12

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
DAVID M. WULFF

Falling by definition outside the realm of ordinary discourse, mystical

experience eludes any precise description or characterization. Furthermore,
as relatively recent constructions that serve diverse and even opposing
purposes, the terms mystical and mysticism are themselves hard to pin down.
Mystic and its variants derive from the Latin mysticus, of mysteries, and
from the Greek mystikos, from mystes, initiate. The 26 definitions of mys-
ticism that Inge (1899) assembled a century ago illustrate how loosely the
word was used then, often in disparaging or contemptuous ways. Scholars
today (e.g., Forman, 1990) continue to remark on how variable the defi-
nitions of this term are. Most commentators agree, however, that any ex-
perience qualified as mystical diverges in fundamental ways from ordinary
conscious awareness and leaves a strong impression of having encountered
a reality different from-and, in some crucial sense, higher than-the
reality of everyday experience.' Rare and fleeting though they usually are,

'If one considered these criteria as sufficient for identifying an experience as mystical, near-
death experiences (NDEs) would easily qualify. However, the accent on individual identity
(e.g., in the form of a life review and encounters with deceased relatives). the relative clarity
of events, and the absence of the experience of union distinguish most NDEs from classic
mystical experiences. The two are usually discussed separately, as in this book. Peak experiences,
Maslow's (1964, 1968) preferred phrase, is still looser in meaning than mystical experiences,
emphasizing the individual's experience over, if not to the exclusion of, the reality that is

397
such experiences often stand out as defining moments in the lives of those
who have them.

THREE EXAMPLES

Given the extraordinary range of experiences that are described as

mystical, a few examples cannot possibly represent the whole. Yet a sam-
pling of first-hand reports is essential to ground us in the lived reality of
these compelling experiences. The first of these describes an experience of
author Sophy Burnham (1997), who at the time was a freelance writer on
assignment in Central and South America. A spiritual seeker and meditator
whose mother had died a few months earlier, she had been deeply stirred
by the discussions of God she had had with a group of three extraordinary
men she met in Costa Rica. Still in a state of transport when she arrived
in Peru, Burnham joined a tour group visiting the ancient sacred site of
Machu Picchu. Suddenly assailed by a hollow roaring in her ears and the
sense that she was there for some purpose, she separated herself from the
group, climbed the hillside, and threw herself to the ground.
I felt a pressure on my neck, as if a dark hand were pressing me down.
Terrible and majestic it was. . . . From the midst of black roaring, came
a voice: You belong to me or You are mine. Not in words, but rather as
a form of knowledge, resounding in blackness.. . . For a moment I
fought it, terrified. Then: “If you are God, yes,” I surrendered with my
last coherent thoughts. “I belong only to God.” . . . With that I was
immersed in a sweetness words cannot express. 1 could hear the singing
of the planets, and wave after wave of light washed over me. But this
is wrong, because I was the light as well, without distinction of self or
of being washed. It is hard to speak of what happened at this stage.
A t one level I ceased to exist, was swallowed into light. How long that
lasted I do not know. At another level, although I no longer existed
as a separate “I,” nonetheless I saw things, thus indicating the duality
of “I” and “other.” In that state I knew things that today I haven’t
even the wit to ask questions about. Some I do not remember, but I
know that I saw into the structure of the universe. I had the impression
of knowing beyond knowledge and being given glimpses into ALL.
. . . I t was knowledge untranslatable, and it filled me with joy. (Burn-
ham, 1997, pp. 78-79)
In the next example, taken from a collection of documents solicited
by zoologist Alister Hardy (1979) as the founding director of the Religious

encountered. Flow experiences, which are said to share many features with peak experiences,
including self-forgetfulness, only occasionally include the transcendent, ecstatic, or visionary
element of “deep flow,” which seems to occur mainly in nature settings (Csikszentmihalyi,
1982).

398 DAVID M.WULFF

Experience Research Unit at Oxford University, an officer recalled an ex-
perience he had during World War I:
I walked eastward for about two miles along the towpath and then
turned about. The nearer I drew to the village, the more alive my
surroundings seemed to become. It was as if something which had been
dormant when I was in the wood were coming to life. I must have
drifted into an exalted state. The moon, when I look up at it, seemed
to have become personalised and observant, as if it were aware of my
presence on the tow-path [sic]. A sweet scent pervaded the air. . . . The
slowly moving waters of the canal, which was winding its unhurried
way from the battlefields to the sea, acquired a “numen” which en-
dorsed the intimations of the burgeoning trees. . . . A feeling that I was
being absorbed into the living surroundings gained in intensity and
was working up to a climax. Something was going to happen. Then it
happened. The experience lasted, I should say, about thirty seconds
and seemed to come out of the sky in which were resounding har-
monies. The thought: “That is the music of the spheres” was imme-
diately followed by a glimpse of luminous bodies-meteors or stars-
circulating in predestined courses emitting both light and music. I
stood still on the tow-path and wondered if I was going to fall down.
I dropped on to one knee and thought: “How wonderful to die at this
moment!” (p. 41)
Our third example, cited by William James (1902/1985), comes from
the English writer and poet John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), who
described a trancelike’ mood that recurred, with diminishing frequency,
until he was 28.
Suddenly, at church, or in company, or when 1 was reading . . , I felt
the approach of the mood. Irresistibly it took possession of my mind
and will, lasted what seemed an eternity, and disappeared in a series
of rapid sensations, which resembled the awakening from anaesthetic
influence. One reason why I disliked this kind of trance was that I
could not describe it to myself. I cannot even now find words to render
it intelligible. It consisted in a gradual but swiftly progressive obliter-
ation of space, time, sensation, and the multitudinous factors of ex-
perience which seem to qualify what we are pleased to call our self. In
proportion, as these conditions of ordinary consciousness were sub-
tracted, the sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired

’Trance should he understood to refer to a state of profound absorption or lack of mental

content during which the individual is experientially cut off from the outside world; it is
frequently accompanied by vocal and motor automatisms, lack of reflective awareness, and
amnesia. Ecstasy, as the title of Arbman’s (1963-1970) three-volume work, Ecstasy, or Religious
Trance, suggests, is a specifically religious or mystical state distinguished by the profound
emotionality that accompanies the narrowing of awareness to the contemplative object. In
contrast to trance, ecstasy is marked by little or no movement and may he accompanied by vivid
imagery. Rouget (1980/1985) suggests several further distinctions, noting that states of trance are
often the product of over-stimulation in a group setting, whereas states of ecstasy more often
occur in solitary settings marked by sensory reduction (see also Cardeiia, 1996).

MYSTlCAL EXPERlENCE 399

 intensity. At last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract self.
The universe became without form and void of content. But self per-
sisted, formidable in its vivid keenness, feeling the most poignant
doubt about reality.. . . The return to ordinary conditions of sentient
existence began by my first recovering the power of touch, and then
by the gradual though rapid influx of familiar impressions and diurnal
interests. At last I felt myself once more a human being; and though
the riddle of what is meant by life remained unsolved, I was thankful
for this return from the abyss-this deliverance from so awful an ini-
tiation into the mysteries of scepticism. (James, 1902/1985, p. 306)
Symonds also supplied James with an example of mystical ecstasy induced
by chloroform-in this instance, a deeply intimate sense of God’s presence,
the fading of which, as Symonds regained consciousness following surgery,
left him feeling devastated (James, 1902/1985, p. 310).

CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

From such variable descriptions as well as the more traditional mys-

tical literatures, various commentators have abstracted a common core of
essential traits that remains invariant from one context to the next. Per-
haps the most famous and perdurable characterization of mystical experi-
ence is the one offered by James (1902/1958), who identified two essential
traits, one negative and the other positive. Such experience is marked, first
of all, by ineffability, the quality of eluding any adequate account in words.
Thus, like feeling states, the experience can be truly comprehended only
by those who have known it at first hand. Second, it possesses a noetic
quality: It is experienced as a state of deep, authoritative knowledge or
insight unknown to the discursive intellect. These two qualities are often
accompanied by two less-distinctive characteristics: transiency, a tendency
for the experience to fade within an hour or two, leaving behind an imper-
fect recollection though an enduring sense of its importance, and passivity,
the feeling that, after the experience sets in, one is no longer in control and
is perhaps even in the grasp of a superior power (pp. 302-303).
A more elaborate and serviceable set of characteristics defining a uni-
versal core of a mystical experience was subsequently put forward by Stace
(1960) from his study of Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu, Buddhist, and
Taoist mystical sources. Of the seven characteristics Stace identified, the
first stands out as the “very inner essence of all mystical experience” (p.
132): (a) the disappearance of all the physical and mental objects of or-
dinary consciousness and, in their place, the emergence of a unitary, un-
differentiated, or pure consciousness. Accordingly, (b) the experience is
located neither in space nor in time. Furthermore, it is marked by (c) a
sense of objectivity or reality; (d) feelings of peace, bliss, joy, and bless-

400 DAVID M. WULFF

edness; (e) the feeling, in varying degrees, of having encountered the holy,
the sacred, or the divine (sometimes identified as “God”); (f) paradoxical-
ity, apparent violations of the usual laws of logic as illustrated by a con-
sciousness that has no object; and (g) alleged ineffability-“alleged” be-
cause Stace is less certain than James what this common claim of the
mystics means.
Together, these seven characteristics constitute what Stace ( 1960)
called introvertive mystical experience. The first and third examples cited
at the beginning of the chapter mentioned illustrate such experience, Sy-
monds’s (the third example) most explicitly when he wrote of a pure self
and a universe beyond space and time and without form or content. As
Stace pointed out, however, Symonds’s experience is rather unusual in its
lack of peace and joy or the conviction of objective reality. These qualities,
along with the others, are unmistakable in Burnham’s (1997) account.
In the case of extrovertive mystical experience, illustrated by our sec-
ond example, the objects of the material world do not vanish but are
directly and mysteriously perceived as possessing an underlying unity. This
unity is understood as basic to the universe, and thus extrovertive mystical
experience differs from the introvertive type on the second characteristic
as well: In place of a nontemporal and nonspatial experience is a perceived
“inner subjectivity, or life, in all things” (Stace, 1960, p. 131). The two
types have in common, then, the remaining five characteristics. In Stace’s
view, the extrovertive mystical experience is both inferior to and less sig-
nificant than the introvertive type, which is far more common in the lit-
erature on mysticism. In contrast, Forman (199813) concluded that introv-
ertive mystical experience, which he relabeled a pure consciousness event to
emphasize the absence of any experienced object, is the more elemental
form. Two further states develop from this-the dualistic mystical state,
which combines a heightened awareness of one’s own awareness with con-
sciousness of thoughts and objects, and the unitive mystical state, in which
one’s awareness and its objects become one, which is Stace’s extrovertive
experience. Forman rejected the label extrovertive because it seems to sug-
gest that one is having the experience “out in the world” (p. 186).
A further typological distinction will be helpful here. Critical to any
right understanding of mysticism, according to Pratt (1920), is the differ-
entiation of two forms of mystical experience: the mild and the extreme.
The latter type is featured by James (1902/1985), who maintained that
only by examining extreme cases will one see the essential characteristics
of a mystical experience and be able to judge their consequences. In con-
trast, Pratt argued that most of mysticism’s positive fruits have come from
the less noticeable, but more common, milder type.
In either case, according to Pratt (1920), the individual experiences
the presence of a greater reality without the evident participation of or-
dinary perceptual processes but with the same compelling sense of objec-

MYSTlCAL EXPERIENCE 40 1
tivity that sensory experience provides. The extreme type adds a number
of distinctive elements, including dramatic swings from painful suffering
and profound feelings of unworthiness at one pole to joyful ecstasy and
bliss at the other. Typical of the extreme type, too, is the use of various
ascetic practices-including fasting, flagellation, isolation, and other forms
of abstinence and austerity-as a means of spiritual training, and the oc-
currence of such exceptional phenomena as visions, inner voices, the feel-
ing of levitation, and abnormal bodily changes.
Erotic language and images are common among these extreme mystics
as well. Perhaps the most famous example, immortalized by Bernini’s well-
known sculpture of the scene, is the description by Saint Teresa of Avila
(1515-1582) of her encounter with a handsome angel, whose repeated
plunging of his fiery spear into her “entrails” caused her to moan from the
intense but deliciously sweet pain (Moller, 1965, p. 263). Some commen-
tators (e.g., Montmorand, 1920) have argued that the mystics resorted to
erotic language because no other came as close to expressing their mystical
ecstasies. Other observers (e.g., Pratt, 1920; Leuba, 1925), however, have
pointed out that in various religious traditions the intensity and literalness
of the mystic’s imagery leave little doubt that sexual impulses are to some
degree implicated. Flournoy’s (1915) modern mystic was frank about the
sexual influences in her own mystical experience just as Mallory’s (1977)
comtemplatives were candid about the erotic elements in theirs.
Taken together, the various features of the extreme form of mysticism
have suggested to many psychologists that mystical experience is sympto-
matic of mental disorder. While defending the extreme type from any
sweeping comparisons to mental illness, Pratt ( 1920) acknowledged that
pathology may color the experience of some of the great ecstatics and even
take over the lives of some of the minor ones. But he noted that the mystics
themselves often resist these tendencies and discount their importance.
Moreover, their disciplined dedication to a higher purpose sets them apart
from the pathologically disturbed. Pratt was nevertheless convinced that
ecstasy is in some sense dangerous, and thus he was anxious to dissociate
the mild form of mystical experience from any judgments of the extreme
type. The possible connections between pathology and mystical experience
are addressed below.

AFTEREFFECTS

The aftereffects of mystical experience have been explored mainly by

case studies and anecdotes, techniques that, while unserviceable for em-
pirical generalizations, can be very useful in phenomenological research
(see van Manen, 1990). Anecdotes bring home how individual and striking
the aftereffects of mystical experience can be at the same time that they

402 DAVID M. WULFF

make apparent-in some cases, at least-the intimate connection between
the particular content of the experience and its effects. Although a pro-
found sense of fatigue may immediately follow a mystical experience, and
the knowledge or insight that defines it often proves frustratingly difficult
to recapture and articulate, there remains the joyful impression of having
encountered a higher reality and discovered new truths. Ordinary concerns
recede in importance or appear in a new light, and new beliefs and values
take the place of old ones. Some experients report feeling an intensified
love and compassion for others, and many say that life as a whole has
taken on new meaning.
Writing many years after her own experience of a compelling lumi-
nous presence that remained with her for 5 days, even in the midst of
ordinary activities and relationships, Foster (1985) said that her life was
permanently altered and that the values she became aware of during those
days became ascendant over all others. Moreover, the vision itself did not
entirely fade: From that time forward, she wrote, she had “an intuitive
awareness of being ‘companioned,’” and any work she did was an offering
to “that Other whom I now recognized” (pp. 47, 48). A theologian who
experienced an ecstatic vision of unity while swinging in Houston and
Masters’s ( 1972) Altered States of Consciousness Induction Device found
a long-standing writing block suddenly dissolved, and he reported improved
family relations and teaching as well as a sense of continuing growth.
The most systematic empirical study of the aftereffects of mystical
experience was undertaken by Pahnke (1966) and extended years later by
Doblin (1991). With 20 Protestant seminarians serving as his participants,
Pahnke set about to establish that psilocybin, the primary psychoactive
substance contained in “sacred mushrooms,” can precipitate experiences
similar to those reported by the classic mystics. Carefully controlling for
all other variables including set or expectation, Pahnke randomly gave
psilocybin to half of his participants (who thereby became the experimental
group) and nicotinic acid, a B vitamin that causes flushing sensations, to
the other half (the control group). Together, the two groups of participants
then listened to a 2.5-hr broadcast of a nearby Good Friday service. Sta-
tistical analysis of coded interviews and written descriptions of the expe-
rience along with responses to a 147-item questionnaire based mainly on
Stace’s ( 1960) phenomenology allowed Pahnke to conclude that the ex-
periences reported by those who ingested psilocybin were significantly
closer to the classic mystical experience than those reported by the partic-
ipants receiving the B vitamin.
Six months later, all 20 of Pahnke’s (1966) volunteers completed a
lengthy questionnaire designed to reassess the experience and to measure
any enduring changes that may have resulted. Members of the experimental
group, beyond confirming their initial reports of having had mysticlike
experiences under the influence of psilocybin, reported significantly more

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 403

enduring positive changes in their attitudes and behavior-toward them-
selves, others, life, and the psilocybin experience itself-than those in the
control group. After a quarter of a century, the 7 participants from the
experimental group who were interviewed by Doblin (1991) and retook
the follow-up questionnaire unanimously agreed that their experience had
had genuinely mystical elements and, despite the frightening or painful
moments that most experienced, was one of the high points in their spir-
itual lives. Their questionnaire replies once again showed a much higher
rate of persisting positive changes than those of the 9 control individuals
who participated in the follow-up study. In particular, the individuals in
the experimental group reported that the experience had helped them to
settle on a career (a majority had become ministers); deepened their faith
and their understanding of elements of the Christian tradition; increased
their identification with minorities, women, and the environment; reduced
their fear of death; and heightened their experience of beauty and joy
(Doblin, 1991, p. 12).
As seminary students, Pahnke’s (1966) participants were likely dis-
posed not only to have religious experiences under psilocybin but also to
integrate them into their lives later on. When experiences facilitated by
psilocybin and other such entheogens3 occur outside a religious context or
tradition, however, they may be expected to have less “staying power” than
Pahnke and Doblin documented (Smith, 1967, p. 144; see also Deikman,
1966). A study by S. R. Wilson and Spencer (1990) supports such a con-
clusion. Two groups of participants-one of undergraduate sociology stu-
dents, the other of members of a yogi ashram who were similar in age and
gender composition-were asked to describe their most positive experi-
ences and then to rate them on a series of indexes. Those of the nonashram
respondents who had used mind-altering substances were asked to describe
experiences both under and apart from the influence of these substances.
Ratings of the substance-facilitated experiences yielded a profile similar in
many respects to the profile of the ashram members, but the yogi practi-
tioners were dramatically higher on mystical interpretation, felt personality
change, and perceived life changes resulting from the experience.
American participants in Asia-derived spiritual practices often have
a history of having used plant or chemical psychoactives first. Certainly
that was the case for the majority of the students whom Tart (1991) queried
at a Tibetan Buddhist retreat. Furthermore, although most said that such
experience was important in their spiritual lives, the overwhelming major-
ity reported that they no longer used such substances. Like Jordan (1971),

’The terms entheogen and entheogenic, derived from the Greek entheos, “god within,” have been
proposed by Ruck, Bigwood, Staples, Otto, and Wassen (1979) and adopted by others as more
accurate and more devoid of misleading connotations than hallucinogen, psychotomemetic, or
psychedelic for referring to the substances and effects associated with shamanic and related
altered states of consciousness.

404 DAVID M. WULFF

they may have found that more traditional spiritual practices carried out
in sustained association with others yielded experiences more profound,
meaningful, and consequential than those they had under the entheogens.
Altogether, these findings suggest that healthy, highly educated per-
sons who are open to mystical experiences and have them in supportive
contexts may enjoy long-enduring positive aftereffects, especially when the
experiences are dramatic. Yet such conditions do not always hold, and
mystical experiences come in a great many varieties, including what James
(1902/1985, p. 337) called diabolical mysticism. The experience of John
Symonds described above was certainly a dramatic one, but he neither
welcomed it nor recorded, apparently, any long-term effects. In his own
analysis of the aftereffects (i.e., the “fruits”) of religious experience, James
( 1902/1985) suggested that mystical impulses yield admirable lives only in
combination with a high degree of intelligence and imagination. Although
struck by the superficiality and pettiness of many of the mystics he ex-
amined, James concluded that the greatest of them possess qualities “in-
dispensable to the world’s welfare” (p. 299).
Pratt (1920), on the other hand, inferred from his exceptionally het-
erogeneous collection of documents that positive aftereffects come mainly
out of the more common and less definite mild forms of mystical experi-
ence. One of Pratt’s (1920) respondents wrote: “I have experienced God’s
presence so that I felt the lack of nothing and feared nothing. It is hard
to describe the feeling, but everything seems bright and clear ahead, and
I feel as if I had the support of some great unimpeachable authority behind
me for everything I may do then. It feels as though I were not standing
alone” (pp. 341-342). Such undramatic experiences, Pratt concluded, are
of supreme value to those who have them, making possible a religious
outlook even for the skeptic and providing the self-transcending aspiration
and insight that are necessary, he said, for continued inner growth.

BIOLOGICAL MARKERS

Whether mild or extreme, mystical experiences are increasingly

thought to be correlates of certain forms of activity in the brain’s temporal
lobes. Unfortunately, however, few data directly support this speculation.
There are numerous electroencephalographic (EEG) studies of meditation
(Murphy & Donovan, 1996), a traditional precursor of mystical experience,
but because mystical states are so difficult to generate, they are most un-
likely to appear during these studies, even among highly proficient medi-
tators. Lower still is the probability of a laboratory occurrence of the more
common and spontaneous, mild forms of mystical experience. Furthermore,
those who are trying to construct models of meditative and mystical con-
sciousness tend to distrust the meditative research that does exist, given

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 405

that it has been carried out largely by partisan groups of investigators
(d’Aquili, 1993, p. 260).
The first clues to the possible neural origins of mystical experience
came from research on epilepsy, which has long been associated with re-
ligious preoccupations and sometimes with remarkable religious experi-
ences. More recent investigations of epilepsy suggest that religiousness in
general and trance states in particular are associated with activity in the
temporal lobes (Bear & Fedio, 1977; Geschwind, 1983; Mandel, 1980).
Persinger ( 1983, 1987) postulated a continuum of temporal-lobe lability
representing the varying degrees to which individuals are predisposed to
experience “temporal-lobe transients” (TLTs), momentary foci of electrical
activity or microseizures, which are said to yield mystical and related ex-
periences and in time produce alterations in the synaptic organization of
limbic regions. Contributing to the occurrence of these TLTs is a variety
of culturally conditioned factors, including the various techniques and pro-
cedures traditionally used for the induction of trance states (Winkelman,
1986). Persinger found indirect support for his hypothesis in a series of
studies, including one in which the number of EEG spikes in the temporal
lobe in response to exotic rhythmic sounds and pulsating light correlated
significantly with measures of religious belief, paranormal or mystical ex-
perience, and a sense of presence, whereas measures of spike activity in the
occipital lobe did not (Makarec & Persinger, 1985). More encompassing
explanatory theories based on such evidence are considered below.

PREVALENCE AND PREDISPOSING FACTORS

National surveys using single-item scales suggest that mystical expe-

riences, at least of Pratt’s ( 1920) mild type, are surprisingly widespread.
The best known of these studies was carried out by Greeley (1975, p. 58)
and his associates, who asked a national sample of 1,460 Americans, “Have
you ever felt as though you were very close to a powerful, spiritual force
that seemed to lift you out of yourself?” An accompanying checklist of
descriptors allowed for a closer analysis of affirmative responses. Among
the respondents, 35% reported having felt such a spiritual force at least
once or twice in their lives; 12% claimed that they had had the experience
several times, and 5% said that it happened often. In a British national
sample of 1,865 persons polled at about the same time, 30.4% answered
Greeley’s question affirmatively and 36.4% reported being “aware of or
influenced by a presence or power, whether referred to as God or not,
which was different from their everyday selves” (Hay & Morisy, 1978, p.
257). In surveys in the United States since then, Greeley’s question has
drawn affirmative answers from between 30.9% and 39.3% of respondents.
To Back and Bourque’s (1970) question, which asked respondents if they

406 DAVID M. WULFF

had had “a ‘religious or mystical experience’-that is, a moment of sudden
religious awakening or insight,” between 21% and 41% responded affir-
matively in national polls in the 1960s and a robust 53% in each of two
Gallup polls in 1990 (Levin, 1993; Yamane & Polzer, 1994).
Thus, a substantial minority of Americans and British nationals would
seem to have had at least one mystical experience, though it is apparently
uncommon, as Laski (1961) also concluded, to have them more than a few
times. The actual prevalence of mystical experience, however, may be lower
than these figures suggest. In a random sample of 30 nonpsychiatric hospital
patients, Hufford (1985) found that 8 of the 14 who responded affirma-
tively to Greeley’s (1975) question proved to be false positives when their
descriptions of the experience were closely analyzed. Six respondents, for
example, took the expression “lift out” simply to mean feeling uplifted in
a metaphoric sense, and they equated feeling “close to a powerful, spiritual
force” with the belief that God is always near. And whereas 34% of
Thomas and Cooper’s (1980) sample of 305 adults endorsed Greeley’s ques-
tion-a nearly perfect replication of the original finding-analysis of their
written statements showed that the experiences they referred to varied
enormously. As many as 10% of the sample wrote replies that were un-
codable, and only 2 respondents described experiences that were deemed
to be genuinely mystical. The largest proportion, 16% of the total sample,
fell into the category “faith and consolation,” which consisted of intense
spiritual experiences.
In both Greeley’s (1975) and the Hay and Morisy’s (1978) studies,
there was a slight but significant tendency for the occurrence of mystical
experience to increase with age, education, and income; sex differences
were inconsistent between the two studies. Whereas a century ago, Bucke
( 1901/1923) noted that his rare exemplars of “cosmic consciousness” were
mainly in their 30s, in Greeley’s study mystical experience was most often
reported by persons in their 40s and 50s-a roughly comparable point in
the life span, perhaps, given the increase in life expectancy in the 20th
century. In the 1988 General Social Survey analyzed by Levin (1993), on
the other hand, no significant age trends were found among the responses
to Greeley’s question.
Children, who are not represented in these national samples, have
been thought by some to be peculiarly subject to mystical experience. In
a study of children’s religious drawings, Bind1 (1965) reported that spon-
taneous experiences of the numinous (Otto’s [ 1917/1950] now-famous term
for “the holy”) are common among children under 7, but then gradually
fade as naive credulity declines. Among those who responded to an ad-
vertisement placed by the Religious Experience Research Unit at Oxford
University, only 15% referred back to childhood experiences (Armstrong,
1984), whereas in the grammar-school sample queried by Paffard (1973) at
about the same time, 40% of the boys and 61% of the girls affirmed that

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 407

they had had experiences akin to those celebrated by the poet Wordsworth.
Although Laski (1961) likewise made note of many recollections of ecstatic
experiences in essays written by 12- to 15-year-old girls, she concluded that
the Wordsworthian notion that childhood is normally “a Golden Age of
ecstasy,” a time of almost continuous ecstasy, is insupportable (p. 137).
Any estimate of the prevalence of mystical experience in the general
population clearly depends on how one defines the term. Even in its mild
forms, however, it is uncommon enough to invite consideration of predis-
posing factors, perhaps something akin to a “mystical trait.” James (1902/
1985) proposed that mystical experience originates in a region lying outside
of normal awareness, a region that he called the “subliminal” or “subcon-
scious self,” a notion he borrowed from Myers (1892). According to Myers,
the limen, or threshold, below which this subliminal self is found marks
the boundary of the ordinary self, which is that selection of conscious
sensations and thoughts that best serves us in everyday life. Differences in
the character and accessibility of the subliminal self are reflected in differ-
ences in religious or mystical experience. In persons prone to mystical ex-
perience, this self is relatively large and active, and the margin of the
conscious field relatively leaky or pervious (p. 197).
Contemporary correlational research suggests in various ways the con-
tinuing aptness of James’s metaphors (at least for those who grant metaphor
a significant role in scientific thought; see Leary, 1990). Persons who tend
to score high on mysticism scales tend also to score high on such variables
as complexity, openness to new experience, breadth of interests, innova-
tion, tolerance of ambiguity, and creative personality (Cowling, 1985;
Hood, Hall, Watson, & Biderman, 1979; Thalbourne & Delin, 1994;
Thomas & Cooper, 1980). Furthermore, they are likely to score high on
measures of hypnotizability, ab~orption,~ and fantasy p r o n e n e ~ ssuggesting
,~
a capacity to suspend the judging process that distinguishes imaginings and
real events and to commit their mental resources to representing the
imaginal object as vividly as possible (Nelson, 1992; Spanos & Moretti,
1988; Thalbourne, Bartemucci, Delin, Fox, & Nofi, 1997). Individuals high
4Whereas in Albrecht’s (1951) work, the term absorption (die Versunkenheit) refers to the
unique and relatively rare psychological state out of which full-scale mystical experiences
emerge, here it refers to a disposition to have episodes of “total” attention that fully engage
perceptual, imaginative, and ideational resources. Possessing both cognitive and motivational-
affective components, this capacity is said to be associated with hypnosis, artistic creativity,
and mystical experience (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974). Kumar and Pekala (1988) found that
persons who are high in absorption capacity report experiences of greater intensity than lower-
scoring participants. Absorption has been found to be positively correlated with an intrinsic
religious orientation (Levin, Wickramasekera, & Hirshberg (1998), which in turn has been
associated with more frequent reports of experiences akin to Stace’s (1960) introvertive
mysticism (Hood, 1973).
’In their originating study of the fantasy-prone personality, S. C. Wilson and Barber (1983)
reported that 6 of the 27 women in their fantasy-prone group-who were initially identified by
their excellence as hypnotic subjects-but none of the 25 in the comparison group, reported
intense, life-changing religious experiences that were marked by visions and voices and
described as deeply moving, overwhelming, and awesome.

408 DAVID M. WULFF

on hypnotic susceptibility are also more likely to report having undergone
religious conversion, which for them is primarily an experiential rather
than a cognitive phenomenon-that is, one marked by notable alterations
in perceptual, affective, and ideomotor response patterns (Gibbons & De
Jarnette, 1972). Although religious conversion can be distinguished from
mystical experience both phenomenologically and dynamically, some of the
perceptual and affective changes in question here represent points of com-
monality.
The correlates of reported mystical experience also include other var-
iables: belief in paranormal phenomena, such as extrasensory perception
and psychokinesis, magical ideation, and manic and depressive experiences.
Noting a consistent interrelationship among these variables and a creative
personality scale, Australian researchers Thalboume and Delin ( 1994) sub-
jected student data on all of these dimensions to a principal-components
analysis. A single factor emerged, accounting for 52.8% of the variance in
the initial study and 54.2% in a replication (Thalbourne et al., 1997). The
common thread among these disparate experiences, Thalbourne and Delin
concluded, is a high degree of accessibility to subliminal consciousness.
Thus they proposed calling the factor transliminality. Although Thalbourne
and Delin (1994) have not proposed how to operationalize the “barrier or
gating” mechanisms between the subliminal and conscious regions, they
found that those who are high in transliminality, because the barrier or
gating mechanism between the subliminal and supraliminal (conscious)
regions operates relatively freely, will be highly susceptible to incursions of
large amounts of ideational and affective input from subliminal regions
(P. 22).
In additional research, Thalbourne and Delin (1994) found that per-
sons who score high in transliminality tend to agree that they have “re-
ceived a communication from the Divinity”; that, “in some symbolic sense,”
they have “gone through the process of being martyred, of dying, and of
being spiritually reborn”; and that they have had “the experience in which
life appeared to be simply a play, or like a dream in the mind of the
Creator” (pp. 27, 29). In a follow-up study, Thalbourne and Delin (1999)
found that transliminality scores correlated .67 with a modified version of
Hood’s (1975) 25-item Mysticism Scale, which is based on Stace’s (1960)
analysis, and .57 with their own Mystical Experience Ratings, an adapta-
tion of Hood’s (1970) earlier Religious Experience Episodes Measure, which
consists of 15 examples from James’s (1902/1985) Varieties. High scorers in
transliminality also tended to rate themselves as more religious, to identify
with some religious group, and to report reading about Eastern religious
traditions (Bible reading, in contrast, did not correlate with translimi-
nality ).
Whatever one calls it, a certain predisposition evidently plays a major
role in mystical experience. But set and setting are also significant factors,

MYSTlCAL EXPERIENCE 409

as research with psychedelic drugs has made apparent. O n the basis of
observations carried out mainly in the United States, researchers estimate
that, in general, at least 25% to 33% of persons taking such drugs will
have intense mystical experiences, but if such persons have a religious
background and the context in which they take the drug is explicitly de-
signed to facilitate a religious response, as in the case of Pahnke’s (1966)
experiment, up to 90% will have such experiences (Wulff, 1997, p. 92).
The specific “triggers” that often play a role in spontaneous cases include,
in addition to religious services, such stimuli as impressive natural settings,
flowers, scents, fine (or sometimes violent) weather, sunrise or sunset,
breezes, light patterns, music, poetry, art, beautiful cities, sacred places,
swift movement, creative work, sex, childbirth, watching children, illness,
depression, the prospect of death, personal crisis, and so on (Greeley, 1975;
Hardy, 1979; Laski, 1961).

RELATIONSHIP TO PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

The unusual experiences of the classic mystics, combined as they so

often were with self-deprivation and self-torture, extraordinary bodily mal-
adies, tidal swings in mood, and claims of erotic trysts with divinity, led
many early psychiatrists and psychologists to conclude that mysticism is
fundamentally a pathological process. Janet ( 1926- 1928), for example, af-
ter observing parallels among the sufferings and ecstasies of a patient he
studied for years and those reported by the great Christian mystics, con-
cluded that all ecstatics suffer from psychasthenia, a term he coined for a
group of neuroses marked by extreme anxiety, obsessions, and phobias. O n
the basis of his own study of the Christian mystics, Leuba (1925) was
convinced that mystical experience can be entirely accounted for by var-
ious psychological and physiological processes, especially the disorders of
hysteria (a group of neuroses marked by hallucinations, anesthesias, paral-
yses, and somnambulism) and neurasthenia (a disease characterized by such
symptoms as chronic physical and mental exhaustion, hypersensitivity,
sleeplessness, and loss of appetite; see Ellenberger [1970] on these now-
dated diagnostic categories).
Pratt’s (1920) more favorable view-according to which, even
though pathology may indeed mark some mystics’ lives, mystical experience
per se is not pathological but a factor for growth-finds substantial support
in the contemporary empirical and transpersonal literatures. There are, first
of all, several studies suggesting that measures of mystical experience tend
not to be correlated with measures of pathology. In a study of 38 female
outpatients, for example, Kroll, Fiszdon, and Crosby (1996) found that the
tendency to experience pathological, or dissociative, altered states of con-
sciousness was not correlated with a disposition to have positive mystical

41 0 DAVlD M. WULFF
experiences. Among female undergraduates in Canada, Spanos and Moretti
(1988) found Hood’s Mysticism Scale to be correlated with hypnotizability
and absorption, consistent with a trend I noted earlier, but not with mea-
sures of neuroticism, self-esteem, depressive affect, or psychosomatic symp-
toms. O n the other hand, their Diabolical Experiences Scale, which as-
sesses the felt reality of the Devil, Satan, and evil spirits, correlated
significantly with neuroticism and psychosomatic symptoms as well as hyp-
notizability and absorption. Finally, Oxman, Rosenberg, Schnurr, Tucker,
and Gala (1988) found that autobiographical accounts of mystical ecstasy,
hallucinogenic drug-induced states, and schizophrenia are more different
than similar when assessed in terms of patterns of lexical choice.
That mystical experience may be a positive factor in people’s lives is
suggested by Greeley’s (1975) finding that, in his national U.S. sample, the
reported occurrence of mystical experience correlated .34 with the Positive
Affect Scale developed by Bradburn (1969) as a measure of psychological
well-being, and -.31 with the Negative Affect Scale, an indicator of poor
mental health. The correlation with positive affect was still higher, .52,
with a “‘twice-born’ mysticism” factor on which four classic criteria had
loaded: ineffability, passivity, a sense of new life, and the experience of
light. Greeley concluded, “Mystics are happier. Ecstasy is good for you” (p.
77). In IHay and Morisy’s (1978) parallel study in Great Britain, reported
mystical experience again proved to be significantly related to the Positive
Affect Scale, but at a greatly reduced level (.05).At about the same time,
Hood (1974) found a negative correlation between his Religious Experi-
ence Episodes Measure and Stark‘s Index of Psychic Inadequacy, and in a
group of 54 members of the contemplative Discalced Carmelite Order,
Mallory ( 1977) found mystical experience to be positively correlated with
happy emotionality and negatively correlated to neuroticism and unhappy
emotionality.
In yet another study of peak experiences among persons living in the
San Francisco Bay area, Wuthnow (1978) found a significant relationship
between “deep and lasting” peak experiences and several measures of pos-
itive mental health. He established, once again, that such experiences are
not uncommon: 50% reported an experience of contact with “something
holy or sacred,” 82% recalled having felt deeply moved by the beauty of
nature, and 39% said they had had a feeling of harmony with the universe.
Wuthnow also demonstrated that the more recent and lasting such expe-
riences were, the more likely the respondents would report that they found
life meaningful, thought about life’s purpose, meditated about their lives,
and felt self-assured.
Yet we also have the finding of Thalbourne and Delin (1994) alluded
to above: In a student population, their Mystical Experience Scale, which
correlates .72 with Hood’s Mysticism Scale, was significantly related (.37
to .53) to measures of manic and depressive experience. Furthermore, two

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 41 1
clinical samples recruited from self-help groups, one of people diagnosed as
manic depressives and another of individuals with schizophrenia (most of
whom were well at the time), scored significantly higher than the students
on their mysticism scale. Thalbourne and Delin, as noted earlier, proposed
that the common factor in the correlations they found is transliminality, a
susceptibility to incursions from subliminal regions. If mystical experience
and psychotic disposition are linked in sharing this susceptibility, as these
data suggest, it bears emphasizing that individual clinical variables account
at most for a quarter of the variance in mystical-experience scores (Thal-
bourne, 1991, p. 181).
In their systematic comparisons of mystical and schizophrenic expe-
rience, Arbman (1963-1970) and Austin (1998) noted that the former is
distinguished in numerous ways: by its transience, the absence of coercive
impulses, evident conscious striving, ongoing orderly development, con-
ditioning by training within some tradition, the diminution of self-
reference and sense of unity with the environment, the retention of social
attachments, the recognition of the demands of logic and collective knowl-
edge, positive visual hallucinations rather than negative auditory ones, and
so on. Arbman allowed that, in rare cases, genuine religious ecstatics have
suffered from schizophrenia, and he noted that “religious insanity” is not
infrequently a concomitant of this serious disorder. But in general he con-
sidered the dementia of schizophrenia to constitute ‘(a practically insur-
mountable obstacle to the provocation of any religious transports of the
trance-like kind” (Arbman, 1970, p. 385). Both Arbman and Austin con-
cluded that mysticism and psychosis have little, if anything, in common.
No11 (1983) reached much the same conclusion from a comparison of sha-
manic states of consciousness and activities with the diagnostic criteria for
schizophrenia.

THERAPEUTIC POTENTIAL

According to various commentators, the therapeutic possibilities of

mystical experience are intrinsic to its very nature. A t the heart of the
“mystic way,” Underhill (1911/1930) wrote in her classic study, is a process
of profound psychological transformation. In a series of five stages, she
suggested, the aspirant’s center of interest is shifted to a higher plane, false
and inharmonious elements of the self are systematically stripped away, a
deeper apprehension of the nature of things emerges, and-with the es-
tablishment of the long-sought-for higher state of consciousness-the self
undergoes a final transformation that brings to light the “deepest, richest
levels of human personality” (p. 416). The religious traditions share a com-
mon message, according to James (1902/1985): There is something wrong
about human beings in their natural condition, but deliverance from this

41 2 DAVID M. WULFF
wrongness is available through connection with “the higher powers,” that
is, through mystical experience.
The potential healing power of mystical experience per se, apart from
any systematic spiritual quest, is illustrated by Horton (1973) in a series of
three case studies of severely depressed adolescents who suffered schizo-
phrenic reactions in the process of separating themselves from their nuclear
families. The 18-year-old participant in one of these cases, for example,
had a history of self-injury from childhood, when his parents nearly di-
vorced and were able to show him little affection. His father, a poorly
integrated obsessive-compulsive man who sought to relive his own, deeply
disappointing life through his son, strove to keep the boy in a symbiotic
union. When that effort failed, the disturbed father harassed his son by
every means possible, including anonymous phone calls and efforts to drive
his son’s friends away. Feeling an uncanny sense of being followed by
“someone,” the son suffered overwhelming nightmares of being completely
annihilated. Lonely and afraid, he experimented with prayer and medita-
tion. One night, far from home and feeling defeated and disconsolate, he
had a union mystical experience, “like a fountain bursting forth.” The
profound changes he felt, including “limitless courage and strength” and
the inspiration to make his life “a continuous celebration” of what he had
found within himself, was validated weeks later by a visiting friend, who
was astonished by his changed demeanor. Able at last to resist his father’s
efforts and less inclined to engage in reckless behavior, the young man
entered psychotherapy. Recurrence of mystical experiences, he said, gave
him the “courage and strength to go on” (Horton, 1973, p. 295).
The therapeutic potential of mainly spontaneous mystical experiences
has been noted in relationship to threats to life (Noyes 6r Slymen, 1979),
solitary ordeals (Logan, 1985), unresolved grief (Aberbach, 1987), and
posttraumatic stress disorder (Decker, 1993). The possible therapeutic value
of actively inducing mystical experience in receptive clients has been ex-
plored bv numerous investigators. Sacerdote ( 1977), for example, sought
to treat physical and emotional pain-apparently with some success-by
hypnotically altering space and time perceptions in his patients, and thus
inducing mystical-like states, much as Aaronson (1967, 1969, 1970) had
done. Although Cardeiia’s (1996) study of the experience of neutral “deep
hypnosis” among hypnotic virtuosos was not intended to be therapeutic, 4
months afterward the participants claimed positive aftereffects of their ex-
periences during the experiment. The original experiences included spon-
taneous reports of timelessness, bright light, a sense of oneness with the
world, and profound peace.
The most extensive exploration of the therapeutic possibilities of mys-
ticlike experiences is represented by Grof‘s (1980, 1985, 1993) work on
LSD psychotherapy and, since the legal ban on hallucinogens, his “holo-
tropic breathwork.” Grof (1980) reported that volunteers in LSD therapy

MYSTICAL. EXPERIENCE 413

pass through a series of more or less predictable stages, full of highly dra-
matic imagery and deep emotion, and representing both personal and trans-
personal levels of the psyche. Ordinarily encountered over a series of ses-
sions using lower doses of the drug in combination with dynamic
psychotherapy (“psycholytic therapy”), this sequence of phenomena can
also take place in a single session with a dosage high enough to trigger the
egoless and usually contentless psychedelic peak experience (“psychedelic
therapy”). Transformation can be sudden and dramatic, Grof claimed,
bringing about radical changes in outlook and ways of being. Intense in-
terest in rnyscicism, spiritual disciplines, and mythology commonly result,
along with a new transcendental ethic. The replication of Grof’s obser-
vations and evaluation of his claims by independent investigators are
clearly warranted, as is a thorough examination of the possible role of
demand characteristics and expectancy effects in shaping the experience
of “holotropic” breathwork and LSD psychotherapy.
According to Grinspoon and Bakalar (1979), between 1950 and the
mid- 1960s, the heyday of psychedelic drug therapy, six international con-
ferences were held on this topic, several dozen books were published, and
more than 1,000 clinical papers presented results from work with 40,000
patients. LSD and related substances were given to patients presenting
psychosomatic and neurotic symptoms, to children with schizophrenia or
autism, to chronic criminal offenders, to alcoholics, and to persons who
were dying. Extravagant therapeutic claims were sometimes made and im-
portant methodological issues, including the problem of obtaining informed
consent without suggesting particular experiences, were insufficiently ad-
dressed; but there was a general consensus among researchers that there
was enough positive evidence to justify continued research. Nonetheless,
the religious fervor of casual users and their calls for social revolution
evoked a backlash that transformed LSD into a pariah substance and trig-
gered the laws that made its use in any context illegal.6 That therapy using
LSD and similar substances continues underground gives testimony to the
promise that some think it still holds (Grinspoon & Bakalar, 1979).

CLINICAL ISSUES AND RISKS

The use of LSD will most likely remain controversial for the foresee-
able future. Recent, dispassionate reviews of research findings conclude,
contrary to earlier claims, that LSD “appears to pose few if any risks to

‘Potential users should he aware of the severe penalties that apply under the current laws
(Henderson & Glass, 1994). The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies,
founded by Rick Dohlin in 1986, is working to reverse the legal suppression of research on
entheogens and to raise funds to support whatever research the increasingly open Food and
Drug Administration may allow.

414 DAVID M. WULFF

physical health” and that prolonged psychiatric illness is a rare complica-
tion (Henderson & Glass, 1994, pp. 64, 70). Furthermore, as a nonad-
dictive substance that rapidly loses its novelty, LSD is rarely abused. Yet
casual use of LSD by unstable personalities and in negative, nonsupportive
settings can be dangerous. Its use in clinical settings, where its purity can
be assured, vulnerable individuals can be screened out, and both setting
and supervision, including the management of negative sequelae, can be
carefully optimized, is generally considered safe. The chief adverse effects
of LSD are “bad trips”; acute anxiety or panic reactions that usually yield
to simple reassurance; and “flashbacks,” or recurrences of the LSD-induced
perceptual and emotional experiences that are often triggered by the use
of other drugs (Grinspoon & Bakalar, 1979; Henderson & Glass, 1994).
Can acute adverse reactions likewise be triggered by traditional ap-
proaches to mystical experience? Greenberg, Witztum, and Buchbinder
(1992) considered this question in their presentation of four cases of young
men who became severely disordered after becoming ultraorthodox and
undertaking the study of Jewish mysticism. All of the participants suffered
from unresolved grief reactions in conjunction with the death of close
friends or family members, and they chose mystical texts and practices that
offered the possibility of atonement for the guilt they felt. If the mystical
teachings regarding supernatural forces and creatures of evil did not help
to precipitate their subsequent hallucinatory and delusional experiences,
they appear at least to have justified these experiences and given them
traditional form. The congruence between their psychotic experiences and
the mystical teachings also encouraged these patients’ wives, fellow stu-
dents, and rabbis to ascribe to them a measure of sanctity, even in the face
of severe deterioration and subsequent psychiatric treatment.
In interviews with members of a mystical cult in India, Kakar (1991)
likewise found that loss was the outstanding factor impelling involvement.
Yet whatever issues or predispositions people may bring to the “mystic
journey,” it is widely understood to be inherently marked by a variety of
problems and pitfalls. In the Christian tradition, the chief psychological
crisis is the “dark night of the soul,” Underhill’s (1911/1930) fourth stage
of the mystic way, the painful interval when the joyous illumination of the
third stage fades away and a state of emptiness, misery, and chaos takes its
place. There are parallels in the Eastern traditions, including the agonizing
pain and powerful recollections that come with “the surfacing of the deep
patterns of blocks and bound energies” (Kornfield, 1989, p. 142) that is
common in the course of Buddhist meditation. Such complications rep-
resent what are today called spiritual emergencies, crises occasioned by the
revolution in values and the sense of identity that mystical experiences
can bring about. Long familiar to traditional spiritual directors, such cha-
otic and overwhelming experiences are today being addressed by psychol-

MYSTICAL EXPERlENCE 415

ogists and psychiatrists who view them as transformational crises in the
evolution of consciousness (Grof & Grof, 1989).

EXPLAINING MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

In this section, six groups of explanations or interpretations of mys-

tical experience are considered: neuropsychological, psychoanalytic, ana-
lytical (Jungian), humanistic-transpersonal, perceptual-cognitive, and
contextual. These approaches differ not only in the constructs they use but
also in the degree to which they explicitly position mystical experience in
the framework of an underlying process and take into account social-
historical factors. They vary, too, in the degree to which they attend to
the specific contents of mystical experiences and take seriously the mystic’s
claims to a higher knowing. Their amenability to systematic empirical test-
ing also varies enormously.

Neuropsychological Explanations

The association of mystical experience with epilepsy, noted earlier, as

well as with systematic bodily stimulation or manipulation and the taking
of plant or chemical substances, has prompted some researchers to look for
a biological explanation. From the 19th century to the present, some sci-
entists have assumed that, if mystical experience can be linked to neuro-
physiological processes, especially pathological ones, it will have to forfeit
any claims to epistemological significance (e.g., Leuba, 1925; Rose, 1989).
Others have reached the opposite conclusion: If there are brain structures
that mediate mystical experience such experience must in some funda-
mental way accord with the nature of things.
The “split-brain” research of the 1960s offered evidence that the two
hemispheres of the brain tend to specialize in separate functions, the left
one showing greater development of linguistic, rational, mathematical, and
logical abilities and the right one exhibiting superiority in visuospatial and
musical capacities, emotional response, and synthetic or holistic percep-
tion. Some researchers proposed that the right hemisphere might be the
primary source of mystical experiences, given especially their reported in-
effability (Fenwick, 1996). Intrigued by Penfield and Perot’s (1963) report
that mild electric stimulation of the right temporal lobes of surgical patients
would frequently produce hazy, unknown voices emanating from mysterious
places, Jaynes (1976) proposed that such voices were commonplace several
thousand years ago, when, according to his controversial reconstructions,
the two hemispheres operated relatively independently. In times of crisis,
according to Jaynes, when the left hemisphere could think of no solution,
the right hemisphere’s more astute problem solving would be experienced

416 DAVID M.WULFF

as the helpful voice of a god. Jaynes speculated that although consciousness
eventually inhibited the right temporal lobe areas and thus quieted the
intimate voice of divinity, a vestigial neurological structure survives in each
person, making possible still today a variety of exceptional phenomena,
including oracles, possession states, speaking in tongues, and mystical ex-
periences.
Most of the speculation today regarding mysticism’s neurophysiolog-
ical conditions is grounded in Gellhorn’s (1967, 1969) concept of the “tun-
ing” of the body’s two activation systems: the ergotropic, which is marked
by increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system, muscle tension,
and diffuse cortical excitation, and the trophotropic, which consists of in-
creased parasympathetic discharges, reduced cortical activity, and thus hy-
poarousal. The two systems often act reciprocally, the one tending to sup-
press the other; furthermore, the somatic and cerebral components usually
exhibit congruence as a result of being activated in concert. Under stress
or other circumstances triggering high levels of activation, however, both
reciprocity and congruence break down. It is this failure in the systems’
ordinary tuning, Gellhorn thought, that underlies altered states of con-
sciousness and various forms of psychopathology (Davidson, 1976, p. 359).
O n the basis of Gellhorn’s (1967, 1969) leads and his own research
on psilocybin, Fischer (1971, 1975) developed a circular “cartography of
ecstatic and meditative states.” Clockwise movement in the diagram rep-
resents increasing trophotropic arousal, characteristic of various forms of
meditation; counterclockwise movement indicates a preponderance of er-
gotropic arousal, associated with creative, psychotic, and ecstatic states. In
either case, the arousal is subcortical, producing diffuse emotional states
that are interpreted in diverse ways at the cortical level. Although these
movements represent physiological processes that are ordinarily opposites,
they are alleged to have a common starting point, the rational “I” that
experiences itself in an objective time-space world, and a common end
point, the ecstatic “Self,” which represents the mystical experience of one-
ness with the universe. Observing that the syntactical structure of language
becomes increasingly simplified as the level of drug induced arousal in-
creases, Fischer (1972) suggested that the movement from the I to the Self
corresponds to a gradual shift from rational, left-hemispheric functioning
to intuitive, right-hemispheric activity.
A similar neuropsychological model of mystical states, but reflective
of the more complicated picture that has come with the recent shift in
interest from hemispheric to regional brain function (Liddon, 1989), has
been developed by d’Aquili and Newberg (1993, 1999). Their theoretical
model is not easily summarized, but a brief overview of the events postu-
lated to occur during “passive meditation” will at least give a flavor of it.
They posited a reverberating circuit that originates with impulses in the
right prefrontal cortex representing the intent to eliminate thoughts from

MYSTlCAL EXPERlENCE 417

the mind. These impulses pass to the right posterior-superior parietal lob-
ule, a structure implicated in the analysis and integration of higher order
information. From there they pass to the right hippocampus, which mod-
ulates emotional response; to the right amygdala, part of the ancient,
emotion-mediating limbic system; to the ventromedial structures of the
hypothalamus, which are an extension of the trophotropic system into the
brain stem; then back to the right amygdala, the right hippocampus, and
finally the right prefrontal cortex.
As meditation continues, perhaps after months or even years of prac-
tice, neural activity may finally build to a maximum level in the tropho-
tropic system. At that critical moment, the resulting “spillover” triggers a
maximal arousal of the ergotropic system, culminating in intense stimula-
tion of the lateral hypothalamus and the median forebrain bundle, which
is experienced as an ecstatic and blissful state. The immediate consequence
of this stimulation is the total cutting off of input to both posterior-superior
parietal lobules, resulting, in the right one, in a sensation of pure space
that is subjectively experienced as absolute unity or wholeness and, in the
left one, the obliteration of the self-other dichotomy (d’Aquili & New-
berg, 1993, pp. 187-190).
This model integrates what is now known about brain activity during
various mystical or religious states, but it also expands on these findings to
explain the phenomenology of such experiences. According to d’Aquili and
Newburg (1993), new technologies for the study of brain activity may assist
in testing this model, but the unpredictability of these experiences will in
any case make such research exceedingly difficult. Whether or not their
model proves to be basically accurate, the authors warn against any facile
reduction of the experiences in question to neurochemical flux. It is not
obvious that the “objective reality” of ordinary consciousness has a higher
ontological status than the “hyperlucid” and “highly integrated and inte-
grating visions” of mystical experience (p. 197).

Psychoanalytic Interpretations

In spite of Freud’s deep and sustained interest in applying psychoan-

alytic theory to religion, he had little to say about mystical experience. His
few published remarks on the subject were written in response to a friend,
writer and mystic Romain Rolland, who expressed regret over Freud’s ne-
glect of the “oceanic feeling”-the sense of being one with the surrounding
world-which Rolland took to be the fountainhead of the religious sen-
timent and hence the religious traditions. Acknowledging the elusiveness
of this phenomenon, Freud (1930/1961) speculated that it constitutes a
revival of feelings belonging to the earliest stages of the ego, before it has
separated itself from the external world. Whereas Freud allowed that this
restoration of limitless primary narcissism, the earliest form of self-love,

418 DAVID M . WULFF

may serve as a religious consolation, he declined to consider it the source
of religious needs, which he insisted on tracing to later feelings of help-
lessness.
Other psychoanalytic interpreters, writing both before and after Freud
published his remarks, were less reticent about declaring mystical experi-
ence to be a sign of severe regression and a loss of reality orientation. Morel
( 1918), for example, attributed to the mystics a universal tendency toward
regression, a nostalgic longing for the mother if not for the womb itself,
compelled in part by sexual anxieties that the mystic suppresses through
ascetic renunciation. The outcome, he said, may be either megalomania or
an autistic system centering on erotic relations with imaginary objects or
persons. According to Alexander ( 1923/193l ) , Buddhist meditative prac-
tices set in motion a systematically regressive process that culminates in a
schizophreniclike state equivalent to the experience of intrauterine life.
Likewise pathologizing the mystic life by equating it with narcissistic re-
gression, the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, Committee on
Psychiatry and Religion (1976) concluded that it is a response to over-
whelming demands or disappointments in the outer world. Confession, ab-
stinence, purification, and other such preparations for mystical experience
are interpreted as ways of warding off depression, by inviting the forgiveness
and love of a parental figure.
Some psychoanalysts, however, came to see mystical regression as a
potentially constructive process-a form of “regression in the service of
the ego” akin to the rejuvenating state of sleep, certain creative experi-
ences, and some forms of psychotherapy (Prince & Savage, 1966). The
viewpoint of this adaptive school of interpretation, as Parsons (1999) called
it, has been most fully developed by ego psychologists and object-relations
theorists. Horton (1974, p. 379), for example, argued that, as quintessen-
tially “an upsurgence of residual primary narcissism,” mystical experience
may serve as a transitional phenomenon and hence as a potentially adap-
tive ego mechanism of defense. For a 20-year-old patient, it offered a last
refuge from overwhelming anxiety and loneliness while also providing re-
sources for more adaptive individuation and integration. In his book-length
study of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, Meissner
(1992) likewise used Winnicott’s (1953) notion of transitional experience
as a way of drawing meaningful connections between Ignatius’s mystical
ecstasy and grandiose hallucinatory visions and the complex of needs that
were traceable in part to his mother’s death when he was an infant and to
the severe narcissistic insult of a crippling accident. Like Kakar (1991),
whom Parsons also associated with the adaptive school, Meissner took care
to place his subject’s mystical experience in its social and cultural context
and to avoid reductionistic claims about its content.
Parsons ( 1999) identified a third cluster of psychoanalytic interpre-
tations of mystical experience, in addition to the classic and adaptive ones,

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 419

which he called the transfornative school. Like the adaptive school, it rec-
ognizes both regressive, pathological elements and ego-adaptive ones; but
in addition, those associated with it “tend to be mystical, or are receptive
to mysticism, or make use of mystical experience as intuitive models for
psychoanalytic experience” (Eigen, 1995, p. 371). Both Parsons and Eigen
located Bion ( 1970) here for characterizing psychoanalytic processes with
such expressions as “0,” “void,” and L‘formlessness’’while interweaving
Western and Asian mystical images throughout his writing. The potential
complementarity of psychoanalysis and the mystical traditions is illustrated
in the work of Engler (1984), who combined object-relations theory with
Buddhist psychology to map out a sequence of developmental stages and
their corresponding pathologies. In the initial, personal stages, addressed
by object-relations theory, the deepest pathological problem is the lack of
a sense of self; in the subsequent transpersonal stages, delineated by Bud-
dhist psychology, it is the presence of a self. Thus, self-transcending mystical
states that would be appropriate in the later stages may be considered
pathological if they occur in earlier ones.
To empirical psychologists who take seriously in psychoanalysis only
what finds support in rigorous scientific assessment, the addition of Bud-
dhist psychology can only make matters worse. But for hermeneutically
oriented psychologists who view psychoanalysis as a heuristic of consider-
able explanatory power, Engler’s ( 1984) construction effectively counters
what Wilber (1996) called the peltrans fallacy,the simple equating of pre-
personal states of consciousness, those existing before the emergence of
self-conscious awareness, with later transpersonal, or ego-transcendent,
ones. Whereas the ontogenetic source of the numinous may indeed lie in
the infant-mother relationship, as Erikson (1977) claimed, and some mys-
tics’ experiences may hark back on some level to infantile experience, it
seems highly doubtful that the mystical absorption that Albrecht (1951)
characterized as the most orderly state known in human experience is sim-
ply a regression to the vague and shifting pre-egoic states of awareness.
Regressive explanations, argued Hood ( 1976), confuse what is analogical
in mystical expression with the mystical experience itself.

Analytical Interpretations

Whereas Freud viewed mystical experience as a personal phenome-

non, the product of a regressive turn in individual development, Jung saw
it as a collective one, a manifestation of a positive, universal process. Jung’s
analytical psychology is distinguished foremost by the positing of a collec-
tive unconscious, a deep layer of the psyche hypothesized to contain a
reservoir of universal archetypes, an indeterminate number of interpene-
trating forms or templates that dispose individuals to experience the typical
persons, situations, and processes that have structured human experience

420 DAVID M.WULFF

since time immemorial. The gradual differentiation and integration of these
archetypes, and of both conscious and unconscious attitudes, is said to lie
at the heart of individuation, the life-long process of self-realization that
was traditionally facilitated, Jung said, by the mysterious and often dramatic
images and rituals of the religious traditions.
In this framework, mystics are persons who vividly experience the
processes of the collective unconscious. “Mystical experience,” Jung ( 1935/
1976, p. 98) once remarked in a discussion, “is experience of archetypes.”
Encounter with manifestations of the archetypes is always numinous, Jung
said in an allusion to Otto’s (1917/1950) phenomenological work on the
experience of the holy, and its intensity is in proportion to the clarity of
the representations. Given the power of these factors and their apparent
independence of individual will and understanding, they are almost inev-
itably experienced as originating from outside the person.
The classic exposition of mystical experience from the perspective of
analytical psychology is an essay by Neumann (1948/1968), who considered
the mystical to be a fundamental category of human experience. According
to Neumann, mystical experience appears wherever consciousness is not
centered around the ego, beginning with the earliest stage of original unity.
During the long, difficult struggle into a differentiated and responsible
awareness, the ego battles for supremacy over the forces of the unconscious,
or nonego, by appropriating and assimilating its content. But to encounter
the nonego, the ego must temporarily renounce conscious reality and sus-
pend the polarization of world and self. The result is a numinous experi-
ence, a mystical encounter of ego and nonego, during which, Neumann
claimed, both are transformed.
Although the content of such experience will reflect prevailing teach-
ings, an underlying uniformity can be expected, given that such experi-
ences are grounded in the universal archetypes. The various forms and
levels of mystical experience correspond to different life phases, the highest
of them signaling the achievement of personality integration, the attain-
ment of the formless Self, the archetype of wholeness. The human being,
Neumann (1948/1968) declared, is by nature a homo mysticus. Whether or
not people are aware of it, he said, the inner development of each person
has a mystical stamp, the result of recurring archetypal encounters. A con-
temporary reworking of such themes, especially in relation to American
Indian and Australian aboriginal spirituality, can be found in Broadribb
(1995).
Support of a kind for Jung’s controversial claims regarding the col-
lective unconscious and the healing power of encounter with the arche-
types has been offered by therapist-researchers using entheogens. Naranjo
( 1973) reported that he was dramatically surprised by the recurring myth-
ical themes and images that harmaline, a nonhallucinatory entheogen, pre-
cipitated in a group of 30 volunteers, and no less by the observation that

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 42 I
10 of them (60% of those with obvious neurotic symptoms) showed “re-
markable improvement or symptomatic change comparable only to that
which might be expected from intensive psychotherapy’’ (p. 126). Naranjo
interpreted this outcome as evidence in support of the Jungian hypothesis
-one he had not intended to test-that elicitation of archetypal expe-
rience will facilitate personality integration.
Grof (1985, p. 190) remarked that his own extensive observations
from LSD psychotherapy have repeatedly confirmed most of Jung’s funda-
mental ideas, including the collective unconscious, the dynamics of the
archetypes, the distinction between ego and Self, and the concept of the
individuation process. Given the extraordinary character of both Grof’s
and Naranjo’s findings and the understandable skepticism they tend to
arouse in other scientific investigators, independent replications under
well-controlled conditions would be extremely helpful, especially to eval-
uate the role of expectancy in these experiences, the durability of the
treatment effects, and the generalizability of the overall findings. Under
current laws, however, such replications are essentially ruled out.
Regrettably, there is little research evidence of a more conventional
type that addresses the validity of Jung’s theories. But then it is exceedingly
difficult if not impossible to subject major aspects of these theories, and of
the psychoanalysts’ theories as well, to the typical empirical verification.
Whereas many empiricists thus reject such theories out of hand, other
scholars have proposed that psychoanalysis and analytical psychology may
best be evaluated from an interpretive, or hermeneutical, perspective. Rig-
orously empirical in its own way, such an approach begins with reflections
on the very nature of understanding and proceeds, then, to a critique of a
psychology’s metatheoretical assumptions, its guiding metaphors, its rhet-
oric style, its use of data, and so on, and finally to an evaluation of its
adequacy as a system of interpretation, using such criteria as coherence,
comprehensiveness, and productivity (Packer & Addison, 1989; Strenger,
1991). The direction that a hermeneutical critique of the Jungian inter-
pretation of mysticism might take is briefly suggested by McGinn (1991,
p. 333), who noted its lack of attention to historical particularities and its
deviation from traditional mystical models. In Jungian hands, said McGinn,
the mystical has become too general.

Humanistic-Transpersonal Perspectives

Among humanistic perspectives on mystical experience, no others are

as well known as Maslow’s (1964, 1968). In the course of his famous studies
of self-actualizing persons, Maslow noticed that it was common for these
exceptional individuals to report having had mystical experiences. Wishing
to dissociate such experiences from their traditional religious contexts and
to make them available for scientific investigation, Maslow called them

422 DAVlD M. WULFF

peak experiences, a term that other psychologists have adopted as well. In
describing peak experiences, Maslow reiterated the ecstatic feelings of ego-
less fusion with the world, of wholeness and integration, and of effortless
existence in the here and now. James’s (1902/1985) noetic quality becomes
for Maslow a “Cognition of Being,” or B-cognition, a receptive and holistic
perceiving of “B-values,” including truth, beauty, goodness, justice, play-
fulness, and perfection. As the moments when a person is most fully alive,
peak experiences are profoundly satisfying, Maslow noted, and they have
the potential for revolutionizing the lives in which they occur.
Eager to make such experiences and their putative benefits widely
available in an increasingly secular world, Maslow argued (1964) that the
traditional religious contextualizations of this intrinsic core of experience
serve not only to distort and suppress it but also to create divisiveness
where otherwise there might be profound accord. According to Maslow, by
studying and promoting this core outside of its traditional contexts, hu-
manistic psychology could revolutionalize human existence by making the
peak experience and its values the ultimate goals of education, if not of
every other social institution as well.
Maslow has been faulted for his uncritical embracing of the peren-
nialist7 view of mystical experience and his triumphant sense of having
reached a breakthrough in understanding this phenomenon (Hufford,
1985); for sanitizing an experience that is far more ambivalent in its po-
tential than he represented it (Blanchard, 1969); and for his unsupportable
reconstructions of religious history (Bregman, 1976). Yet his hierarchy-of-
needs model does offer a testable hypothesis for why the higher reaches of
human potential are seldom attained, and his rhetoric of peak experiences
has helped to foster discussion of mystical experience in various psycho-
logical contexts while providing a model for interpreting related phenom-
ena (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1982).
The apparent association of peak experiences with exceptional psy-
chological well-being suggested what Maslow claimed was a still higher
form of psychological science, transpersonal psychology, of which he be-
came the philosophical father. Transpersonal psychology, one of a cluster
of related transpersonal disciplines, takes seriously a wide range of self-
transcending phenomena, including mystical experiences, while declining
any interpretations that reduce them to something else. Hanegraaff ( 1996,
p. 5 1) distinguished two branches of transpersonal psychology, an empirical
one, which has been chiefly preoccupied with research on altered states of

‘The adjective perennialist derives from philosophia perennis, perennial philosophy, a term coined
hy the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhem Leihniz and still used today to refer to a
putarive common core in the world’s religious traditions, ranging from practice and morality to
metaphysical truths. Huxley’s (1945) anthology with commentary helped to give currency to
this term in the 20th century, although Smith (1976) more recently championed the phrase
the primordial rrdition to avoid the suggestion that the core consists of an articulate formal
philc)sophy.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 423

consciousness and the techniques associated with them, and a theoretical
one, which has been working on cartographies or hierarchical models of
consciousness, according to which the world’s great mystics represent the
upper reaches of human development (Wilber, 1996). The latter branch
especially has sought to develop new paradigms of scientific understanding
and, taking the perennial philosophy as axiomatic, to appropriate insights
from the spiritual traditions, especially those of the East (see Walsh &
Vaughan, 1993).
Like analytical psychology, with which it bears an obvious kinship,
transpersonal psychology entails a general framework and underlying as-
sumptions that diverge from the reigning models in psychology and resist
empirical assessment and analysis. Unlike Jungian psychology, however,
transpersonal psychology is committed to using the best of modern empir-
ical methods to carry out its own research (see, e.g., Shapiro & Walsh,
1984) at the same time that it explores current revolutionary changes in
scientific thinking and strives to develop new models of humankind’s ev-
olution (Washburn, 1995; Wilber, 1977/1993, 1995). But with the peren-
nial philosophy explicitly posited as its foundation, transpersonal psychol-
ogy has become “an openly religious psychology” (Hanegraaff, 1996, p. 51),
bringing it into fundamental conflict with strictly scientific views.

Perceptual-Cognitive Explanations

Given the singular perceptual and cognitive changes that lie at the
heart of mystical experience-including dramatic modifications in bodily
sensations and in the appearance of the world and the accompanying con-
viction of new knowledge and understanding-it is surprising that few
efforts have been made to explain such experience in terms of perceptual-
cognitive principles. The best known of these efforts is Deikman’s (1963,
1966) widely cited theory of deautornatization. Deikman suggested that the
mystic’s basic techniques of contemplation and renunciation inhibit ordi-
nary cognitive processes and thus serve to undo the psychological structures
responsible for selecting, organizing, and interpreting perceptual stimuli. A
receptive and more inclusive perceptual mode takes over.
In an “experiment” designed to explore this process, Deikman ( 1963)
asked a dozen or so observers to meditate on a blue vase for about 30 min
three times a week for as many weeks as they were willing to continue.
Those who persisted the longest (1 observer completed 106 sessions) re-
ported a series of striking changes in perceptual experience: increased viv-
idness and richness, animation, merging, a fusing of perceptual modes and,
when looking out a window afterward, dedifferentiation of the landscape.
Such changes were suggestive of the perceptual and cognitive functioning
of young children, but they were also reminiscent of the main features of
mystical experience, including intense realness, unusual sensations, the

424 DAVlD M . WULFF

feeling of unity, and the quality of ineffability. Rather than considering
deautomatization as merely regressive, Deikman proposed that the suspen-
sion of the usual organization of consciousness may allow the mobilizing
of undeveloped or unused perceptual capacities, as suggested by mystics’
reports of sensate phenomena that do not fit ordinary sensory categories.
It correspondingly enhances “the observing self,” the transparent center of
awareness, the development of which Deikman (1982) placed at the heart
of psychotherapy.
A more elaborate cognitive psychology of mystical experience has
been put forward by Hunt (1984, 1985, 1995)) who drew on holistic-
phenomenological cognitive theories and took as his model of mystical
experience Otto’s (1917/1950) classic description of the numinous con-
sciousness. Hunt sought to demonstrate through his analysis that, in con-
trast to those who view mystical and related altered states of consciousness
as products of regression or perceptual breakdown, these states represent
an emergent cognitive capacity, a separate line of development of higher
mental abilities. Because of the close-up view that these states offer of
certain fundamental processes, Hunt (1985) argued that their study is vital
for any general cognitive theory.
According to Hunt (1983, mystical experiences represent a recom-
bination, condensation, and intensification of the earliest, ultrarapid, and
normally masked constructions-the microgenesis-of perceptual and af-
fective meaning structures. Citing remarkable impressions that first emerge
in response to tachistoscopic images, Hunt noted that these microgenetic
schemas are typically synesthetic (i.e., they simultaneously engage two or
more sensory modalities), thus facilitating, when they are prolonged and
stabilized, the process of cross-modal translations (see Marks, this volume,
chap. 4). The appearance of white light that is a major feature of classic
mystical experiences (see Wulff, 1997, pp. 147-152) testifies to light’s be-
ing “the most primitive quale of the visual system” (Hunt, 1984, p. 486)
and thus, when reused metaphorically, the most open and encompassing.
The line of cognitive development represented here, which signals
the growth of the capacity to use abstract, presentational symbols and
which eventually culminates in mystical and other altered states, ordinarily
takes second place to more literal and practical intelligence, if it is not
masked entirely. As Hunt (1984) suggested, his explanation of mystical
experiences “has the immense theoretical advantage of reconciling the
clearly primitive aspects of these phenomena with their symbolic and
highly abstract features” (p. 497). His analysis has the additional virtue of
encompassing major elements from other interpretive perspectives already
considered here, including Jungian geometric symbolism and Grof‘s trans-
personal itnagery.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 425

Contextual Explanations

All of the perspectives considered so far give primacy to the role of

internal factors in the shaping of mystical experience, whether they be
neuropsychological, psychodynamic, transpersonal, or cognitive-perceptual.
Although they allow for individual differences, these viewpoints neverthe-
less posit a core of experiences reflecting universal features of the structure
and dynamics of the brain on one level, and of the human personality on
another. In the past two decades, however, this essentialist or perennialist
perspective has been challenged by a number of scholars (see Katz, 1978,
1983) who together put forward a contextualist view, according to which
the contexts of tradition, discipline, and culture do not simply add an
interpretation to an autonomous core experience but shape experience
through and through (Gimello, 1983; Hollenback, 1996).
To explain mystical experience, then, one must attend to the con-
ditions of experience in general, and to the specific concepts, images, sym-
bols, cultural-social beliefs, and ritual practices that define in advance
what the mystic’s experience will be (Katz, 1978, p. 34). The Jewish “pre-
experiential” or “conditioning pattern,” Katz pointed out in illustration,
includes the teaching that experiences of unity with the divine do not
happen, given the Jewish conception of God as radically Other and the
principles traditionally recommended for reaching the mystic goal. The
result is that ecstatic, self-forgetting moments of unity, of absorption into
God, are rare among Jewish mystics, who are far more likely to experience
“the Divine Throne, or the angel Metatron, or aspects of the Sefiroth [Di-
vine Emanations], or the heavenly court and palaces, or the Hidden Torah,
or God’s secret Names” (Katz, 1978, p. 34). The complex Buddhist pre-
conditioning, in contrast, prepares the Buddhist mystic for a rather differ-
ent experience, nirvana, a state not of relationship but apparently of selfless
tranquillity. One major implication is that lists of phenomenological char-
acteristics such as James and Stace have to offer are too general to delineate
what mystical experience actually is (Katz, 1978, p. 51).
In the psychology of religion, the contextual perspective has been
most systematically developed by SundCn ( 1959/1966, 1970), who argued
that religious experience is the result of shifts in the perceptual field
brought about by the taking on of roles learned from religious texts. “With-
out a religious reference system, without religious tradition, without myth
and ritual,” SundCn ( 1959/1966, p. 27) wrote, “religious experiences are
unthinkable.” In an experiment designed to test out Sundin’s theory, Lans
(1987) found that half of his 14 participants with strong religious frames
of reference reported religious experiences during a 4-week course of Zen
meditation, whereas none of the 21 without such frameworks reported such
experiences.
What SundCn’s (1959/1966) theory fails to address is how these

426 DAVID M. WULFF

traditions were established in the first place. It is likewise challenged by
Grof’s (1980) observation that LSD experiences sometimes occur in the
framework of a religious tradition other than the experient’s own. The
contemporary essentialist-contextualist debate centers mainly on whether
there is a tradition-independent core experience and, in particular, an ex-
perience of pure consciousness (see Forman, 1990, 1998a; Janz, 1995), and
on the role that tradition plays in shaping individual experience. As in the
case of the hoary nature-nurture debate in psychology, which it resembles
to a certain degree, a reasonable resolution to this debate would seem to
lie in an intermediate position (see King, 1988; Parsons, 1999). Thus one
would recognize that mystical experiences frequently occur apart from any
formal preconditioning, suggesting some fundamental internal mechanism,
but also that such conditioning doubtless plays a major role in shaping the
experiences of those who are grounded in a mystical tradition.

METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES

Perhaps more than any other subjective phenomenon, mystical ex-

perience continues in essential respects to elude rigorous scientific inves-
tigation. Relatively rare and unpredictable, it has proved difficult if not
impossible to study in the laboratory. Even in Pahnke’s (1966) famous
double-blind experiment, conducted before the legal ban on the hallucin-
ogens, the variable of expectation ultimately proved impossible to control,
leaving its relative contribution to the final results in question (see Wulff,
1997, pp. 191). Correlational research has been facilitated by the devel-
opment of mysticism scales with respectable psychometric properties (e.g.,
Hood, Morris, & Watson, 1993), but many of the scales with which they
are correlated have items sufficiently similar to their own to raise doubts
about whether these various scales represent truly discrete variables. There
is also the serious problem uncovered bv Hufford (1985) and Thomas and
Cooper (1980) that the rather abstract statements found on mysticism
questionnaires are subject to widely varying interpretations, leaving in
doubt what the scores really mean and how well they represent the indi-
vidual’s experience. Demand characteristics of either the questionnaires or
the situations in which they are given may distort scores as well.
But such technical problems pale in significance in the face of a much
larger issue. Mysticism not only eludes empirical study but by its very nature
also calls into question the assumptions, methods, and modes of thought
of modern Western scientific investigation. As Stace (1960, p. 65) re-
marked, “Any writer who is honest about mysticism, as well as familiar
with it, will know that it is utterly irreconcilable with all the ordinary rules
of human thinking, that it blatantly breaches the laws of logic at every
turn.” Thus it is essential, argued Deikman (1977), that those who wish

MYSTlCAL EXPERIENCE 427

to understand mystical experience must participate in it to some degree
themselves. James shared the same view, but as a professed outsider, he
held out the possibility of understanding others’ mystical experience em-
pathically, through the use of personal documents, and subsequently shed-
ding new light on it. Albrecht (1951)’ in carrying out his subtle phenom-
enology of mystical consciousness, drew on his own meditative experience
and that of his patients, some of whom were able to make verbal reports
while deep in the state of absorption.
Even if one is able to approach mystical experience from the inside,
however, there remains the problem of how to translate it into the language
of the outsider and to subject it, then, to scientific analysis in a way that
does not violate the original apprehension. Tart (1972) proposed the pos-
sibility of state-specific sciences, according to which one would carry out
observations, data reduction, and theorizing all while in a specific altered
state. Among the many difficulties raised by such a proposal, especially in
conjunction with mystical states, is the question of how one is to maintain
a posture of disinterested agnosticism in the face of the overwhelming
impressions of reality that are characteristic of such experiences.
Even the empathic outsider may find such impressions difficult to
resist. It is not uncommon for investigators, originally neutral about the
exceptional psychological phenomena they are studying, to become con-
vinced that the phenomena genuinely do reflect reality and to shift, then,
to a world view that is harmonious with them. Morse (1990), for example,
who began his studies of near-death experiences as a strictly empirical phy-
sician-researcher, 8 years later found his life thoroughly transformed by the
accumulation of stories he was told and especially by the seemingly inex-
plicable descriptions of light. Grof’s ( 1993) transformation was more dra-
matic, starting off as it did with the thunderbolt of a first LSD experience,
which Grof said moved him to the core. During the years of research he
subsequently conducted on the therapeutic potential of LSD, “the unre-
lenting influx of incontrovertible evidence” (p. 16) gradually shifted his
outlook on the world from an atheistic posture to a mystical one. Inevi-
tably, it seems, one has but two choices in the study of mystical experience:
working as an outsider whose pronouncements are likely to be viewed by
insiders as uncomprehending and thus irrelevant, or becoming an insider
oneself, thereby risking the loss not only of the minimal critical distance
that disinterested scholarly analysis requires but also of one’s credibility-
one’s “objectivity”-in the eyes of many outsiders.
As in the case of meditation researchers, who are almost always them-
selves dedicated practitioners, it may be that, with few exceptions, only
insiders have sufficient interest and motivation to pursue research on the
difficult subject of mysticism. They are also likely, then, to share West’s
(1987, p. 193) frustration over the great gulf between the fruitfulness of
their own compelling experience and what they are able to establish and

428 DAVID M. WULFF

say about it as scientists. Many will continue to seek a compromise between
the two approaches, grounding themselves in their own experience but
relying as fully as they can on accepted empirical methods and well-
established interpretive frameworks. Others may join the transpersonalists
in seeking out a new paradigm sufficient to embrace both personal expe-
rience and scientific investigation. The rest may abandon the quest alto-
gether, content to let the mystic way provide its own interpretations.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Although full-scale, classic mystical experiences are relatively rare, a

third to half of the populations in the United States and Great Britain
report having had at least one experience that minimally qualifies as mys-
tical. Whereas many early investigators were inclined to consider such ex-
periences as pathological, evidence today suggests that, in general, those
who report them show signs of more adequate adjustment, not less. Even
in the lives of distressed individuals, mystical experiences can serve a pos-
itive function. There is no doubt, however, that mystical elements do some-
times appear in the symptomatology of seriously disturbed persons and that
mystical teachings and practices can either exacerbate existing psycholog-
ical disturbance, even precipitating psychotic episodes, or disguise them by
giving them an acceptable form. It appears that some of the great mystics
were themselves troubled, but there are no grounds for interpreting their
exceptional experiences as psychotic reactions. Rather, for some of them
at least, the experience seems to have helped them to live lives of excep-
tional dedication and productivity.
The disposition to have mystical experiences varies considerably from
person to person and is related to such traits as absorption, hypnotizability,
and fantasy proneness as well as complexity, openness to experience, and
tolerance for ambiguity. Entheogens seem to override such differences,
however, if administered in a supportive setting designed to encourage mys-
tical responses. When mystical experiences have occurred in research set-
tings, whether facilitated by psychoactive substances (Grof, 1980; Pahnke,
1966), hypnosis (Cardeha, 1996), meditation (Gifford-May & Thompson,
1994), or sensory modification (Masters & Houston, 1973), there has been
a high degree of consistency in the general contours of such experience,
reminiscent of classic reports but not explainable in terms of expectations
or induction procedures, suggesting a common core that is likely a reflec-
tion of structures and processes in the human brain. There does seem in-
deed to be an innate capacity for such experiences (Buckley, 1981; Forman,
1998a).
Some of the classic interpreters of mystical experience were inclined
to reduce mystical experience to pathological processes or to interpret them

MYSTlCAL EXPERIENCE 429

as regressive modes of defense. The trend more recently has been to view
them either as constructive reactions to crisis or as evidence of healthy
growth toward higher stages of awareness. Yet even those who are most
positive about mystical experience acknowledge that it entails risks, about
which psychotherapists in particular should be knowledgeable. It can be
added that the valorizing of mystical experience is also risky for the field
of psychology, for to take mysticism seriously-to view it as in some sense
a healthy and veridical response to the world-is to open oneself to a
world view that fundamentally challenges the assumptions, theories, and
procedures of modem empirical psychology.
In the midst of the growing postmodern critique of psychology (e.g.,
Kvale, 1992), taking this risk may serve as further impetus for change and
growth, just as mystical experience can in the lives of individuals. In the
place of today’s sheer plurality of interpretive frameworks and research
methods, we may look forward to a genuinely pluralistic mode of inquiry
-what Roth ( 1987) called methodological pluralism-according to which
no point of view is finally privileged over any other, but each is entertained
as a potential source of insight. Rather than anchoring ourselves in a par-
ticular theory or method, then, we would take our grounding in the phe-
nomena themselves, which are far more likely to yield their secrets to a
pluralistic approach.
In the study of mystical experience, the initial, great challenge is
accessing such experiences as fully and openly as possible. Disciplined phe-
nomenological study-direct where possible, but otherwise vicarious (Spie-
gelberg, 1975)-that builds on work already completed is the crucial first
step as well as the final court of appeal for any subsequent interpretation.
Yet the Sirens of mystical experience are highly seductive, and like Odys-
seus, investigators have to find some way to stay on course. A model of a
sort is offered by Floumoy’s (1915) gifted 20th-century mystic, Mlle VC,
who serves as Hoffding’s (1918/1923) example of the historically emerging
capacity to separate interpretation from experience, to the degree that that
is possible. But Mlle VC’s achievement did not come easily. Here, if any-
where, the discipline of scholarly inquiry will be engaged to its fullest.

REFERENCES

Aaronson, B. S. (1967). Mystic and schizophreniform states and the experience

of depth. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 6, 246-252.
Aaronson, B. S. (1969, March). The hypnotic induction of the void. Paper presented
at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, San Francisco.
Aaronson, B. S. (1970). Some hypnotic analogues to the psychedelic state. In
B. S. Aaronson & H. Osmond (Eds.), Psychedelics: The uses and implications
for hallucinogenic drugs (pp. 279-295). Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

430 DAVlD M . WULFF

Aberbach, D. ( 1987). Grief and mysticism. lnternational Review of Psycho-Analysis,
14, 509-526.
Albrecht, C. (1951). Psychobgie des mystischen Bewufltseins [Psychology of mystical
consciousness]. Bremen, Germany: Carl Schunemann.
Alexander, F. ( 1931). Buddhistic training as an artificial catatonia (The biological
meaning of psychic occurrences). Psychoanalytic Review, 18, 129-145. (Orig-
inal work published 1923)
Arbman, E. (1963-1970). Ecstasy, or religious trance, in the experience of the ecstatics
and from the psychological point of view (3 vols.). Norstedts, Sweden: Svenska
Bokforlaget .
Armstrong, T. ( 1984). Transpersonal experience in childhood. Journal of Transper-
sonal Psychology, 16, 207-230.
Austin, J. H. (1998). Zen and the brain: Toward an understanding of meditation and
consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Back, K., & Bourque, L. (1970). Can feelings be enumerated? Behavioral Science,
15, 487-496.
Bear, D., & Fedio, P. (1977). Quantitative analysis of interictal behavior in tem-
poral lobe epilepsy. Archiwes of Neurology, 34, 454-467.
Bindl, M. F. (1965). Das religi6se Erleben im Spiegel der Bildgestaltung: Eine
entwicklungs-psychobgische Untersuchung [Religious experience in the mirror of
picture drawing: A study in development psychology]. Freiburg, Germany:
Herder.
Bion, W. R. (1970). Attention and interpretation: A scientific approach to insight in
psycho-analysis and groups. New York: Basic Books.
Blanchard, W. H. ( 1969). Psychodynamic aspects of the peak experience. Psycho-
analytic Rewiew, 56, 87-112.
Bradbum, N. M. (1969). The srrwture of psychological well-being. Chicago: Aldine.
Bregman, L. (1976). Maslow as theorist of religion: Reflections on his popularity
and plausibility. Soundings, 59, 139- 163.
Broadribb, D. (with Holly, M., & Lyons, N.). (1995). The mystical chorus: Jungand
the religious dimension. Alexandria, Australia: Millennium Books.
Bucke, R. M. (1923). Cosmic consciousness: A study in the evolution of the human
mind. New York: Dutton. (Original work published 1901)
Buckley, P. ( 1981). Mystical experience and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin,
7, 516-521.
Bumham, S. (1997). The ecstatic journey: The transforming power of mystical expe-
rience. New York: Ballantine Books.
Cardefia, E. (1996). “Just floating in the sky”: A comparison of hypnotic and
shamanic phenomena. In R. van Quekelberghe & D. Eigner (Eds.), Yearbook
of cross-cultural medicine and psychotherapy 1994 (pp. 85- 112). Berlin: Verlag
fur Wissenschaft und Bildung.
Cowling, W. R. ( 1985). Relationship of mystical experience, differentiation, and
creativity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 61, 451-456.

MYSTlCAL EXPERIENCE 43 1
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1982). Beyond boredom and anxiety: The experience of play in
work and games. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
d’Aquili, E. G. (1993). Apologia pro scriptura sua, or maybe we got it right after
all. Zygon, 28, 251-266.
d‘Aquili, E. G., 6r Newberg, A. B. (1993). Religious and mystical states: A neu-
ropsychological model. Zygon, 28, 177-200.
d’Aquili, E. G., & Newberg, A. B. (1999). The mystical mind: Probing the biology
of religious experience. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Davidson, J. M. (1976). The physiology of meditation and mystical states of con-
sciousness. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 19, 345 -379.
Decker, L. R. (1993). Beliefs, post-traumatic stress disorder, and mysticism. Journal
of Humanistic Psychology, 33, 15-32.
Deikman, A. J. (1963). Experimental meditation. Journal of Nervous and Mental
Dsease, 136, 329-343.
Deikman, A. J. ( 1966). Deautomatization and the mystic experience. Psychiatry,
29, 324-338.
Deikman, A. J. (1977). Comments on the GAP report on mysticism. Journal of
Nerwous and Mental Disease, 165, 213-217.
Deikman, A. J. (1982). The obserwing self: Mysticism and psychotherapy. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Doblin, R. (1991). Pahnke’s “Good Friday experiment”: A long-term follow-up
and methodological critique. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 23, 1-28.
Eigen, M. (1995). Stones in a stream. Psychoanalytic Rewiew, 82, 371-390.
Ellenberger, H. F. (1970). The discovery of the unconscious: The history and evolution
of dynamic psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.
Engler, J. ( 1984). Therapeutic aims in psychotherapy and meditation: Develop-
mental stages in the representation of self. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology,
16, 25-61.
Erikson, E. H. (1977). Toys and reasons: Stages in the ritualization of experience. New
York: Norton.
Fenwick, P. (1996). The neurophysiology of religious experiences. In D. Bhugra
(Ed.), Psychiatry and religion: Context, consensus, and controwersies (pp. 167-
177). London: Routledge.
Fischer, R. (1971). A cartography of ecstatic and meditative states. Science, 174,
897 -904.
Fischer, R. (1972). Letter to Raymond Prince. R. M. Bucke Memorial Society
Newsletter-Rewiew, 5, 42-45.
Fischer, R. ( 1975). Transformations of consciousness. A cartography: I. The
perception-hallucination continuum. Confnia Psychiatrica, 18, 221 -244.
Flournoy, T. (1915). Une mystique moderne (Documents pour la psychologie re-
ligieuse) [A modem mystic (Documents for the psychology of religion)]. Ar-
chives de Psychobgie, 15, 1-224.

432 DAVID M. WULFF

Forman, R. K. C. (1990). (Ed.). The problem of pure consciousness: Mysticism and
philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Forman, R. K. C. (1998a). (Ed.). The innate capacity: Mysticism, psychology, and
philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Forman, R. K. C. (1998b). What does mysticism have to teach us about con-
sciousness?Journal of Consciowness Studies, 5 , 185-201.
Foster, G. W. (1985). The world was flooded with light: A mystical experience remem-
bered. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Freud, S. (1961). Civilization and its discontents. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.),
The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol.
21, pp. 59-145). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1930)
Gellhom, E. ( 1967). Principles of autonomic-somatic integrations: Physiological basis
and psychological and clinical implications. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Gellhom, E. ( 1969). Emotions and the ergotropic-trophotropic systems. Psychol-
ogische Forschung, 34, 48-94.
Geschwind, N. ( 1983). Interictal behavior changes in epilepsy. Epilepsia, 24(Suppl.
l ) , S23-S30.
Gibbons, D., & De Jarnette, J. (1972). Hypnotic susceptibility and religious ex-
perience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1 1 , 152-156.
Gifford-May, D., & Thompson, N. L. (1994). “Deep states” of meditation: Phe-
nomenological reports of experience. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 26,
117-138.
Gimello, R. M. (1983). Mysticism in its contexts. In S. T. Katz (Ed.), Mysticism
and religious traditions (pp. 61 -88). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Greeley, A. M. (1975). The sociology of the paranormal: A reconnaissance (Sage
Research Papers in the Social Sciences, Vol. 3, Series No. 90-023). Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage.
Greenberg, D., Witztum, E., & Buchbinder, J. T. (1992). Mysticism and psychosis:
The fate of Ben Zoma. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 65, 223-235.
Grinspoon, L., & Bakalar, J. B. (1979). Psychedelic drugs reconsidered. New York:
Basic Books.
Grof, S. (1980). LSD psychotherapy. Pomona, CA: Hunter House.
Grof, S. (1985). Beyond the brain: Birth, death, and transcendence in psychotherapy.
Albany: State University of New York Press.
Grof, S. (1993). The holotropic mind: The three levels of human consciousness and how
they shape our lives. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Grof, S., & Grof, C. (Eds.). (1989). Spiritual emergency: When personal transfor-
mation becomes a crisis. New York: Putnam’s.
Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, Committee on Psychiatry and Religion.
(1976). Mysticism: Spiritual quest or psychic disorder? (GAP Publication No.
97). New York: Author.

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE 433

Hanegraaff, W. J. (1996). New age religion and Western culture: Esotericism in the
mirror of secular thought. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Hardy, A. (1979). The spiritual nature of man: A study of contemporary religious
experience. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Hay, D., & Morisy, A. (1978). Reports of ecstatic, paranormal, or religious expe-
rience in Great Britain and the United States-A comparison of trends.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 17, 255-268.
Henderson, L. A., & Glass, W. J. (Eds.). (1994). LSD: Still with us after all these
years. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hoffding, H. (1923). Erkbnis und Deutung. Eine oergkichende Studie mr Religions-
psychologie [Experience and interpretation: A comparative study in the psy-
chology of religion] (E. Magnus, Trans.). Stuttgart, Germany: Frommanns Ver-
lag (H. Kurtz). (Original Danish edition published 1918)
Hollenback, J. B. (1996). Mysticism: Experience, response, and empowerment. Uni-
versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Hood, R. W., Jr. (1970). Religious orientation and the report of religious experi-
ence. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 9, 285-291.
Hood, R. W., J . (1973). Religious orientation and the experience of transcen-
dence. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 12, 441 -448.
Hood, R. W., Jr. (1974). Psychological strength and the report of intense religious
experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 13, 65-71.
Hood, R. W., Jr. (1975). The construction and preliminary validation of a measure
of reported mystical experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 14,
29-41.
Hood, R. W., Jr. (1976). Conceptual criticisms of regressive explanations of mys-
ticism. Review of Religious Research, 17, 179- 188.
Hood, R. W., Jr., Hall, J. R., Watson, P. J., & Biderman, M. (1979). Personality
correlates of the report of mystical experience. Psychological Reports, 44, 804-
805.
Hood, R. W., Jr., Morris, R. J., & Watson, P. J. (1993). Further factor analysis of
Hood’s mysticism scale. Psychological Reports, 3, 1176-1 178.
Horton, P. C. (1973). The mystical experience as a suicide preventive. American
Journal of Psychiatry, 130, 294-296.
Horton, P. C. (1974). The mystical experience: Substance of an illusion. Journal
of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 22, 364-380.
Houston, J., & Masters, R. E. L. (1972). The experimental induction of religious-
type experiences. In J. White (Ed.), The highest state of consciousness (pp. 303-
321). Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor.
Hufford, D. J. (1985). Commentary: Mystical experience in the modem world. In
G. W. Foster, The world was flooded with light: A mystical experience remembered
(pp. 87- 183). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Hunt, H. T. (1984). A cognitive psychology of mystical and altered-state experi-
ence. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 58, 467-513.

434 DAVID M. WULFF

Hunt, H. T. (1985). Relations between the phenomena of religious mysticism
(altered states of consciousness) and the psychology of thought: A cognitive
psychology of states of consciousness and the necessity of subjective states for
cognitive theory. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 61, 911-961.
Hunt, H. T. (1995). O n the nature of consciowness: Cognitive, phenomenological,and
transpersonal perspectiwes. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press.
Huxley, A. (1945). The perennial philosophy. New York: Harper.
Inge, W. R. (1899). Christian mysticism. New York: Scribner’s.
James, W. (1958). The warieties of religious experience: A study in human nature.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1902)
Janet, P. (1926-1928). De l’angoisse a l‘extase, 6tud.e~sur ks croyances et ks senti-
ments [From anguish to ecstasy: Studies of beliefs and sentiments] (2 vols.).
Paris: Felix Alcan.
Janz, B. (1995). Mysticism and understanding: Steven Katz and his critics. Studies
in Religion, 24, 77-94.
Jaynes, J. (1976). The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Jordan, G. R., Jr. (1971). Psychedelics and zen: Some reflections. The Eastern Bud-
dhist, 4, 138-140.
Jung, C. G. (1976). The Tavistock lectures on the theory and practice of analytical
psychology. In H. Read, M. Fordham, & G. Adler (Eds.), W. McGuire (Exec.
Ed.), & R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), The colkcted works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 18, pp.
1- 182). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Originally delivered
1935)
Kakar, S. (1991). The analyst and the mystic: Psychoanalytic refictions on religion and
mysticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Katz, S. T. (Ed.). (1978). Mysticism and philosophical analysis. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Katz, S. T. (Ed.). (1983). Mysticism and religious traditions. Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press.
King, S. (1988). Two epistemological models for the interpretation of mysticism.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 56, 257-279.
Komfield, J. (1989). Obstacles and vicissitudes in spiritual practice. In S. Grof &
C. Grof (Eds.), Spiritual emergency: When personal transformation becomes a crisis
(pp. 137-169). New York: Putnam’s.
Kroll, J., Fiszdon, J., & Crosby, R. (1996). Childhood abuse and three measures of
altered states of consciousness (dissociation, absorption and mysticism) in a
female outpatient sample. Jouml of Personality Disorders, 10, 345-354.
Kumar, V. K., & Pekala, R. J. (1988). Hypnotizability, absorption, and individual
differences in phenomenological experience. Intemtional Jouml of Clinical
and Experimental Hypnosis, 36, 80-88.
Kvale, S. (Ed.). (1992). Psychology and postmodernism. London: Sage.
Lans, J. M. van der. (1987). The value of Sundkn’s role-theory demonstrated and

MYSTICAL EXPERlENCE 435

 tested with respect to religious experiences in meditation. Journal for the Sci-
entific Study of Religion, 26, 401-412.
Laski, M. (1961). Ecstasy: A study of some secular and religious experiences. London:
Cresset Press.
Leary, D. E. (1990). (Ed.). Metaphors in the history of psychology. Cambridge, En-
gland: Cambridge University Press.
Leuba, J. H. (1925). The psychology of religious mysticism. New York: Harcourt,
Brace.
Levin, J. S. (1993). Age differences in mystical experience. The Gerontologist, 33,
507-513. [see also Errata in 33(5), Table of Contents]
Levin, J. S., Wickramasekera, I. E., & Hirshberg, C. (1998). Is religiousness a
correlate of absorption? Implications for psychophysiology, coping, and mor-
bidity. Alternate Therapies in Health and Medicine, 4, 72-76.
Liddon, S. C. (1989). The dual brain, religion, and the unconscious. Buffalo, NY:
Prometheus Books.
Logan, R. D. ( 1985). The “flow experience” in solitary ordeals. Journal of Human-
istic Psychology, 25, 79-89.
Makarec, K., & Persinger, M. A. (1985). Temporal lobe signs: Electroencephalo-
graphic validity and enhanced scores in special populations. Perceptual and
Motor Skills, 60, 831-842.
Mallory, M. M. ( 1977). Christian mysticism: Transcending techniques. Amsterdam:
Van Gorcum.
Mandel, A. (1980). Toward a psychobiology of transcendence: God in the brain.
In J. Davidson & R. Davidson (Eds.), The psychobiology of consciousness (pp.
379-464). New York: Plenum.
Maslow, A. H. (1964). Religions, values, and peak-experiences. Columbus: Ohio State
University Press.
Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). New York: Van
Nostrand Reinhold.
Masters, R. E. L., & Houston, J. (1973). Subjective realities. In B. Schwartz (Ed.),
Human connection and the new media (pp. 88-106). Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
McGinn, B. (1991). The foundations of mysticism. New York: Crossroad.
Meissner, W. W. (1992). lgnutius of Loyola: The psychology of a saint. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Moller, H. ( 1965). Affective mysticism in western civilization. Psychoanalytic Re-
view, 52, 259-274.
Montmorand, M. de. (1920). Psychologie d e s mystiques catholiques orthodoxes [Psy-
chology of orthodox Catholic mystics]. Paris: Felix Alcan.
Morel, F. (1918). Essai sur l’introversion mystique: Etude psychobgique de Pseudo-
Denys l’Areopagite et de quelques autres cus de mysticisme [Essays on mystical
introversion: A psychological study of Pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite, and
of some other cases of mysticism]. Geneva: Albert Kundig.

436 DAVID M. WULFF

Morse, M. (1990). Closer to the light: Learning from the near-death experiences of
children. New York: Villard Books.
Murphy, M., & Donovan, S. (1996). The physical and psychological effects of medi-
tation: A review of contemporary research with a comprehensive bibliography ,
I931 -1996 (2nd ed.). (E. I. Taylor, Ed.). Sausalito, CA: Institute of Noetic
Sciences.
Myers, E W. H. (1892). The subliminal consciousness. Chapter I. General char-
acteristics of subliminal messages. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Re-
search, 7, 298-327.
Naranjo, C. (1973). The healing journey: New approaches to consciousness. New York:
Pantheon.
Nelson, P. L. ( 1992). Personality attributes as discriminating factors in distinguish-
ing religio-mystical from paranormal experients. Imagination, Cognition, and
Personality, 11, 389-406.
Neumann, E. (1968). Mystical man. In J. Campbell (Ed.) & R. Manheim (Trans.),
The mystic vision: Papers from the eranos yearbooks (pp. 375-415). Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press. (Originally delivered 1948)
Noll, R. (1983). Shamanism and schizophrenia: A state-specific approach to the
“schizophrenia metaphor” of shamanic states. American Ethnologist, 10, 443-
459.
Noyes, R., & Slymen, D. J. (1979). The subjective response to life-threatening
danger. Omega: J o u d of Death and Dying, 9, 313-321.
Otto, R. (1950). The idea of the holy: An inquiry into the non-rational factor in the
idea of the divine and in relation to the rational (2nd ed.). (IW.
. Harvey, Trans.).
London: Oxford University Press. (Original German edition published 1917)
Oxman, T. E., Rosenberg, S. D., Schnurr, P. P., Tucker, 0 . J., & Gala, G. (1988).
The language of altered states. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseuse, 176,
401 -408.
Packer, M. J., & Addison, R. B. (Eds.). (1989). Entering the circle: Hermeneutic
investigation in psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Paffard, M. (1 973). Inglorious Wordsworth: A study of some transcendental experiences
in childhood and udokscence. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Pahnke, W. N. (1966). Drugs and mysticism. International Journal of Parapsychology,
8, 295-314.
Parsons, W. B. ( 1999). The enigma of the oceanic feeling: Revisioning the psychoanalytic
theory of mysticism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Penfield, W., & Perot, P. (1963). The brain’s record of auditory and visual expe-
rience: A final summary and discussion. Brain, 86, 595-702.
Persinger, M. A. (1983). Religious and mystical experiences as artifacts of temporal
lobe function: A general hypothesis. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 57, 1255-
1262.
Persinger, M. A. (1987). Neuropsychological buses of god beliefs. New York: Praeger.

MYSTlCAL EXPERlENCE 437

Pratt, J. B. (1920). The religious consciousness: A psychological study. New York:
Macmillan.
Prince, R., & Savage, C. (1966). Mystical states and the concept of regression.
Psychedelic Review, No. 8, 59-75.
Rose, S. (1989). The conscious brain (Rev. ed.). New York: Paragon House.
Roth, P. A. (1987). Meaning and method in the social sciences: A case for methodo-
logical pluralism. Ithaca, NJ: Cornell University Press.
Rouget, G. (1985). Music and trance: A theory of the relations between music and
possession (B. Biebuyck & G. Rouget, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. (Original French edition published 1980)
Ruck, C. A. P., Bigwood, J., Staples, D., Otto, I., & Wassen, R. G. (1979). En-
theogens. Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, 1 1 , 145-146.
Sacerdote, P. (1977). Applications of hypnotically elicited mystical states to the
treatment of physical and emotional pain. International Journal of Clinical and
Experimental Hypnosis, 25, 309-324.
Shapiro, D. H., Jr., & Walsh, R. N. (Eds.). (1984). Meditation: Classic and contem-
porary perspectives. New York: Aldine.
Smith, H. (1967). Psychedelic theophanies and the religious life. Christianity and
Crisis, 27, 144-147.
Smith, H. (1976). Forgotten truth: The primordial tradition. New York: Harper &
Row.
Spanos, N. P., & Moretti, P. (1988). Correlates of mystical and diabolical expe-
riences in a sample of female university students. Journal for the Scientific Study
of Religion, 27, 105- 116.
Spiegelberg, H. (1975). Phenomenology through vicarious experience. In Doing
phenomenology: Essays on and in phenomenology (pp. 35-53). The Hague, The
Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Stace, W. T. ( 1960). Mysticism and philosophy. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
Strenger, C. (1991). Between hermeneutics and science: An essay on the epistemobgy
of psychoanalysis. Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
Sunden, H. (1966). Die Religion und die Rolkn. Eine psychologische Untersuchungder
Frommigkeit [Religion and roles: A psychological investigation of piety]. Ber-
lin: Alfred Topelmann. (Original Swedish edition published 1959)
Sunden, H. (1970). Meditation and perception: Some notes on the psychology of
religious mysticism. In S. S. Hartman & C. M. Edsman (Eds.), Mysticism (pp.
34-46). Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Tart, C. T. (1972). States of consciousness and state-specific sciences. Science, 176,
1203- 1210.
Tart, C. T. (1991). Influences of previous psychedelic drug experiences on students
of Tibetan Buddhism: A preliminary exploration. Journal of Transpersonal Psy-
chology, 23, 139-173.
Tellegen, A., & Atkinson, G. (1974). Openness to absorbing and self-altering

438 DAVlD M. WULFF

 experiences (“absorption”), a trait related to hypnotic susceptibility.Journal
of Abnormal Psychology, 43, 111-122.
Thalboume, M. A. (1991). The psychology of mystical experience. Exceptional
Human Experience, 9, 168-186.
Thalbourne, M. A., Bartemucci, L., Delin, P. S., Fox, B., & Nofi, 0. (1997).
Transliminality: Its nature and correlates. Journal of the American Society for
Psychical Research, 91, 305-331.
Thalboume, M. A., & Delin, P. S. (1994). A common thread underlying belief in
the paranormal, creative personality, mystical experience and psychopathol-
ogy. Journal of Parapsychology, 58, 3-38.
Thalboume, M. A., & Delin, P. S. (1999). Transliminality: Its relation to dream
life, religiosity, and mystical experience. International Journal for the Psychology
of Religion, 9, 35-43.
Thomas, L. E., & Cooper, P. E. (1980). Incidence and psychological correlates of
intense spiritual experience. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 12, 75-85.
Underhill, E. (1930). Mysticism: A study in the nature and development of man’s
spiritual consciousness (Rev. ed.). London: Methuen. (Original work published
1911)
van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience; Human science for an action
sensitive pedagogy. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Walsh, R., & Vaughan, E (Eds.). (1993). Paths beyond ego: The transpersonal vision.
Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Washbum, M. (1995). The ego and the dynamic ground: A transpersonal theory of
human development. Albany: State University of New York Press.
West, M. A. (Ed.). (1987). The psychology of meditation. Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press.
Wilber, K. (1993). The spectrum of consciousness (2nd ed). Wheaton, IL: Quest.
(Original work published 1977)
Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution. Boston: Shamb-
hala.
Wilber, K. (1996). Eye to eye: The quest for the new paradigm (3rd ed.). Boston:
Shambhala.
Wilson, S. C., & Barber, T. X. (1983). The fantasy-prone personality: Implications
for understanding imagery, hypnosis, and parapsychological phenomena. In
A. A. Sheikh (Ed.), Imagery: Cuwent theory, research, andapplication (pp. 340-
387). New York: Wiley.
Wilson, S. R., & Spencer, R. C. (1990). Intense personal experiences: Subjective
effects, interpretations, and after-effects. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 46,
565-573.
Winkelman, M. (1986). Trance states: A theoretical model and cross-culturalanal-
ysis. Ethos, 14, 174-203.
Winnicott, D. W. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena. Inter-
national Journal of Psychoanalysis, 34, 89-97.

MYSTlCAL EXPERlENCE 439

Wulff, D. M. (1997). Psychology of religion: Classic and contemporary (2nd ed.) New
York: Wiley.
Wuthnow, R. ( 1978). Peak experiences: Some empirical tests. Journal of Humanistic
Psychology, 18(3), 59-75.
Yamane, D., & Polzer, M. (1994). Ways of seeing ecstasy in modem society:
Experimental-expressive and cultural-linguistic views. Sociology of Religion,
55, 1-25.

440 DAVID M. WULFF