable sense in which
they are having the same experience: seeing that black dog at that
place and time. Similarly, there might exist a
valuable commonality of experiences across mystical traditions
despite conceptual disparity. The conceptual differences might not be
sufficient to deny this important commonality (Wainwright 1981,
25).
4. Cultural conditioning does not influence everyone to the same degree
and in the same way. Individuals have rich and varied personal
histories that influence their experiences in their lives in
widely differing ways. Some accept cultural restraints
gladly, others rebel against them, others are blessed with a
creative spirit, and so on.
5. Mystical traditions characteristically involve disciplines aimed at
loosening the hold of one's conceptual scheme on subsequent
experience. Meditative techniques promote a pronounced inhibition
of ordinary cognitive processes -- what Arthur Deikman (1980)
labelled "deautomization." This plausibly restricts the influence
of one's cultural background on one's mystical
experiences, in turn making possible identical experiences across
mystical traditions to the extent that our neurology is the same in
relevant respects.
6. Hard constructivists also fail to account well for widely
differing mystical understandings of the same religious text. For
example, the metaphysics of the Upanishads and *Brahma
Sutra* is an absolute nondualism for Shankara (c.
eighth century CE), a "qualified dualism" for Ramanuja (c.
1055-1137), and a strict dualism for Madhva
(1199-1278). (See Radhakrishnan 1968,
introduction.) Likewise, the teaching of emptiness in the
Buddhist *Heart Sutra* receives disparate unpacking in
different streams of Buddhism. It is plausible to conclude that
distinct mystical experiences were responsible, at least in part, for
these differences. If so, the experience control the mystics'
understanding of their basic scriptures rather than *vice
versa*.
7. More generally, hard constructivists overemphasize the influence
of pre-mystical religious teaching on the mystic's experience.
Mystical experiences can cause a mystic to reinvent the meaning of
doctrines. An example is the Jewish Kabbalistic transformation of the
notion of *mitzvah* ("commandment") to that of
"joining" or "connection" with God. Starting
with "commandment," the mystic ends up with
"clinging" (*devekut*) to God.


## 8. Inherentists and Attributionists



"Inherentists" believe that there are experiences that are
inherently religious or mystical. "Attributionists" believe that there
are no inherently religious or mystical experiences (see Proudfoot
1985) -- experiences are only *deemed* religious by
the subject or a group. Ann Taves contends that people or
groups have experiences of what afterward strikes them
as "special." Only then, depending on various factors, will
they attribute a religious or mystical meaning to
them (Taves 2009). Some neuropsychological
research seems to support this position (Azari et
al. 2001). Taves also rejects constructivism: constructivists
see religious or mystical experiences to be constituted from the
very start by cultural conditioning, but attributionists
deny this in favor of a tiered or
"block-building" approach from experiencing something
"special" to a religious or mystical conclusion.



William Forgie (1984 and 1994) argues, as would an
attributionist, that there could not be an "experience of God" if
we understand "experience of God*"* to mean that it is
phenomenologically given in the experience itself that
an experience is in fact of God. He argues that phenomenological
content can consist only of general features and not features
specifically identifying God as the object of experience. He compares
this to seeing one of two identical twins. Which one of the two you
perceive cannot be a phenomenological given. Likewise, that
someone experiences precisely God and not something else cannot
be a *phenomenological* datum. Pike (1992, chap. 7) argues,
against Forgie, that the individuation of an object can be a component
of the phenomenological content of an experience, drawing on examples
from sense-perception.



We can distinguish "inherently religious" from "inherently
mystical." Today it is increasingly becoming apparent that
mystical experiences are real: there is evidence of distinctive
configurations of brain activity uniquely associated with mystical
experiences (e.g., Newberg, d'Aquili, and Rause
2001, 143; Yaden et al. 2017, 60). However, by
"real," neuroscientists mean only that mystical experiences
involve distinct neurological events and are not merely ordinary
experiences interpreted as mystical or products of the imagination,
not that they are necessarily cognitive. If unique patterns of
brain activity do underlie different mystical experiences,
then it may be that there are some experiences that are inherently
*mystical* even though their significance varies
between different religious and nonreligious experiencers and
thus these experiences are not inherently
*religious*. 


## 9. Epistemology



William James asked: "Do mystical states establish the truth
of those theological affections in which the saintly life has its
roots?" (1958, 415). This question can be divided into two: (Q1)
Is a mystic warranted in thinking that his or her experiences are
veridical or have evidential value? A mystical experience may be
psychologically compelling for the person who had it, but is it also
cognitively authoritative? And (Q2), are those who have not
undergone any mystical experience, upon examining the evidence
presented by mystics, warranted in thinking them veridical or endowed
with evidential value? The major philosophical reply in the
affirmative to Q1 is called the "Doxastic Practice Approach." The
major defense of an affirmative reply to Q2 is called the
"Argument from Experience."


### 9.1 The Doxastic Practice Approach



William Alston has defended the beliefs that
people form from their mystical and numinous experiences,
specifically of a theistic kind, based on their "doxastic
practice." He defines a "doxastic practice" as consisting of
socially established ways of forming and epistemically evaluating
beliefs (the "output") from a certain kind of content from various
inputs, such as cognitive and perceptual ones (Alston 1991, 100;
also see Alston 2005, chap. 9-11). The practice is beholden to
an "over-rider system" which is a background system of beliefs
against which beliefs supported by the practice are checked for
possible over-riders. The practice of forming physical-object beliefs
based on sense-perception is an example of a doxastic practice;
drawing deductive conclusions from premises is another. Alston (1993)
argues that the justification of every doxastic practice is
"epistemically circular" -- i.e., its reliability cannot be
established in any way independent of the practice itself. This
includes sense-perception practice. However, we cannot avoid
engaging in doxastic practices. Therefore, Alston contends, it is
a matter of *practical rationality* to engage in the doxastic
practices we do engage in providing there is no good reason to think
they are *unreliable*.



There are also doxastic practices consisting of forming beliefs about
God, God's purposes for us, and the like, grounded on religious
and mystical experiences such as "God is now appearing to
me." The Christian doxastic practice has an over-rider
system consisting of scriptures, Christian dogma, and guidelines
resulting from the past history of the mystical Christian doxastic
practice. It follows from Alston's argument that it is rational
for a person engaged in such a practice to take its belief
outputs as true unless the practice is shown to be unreliable. Thus we
have an affirmative answer to question Q1.



Most objections to Alston are equally objections to the Argument from
Experience or come from general epistemological complaints.
Objections that apply specifically to Alston include Jonathan
Kvanvig's (1994) faulting of Alston for a loose employment of
"rationality." He argues that no one meaning of that term can do
the work Alston does with it. Another objection is that Alston moves
from "It is practically rational to engage in a Christian doxastic
practice" to "It is rational for me to believe the Christian
doxastic practice is *reliable*." Others argue that there is a
problem with the construction of the over-rider system of the
Christian mystical practice since the guidelines gleaned from the
history of the practice, so it is argued, were compromised by
androcentric bias and outdated scientific beliefs. (See Section 10.)
These detract from the practice's epistemic legitimacy
(Gellman 2011).



It is also a question whether the Christian doxastic practice approach
is able to justify conversion experiences since in such experiences
the subject is not yet Christian and cannot employ the Christian
over-rider system when becoming convinced to accept the Christian
practice and its over-rider system.


### 9.2 The Argument from Experience



Various philosophers have defended the evidential value, to one degree
or another, of some religious and mystical experiences, principally
with regard to experiences of God (see Baillie 1939,
Broad 1953, Davis 1989, Gellman 1997 and 2001a,
Gutting 1982, Swinburne 1991 and 1996, Wainwright 1981,
Yandell 1993). These philosophers have stressed the
"perceptual" nature of experiences of God. This approach can be
summarized as follows:


1. Experiences of God have a subject/object structure with a
phenomenological content allegedly representing the object of the
experience. Subjects are also moved to make truth claims based on such
experiences. Furthermore, there are mystical procedures for getting
into position for a mystical experience of God (see Underhill 1911 [1945,
90-94]), and others can take up a suitable mystical path to try
to check on the subject's claims (see Bergson 1977, 210). In all
these ways, experiences of God are perceptual in nature.
2. Such experiences count as at least some evidence in favor of
their own validity. That a person seems to experience some object is
some reason to think he or she really does have experiential contact
with it. Thus, experiences of God count as at least some evidence
in favor of their own validity.
3. Agreement between experiences of people in different places, times,
and traditions enhances the evidence in favor of their validity
(see Broad 1953). Hence, agreement about experiences of God in
diverse circumstances enhances the evidence in their favor. (But see
Section 9.6.)
4. Further enhancement of the validity of a mystical experience can come
from appropriate consequences in the life of the person who had the
experience, such as increased saintliness (see Wainwright 1981,
83-88). William James proposed a pragmatic
"fruit" test for determining true mystical doctrines (James
1958, 368): if a mystical experience produces positive results in
how one leads one's life, then the experience is authentic and
the way of life one follows is vindicated, and so the teachings
leading to the positive life are correct. In short, the
"truth" of one's beliefs are shown by one's
life as a whole. (But what is considered positive fruit in one
mystical tradition may not be considered so in another.)



(1)-(4) yield initial evidence in favor of the validity of
(some) experiences of God.



Kai-Man Kwan has developed this type of argument further by specifying
theistic experience, in particular, as a "well-established type
of experience." The tokens of such a type of experience occur to
many people and on repeated occasions, have a common ontology, and are
communicable in a coherent conceptual framework. This strengthens an
argument from experience for theistic experience (Kwan 2011,
511).



Kwan (2011 and 2013) has also significantly expanded the Argument from
Experience in a way that avoids focusing only on experiential
episodes. He argues for what he calls a "holistic
empiricism" that considers an array of dimensions of human
experience: the noetic (consisting of epistemic seemings), the
qualitative (the feel of what it is like to have the
experience), and the volitional (action, choice, deliberation,
and the like). Kwan argues that when judging the credentials of
religious experience we should take into account the following
experiences, in addition to narrowly selected religious experiences:
experiences of the natural world and of the self, existential
experience, interpersonal experience, moral experience, aesthetic
experience, and intellectual experience. Kwan argues that the
integration, in the appropriate way, of these types of experience
coherently and fruitfully constitutes a defeasible justification for
relying on the product of religious belief. Kwan argues in this way
for theistic belief in particular. A similar argument can be presented
for judging narrowly construed mystical experience. The unit of
justification of believing a proposition when having had a mystical
experience would be the entire holistic complex of all of the
mystic's experiences. Going beyond, but including, discrete
mystical episodes, the mystic is able to fashion a cumulative case for
mystical conclusions.



Kwan's argument avoids the objection based on dissimilarities
between mystical experiences and sense-experience. The unit of
justification then encompasses far more than the mystical experience
itself. Kwan's argument also neutralizes objections based on
neuroscience against the validity of mystical experiences: belief in
the import of mystical experience will seek justification far beyond
what can be possibly identified as a brain state
accompanying a mystical experience.



Whether any experiences of God are veridical in the end will depend on
the strength of the initial evidential case, on other favorable
evidence, and on the power of counter-considerations against validity.
Defenders of the Argument from Experience differ over the strength of
the initial evidential case and have defended the Argument
against counter-evidence to varying degrees.


### 9.3 Disanalogies to Sense-Experience



Several philosophers have argued against either the Doxastic Practice
Approach or the Argument from Experience, or both (see Bagger
1999; Fales 1996a, 1996b, and 2001; Gale 1991,
1994, and 1995; C.B. Martin
1955; M. Martin 1990; Proudfoot 1985; Rowe 1982). Philosophers
have disputed the Argument from Experience on the grounds of alleged
disanalogies between experiences of God and sense-perception. Two
issues must be examined: whether the disanalogies exist, and if
they do exist, whether they are epistemologically significant.


#### 9.3.1 Lack of Checkability



The analogy allegedly breaks down over the lack of appropriate
cross-checking procedures for experiences of God. With
sense-perception, we can cross-check by employing inductive methods to
determine causally relevant antecedent conditions; we can
"triangulate" an event by correlating it with other
effects of the same purported cause; and we can discover causal
mechanisms connecting a cause to its effects. These are not available
for checking on experiences of God. Evan Fales (2001 and 2010)
argues that cross-checkability is an integral part of any
successful perceptual epistemic practice. Therefore, the perceptual
epistemic practice in which mystical experiences of God are embedded
is severely defective. Moreover, Richard Gale (1991) argues that
in experiences of God there is missing agreement between perceivers as
well as missing the possibility of checking whether the perceiver was
in the "right" position and psychological and
physiological state for a veridical experience. For similar reasons,
C.B. Martin (1955) concludes that claims to have experienced God are
"very close" to subjective claims like "I seem to
see a piece of paper" rather than to objective claims like "I
see a piece of paper."



William Rowe (1982) observes that God may choose to reveal himself to
one person and not to another. Thus, unlike with sense-perception, the
failure of others to have an experience of God under conditions
similar to those in which one person did, does not impugn the validity
of the experience. Therefore, we have no way of determining when an
experience of God is delusory. If so, neither can we credit an
experience as authentic.


#### 9.3.2 God's Lack of Space-Time Coordinates



Some philosophers have argued that there could never be evidence for
thinking a person had perceived God (Gale 1994 and
1995; Byrne 2001). For there to be evidence that a person
experienced an object O, and did not merely have an
"O-ish-impression," it would have to be possible for there
to be evidence that O was the common object of different perceptions.
In turn, this would be possible only if it were possible to
distinguish perceptions of O specifically from possible
perceptions of other objects that might be perceptually similar to O.
This latter requirement is possible only if O exists in both space and
time. Only space-time coordinates make it possible to distinguish O
from objects of similar appearance existing in other space-time
coordinates. God, however, does not exist in space and time.
Therefore, there could never be evidence that a person had experienced
God.


### 9.4 Evaluation of the Disanalogy Arguments



Although Alston defends the perceptual character of mystical
experiences of God for his Doxastic Practice Approach, there is no
restriction that the experiential input of a doxastic
practice must be perceptual in nature. Any cognitive input will do.
Hence, disanalogies between experiences of God and sense-perception,
even if great, would not be directly harmful to this approach
(Alston 1994).



Regarding the bearing of the alleged disanalogies on the Argument from
Experience, the disanalogists take the evidential credentials of
sense-perception as paradigmatic for epistemology. They equate
confirming and disconfirming evidence only when evidence strongly
analogous to the kind for sensory perception is available. However,
the evidential requirement should be only "confirming
experiential evidence," be what it may. If God-sightings have
confirming evidence, even if different from the kind available for
dualistic sense-perception, they will then be evidentially
strengthened. If God-sightings do not have much confirming empirical
evidence, be it what it may, they will remain unjustified for that
reason, and not because they lack cross-checks appropriate to
sense-perception.



Perhaps the justification of physical-object claims should not be
our evidential standard since our ordinary physical-object
beliefs are far over-supported by confirming evidence. We have
extremely large constellations of confirming networks there.
Hence, it does not follow that were mystical claims justified to a
lesser degree than that, or not by similar procedures, that they would
be unjustified at all.



A problem with the argument from God's lack of dimensionality is
that the practice of identifying physical objects proceeds by way of
an interplay between qualitative features and relative positions to
determine both location and identity. The judgments we make reflect a
holistic practice of making identifications of place and identity
together. There is no obvious reason why the identification of God
cannot take place within its own holistic practice, with its own
criteria of identification, not beholden to the holistic practice
involved in identifying physical objects. (See Gellman 2001a,
chap. 3.)


### 9.5 The Argument from Experience as Dependent on the Doxastic Practice Approach



In the end, the Argument from Experience might have to yield to the
Doxastic Practice Approach (Gellman 2010). One reason is that it is
doubtful if many experiencers of God make truth claims solely on the
basis of their mystical experiences, rather than within a doxastic
practice. For example, Teresa of Avila said that one can tell if an
experience comes from God or from the Devil by its fruits in actions
and personality, the vividness of the memory of the experience,
conformity to Christian scripture, and confirmation by church
superiors. Mystical experiences as such were given no special
authority. Classical mystics in general did not take their mystical
experiences as verifying the doctrines of their basic scriptures but
*vice versa* -- the fundamental scriptures vouched
for the validity of genuine mystical experiences.



In addition, if identification of God takes place in
a holistic practice (see Sections 9.2, 9.4), then quite plausibly
this is a social practice in which one judges one's mystical
experiences to be *of* God.



Finally, it is an open question to what extent alleged God-experiences
are sufficiently detailed to provide grounds to the subject that they
are *of* God. Hence, a subject's judgment that a
particular encounter is with God might well be a matter of
assimilating the event into a larger social practice.


### 9.6 The Problem of Religious Diversity



Essentialists and others often rely on the alleged uniformity of
claims of mystics around the world. In William James's words,
there is an alleged "eternal unanimity" among mystics
(James 1958, 321). But as he also realized, "if we take the
larger mass as seriously as religious mysticism has historically taken
itself, we find that the supposed unanimity largely
disappears" (James 1958, 325). Constructivists in particular
emphasize the diversity of mystical experiences, indeed for
them each mystical experience is utterly unique.



Diversity of claims, and especially any genuinely conflicting claims,
would impact the Argument from Experience for the epistemic value of
mystical experiences. In the history of religions, we find innumerable
gods, with different characteristics. Shall we say they all exist? Can
belief in all of them be rational? In addition, there are experiences
of non-personal ultimate realities, such as the Brahman of Advaita
Vedanta. Brahman cannot be an ultimate reality if God is
(Hick 1984, 234-235) since it is devoid of all personal
features. Furthermore, different theistic faiths claim experience of
the one and only God, ostensibly justifying beliefs that are in
contradiction with one another (see Flew 1966, 126). If theistic
mystical experiences lead to such contradictory results,
they cannot provide evidence in favor of their validity
as experiences of God.



Conflicting mystical claims thus lead to the issue of the
*reliability* of mystical experiences as a source of
knowledge: whatever the correct understanding of each type of mystical
experience is, many (perhaps most) mystics have
misunderstood their own experiences. Mystical experiences may put
mystics in contact with a previously unrealized reality, but
mystics' diverse and conflicting understandings of that reality
damaged their claim to have gained actual knowledge. Once mystics are
aware of competing claims, whether the experiences can be
authoritative even for the experiencers themselves, as James believed
(James 1958, 324, 414), becomes an issue.



In reply, many discount experiences of polytheistic gods straight away
because of their being embedded in settings we today take to be
bizarre, and because of the relative paucity of reports of actual
experiences of such beings. Regarding clashing experiences within
theistic settings, Richard Swinburne (1991, 266) has proposed an
ascent to generality as a harmonizing mechanism. He believes that
conflicting descriptions of the objects of religious experience pose a
challenge only to detailed doctrinal claims, not to general claims of
having experienced a supernal being.



Philosophers and theologians may rank different types of mystical
experiences according to their cognitive importance. For example,
Michael Stoeber ranks theistic experiences occurring after a mystical
experience empty of all differentiated content to be higher in
importance, calling them "theo-monistic" experiences (Stoeber
1994). But Advaitins would discount all theistic
experiences as instances in which the mind is not yet clear of
illusory content.



John Hick (1984, chap. 14) has proposed a pluralistic
hypothesis to deal with the problem. According to this
hypothesis, the great world faiths embody different perceptions and
conceptions of one reality that Hick christens "the Real." The
Real itself is indescribable and is never experienced
directly but has "masks" or "faces" that depend on
how a particular culture or religion thinks of the Real that are
experienced. The Real itself is, therefore, neither personal nor
nonpersonal, these categories being imposed upon the Real by different
cultural contexts. Hence, the typical experiences of the major faiths
are to be taken as validly of the Real through mediation by the
local face of the Real.



Hick has been criticized for infidelity to the world's religious
traditions (d'Costa 1987). However, Hick is providing
a second-order philosophical *theory* about the nature of
religions rather than an exposition of religions themselves that
members necessarily would endorse.



Some propose harmonizing some conflicting experiences by reference to
God's "inexhaustible fullness" (Gellman 1997, chap.
4). In at least some mystical experiences of God, a subject
experiences what is presented as proceeding from an intimation of
infinite plenitude. Given this feature, a claim to experience a
personal ultimate (God) can be squared with an experience of a
nonpersonal ultimate (e.g., the "unspeakable" Dao): the same one
reality can be experienced in its personal attributes or in its
nonpersonal attributes from out of its inexhaustible plenitude
-- e.g., nontheists experience the sheer being of the reality
while theists experience its personal nature.



Whether any of these solutions succeed, the body of experiential data
is too large to simply scrap on the grounds of contradictory
claims. We should endeavor to retain as much of the conflicting data
as possible by seeking some means of conciliation.



But it must be noted that religious theorists are just as willing
as naturalists to tell mystics that they are mistaken about the
content of their experiences. For example, Caroline Franks Davis has
to twist the Advaitins' and Buddhists' accounts to show
that mystical experiences really support a "broad theism" --
i.e., Shankara was really experiencing God although he explicitly
argued that the nonpersonal and non-loving Brahman alone is real, and
the Buddha was totally unaware that he was experiencing a god. She
claims that all mystics, despite what they say, really experience "a
loving presence . . . with whom individuals can have a personal
relationship" (Franks Davis 1989, 191). That is just what
one would expect someone raised a Christian to see as the true
"common core" of all mystical experiences. But the same
process, mutatis mutandis, would be available for nontheists
raised in other traditions for their claims. 



As things stand, the diversity problem raises the issue of how much is
given in mystical experiences and how much is a matter of
interpretation based on a tradition's beliefs. This limits how much
actual knowledge mystics can claim.


### 9.7 Scientific Studies: Meditation and Psychedelics



Various psychological explanations of mystical experiences, both their
nature and their causes, have been offered. These include
pathological conditions such as hyper-suggestibility, severe
deprivation, severe sexual frustration, intense fear of death,
infantile regression, pronounced maladjustment, and mental illness, as
well as non-pathological conditions, including the inordinate
influence of a religious mental "set" (see
Wulff 2000). In addition, some have advanced a sociological
explanation for some mysticism in terms of the socio-political
power available to an accomplished mystic (Fales 1996a
and 1996b).



In the 1990's, interest revived in studying meditation and psychedelic
drugs to see what they may reveal about how the brain works. Different
meditative techniques (especially mindfulness meditations) are now
being studied through neuroimaging to gain data on the brain activity
occurring during these experiences and practices. (For an overview,
see Schjoedt 2009.) Losing a sense of a phenomenal "self"
necessarily alters our ordinary ego-driven state of consciousness.
(See Milliere et al. 2018 for an overview on different senses
of "loss of self" and their phenomenological
differences.) Thus, the phenomenology of mystical
experiences also has become an important subject for the
study of consciousness. As noted in Section 8, neuroscientists are
finding unique patterns of brain activity during mystical
experiences. Different neurophysiological effects and unique
patterns of brain activity have also been detected in mindfulness
practices and in introvertive concentration practices (Hood 1997
and 2001; Dunn, Hartigan, and Mikulas 1999). The
neurological effects of concentration differ from those
of mindfulness meditation (Valentine and Sweet 1999). This
suggests as strongly as neuroscience can that the
mystical experiences enabled by meditation differ from more
ordinary experiences and our normal waking state of consciousness and
that the effects of different types of meditations are
distinguishable. Possible neural correlates of different mystical
features -- a loss of a sense of self, a sense of connectedness
to others, a feeling of certainty, feeling the experience has great
significance, loss of a sense of time -- have been identified.
For example, a loss of a sense of self is correlated to the decrease
of activity in the brain connected to a sense of self and a sense of
separation from the world.



The study of the mystical experiences enabled by psychedelics (in
particular, psilocybin and LSD) is now also a major topic (Barlett and
Griffiths 2018). Psychedelics are reported to occasion some of the
most spiritually significant experiences in the life of the
participants (Doblin 1991). There is also the clinical study of
psychedelics in therapy for such conditions as depression
and addiction that are resistant to more conventional forms of
therapy. An important issue is whether the positive effects of a
psychedelic drug on a patient's well-being are the result solely of
the chemical effect of the drug on the brain or whether the
mystical experiences enabled by the drugs are also a necessary part of
the treatment. 



This research leads to philosophical issues. Does brain activity
alone cause these experiences, or does meditation or a
psychedelic drug merely disrupt our normal state of
consciousness thereby enabling new experiences to arise that
are not caused by brain activity itself? If the former, can the
alleged cognitive content of mystical experiences be discounted
because mystical experiences are reduced to "merely brain events"? If
the latter, does the same brain state underlie different
meditation and psychedelic-enabled experiences? If so, the
situation is the opposite of the "multiple realization" problem in
philosophy of mind: multiple experiences are connected to the same
brain state. So too, the question remains of whether
neuroscientists are actually studying mystical experiences at all by
studying neural activity correlated with them. (See Jones 2018, 2016,
chap. 9.) Concerning psychedelics, the most
important question is whether the mystical experiences
enabled by psychedelics are mere hallucinations that are no more
cognitive than the LSD-induced distortions of perception.
Another important question is whether the experiences enabled by
the drugs are the same as "natural" mystical experiences
or only pale copies. And does the fact that such experiences can
be touched off fairly consistently by drugs with the proper dosage and
a conducive "set and setting" for the participant
mean that the experiences are only products of the brain? Or
do the drugs only set up new conditions in the brain
enabling new experiences to occur that are not caused by brain
activity? (See Smith 1964 and 2005; Letheby 2021;
Jones 2019.)


### 9.8 A Critique of Naturalist Explanations



Bertrand Russell (1935, 188) once quipped that "We can make no
distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the
man who drinks much and sees snakes. Each is in an abnormal physical
condition, and therefore has abnormal perceptions." C.D. Broad (1935,
164) wrote, to the contrary, "One might need to be slightly
'cracked' in order to have some peep-holes into the
super-sensible world." Thus, the issue is engaged whether we can
explain away religious and mystical experiences by reference to
natural causes. Can science "explain away" mystical
experiences by showing that "It's all in the head"?



If all mystics had a demonstrable pathology or brain-defect, a
naturalist explanation would carry great weight. However, that is
not the case. Naturalist proposals often exaggerate the scope and
influence of the cited factors, sometimes choosing to highlight what
is eye-catching at the expense of the more common
occurrences.



For an example of the overreach and problem of simple reductive
explanations, consider a popular pathological explanation: temporal
lobe epileptic seizures (e.g., Persinger 1987, 111).
However, ecstatic experiences of well-being, self-transcendence, and
certainty from temporal lobe epileptic seizures are very rare (1% to
2% of patients) (Devinsky and Lai 2008). That may be
significantly less common than in the general population. Nor are all
mystical experiences "ecstatic" in the emotional sense --
serenity and calm characterize many mystical experiences. The
epileptic experiences usually last only a few seconds out of a larger
episode and usually are not a matter of joy but fear and anxiety
(Kelly and Grosso 2007, 531-534). If seizures were the cause,
why the vast majority of patients do not have mystical experiences
would have to be explained. Moreover, visions and voices are more
common than mystical experiences for these patients. Mystical
experiences have a different phenomenological content, but studies
aligned with the temporolimbic model truncate and misrepresent the
"felt" phenomenological features of mystical experiences (Bradford
2013, 113).



Nor can we simply assume that mystics in the past must have had some
pathology despite their lack of observable symptoms --
a study of medieval Christian mystics and ascetics did not turn
up evidence of any major forms of mental illness such as schizophrenia
or manic-depressive disorder (Kroll and Bachrach 2005).
Today mystical experiences have been correlated with healthy
indices of personality and adjustment (Hood and Byrom 2010, Griffiths
et al. 2011). Mystical experiences also more often correlate with
positive changes in family life, reduced fear of death, better health,
and a greater sense of purpose, although some patients do require
therapeutic care, than do pathological experiences (Yaden et al.
2017, 59). The loss of a sense of self outside of mystical experiences
is associated with maladaptive outcomes such as a sense of
disconnection to other people and a loss of empathy (Yaden et al.
2017, 59). The pathology model does not explain any of this. It also
makes emotion, rather than cognition, the central feature of mystical
experiences, and this does not jibe with the historical record
(Bradford 2013).



In sum, these pathologies may be one possible trigger, but they are
not a total explanation. Secondly, at least some of the proposals are
perfectly compatible with the validity of claims that mystics
experience a transcendent reality. For example, a person's
religious mental set can just as well be a condition for enjoying and
being capable of recognizing an experience of God as it can
be a cause of delusion. However, there might be
naturalist explanations that would make it implausible that God
would appear in just certain ways.


#### 9.8.1 Evaluation of Neuropsychological Explanations



In principle, neuroscience can give as complete an account of brain
activity during a mystical experience as it can for any conscious
event or state. But a neuropsychological theory can do no more
than relate what happens in the brain when a mystical experience
occurs, and merely identifying the activity does not discredit
mystical claims any more than a neurological account of perception
discredits sense-experience as cognitive -- all human
experiences have some grounding in neural activity.
Neurology cannot tell us that the ultimate cause of brain events
is altogether internal to the organism. True, there may not
be "God-receptors" in the body, analogous to those
for sensory perception, and this might reinforce a suspicion that
it's all in the head. However, such receptors are neither to be
expected nor required with non-physical stimuli, as in mystical
experiences. For example, God, Brahman, or the Dao would not
exist at a physical distance from the brain. Thus, God could act
directly upon the brain to bring about the relevant processes for a
subject to perceive God or otherwise use a natural medium
(see Wainwright 1981, chap. 2). In sum, simply identifying and
explaining what is occurring in the brain while a mystical experience
is occurring is neutral to whether that is all there is to producing
the experience.



Plausible natural explanations would tend to discredit religious
explanations of mystical experiences only if people with pathologies
or negative psychological conditions had mystical experiences.
But as noted in the last section, that is not the
case. Nevertheless, plausible natural explanations do
weaken the religious case by offering a *reasonable
alternative* -- there is competition for the best explanation
where before there was none.


#### 9.8.2 The Claimed Superiority of Naturalist Explanation



Some philosophers have argued that because the "modern
inquirer" assumes everything is ultimately explicable in
naturalist terms, we should in principle reject any supernatural
explanation of mystical experience (see Bagger 1999). Invoking
God to explain mystical experiences is like invoking miracles to
explain natural phenomena. We should match our elimination of miracles
from our explanatory vocabulary with an elimination of a supernatural
explanation of mystical experiences of God. Hence, we do not have to
wait until we discover a live alternative explanation to the theistic
explanation of mystical experiences of God. We should resist any
theistic explanation in the name of our epistemic standards.



This argument raises the important question of the relationship
between theistic explanation and a naturalist program of
explanation. Arguments have been presented for the compatibility of
religion and natural science (e.g., Swinburne 1989 and Plantinga
2011). Of course, a person for whom supernatural explanations
are not a live option would have reason to reject the Argument
from Experience and refuse to engage in a doxastic practice of
identifying valid God-experiences. However, most defenders of the
Argument from Experience advance it as at best a defensible line of
reasoning rather than as a proof of valid experiences of God that
should convince anyone, and the Doxastic Practice Approach is not
meant to convince everybody to participate in a theistic doxastic
practice (see Gellman 2001b). The bar is lowered from advancing
assent-compelling *proofs* to establishing merely the
*rationality* of participation in a doxastic practice that
would justify belief.


## 10. Gender and the Study of Mysticism



Some feminist philosophers have criticized what they perceive as the
androcentric bias of male philosophers of mysticism. There are three
main objections:


1. Contemporary male philosophers treat mysticism as centered
on private psychological episodes of a solitary person. They
believe these private experiences reveal the meaning and value of
mysticism (Jantzen 1994 and 1995; also see Turner 1996). Instead,
philosophers should be studying the socio-cultural dimensions of
mysticism, including its patriarchal failings. Sarah Coakley (2009)
maintains that the focus of mysticism should be on the ongoing
contemplative practice and all that entails.
2. At times. scholars of mysticism have systematically ignored or
marginalized much of women's mysticism. Closer attention to
women would reveal the androcentric bias in mystical
studies (Jantzen 1995). Nancy Caciola (2000 and 2003)
argues that the criteria the Christian church developed for authentic
mystical experiences curtailed the power of women in the church. For
example, on the basis of theories about female physiology, women were
deemed more vulnerable to devil possession than men and so their
experiences were more suspect. Coakley (2009) also notes that while
some analytic philosophers attend to the mysticism of Teresa of Avila,
they do not do justice to the full content of her mystical writings,
picking out experiences only.
3. The traditional male construction of God has determined the way male
philosophers think of theistic experiences. Thus, theistic experiences
are conditioned from the outset by patriarchal conceptualizations
and values, and by sex-role differentiation in the practice of
religion (Raphael 1994).



Under this view, men typically understand theistic
experience as a human subject encountering a being wholly distinct,
distant, and overpowering. A paradigm of this approach is the numinous
experience of a "wholly other" reality that is unfathomable
and overpowering, engendering a sense of dread and fascination in
which the mystic is "submerged and overwhelmed" by his own
nothingness (Otto 1957). Otto claims that this is the
foundational experience of religion. This approach, it is claimed, is
mediated by the androcentrism of Otto's worldview, entrapped in
issues of domination, atomicity, and submission. Some feminist
thinkers deny the dichotomy between the holy and the creaturely that
makes Otto's analysis possible
(Daly 1973, Goldenberg 1979). Feminist theologians
stress the immanent nature of the object of theistic experiences, and
bring to prominence women's experience of the holy in their
fleshly embodiment, denigrated by androcentric attitudes.



Feminists have also supported the constructivist position in the
name of anti-essentialism and diversity of experience
(Lanzetta 2005, chap. 1). Thinking that there is a
common unconstructed essence to mystical experience has worked
against the recognition of women's experiences as properly
mystical.



The feminist critique poses a valuable corrective to unperceived
androcentric biases in mysticism and mystical studies. This critique
should help neutralize the conception of mysticism and mystical
experience as completely private, introduced to philosophy largely by
William James. Objection (2) has begun to produce scholarship
dedicated to women's mysticism and its significance (e.g.,
Hurcombe 1987, Brunn and Epiney-Burgard 1989,
Beer 1993, Borchert 1994, Hollywood 2002). Several
collections on women mystics have helped change the over-emphasis on
male mystics (in particular, Furlong 2013). Regarding (3):
the rich variegation of religious and mystical experience
among men throughout history must also be considered. This
includes men's experiences of God's immanent closeness as
well as mystical "union" with God, unlike Otto's dualistic
numinous experiences. 



The principal impact of the feminist critique on philosophy of
mysticism would be to give more reasons to expand the consideration of
mysticism to more than episodic experiences.


## 11. Mysticism and Morality



Some scholars maintain that there is an intrinsic connection between
mysticism and moral behavior, or even that mystical experiences are
the source and only justification of a moral concern for others. This
is because mystical experiences blur or erase the
distinction between the subject and others (Stace 1960) and so
remove the barrier to moral motivation, or because one's sense of
a "self" disappears entirely. Several scholars have argued, to the
contrary, that at least some mystical doctrines are
incompatible with morality (Danto 1987, Kripal 2002). Monistic
mystical metaphysics eliminates all distinctions between one person
and others -- all is one -- and so there is no recognition
of real persons distinct from oneself toward whom one can exercise a
moral concern. Hence, monistic mysticism precludes morality. Morality
must be between "independently real persons" (Wainwright
1983, 211-212). David Loy (2002) argues that even if monistic
morality is not incompatible with morality, it fails to reveal the
best way to help people with compassion. Others argue that morality
can get off the ground with the ability to conceptualize "the
welfare of others" without the need to recognize others as
ontologically distinct beings (Zelinski 2007).



Others maintain that there is no intrinsic connection between mystical
experience and moral behavior: one can empty oneself of all
self-centeredness and self-interest without necessarily adopting a
concern for others. Enlightened mystics may no longer be
self-centered, but they can be either moral or indifferent to others
(Jones 2016, chap. 9). We need look no further than to Christian
complaints about mystical antinomian excesses of the "Free
Spirits," the Mahayana Buddhist rejection of the alleged
selfishness of the Arhat ideal in Theravada Buddhism, or the moral
scandals of some Eastern mysticism in the West today (Kripal 2002). If
moral behavior is part of a mystical way of life, it does not issue
from mystical experiences but from a mystic's cultural
background and training. The normative behavioral standards of the
group are not derivable from mystical experiences. Mystical
experiences, so the claim goes, in themselves are nonmoral. Thus,
much will depend on the moral or nonmoral orientation of the mystical
practices meant to lead to mystical experiences. The resulting
behavior will be a consequence of both the practices undertaken to
reach mystical experience and the resulting detachment of the selfless
mystical state (Jones 2004).


## 12. Secular Mysticism



The new scientific interest in meditation (especially mindfulness),
the new cultural interest in meditating for limited psychological or
physiological benefits rather than transforming one's entire
character, and the utilization of psychedelics in psychotherapy have
given rise today to a new phenomenon -- "secular mysticism." Awe
and wonder at nature is prominent, but this mysticism is not a matter
of "nature mysticism" or of aesthetic experiences as possible
triggers of mystical experiences. Rather, the interest is in the
psycho-physiological effects of meditation and psychedelics, with
mystical experiences understood within a naturalist framework.
Neuroscience appears to validate the positive effects of meditation
and psychedelics on our well-being. Secular forms of meditation for
limited benefits, such as Jon Kabat-Zinn's
mindfulness-based stress reduction program. Secularists can disconnect
traditional practices from a mystical tradition (e.g.,
Batchelor's "secular Buddhism" [2015]) or focus only on
limited practices (e.g., Harris 2014, Letheby 2017).



Mysticism becomes "naturalized." It is reduced from a full way of life
to eliciting mystical experiences for limited benefits or as mere
recreation. Mystical experiences break the sense of a narrow
"self'" and makes one feel connected to others and the rest of
the world, and secularists see this in terms of the natural world
alone. This naturalist spirituality appears more tied to mystical
experiences than other psychedelic experiences (Letheby 2021, 200).
Patients often attach great spiritual importance to mystical
experiences even if their metaphysics remains naturalist (see
Griffiths 2011). Mystical experiences often touch off awe and wonder
at the universe and being alive and also an interest in the "big
questions" of philosophy and science even if the experiences
themselves are not taken to be cognitive. That mystical
experiences may involve transcendent realities or may give knowledge
of reality is either denied in favor of a naturalist metaphysics,
or the issue is simply ignored. In fact, while mystical experiences
are normally seen in terms of transcendent realities, these
experiences may lead those inclined toward naturalism to becoming
convinced that there is no god or life after death and to abandoning
religion entirely (Newberg and Waldman 2016, 60, 67-81).



Secular mysticism raises three central philosophical questions. First,
it impacts the epistemological question of whether mystical
experiences give any insight into reality or other knowledge. If the
experiences do not necessarily lead to cognitive claims, we have to
ask whether mystics' knowledge-claims come only from their
tradition and ask what role mystical experiences actually play. The
issue of whether mystical experiences have any epistemic or
ontological implications becomes clearer. Second, it highlights
the issue of the role of cultural interpretation in understanding
mystical experiences and the constructivist claim that cultural
influences penetrate some or all mystical experiences. Third, can the
effect of mystical experiences lead to a meaningful or purposeful life
without reference to transcendent realities?