The Mystical Experience is a unique, intense Quale

What is it like to be a bat, asked Thomas Nagel in 1974, in a paper which has become famous and much quoted in the philosophy of mind.

We can’t say, because we are not bats.  But we can say something at least about our own qualia since we experience them for ourselves.  It is true that language is no substitute for the intensity and power of the experience itself, but those who have not had a mystical experience can grasp a great deal about its nature from the descriptions of those who have.

I have found that even reading the accounts of others brings on the mystical experience in my own mind – so language is clearly very successful in describing this quale. And reading about how the phenomena feels to others can be very helpful to those trying to come to terms with their own mystical experience.

I was prompted to write this post after reading a friend’s doctoral thesis on Psychedelic Assisted Therapy, and querying her statement that a therapist and her patient have insufficient language with which to discuss and integrate the experience of a psychedelic trip. I have been thinking for days about how to give her my input and its not a simple question. The complexity is not the language, but the assessment of my own adventures over the years with mystical experience. And a psychedelic trip is mostly accurately described as a mystical experience.

So the first question I had to ask is what exactly is a mystical experience? And oddly enough, in recent years I have found that much easier to explain with the input of science. In particular I have recently read (or at least analysed) around 100 papers put out by Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital on the effects on the human brain of a prolonged and dedicated long term meditation practice. And few can doubt that such a practice leads to mystical experience. Meditation is at the root of all spiritual traditions, and all such traditions have reported the experiential phenomena of mystical experience.

And so I have come to find it helpful in the extreme to look at mystical experience from two very different perspectives.

For many years I concentrated on the mystical-experience-in-itself. What is it like to have a mystical experience? How does it affect my weltanschauung? What existential meaning does it have (if any)? How does it change my life? And in seeking out mystical experience, largely through meditation and in later years through psychedelics (having been sorely misinformed that it was going to cure my depression).

But as I became more fascinated, as well as more informed, on the nature of consciousness, I began to wonder what science had to say on the topic. Science can not describe the quale – can not fathom the experience itself, but it can certainly shed light on how it arises in the physical world. And indeed how it can be brought on.

The consideration of these two very different aspects in no way answered the question: what does it mean? Is there any meaning to the mystical experience? Is it showing us a different reality (or at least a very different way of interpreting the vastly complex natural world). I suspect that yes, it enables us to access a different way of seeing the world. It tells us that we are not special, that we are animals not so different from any other descendent of the last common ancestor.

But this “seeing” has brought great relief, and a real sense of fully understanding, at a deep level, that we are not who or what we think we are. The scientist usually likes to refer to the mystical experience in terms of non duality and ego loss. To a scientist, non-duality and ego loss (or ego dissolution) are measurable psychological and neurological states, rather than just abstract philosophical concepts. While historically these terms were relegated to spiritual traditions, modern neuroscience and psychology now study them as specific “distortions” or “transcendences” of the ordinary sense of self.

That has brought great solace and a determination to push my meditative practice to the extreme. Let us put it this way: everything in the universe is made of the same stuff and if I can feel that with a visceral, lucid and intense reality within my own mind through ego dissolution, I cease to worry about the endless human fears and petty concerns I have so long suffered from.

So back to language. “Meaning” I have now dealt with: it enables us to see reality.

The best descriptions I have found of this quale come from religion and Buddhism, and in particular from three books I was lucky enough to come across over 35 years ago:

1. William James – The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
2. Evelyn Underhill – Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness (1911)
3. DT Suzuki – Mysticism Christian and Buddhist (1957)

The mystical experience is almost identical, wherever it is found – whether in a Christian convent in mediaeval Norwich, a Tibetan Monastery, or a ritual tribal gathering in South America using psychedelics. Or course it will be interpreted in differing ways according to the cultures to which the experiencer belongs. Christian nuns have a rather uncomfortable way of talking about union with Christ with unfortunate sexual undertones. Tribal societies may believe they have met all sorts of spirits and goblins and trolls. The Zen or Tibetan monk will have achieved Nirvana – a realisation that nothing truly exists and life is a grand illusion. Take your pick.

If I was a therapist (which thankfully I am not) I would be inclined to study these three books and encourage my clients to do the same. And indeed to go far and wide to try to understand the human condition using every means possible – including science such as that provided by Harvard.

My friend suggests Shared Therapeutic Language: That there is a call for the development of a shared therapeutic language within psychology to help practitioners and clients navigate and name “ineffable” experiences.

I believe the language is already there and I do not believe it helpful to invent new terms of art specifically for the purpose.

James highlights a specific sense of reality that transcends the five physical senses, allowing people to feel the objective presence of an unseen order as vividly as if it were a tangible object. 

Here are some descriptions of the mystical experience from James’s book:

•  A Clergyman’s Union with the Infinite: A clergyman describes a night on a hilltop where his soul “opened out into the Infinite,” resulting in a “rushing together of the two worlds, the inner and the outer”. He felt a “perfect unison” of his spirit with God, characterized by an “ineffable joy and exaltation” that made the ordinary sense of things fade away
• A Hiker’s “State of Equilibrium”: A Swiss man recounts a sudden “feeling of being raised above myself” while tramping in the mountains. He perceived the “presence of God” as a throb of emotion so violent he could no longer stand, describing a state where his personality was “transformed by the presence of a spiritual spirit” that had neither form nor colour but was clearly perceived by his consciousness
• Loss of Identity on a Mountain Summit: A twenty-seven-year-old man describes experiencing “intimate communion with the divine” while looking over vast landscapes. This experience consisted of a “temporary loss of my own identity” combined with an “illumination” that revealed a deeper significance to life than he had previously known
• J. A. Symonds’s “Pure, Absolute, Abstract Self”: Symonds describes a trance-like state involving a “gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space, time, sensation” and all usual factors of experience. This culminated in a state where “nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract Self” and the entire universe appeared “without form and void of content”
• Dr. R. M. Bucke’s “Cosmic Consciousness”: Bucke recounts a sudden experience where he felt “wrapped in a flame-coloured cloud” and realized the fire was within himself. This was followed by an “intellectual illumination” and “immense joyousness” leading to the realization that the universe is a “living Presence,” that all men are immortal, and that “the foundation principle of the world… is what we call love”.

Here are some descriptions of the mystical experience from Underhill’s book:

• Saint-Martin’s Synesthetic Perception: The visionary Saint-Martin described a rare state of fused senses, stating, “I heard flowers that sounded, and saw notes that shone”. Underhill notes this as an interpretation of vibrations by a consciousness that has changed or transcended its normal rhythm.
• Richard Rolle’s “Heavenly Melody”: Rolle provided an account of his passage into a state of “songful love,” recounting how, while praying in a chapel, he suddenly felt “the sound of song” within himself. He described this as a “heavenly melody” that dwelt in his mind and turned his thoughts into a “mirth of song”.
• Suso’s Vision of the Crystal Heart: In a symbolic vision, Suso saw his own body in the region of his heart become “pure and transparent like crystal”. He perceived “Divine Wisdom peacefully enthroned” in the center of his heart, while his soul rested on the “bosom of God” in a state of inebriation.
• Dante’s River of Light: Dante described a “symbolic reconstruction of reality” where he saw “light in the form of a river blazing with radiance”. This river flowed between banks of flowers, and from it issued “living sparks” that settled on the blossoms like “rubies set in gold”.
• St. Teresa’s Transverberation: In a celebrated “active imaginary vision,” St. Teresa described an angel who thrust a golden spear tipped with fire into her heart. This experience left her “all on fire with a great love of God,” producing a physical and spiritual pain that she described as having a “surpassing sweetness”.

Here are some descriptions of the Buddhist mystical experience from Suzuki’s book:

• The Experience of “Is-ness” (Tathata): Buddhist enlightenment is described as the experience of “is-ness” or “suchness” (tathata), which in itself possesses all the possible values humans can conceive.
• Universal Enlightenment: It is recorded that when Buddha attained enlightenment, he perceived that all beings—both sentient and non-sentient—were already part of the enlightenment itself.
• “Vast Emptiness” (Sunyata): The Zen patriarch Bodhidharma described the highest and holiest truth of the Sutras as “A vast emptiness and no holiness in it”. This state is reached by a metaphorical “leap” into a “silent valley” of Absolute Emptiness.
• Transformative Perception (The Circular Sun): In a Zen verse-story, master Rakan Osho describes his enlightenment as an explosion of doubt, after which he “for the first time perceived that the sun was circular”. This signifies seeing the fundamental “is-ness” of everyday things with a transformed view of life
• The Oneness of the Devotee and Buddha (Ki and Ho): In Shin Buddhism, the mystical experience is characterized as the identification of “oneness” of the devotee (ki) and the Buddha or Reality (ho). This identification is often actualized through the invocation of the “Namu-amida-butsu”

You could of course codify all the above into categories for the purpose of making a specific therapeutic definition of each particular variety of mystical experience, but I wonder whether that would add much?

“Sex_obsessed_nun_crush_on_christ” for instance would be a splendid short code for much of the Western Christian mystical experience in the convent. But perhaps it doesn’t really add much.

Who am I to say. I hope my friend will forgive my tongue in cheek irreverence.