A most significant effect of the mystical experience is the inability to put the mystical experience into words. Direct awareness is needed to understand the mystic insight.
States of mind are not easily transferable from one level of perception to another. Many years ago, when I first tried marijuana, I thought I had some very brilliant insights about life. The insights came faster than I could write them down. What a shock it was the next morning when I read what I had written the night before; it was all gibberish. I couldn't make heads or tails of anything I wrote. I knew that my insights of the previous night were absolutely valid, but I was unable to communicate them—even to myself.
Successful mystics claim to have attained gnosis, pure knowledge of the Absolute—a Reality that cannot be accessed by the discursive mind. Such illuminations themselves may fade in normal states of consciousness, but their profound effect does not. Once a view of the Absolute is achieved, it is not soon forgotten. While true knowledge cannot be articulated to anyone else, one's new understanding carries the weight of authority from then on.
Usually, the mystical state of awakened awareness cannot be maintained. Almost certainly that would be true for those who achieve “mini” enlightenments. But Hindus and Buddhists both maintain that true Enlightenment is a state of consciousness that is permanent. This seems to mean that an illuminated being like the Buddha would have the ability to function simultaneously in more than one reality.
Although entering a mystical state is usually voluntary and intentional, once the state is achieved, the one experiencing it has the sense that his or her own will is in abeyance—that one's whole being is sublimated to a higher power. “Not my will, but Thine be done,” or as the Apostle, Paul, put it: “No longer I, but Christ in me.” Such a state of mind always produces a memory of that state of mind, even when one returns to default reality.