The first issue is simply to identify what mysticism is. The term derives from the Latin word “mysticus” and ultimately from the Greek “mustikos.”1 The Greek root “muo” means “to close or conceal” and hence “hidden.”2 The word came to mean “silent” or “secret,” i.e., doctrines and rituals that should not be revealed to the uninitiated. The adjective “mystical” entered the Christian lexicon in the second century when it was adapted by theologians to refer, not to inexpressible experiences of God, but to the mystery of “the divine” in liturgical matters, such as the invisible God being present in sacraments and to the hidden meaning of scriptural passages, i.e., how Christ was actually being referred to in Old Testament passages ostensibly about other things. Thus, theologians spoke of mystical theology and the mystical meaning of the Bible. But at least after the third-century Egyptian theologian Origen, “mystical” could also refer to a contemplative, direct apprehension of God. The nouns “mystic” and “mysticism” were only invented in the seventeenth century when spirituality was becoming separated from general theology.3 In the modern era, mystical interpretations of the Bible dropped away in favor of literal readings. At that time, modernity’s focus on the individual also arose. Religion began to become privatized in terms of the primacy of individuals, their beliefs, and their experiences rather than being seen in terms of rituals and institutions. “Religious experiences” also became a distinct category as scholars beginning in Germany tried, in light of science, to find a distinct experiential element to religion. Only in the early 1800s did a theologian (Friedrich Schleiermacher) first try to ground Christian faith in religious experiences. And only in that era did the term “mysticism” come to refer primarily to certain types of religious experiences (involving “infused contemplation” as opposed to ordinary grace).
But this is not to deny that there were mystics in the modern sense earlier or in other cultures. Simply because the term “mysticism” did not refer explicitly to experiences before the modern era does not mean that “mystical theology” was not informed by mystical experiences. In Christianity, mystics were called “contemplatives.”4 The Syrian monk Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite first used the phrase “mystical theology” in around 500 CE to refer to a direct experience of God. Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth century first referred to the “book of experience.” By the Middle Ages, when Christian contemplatives were expounding the “mystical” allegorical and symbolic meaning of biblical passages, the meanings they saw were ultimately based on the notion of unmediated experiences of God—in Bonaventure’s words, “a journey of the mind into God.” “Mystical theology” then meant the direct awareness of God, not a discipline of theology in the modern sense; and the “mystical meaning” of the Bible meant the hidden message for attaining God directly through experience.
Today “mysticism” has become a notoriously vague term. In popular culture, “mystical” refers to everything from all occult and paranormal phenomena (e.g., speaking in tongues or alleged miracles) to everyday things such as childbirth or viewing a beautiful sunset. But in this book “mystical” will refer only to phenomena centered around an inward quest focused on two specific classes of experiences. However, it is important first to note that mysticism is a more encompassing phenomenon than simply practices related to cultivating mystical experiences. Mysticism is no more private than religion in general. It is a sociocultural phenomenon, but one in which a particular range of experiences has a central role. It is a “way” (yana, dao) in the sense of both a path and a resulting way of life. Mystical traditions involve values, rituals, action-guides, and belief-commitments. Traditionally, mysticism is also tied to comprehensive religious ways of life.5 Only in the modern era has mysticism come to be seen as a matter of only special experiences. The modern reduction of mysticism to merely a matter of personal experiences was solidified by William James in 1902 (1958). Nevertheless, mysticism is traditionally more encompassing than simply isolated mystical experiences: it is about living one’s whole life aligned with reality as it truly is (as defined by a tradition’s beliefs).
Nevertheless, what distinguishes mysticism is its unique experiences: it is the role of certain types of experiences central to mysticism that separates it from other forms of religiosity and metaphysics. “Mysticism” is not simply the name for the experiential component of any religious way of life or for the inner life of the intensely pious or scrupulously observant followers of any strand of religiosity. One can be an ascetic or rigorous in fulfilling the demands of a religion without having the experiences that distinguish mystics. Nor is mysticism the “essence” or “core” of all religion—there are other ways of being religious and other types of religious experiences, even if mystics have been a shaping force in every religion.6 Indeed, many mainline Protestants deny that God can be united with in any sense (since we cannot become divine) or known experientially (since God is utterly transcendent and so cannot be approached experientially) or that the self or soul can be denied, and so they deny that mystical experience is a way of knowing God or reality. Moreover, not all people today who have mystical experiences are religious: mystical experiences need not be given any transcendent explanations but can be given naturalistic explanations in terms of unusual but perfectly normal brain activity or of a brain malfunction having no epistemic or ontic significance at all. In particular, isolated spontaneous mystical experiences (i.e., ones occurring without any prior intentional cultivation through meditation or ones stimulated by drugs or other artificial “triggers”) are often taken to have no ontic implications.7 In short, mystical experiences are not always taken to be revealing a “divine” reality.
A “religious experience” can be broadly classified as any experience imbued with such a strong sense of reality and meaning that it causes the experiencers to believe that they have been in contact with the source of the entire natural realm or some other irreducibly fundamental reality. That is, these experiences are taken to be a direct awareness of another component to reality: either the “beingness” of the natural realm or a transcendent reality. (A “transcendent reality” is a nonspatial and nontemporal reality that is not part of the realm of reality that is open to scientific study, such as a self or soul existing independent of the body or a creator god or a nonpersonal source, or, if that reality is immanent to the natural realm, one that is not experiencable as an object—hence, not a “phenomenon”—and so is not open to scientific scrutiny.) Either way, the reality is allegedly experiencable, and mystical experiences allegedly involve an insight into the nature of reality that people whose awareness is confined to the natural order of objects have not had. There are many types of experiences properly classified as religious—e.g., prayers, alleged revelations, visions and auditions, conversion experiences, and those “altered states of consciousness” (i.e., states of awareness differing in nature from our normal, baseline waking state) that the experiencers take as having religious significance. Indeed, seeing all of the universe as the creation of God, enjoying sacred music, or even writing theology can be called a “religious experience.”
Thus, there is not merely one abstract “religious experience.” Of particular importance here are allegedly preconceptual, theistic experiences of an overpowering and mysterious otherness—a noetic sense of “absolute dependence” on a reality beyond nature that is greater than oneself (Schleiermacher 1999) or the nonrational sui generis sense of something mysterious, dreadfully powerful, and fascinating that is “wholly other” (Otto 1958). Some Christians take this to be the source of all religion. Theists may well have experiences of transcendent otherness where the sense of self that is separate from that reality remains intact—a sense of encountering the presence of sacred “Something Other” with which a person can commune (Hardy 1979: 131). But there are also nontheistic religious experiences and other types of theistic experiences. Following Rudolph Otto (1958), scholars in the past distinguished such “numinous” experiences of the “holy” from mystical experiences: the latter do not involve a subject/object duality as with a sense of otherness or presence, while numinous experiences involve a sense of seeing or hearing some reality distinct from the experiencer, as with visions.8
Many scholars include visionary experiences among mystical ones (e.g., Hollenback 1996). However, a narrow definition of “mysticism” is used here: it is emptying the mind of conceptualizations, dispositions, emotions, and other differentiated content that distinguishes what is considered here as “mystical.” The resulting experiences are universally considered mystical. Thus, visions and auditions and any other experience of something distinct from the experiencer are excluded.9 In addition, many persons who are deemed here to be mystics (e.g., John of the Cross) point out the dangers of accepting visions and voices as cognitive. Visions are often considered to be merely the manifestations of various subconscious forces that fill the mind when it is being emptied of “dualistic” content or when a mystic is returning to the baseline state of mind. In Zen, visions, sounds, and sensations occurring during meditation are dismissed as hallucinatory “demon states” (makyo). Mystical experiences are also associated with paranormal phenomena, but paranormal powers are also objected to as a distraction (e.g., Yoga Sutras 3.36f). But mystics may also have revelations, visions, or other religious experiences or alleged paranormal abilities—indeed, in emptying the mind of other content, meditation may open the mind up to these and to “demonic” phenomena. Mystics may also interact with others within their tradition who have had visions when developing doctrines.
Calling mystical experiences “trances” mischaracterizes them, since mystics remain fully aware. Calling them “ecstasy” is misleading, since the experiencer is not always incapable of action or coherent thought. In addition, there is no hard and fast line between extrovertive mystical experiences and other spiritual experiences or even ordinary sense-experience since some mystical experiences involve only a slight loosening of our mind’s normal conceptual control, although they do involve an altered state of consciousness. So, too, both extrovertive and theistic introvertive theistic mystical experiences share with numinous experiences a sense of reality, although numinous experiences have the additional element of a sense of a subject/object differentiation and may also involve receiving a message or vision. Nor is a mystical experience a vague sense or feeling that there is more to reality than the natural universe. So too, one can transcend a sense of self without mysticism (e.g., becoming a dedicated member of a social movement). And nonmystical experiences can have lasting effects and can transform a person.
At the center of mysticism as stipulated here is an inner quest to still the conceptual and emotional apparatuses of the mind and the sense of self in order to sense reality without mediation (as discussed in the next chapter, constructivists disagree). Mental dispositions and emotions and their roots must all be eradicated. The quest begins with substituting a desire for enlightenment for more mundane desires, but even this desire must be overcome for the mind to become clear of all conceptual, dispositional, and emotional content. But there is not one “mystical experience.” Rather, there are two classes of mystical experiences: the extrovertive (which include mindfulness states of consciousness, “nature mysticism,” and “cosmic consciousness”) and the introvertive (which include differentiated nontheistic and theistic mystical experiences and the empty “depth-mystical experience”). Extrovertive and introvertive mystics share terms such as “oneness,” “being,” and “real,” but their subjects are not the same: extrovertive mysticism is about the “surface” world of phenomena while introvertive mysticism is about the underlying “depth” sources.10 Thus, all mystical experiences should not be placed on one continuum. Introvertive experiences may lead to metaphysical arguments that extend to the phenomenal world, but this does not mean that the introvertive and extrovertive experiences themselves can be conflated.
In extrovertive experiences, the mind retains sensory content; in introvertive experiences, consciousness is void of all sense-experiences but may retain other differentiable mental content. The distinction goes back to Rudolf Otto (1932: 57–72), and the labels “extrovertive” versus “introvertive” were set by Walter Stace. The distinction appears to be supported empirically by differences in their physiological effects (see Hood 2001: 32–47; Dunn, Hartigan, & Mikulas 1999). For Stace, there is a unifying vision of “all is one” with the One perceived extrovertively versus the One apprehended introvertively as an inner subjectivity in all things (1960a: 62–135). Regardless of his theory, an awareness of a fundamental component of reality is allegedly given in both classes of mystical experiences. In either class, mystical experiences can occur spontaneously without any cultivation or meditative preparation. The impact of such isolated experiences may transform the experiencer or may be taken only as interesting ends in themselves. But classical mysticism was never about isolated mystical experiences, including “enlightenment experiences.”
The accounts of what is experienced in mystical experiences are shaped by the cultural categories of each mystic. But it may be possible to get behind these accounts to come up with a phenomenology of mystical experiences—i.e., to get to the “givenness” of an experience itself by depicting the experiential characteristics presented to the subject while bracketing the questions of what is being experienced and whether the experience is veridical. And there are some characteristics that all mystical experiences of both tracks share in one degree or another: the weakening or total elimination of the usual sense of an “ego” separate from other realities, while the true transcendent “self” seems deathless; a sense of timelessness; a focusing of consciousness; a sense that both the experience and what is experienced are ineffable (i.e., cannot be adequately expressed in any words or symbols); feelings of bliss or peace; often there are positive emotions (including empathy) and an absence of negative ones (anger, hatred, and so on); and a cognitive quality, i.e., a sense that one has directly touched some ultimate reality and attained an insight into the fundamental nature of oneself or of all reality, with an accompanying sense of certainty and objectivity (Hood 2002, 2005). To William James, mystical experience without the “over-beliefs” concerning any reality that might be involved have these four features: ineffability, a noetic quality, transiency, and passivity (1958: 380–82). Walter Stace’s description has been especially influential in psychology: a sense of objectivity or reality; a feeling of blessedness, joy, and so on; a feeling of holiness; paradoxicality; and (with reservations) ineffability (1960a: 79).11 A phenomenology of each type of mystical experience might help in giving an empirical basis for a knowledge-claim, but the phenomenal features alone are limited in providing what can be inferred about what is experienced and so are limited in adjudicating competing mystical knowledge-claims (as discussed in chapter 3).
Both experiences are passive, or better receptive. One may do things to cultivate such experiences, but in the end one cannot force the change in consciousness involved. Meditators cannot force the mind to become still by following any technique or series of steps. Indeed, as Teresa of Avila said, “the harder you try not to think of anything, the more aroused your mind becomes and you will think even more” (Interior Castle 4.3). In Buddhism, nirvana is considered “unconstructed” (asamskrita) since it is not the product of any action or the accumulation of merit. To nontheists, external help is not needed, but to theists enlightenment is a matter of grace (e.g., Katha Up. 2.20, Mundaka Up. 3.2.3, and Shvetashvatara Up. 1.6). To Teresa of Avila, “God gives when he will, as he will, and to whom he will.”12 Mystical training techniques and studying doctrines can lessen a sense of self, remove mental obstacles, and calm a distracted mind; thus, they facilitate mystical experiences. But they cannot guarantee the complete end to a sense of self—as long as we are trying to “get enlightened,” we are still in an acquisitive state of mind and cannot succeed in becoming selfless. No act of self-will or any preparatory activity (including the natural triggers discussed in chapter 4) can force mystical experiences to occur: we must surrender, simply let go. In short, no actions can make us selfless. But once meditators stop trying to force the mind to change and become receptive, the mind calms itself and the mystical experiences occur automatically. To mystics, it seems that they are being acted upon: in introvertive mystical experiences, the transcendent ground that is already present within us appears while the meditator is passive; in extrovertive experiences, natural phenomena shine forth unmediated by interference from our discursive mind.
Today people meditate for health benefits and to focus attention, but the traditional objective of a mystical way of life is not for those reasons or to attain exotic experiences: it is to correct the way we live by overcoming our basic misconception of what is in fact real and thereby experiencing reality as it truly is, as best as humanly possible. One must become directly aware of reality, not merely gain new information about the world. Through the mystical quest, we come to see the reality present when the background conceptual structuring to our awareness is removed from our mind—either experiencing in extrovertive states the phenomenal world independently of our conceptualizations and manipulations, or experiencing in introvertive experiences the normally concealed transcendent source of the self or of the entire natural realm free of all other mental content. No new messages from a transcendent reality are revealed (although mystics may also have such experiences). Thus, a mystical quest begins with the notion that reality is not constructed as we normally think and leads to a new way of seeing it: the world we experience through sense-experience and normal self-awareness is in fact not a collection of independently existing entities that can be manipulated to satisfy an independently existing ego. And by correcting our knowledge and our perception, we can align our lives with what is actually there and thereby ease our self-inflicted suffering.
Of particular importance is the misconception involved in the “I-Me-Mine” complex (Austin 1998, 2006): we normally think we are an independent, self-contained entity, but in fact this “self-consciousness” is just another function of the analytical mind—one that observes the rest of our mental life. By identifying with this function, we reify a separate entity—the “self” or “ego”—and set it off against the rest of reality. We see ourselves as one separate entity in a sea of distinct entities, and our ego then runs our life without any conscious connection to the source of its own being. This error (called avidya in Indian mysticism) is not merely the absence of correct knowledge but an active error inhibiting our seeing reality as it is: there is no separate self-existing “ego” within the field of everyday experience but only an ever-changing web of mental and physical processes. There is no need to “kill the ego” because there is no actual ego to remove to begin with—what is needed is only to free our experience from a sense of ego and its accompanying ideas and emotions and thereby see what is actually there.
More generally, the error is that our attention is constricted by conceptualization. The inner quest necessary for overcoming this falsification involves a process characterized in different traditions as “forgetting” or “fasting of the mind”—i.e., emptying the mind of all conceptual content, and in the case of the depth-mystical experience the elimination of all sensory input and other differentiated mental content. The Christian Meister Eckhart spoke of an “inner poverty”—a state free of any created will, of wanting anything, of knowing any “image,” and of having anything; such a state leads to a sense of the identity with the being of the Godhead that is beyond God (McGinn 2006: 438–43). Anything that can be put into words except “being” encloses God, and we need to strip away everything in this way of knowing and become one (Eckhart 2009: 253–55). In medieval Christian terminology, there is a radical “recollecting” of the senses and a “purging” of the mind of all dispositional and cognitive content, especially a sense of “I.” This involves a calming or stilling of mental activity—a “withdrawal” of all powers of the mind from all objects. It is a process of “unknowing” all mental content, including all prior knowledge.13
Sometimes theists characterize God as “nothing” to emphasize that he is not a thing among the things in the universe. Such negative terminology emphasizes that mystics are getting away from the world of differentiation, but mystics affirm that something real is involved in introvertive mystical experiences: through this emptying process, mystics claim that they become directly aware of a transcendent power, not merely conceive a new idea or interpretation of the world. Nor does “forgetting oneself” mean desiring to cease to exist: in the words of the medieval English author of the Cloud of Unknowing in his “Letter of Private Counsel,” this would be “madness and contempt of God”—rather, mystical forgetting means “to be rid of the knowledge and feeling” of independent self-existence. The result is an awareness where all sensory, emotional, dispositional, and conceptual apparatuses are in total abeyance. And yet throughout the process, one remains awake—indeed, mystics assert that only then are we as fully conscious as is humanly possible.
Medieval Christian Franciscans and Dominicans debated whether the will or the intellect was the higher power of the soul—and thus whether love or knowledge is primary—although the consensus was that both are needed. The path to enlightenment is usually seen as an ascent, and various traditions divide it into different stages. In Christianity, since Origen of Alexandria the path has traditionally been divided into three phases: purgation, illumination, and union. Other traditions divide the quest differently. Some, such as Sufism and Buddhism, have many stages or levels of development and attainment. But progress is not steady, nor are all the experiences positive. There is also distress and anxiety and periods in which there is no progress—arid “dark nights of the soul” as John of the Cross called them in which he felt that God was absent and not working. One also may become satisfied with a blissful state on the path—what Zen Buddhists call the “cave of Mara”—and remain there without attaining enlightenment. Shri Aurobindo spoke of an “intermediate zone” where a mystic believes he or she has attained enlightenment but has not and may end up indulging selfish desires. The Christian Theologia Germanica also warns against leaving images too soon and thereby never being able to understand the truth aright. There are also attacks of apparently “demonic” forces, although these may be only our normal conscious and subconscious mind not giving up without a fight—the mind may reassert itself during meditation in the form of anxiety and fear. There may also be visions and other alternative states of consciousness.14 Thus, William James can rightly refer to “diabolical mysticism” (1958: 326).15 There may also be visions and other altered states of consciousness. And after a depth-mystical experience, the analytical mind also returns quickly.
“Meditation” broadly defined involves an attempt to calm the mind by eliminating conceptualizations, dispositions, and emotions. In no mystical tradition can meditation be reduced simply to breathing exercises. Overall, meditation has two different tracks. In the Buddhist Eightfold Path, it is the distinction between “right concentration” (samadhi) and “right mindfulness” (smriti). The former focuses attention on one subject, thereby stabilizing consciousness and culminating in one-pointed attention; the latter frees experience by removing conceptual barriers to perception and thereby “expanding” it to a “pure awareness” that mirrors the flow of what is actually real as it is presented to the mind unmediated by conceptualizations. In the terms of the Yoga Sutras, the mind becomes clear as a crystal and shapes itself to the object of perception. There is neurological evidence supporting the claim that mindfulness meditation helps working memory and the ability to maintain multiple items of attention, and that focusing techniques increase perceptual sensitivity and visual attention (e.g., MacLean et al. 2010).
There are many different meditative techniques within each track, and not all are introvertive—e.g., Buddhist calming techniques (shamatha), concentration techniques focusing all consciousness with or without an object and with or without conceptions (savikalpa and nirvikalpa samadhi), Buddhist insight techniques (vipashyana) using one’s stabilized focus to see the nature of internal and external realities leading to insight (prajna), visualizing objects, relaxation techniques, extrovertive mindfulness techniques involving walking or working, repetitive prayer, ecstatic dance or other activities that overload the senses (including music, incense and flowers, and food and drink), ritualized activities (e.g., archery or gardening), repetition of words or movements, and fasting (see Andresen 2000; Shear 2006).16 Repetition of a word or phrase as a tool initially keeps the analytical mind occupied while the meditator works to calm other aspects of the mind; eventually one becomes “one” with the words, as a dancer becomes one with a dance, and the phrase no longer interferes with one’s awareness. One no longer has the thought “I am repeating this phrase” or any sense of a self separate from the actions. Different aspects of the inner life can be the subject of practice: attention, feelings, bodily awareness, and so on. There are even contradictory practices—e.g., celibacy versus sexual excess, unmarried or married, whirling Dervishes versus silent Sufis, or cultivating dispassion versus bhakti theistic enthusiastic devotion. (It should also be noted that meditating rigidly through a set technique for years may itself lead merely to a new mental habit and not to freedom from the conceptualizing process.) Mystical traditions also have discursive analytical exercises less directly related to emptying the mind (e.g., koans or studying texts). But no techniques belong inherently to only one tradition. Cultivation may cover many facets of life as with the Buddhist Eightfold Path and the Yoga Sutras’ Eight-Limbed Path. So too, in all religions there are institutions such as monasteries and convents with elaborate sets of rules for instruction and social support.
Meditators may practice different techniques, including techniques from both tracks since each track can aid the other in calming and focusing the mind. So too, both extrovertive and introvertive mystical experiences may occur on the path to “enlightenment” (i.e., the permanent eradication of a sense of an independent phenomenal ego). Experiences may be partial and not involve the complete emptying of a sense of ego. So too, theistic mystics may have progressively deeper experiences of a god. Extrovertive mystical experiences can also transition to introvertive ones, but the physiology of the experiencers then changes (Hood 2001: 32–47; Dunn, Hartigan, & Mikulas 1999). Different types of nonmystical religious experiences may also occur. In addition, different or more thoroughly emptied mystical experiences may occur after enlightenment.
Cultivating selfless awareness is central to mystical ways of life, but it should be noted that classical mystics actually discuss mystical experiences very little—how one should lead one’s life, the path to enlightenment, knowledge, and the reality allegedly experienced are more often the topics. Traditionally, the goal is not any momentary experience but a continuous new existence: the mystical quest is not completed with any particular experience but with aligning one’s life with the nature of reality (e.g., permanently uniting one’s will with God’s). The knowledge allegedly gained in mystical experiences is utilized in a continuing way of life. The reality supposedly experienced remains more central than any inner state of mind. Most mystical texts are not meditation manuals but discussions of doctrines, and to read all mystical texts as works about the psychology of different states of consciousness is to misread them badly in light of modern thought. Even when discussing inner mental states, mystics refer more to a transformation of character or an enduring state of alignment with reality than to types of “mystical experiences,” including any transitional “enlightenment experiences” that end a sense of self. This does not mean that cultivating the special mystical experiences is not the defining characteristic of mysticism or that one could attain the enlightened state without any altered states of consciousness. It only means that mystics value most the reality experienced and the long-lasting transformed state of a person in the world and not any state of consciousness or momentary experiences, no matter how insightful. Even if a mystic values the experience of a transcendent reality over all doctrines, still the resulting transformed state of a person is valued more.
But mystics do claim that they realize a reality present when all the conceptual, dispositional, and emotional content of the mind is removed. Mystical experiences and states of consciousness are allegedly cognitive. Mystics claim to have a direct awareness of the bare being-in-itself—the “is-ness” of the natural realm of things apart from the conceptual divisions that we impose—or of a direct contact with a transcendent reality whereby they gain a new knowledge of reality. Both their knowledge and their will are corrected (since the individual will is based on the sense of an independent ego within the everyday world that is now seen to be baseless); and, free of self-will, mystics can now align their life with the way reality truly is and enjoy the peace resulting from no longer constantly trying to manipulate reality to fit our own artificial images and ego-driven emotions and desires.
The first important distinction is between the two classes of mystical experience: “extrovertive” and “introvertive”—i.e., those with sensory input and those without. Extrovertive experiences, like introvertive experiences, have an “inner” dimension, but the two classes differ in the reality experienced. A mystical quest may lead an experiencer to an extrovertive sense of a connectedness to or unity with the flux of impermanent phenomena that can be seen when our mind is free of our conceptual, dispositional, and emotional apparatuses. Extrovertive mystical experiences involve a passive receptivity to what is presented in sensory events—indeed, a greater openness in general (MacLean et al. 2011). They may give a sense of a transcendent reality immanent in nature. All extrovertive mystical experiences involve differentiated content. Thus, these states are “dualistic” in the sense that there are diffuse phenomena present in consciousness even if such phenomena are not seen as a collection of ontologically distinct entities. Mystical experiences with differentiated content have something for the mind to organize with the concepts from a mystic’s culture. But one state of consciousness may be free of all conceptualizations: a “pure” mindfulness involving sensory differentiations but not any conceptualizations.
Also note that the extrovertive mysticism remains this-worldly: its experiences are of the natural realm. These mystical experiences produce an alleged insight into the ultimate construction of the dynamic world of change, including in some a sense of a transcendent source within the world. But even if there is a sense of a transcendent reality immanent in the natural realm, the natural world is still the locus of the experience. What is retained from all extrovertive mystical experiences is a sense of fundamental beingness, immutability, and oneness. Thus, not all mystical experiences involve delving into the changeless transcendent source of being but can involve an experience of the beingness of “surface” phenomena. Since both types of mystical experience involve an emptying of the mind, it may seem natural to consider extrovertive experiences as simply low-level, failed, or partial cases of introvertive mystical experiences, but they are a distinct type of experience with different physiological effects in which the mind still has sensory content. Buddhism and Daoism are traditions in which extrovertive experiences are considered more central than introvertive ones for aligning one’s life with reality.
Especially prominent among extrovertive states are the spontaneous experiences of the natural world of “nature mysticism” or “cosmic consciousness.” In the former, the sensory realm may be transfigured. To William Blake, it is “To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an Hour.” Nature may take on a vivid glow as if alive. Or there may be the presence in the world of a transcendent god outside of time in an “eternal now.” A sense of a transcendent reality grounding the universe may be part of an experience and not merely an inference made after the experience is over. This is a shift from nature mysticism to a cosmic consciousness. Richard M. Bucke presented the classic account of the latter (1969; see also Rankin 2008). They have in one degree or another a lessening of a sense of self and of any boundaries between the experiencer and nature and also of boundaries within nature set up by our analytical mind, leading to a sense of connectedness or partless unity (“oneness”) of oneself with all of nature. (Interestingly, these experiences are more often reported in the West than in South Asia.) They can lead to a sense of the living presence of a timeless reality of light and love that is immanent to the natural world. Both types of experiences come in various degrees of intensity, but there is always a profound sense of connectedness with the natural world, of knowledge, and of contact with something fundamentally real. The event may be a short experience or a longer-lasting state of consciousness.
Paul Marshall describes extrovertive “noumenal experiences” as perfectly clear, luminous, highly noetic, fully detailed, and temporally inclusive, unlike ordinary sense-experience (2005: 267). He concludes that in the simplest extrovertive mystical experiences, the noumenal background is not felt strongly: the stream of phenomenal experience becomes nondual through a relaxation of sharp self/other distinctions, so that the everyday self and the body are felt to be an integral part of the stream; this brings a sense of unity, perceptual clarity, living in the “now,” peace, and joy, but no dramatic transformations of phenomena. In more developed cases, the phenomenal stream begins to reveal its noumenal bedrock, bringing luminous transfigurations of the phenomenal content, more advanced feelings of unity, a growing sense of meaning and knowledge, and a significantly altered sense of time. In the most advanced cases, the noumenal background comes to the fore, blotting out dualistic phenomenal experience altogether, and the mystics experience an all-encompassing unity, knowledge, a cosmic vision, eternity, and love, having accessed the depths of their own minds (ibid.). Marshall explains extrovertive experiences by combining realism and idealism: nature is externally real but mental in nature (ibid.: 261–68). But his approach places introvertive mystical experiences with differentiated content in the same class as extrovertive experiences.
Mindfulness, exemplified in Buddhism, falls into the group of extrovertive experiences when sensory data are involved. But it is not necessarily extrovertive: it may involve internal mental differentiations free of all sensory input.17 To mindfulness mystics, the analytical mind alienates us from what is real, and language is its tool: conceptualizations embedded in language stand between us and what is real, interfering with our view of what is actually real.18 Thus, language-guided perception is the opposite of mindfulness. Through habituation, our everyday perceptions, and indeed the rest of our consciousness, become reduced to no more than seeing the very categories that our mind has itself created as being present in the external world—consciousness, in the words of the very nonmystical W. V. Quine, becomes only the reaction of our mind to our own prior reactions. Mindfulness counters this: it loosens the grip that the concepts we create have on our sense-experiences, inner experiences, and actions. The sense of a separate long-term ego vanishes (Farb et al. 2007). In mindfulness meditation, one does not try to suppress thoughts and feelings but rather to observe them silently as they occur without mental comment; in this way, they do not become distractions but other objects of awareness.
Mindfulness thus consists of simply being totally focused on what is occurring in the present moment without judgment or commentary, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. (This is easier to describe than to achieve—as the Buddha put it, it is easier to quiet a tree full of monkeys than to quiet the mind.) One comes to experience the only moment in which we are actually alive without being distracted by the past or future (Kabat-Zinn 1994). Such mindfulness results in seeing the flow of sensory input and the inner activity of the mind as it is free of memories, anticipations, emotional reactions, and the normal process of reifying the content into distinct objects based on our conceptualizations. The world is seen as a constant flux without discrete objects. Thus, mindful states of consciousness still have sensory or nonsensory mental content, but some or all the background structuring normally associated with such content has been removed. Such mindfulness may be a transient experience, but it also may become an enduring state of transformed consciousness.
Mindfulness exercises in working, walking, or just sitting destructure the conceptual frameworks structuring our perceptions. Like other meditation, this can lead to increases in vitality and energy. The resulting focus of attention produces an inner calm and clarity of awareness. This is not so much a change in the content of our sensory consciousness and inner awareness as a change in our relation to that content. Our usual way of thinking and experiencing both fade away. We normally see rugs and hear trucks—with pure mindfulness all structuring would be removed and we would see patches of color and texture free of rugness and hear sourceless noises. This is a “bare attention” to what is presented to our senses, without attention to anything in particular and with no accompanying intellectual expectations or emotional reactions. It is not a trancelike state or self-hypnosis or a state of unconsciousness—one remains fully awake and remembers it afterward. But it does involve a complete focus on what is being presented to the mind.
We like to think that we normally see the external world “as it really is,” but neuroscientists have found otherwise. There is evidence that our conscious and subconscious mind creates an image of the world, not merely filters or structures sensory data (see Peters 1998: 13–15). Experiments show that our mind “corrects” and constructs things (e.g., filling in visual blind spots). More generally, apparently our mind automatically creates a coherent, continuous narrative out of all the sensory input it receives. We see a reconstruction of the world, and this leads to the question of whether our visual world is only a “grand illusion.” Overall, the mind seems to have difficulty separating fantasies from facts—it sees things that are not there and does not see some things that are (Newberg & Waldman 2009: 5). It does not even try to create a fully detailed map of the external world; instead, it selects a handful of cues and then fills in the rest with conjecture, fantasy, and belief (ibid.). Our brain constructs a subconscious map that relates to our survival and another map that reflects our conscious awareness of the world (ibid.: 7). Mindfulness interferes with this fabrication, making us more alert and attentive, and thus lets in more of the world as it really is into our awareness. Indeed, contra cognitive science, mindfulness mystics claim that we can have a “pure” mind free of all conceptualizations that mirrors only what is actually there.
It is this sense of “illusion” that is the central concern of mindfulness mystics: conceptualizing off independent “entities” from the flow of events. We live in a world of items conceptualized out of the flow of events and react to our own conceptions. Only in this sense is the world “unreal” or an “illusion,” and what we need to do is to rend the conceptual veil and get to what is really there. To convey the sense of what is real and what is illusory, Chandogya Upanishad 6.1.3–4 gives the analogy of a clay pot. The clay represents what is real (i.e., the permanent beingness lasting before and after whatever shape it currently is in) and the potness represents what is illusory (i.e., the temporary and impermanent form the clay is in at the moment). If we smash the pot, the “thingness” is destroyed, but what is real in the pot (the clay) continues unaffected. Mindfulness mystics see the clay but no distinct entity (the pot).19 And they do not dismiss the world as “unreal” or “illusory” in any stronger sense. (Even for the depth-mystical Advaita Vedanta the world cannot be dismissed as a complete nonreality: the world is neither the same as Brahman nor distinct from it, and so its ontic status is indescribable [anirvachaniya].) That is, mindfulness still involves a realism about the experienced realm, but it is a realism not grounded in an awareness of sensed differentiations or linguistic distinctions.
Through mindfulness there is Gestalt-like switch, not from one figure to another (e.g., from a duck to a rabbit in the Kohler drawing), but from any figure to the bare colors. That is, our awareness becomes focused on the beingness of the natural realm rather than the things that we normally conceptualize out. (This is not to deny that there are figures but to see their impermanence, interconnectedness, and beingness.) There is an openness and passive receptivity not previously present. This permits more richness to the sensory input that is now freed from being routinely cataloged by our preformed characterizations. The experiences may not have the intensity or vividness of cosmic consciousness or nature mystical experience, but perception is refreshed by the removal of conceptual restrictions.
In the resulting state, an experience of a uniformity and interconnectedness to all we experience in the phenomenal realm comes through—what Nagarjuna called the “thatness” (tattva) of things—is presented to the senses. In particular, with this new sense of shared beingness any sense of a distinct ego within the natural world vanishes. The conceptual border separating us from the rest of the natural world has been broken, with the resulting sense of an intimate connectedness of everything. In sensory mindfulness, one can be aware that there is content in your mind without dropping out of the experience, unlike in a depth-mystical experience. And if an experience involves a sense of the presence of a transcendent reality in nature or of the “mind of the world,” then the mind is still not emptied of all differentiated content as with the depth-mystical experience.
With mindfulness, we see what is presented to our mind as it is, free of our purposes, feelings, desires, and attempts at control. The content of sensory experience remains differentiated, but we do not pick and choose, setting one conceptually distinct object against another. The mindful live fully in the present, free of temporal structuring, witnessing whatever arises in their consciousness without judging and without a sense of possession, and they respond spontaneously. (As discussed in chapter 9, this spontaneity does not necessarily mean that mystics are acting free of values and beliefs; even in their enlightened state, mystics may have internalized values and beliefs from their religious tradition or other sources.) To most of us, the present is fully structured by our past categories and our expectations and future intentions. To mystics, as long as we have this intentional mind, we have no access to reality: only with a mindful mind do we no longer identify with our thoughts and emotions but simply observe things free of a sense of self, living fully in the “now.” There is a shift in consciousness from mental categorizations to an awareness of the sheer beingness of things. In Buddhism, a person with a concentrated mind knows and sees things as they really are (yathabhutam). Awareness is freed from the dominance of our habitual categorizations and anticipations, and our mind becomes tranquil and lucid. Jiddhu Krishnamurti called this “choiceless awareness” (Lutygens 1983: 42).
The field of perception is no longer fragmented. Awareness is no longer tied to the images we manufacture—i.e., in Buddhist terms, it no longer “abides” anywhere or “grasps” anything. In the words of the Dalai Lama, “nondual perception” is “the direct perception of an object without the intermediary of a mental image.” Note that he does not deny that there is something there to be perceived—only now we see it as it really is, free of conceptualizations setting up dualities. The false world we create of distinct, self-contained entities is seen through, and phenomenal reality appears as it actually is. The mind mirrors only what is there, without adding or distorting whatever is presented. Mental categories no longer fix our mind, and our attention shifts to the “thatness” of things, although some conceptual structuring will remain present in all but a state of pure mindfulness.
Since language refers to the differentiations in the phenomenal realm and is itself a matter of differentiations, mystics always have trouble with applicability of language to undifferentiated beingness. Moreover, empirical studies of meditators suggest that a nonlinguistic aspect of the brain is attuned to beingness, and thus conceptualizations remove us from the proper state of mind to experience beingness. In addition, even phenomenal reality cannot be mirrored in any conceptualizations: words denote distinct entities, and according to mindfulness mystics phenomenal reality is not constructed of discrete parts. But mindfulness mystics are generally realists in the broad metaphysical sense: extrovertive mystics uniformly reject the idea of ontologically distinct, independent, and self-contained entities within the phenomenal world, but they affirm a reality “beneath” such concept-generated illusions—only objectness is an illusion generated by the mind. That is, the beingness of the world’s phenomena is affirmed, although it may also be seen as related to a theistic or nonpersonal transcendent source. Such common-sense realism does not have a built-in correspondence theory of epistemology or any views on materialism, determinism, reductionism, or naturalism.
Misled by the appearance of permanence and our categorization of what is experienced, we unenlightened folk “create” distinct objects by imposing our ideas onto the world—i.e., reifying our conceptualizations into a world of multiple, distinct entities. What is actually there independent of our conceptualizations is real, but we take the conceptual and perceptual distinctions we ourselves create as capturing what is “real” in the world. Most importantly, this includes the idea of a distinct ego. Buddhists affirm that there is thinking and other mental events, but no thinker: if we think of the “person” as a string of beads, there is a succession of beads (momentary mental events) but no string. So too, the discrete “objects” of sense-experience and introspection are “unreal” only in this limited sense: the beingness behind the conceptual differentiations remains real and undifferentiated. While still on the path to enlightenment, a mindfulness mystic sees individual “objects,” but it is their beingness that is the focus of attention, and once enlightened any self-contained individuality in the experiencer or the experienced world is seen as illusory. In sum, we misread sensory experience and construct an illusory world of multiple realities out of what is real in phenomena. What we conceptually separate as “entities” are only eddies in a constantly flowing and integrated field of events. That is, the world of multiple “real” (independent, self-contained) entities is an illusion but not what is really there—the eddies in the flow of events are not unreal but are simply not isolated entities, unconnected to the rest of the flow. The alleged discrete entities are the “discriminations” that Buddhists deny are real.
Thus, with mindfulness we see the mundane with fresh perceptions. It removes habituation from our perceptions. It renews attention to all that is presented and ends the role of concepts guiding our attention. Our attention is “purified” regardless of what we are observing. Mindfulness is thus not about attaining a state of consciousness unconnected to observations, or seeing something special about the world, or anything more (or less) profound than seeing the flow of the world as it is free of the constraints of our conceptualizations and emotions.
The second class of mystical experiences occurs in the concentrative track of meditation when there is no sensory input. It leads to an introvertive awareness of a transcendent reality underlying at least all of the experiencer’s subjective phenomena or in fact all natural phenomena. Such a reality can be called another “level” of reality than the phenomenal world since it is the source of at least something in the natural world. An important distinction here is between introvertive mystical experiences with differentiable content and those without. Both theistic and nontheistic experiences occur in the first group. In theistic experiences, the differentiated content seems personal in nature. Introvertive experiences may be what Teresa of Avila referred as “supernatural” and John of the Cross called “infused contemplation.” With these experiences, there is a change in the state of consciousness from both ordinary awareness and extrovertive mystical experiences: attention shifts from the phenomenal realm to an inner wellspring of reality lying outside the realm of time and change that grounds either phenomenal consciousness or all of the phenomenal realm. The inward turn begins with objects of concentration, but it is not a matter replacing the content with an image of nothingness (e.g., a big, black, silent, empty space), but of eventually emptying the mind of all thought, emotion, sensation, and any other internal distinguishable content. Extrovertive states may be long-lasting or even permanent, but introvertive experiences are transient, being disrupted by life in the phenomenal world.
Theistic introvertive mystical experiences are differentiated since there is a sense of a self realizing another reality. That is, there are dualistic introvertive experiences where differentiated phenomena are not yet eradicated, and theists take what is sensed as an experience of an active separate self—the presence of the benevolent transcendent God loving the experiencer. This sense is especially strong when a sense of bliss is part of the experience itself. Nontheists may dismiss this as merely the product of enculturation in a theistic society or of the mystical training in a theistic tradition and not the presence of God but merely the experiencer’s own subconscious. “Love mysticism” is then seen as dominating Christianity only because the doctrine of God’s unconditional love is central to Christian theology, not because of anything experiential. But theists take the sense of being unconditionally loved as a genuine part of a theistic introvertive experience itself.
Whether theists are correct or not, it does appear from the mystical texts that these experiences differ in nature from the “empty” depth-experience: the experiences themselves still involve differentiated content of a personal character. They are not merely theistic postexperience interpretations of the depth-experience, contra Walter Stace (1960a) and Ninian Smart (1965). But Stace discounted all theistic descriptions of mystical experiences as obviously interpretations, while accepting nontheistic descriptions as closer to a bare description, for philosophical reasons: he wanted to use the latter descriptions in an argument from unanimity to support mystical knowledge-claims and had to get around the conflict of theistic and nontheistic accounts. Theists may just as easily discount nontheistic interpretations for a similar reason. But without such philosophical or theological agendas and from the phenomenological data alone, we should accept that there are two types of introvertive mystical experiences—some with a sense of differentiated content (either personal or nonpersonal) and some without. Some theistic mystics such as Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruusbroec appear to have had both differentiated introvertive theistic mystical experiences and the depth-mystical experience.20 Love does not dominate Islamic theology, but some Muslim mystics such as Jalal al-din Rumi make love central. Such theistic experiences also occur outside the Abrahamic traditions to, for example, bhakti Hindus. (These may have influenced the love tradition in Sufism.) Because these introvertive experiences are differentiated, it is possible that there may be a unique flavor to theistic experiences in each tradition—i.e., a “Christian theistic experience” differing from a Muslim one, and so on.
The inner focusing of attention can lead to the complete inward stillness of the second type of introvertive experience: the depth-mystical experience. There is a silence as the normal workings of the mind—including a sense of self and self-will—are stilled. Phenomenologically the experience appears free of all differentiated content. But looking back on the experience after it is over, something is retained as having been present in the silent state. Is that reality in fact free of all differentiated content? Even in the Abrahamic traditions, there are mystics who affirm a “Godhead beyond God” free of all features. To Eckhart, by means of the intellect (nous), one can break through to the “ground” that is free of self-will, God’s will, all creatures and “images,” and even God himself. If what was experienced were truly ineffable, mystics could label it, but they could not know anything more about it; thus, they could not in any way form any beliefs or values from the experience about what was experienced. But mystics do claim something with characteristics is experienced: pure consciousness or a transcendent reality.
Thus, in the depth-experience, the experiencer is free of all mental differentiations and yet is still awake. This state of consciousness is a state of lucid awareness supposedly having ontic significance. In the ordinary “dualistic” state of mind, it is not uncommon to be so caught up in an experience that we have no sense of self or time, and if we stop to reflect on what is happening we drop out of the experience. This too applies to introvertive mystical experiences: if you think “I am having a depth-mystical experience,” you are not having one. Or as Eckhart said, “to be conscious of knowing God is to know about God and the self,” not to be in the actual experience of him. But when mystics look back on their depth-mystical experiences, they have no memories of any differentiated content—there is no sense of any object. It cannot even be called “self-awareness” since the experiencer is not aware of a subject experiencing anything—there seems to be no self, no subject or object, and no sense of ownership. That is, there is no sense of personal possession of this awareness since it is devoid of all personal psychological characteristics. Indeed, it does not seem to be an individual’s consciousness at all but something transcending all subjects. Since such a state of consciousness is transitory and not a permanent condition of a person, it can be called an “experience,” or an “event” if the term “experience” is taken to require a subject and an object.
Because the depth-mystical experience is free of differentiated features, the state of “pure consciousness” is sometimes characterized as a state of unconsciousness—i.e., the meditator is in some sense awake but not conscious (Pyysiäinen 2001). In one sense it may be so described: since one is not aware of any content during the experience, in that sense it is not a conscious event. But if after introvertive experiences mystics retain a sense that the experiences involved a reality, how can the state be classified as unconscious? And how could it seem to be so profound or indeed have any emotional impact on the experiencer at all? Nevertheless, some scholars do think that the experience is simply unconsciousness. Alan Wallace quotes a Christian scholar who thinks that mystics undergo a “profound cataleptic trance” manifested by some psychotics and long-term coma patients (2003: 7). But Wallace rightly asks, why would Buddhist contemplatives undergo long years of training to achieve a state that could readily be achieved through a swift blow to the head with a heavy blunt object? Something more than true unconsciousness must be involved.
At least bare consciousness is experienced in the depth-mystical experience. And that may be all there is to such an experience: the experience may be simply a state of pure consciousness (see Forman 2010). Or after the experience it may seem to have been an experience of pure beingness—existence as such with no distinctions and without any subject of the event. That is, because depth-mystical experiences are free of differentiable content (sensory input, mental images, and so on), depth-mystics may consider beingness to be consciousness since consciousness is what is directly experienced, and so everything is grounded in consciousness or in fact is consciousness. Thus, the minimal ontic characterization is that depth-mystics are aware of beingness in such experiences as consciousness. But mystics may conclude that what was experienced is ontologically more than simply their own consciousness: when the mind is completely stilled, an awareness bursts forth of a reality greater than consciousness or the being of the natural realm—an unmediated implosion of a more fundamental reality, with an accompanying sense of certitude and typically finality. Eckhart described it as the “birth of the son of God” in the “ground of the soul” where no images or powers (such as the will or the senses) have ever been (2009: 29–30). The reality can be called “transcendent,” whether a god or a nonpersonal reality, since, if the reality exists and is involved, it exists outside the natural realm that is open to ordinary experience and scientific scrutiny. Yet the transcendent reality is open to being directly experienced by beings within the natural realm, and this is possible only if it is not only transcendent but also immanent: a creator god sustaining this world, or a transcendent ontic depth to the entire natural world or at least to the experiencer (the true self once the false sense of a phenomenal ego has been eliminated). But if the experience is indeed empty of differentiatable content, theistic and nontheistic mystics have identical depth-mystical experiences.
Theists can interpret the depth-experience as an experience of the sheer beingness of God without any of God’s personal properties. But it is hard to argue that theists experience anything personal here since what is experienced is devoid of all content—“cleansed and emptied” of all “distinct ideas and images,” to quote John of the Cross. Theists do not experience personal properties in the moments of the depth-mystical experience (as they do in a theistic introvertive experience). Rather, after the experience they transfer their previous beliefs to the sense of reality and finality given in the experience. The beliefs of nontheistic mystics and of theistic mystics such as Eckhart suggest that what is experienced is devoid of any features that can be likened to anything in the natural world, including personhood. According to Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta, we can experience Brahman either through “name and form” as a theistic god (saguna brahman) or as the opposite of all features (nirguna brahman), but Brahman in itself is beyond all attempts at conception, including Advaita’s standard characterizations of it as reality (sat), an inactive consciousness (chitta), and bliss (ananda) (Brihadaranyaka-upanishad-bhashya 2.3.1; Brahma-sutra-bhashya 3.2.22). Traditions that give more specifics to the transcendent reality do not necessarily do so in theistic terms. For example, in Daoism, the Way (dao) is the constant but dynamic source of both being and the order underlying change in the natural world, with the emphasis on the ordering aspect. There is no suggestion of a theistic god; rather the Way is a nonpersonal, law-governed guiding force—a self-giving source that benefits all equally.
It should also be noted that there is a transitional state from the depth-mystical experience back to the baseline state of consciousness or a state of mindfulness. During this transition, images, prior beliefs, and other dualistic phenomena flood back into the mind. This state is not part of the depth-mystical experience itself, but it may well be seen as part of the “total package” between the departure from dualistic consciousness to the depth-mystical state and the return to dualistic consciousness (see Sullivan 1995: 56–57). Thus, theists may mistake its content for what was experienced in the prior depth-mystical experience, especially since the transition is a subconscious process and does not seem to be coming from the experiencer but rather seems like an infused reality. More content may come from this state that theists see as theistic in nature.
In sum, the depth-mystical state of consciousness is itself free of any object of attention and hence is not intentional. It can be called a “contentless awareness”—a light not illuminating any object. It is like a beam of light that illuminates but cannot reflect back upon itself and so is never an object within awareness. Normally, we see only the objects and not the light, but in a depth-mystical experience the light is all there is. (This does not change the experiencer’s ontic status since the light was always there.) This “light” is the content of the depth-mystical experience, even though mystics are not aware that this is the case until the experience is over—there is no space in the experience itself to make labeling the content or interpreting the nature of this content possible at that time.
Thus, in the depth-experience the mind is not truly empty. It has a positive content: a pure consciousness is now fully occupying it, even though the experiencer is not aware of the new content while the experience is occurring. The full ontic nature of that consciousness is a matter of interpretation after the experience. But during the experience the mind is empty of all the differentiated content that normally occupies it—any object of awareness (sensory input, ideas, sense of self, memories, feelings, and so on) or even an awareness of awareness itself. But as mentioned above, if the mind were in fact truly empty, mystics would have nothing to remember after the experience, and it would be hard to see how the event could be seen as an “experience” or “awareness” or as being conscious at all. Nor would there be any grounds to make (or deny) any knowledge- or value-claims based on the experience. Nor could there be any emotional impact on the experiencer. But mystics are not unconscious, and they do not suffer from amnesia for the period they undergo a depth-mystical experience: a sense of something real, and an accompanying sense of profundity is retained after the experience.
The depth-experience is open to four different ontic interpretations:
•The mind is truly empty and any later sense that there was another reality present is simply an unfounded inference; only the natural mind is present.
•A transcendent consciousness distinct from the body is present; the consciousness may be an individual’s or shared by all sentient beings.
•A conscious but nonpersonal ground of beingness underlying both subjective and objective phenomena is present.
•A creator/sustainer god that is personal in nature enters the “empty” mind.
Naturalists by definition deny the existence of transcendent realities—all of reality for them is open to scientific scrutiny—but they can accept that a genuine contentless experience occurs and give it the first explanation. Theists can give that experience the theistic interpretation, but again this does not make the experience a differentiated theistic introvertive experience. Since most people are theists of one stripe or another, “union with God” is probably the most common interpretation, but this does not mean that there is anything differentiable or personal in the depth-experience itself. (The question of “union” will be addressed in chapter 5.) Any bliss that results from the mind being empty and inactive may well be seen by theists after the fact as being fully loved by a god deemed to be limitless and loving—“bliss” becomes “blessed.” As discussed above, theists may also have theistic extrovertive experiences that are felt in terms of the presence of God in his creation. Thus, to theists three types of mystical experiences are theistic.
In his Enlightenment Ain’t What It Appears to Be (2010), Robert Forman makes it clear that having a depth-mystical experience need not transform a person: if one is neurotic, depressed, or a jerk before the experience, one may well remain exactly the same after the experience fades. Emotions may continue as before. Of the four people in the West who convinced Agehananda Bharati that they had had the “zero-experience,” one was a real estate salesman who continued to sell real estate afterward (1976: 226–27). As Forman says, all that has occurred is an unmingling of background consciousness from its ordinary content. All one may have done is discovered that there is more to reality—a witnessing consciousness independent of the observed content and the sense of a subject sensing. This discovery need not change one’s ordinary consciousness or one’s character once one returns to dualistic consciousness; the experience may expand what one accepts as real about oneself but nothing more. In addition, if one has a strong sense of self-importance, that may well be strengthened by losing a sense of the phenomenal ego and having a depth-experience that is interpreted as the ground of an independent self. So too, a depth-mystical experience need not produce a transformation toward selflessness: any effects may be short-lived or even nonexistent if one decides that the experience is delusory. This possibility is especially great when mystical experiences occur spontaneously. (That the enlightened need not be morally transformed will be discussed in chapter 9.) So too, extrovertive mystical experiences may seem bewildering and lead to confusion and distress if they occur outside a religious framework that gives them meaning (Byrd, Lear, & Schwenka 2000: 267–68).
But the mystical quest may also lead to a psychological transformation of the person that initiates a new way of living. A mystical insight may be internalized and become part of one’s cognitive and dispositional framework. When this transformation involves completely ending any sense of an individual ego in the phenomenal world by means of the mystical cultivation discussed above, it is “mystical enlightenment.”21 Mystical enlightenment is not an isolated experience but this enduring state of consciousness. (Thus, merely having a contentless introvertive experience by itself will not be referred to here as “enlightenment.”) It is a psychological and epistemic change, not an ontic one—one realizes what has always been the case. It involves knowledge of the fundamental nature of reality (as defined by the mystic’s tradition) and subsequently living in accordance with reality (normally by following the ethics of the mystic’s tradition). Since beliefs and values from different traditions figure in enlightenment, there is no one abstract “state of enlightenment” but different enlightened states. Indeed, the state differs from person to person: the knowledge each mystic brings to enlightenment will structure his or her awareness differently. Different enlightened mystics make different knowledge-claims and then take their experiences as experiential confirmation of those claims. Thus, “enlightenment,” like “mysticism,” is an abstract category covering diverse actual phenomena. But all such states have ending a sense of a phenomenal ego in common. (It should also be noted that the enlightened state can be lost.)
Mystical enlightenment is not the goal of all religions since salvation may be defined in other terms, but it may be one way to perfect a tradition’s religious virtues or to attain a state not attained by all believers. In classical introvertive mysticism, enlightenment involves an insight into the underlying self or the source of the natural realm. One no longer identifies with one’s thoughts and emotions—these are merely products of the phenomenal ego and not the true self. In extrovertive mysticism, enlightenment is different: its insight involves seeing the lack of any separate, independent ego cut off from the rest of the natural realm—there is no inner ego thinking our thoughts but only the thoughts. One also sees all of this realm as it truly is: free of distinct objects, interconnected, and in constant flux. In both cases, there is a transformed state of consciousness involving an insight into the nature of phenomenal reality.
Thus, the enlightened state of mind is constituted by an abiding sense of fundamental reality. In introvertive mysticism, our everyday sense of a distinct socially constructed ego is replaced by the continuous inflowing of what is deemed the ground of either the true self or all of reality (depending on the particular mystic’s beliefs), and one acts accordingly. The result is a continuous mystical awareness. After an introvertive experience, the enlightened do not return to the normal sense of a self but to a selfless state with sense-perceptions. Thus, the introvertive enlightened state can be seen as a continual state of mindfulness, but it is one in contact with an alleged transcendent reality. It is a continuing state of consciousness with an inner calm even while the person is engaged in thought and activity—i.e., one remains centered in beingness while still remaining fully conscious of thoughts and sensations. But in all cases, the sense of a separate phenomenal ego is replaced by a sense of a true reality. (Any sense that “I am enlightened” imposes a dualism on reality and shows that one is not enlightened. See chapter 7.) More theistic- and depth-mystical experiences may occur, and the enlightened state may be further deepened by these experiences or by mindfulness. In fact, mystics often attach little significance to an event inaugurating the enlightened state since it is the latter state that matters. Nor is becoming enlightened always treated as an end. In Christianity, it may be treated as only a stage in the continuing long-term development of one’s relation to God. In Zen Buddhism, after a satori/kensho one continues to practice zazen meditation as before, just as the Buddha did, without a thought of a goal. But with the sense of a separately existing ego eradicated in enlightenment, a new stage of life has begun.
The change that enlightenment entails is a transformation of the whole inner life of a person—cognition, motivations, desires, emotions, dispositions. Emotions based on the false sense of an ego (such as the passions, fear, anger, and anxiety) melt away as one realizes the true state of things and accepts them for what they are. Thus, one’s inner life is completely reorganized. The mere intellectual acceptance of a proposition is not enough—we do not need a mystical experience to accept that “all is impermanent” or that we are all tiny specks in one interconnected natural whole with no ontologically distinct entities, or to follow the analogy of a dream and its dreamer to envision there being a reality underlying all of this world. But only with a mystical experience can we experience the world as it truly is. The variety of enlightened ways of life from different traditions suggests that doctrines and values are internalized in these states of consciousness, even if depth-mystical experiences are devoid of all conceptualizations. But even if beliefs and values are internalized in the enlightened state from the religious tradition in which the enlightened trained, the enlightened now know them to be true in a way they did not before. The persistent sense of permanence among inner and outer phenomena is uprooted, and one now actually sees in a nonconceptualized experience that the world is impermanent. In the Buddhist analogy, it is the difference between an intellectual acceptance of the idea that water will relieve thirst and actually drinking water (Samyutta Nikaya 2.115). Naturalists may accept that, say, everything is made of one beingness, but only by “drinking the water” do mystics see that it is true and integrate it into how they live. Such a reconstruction of a person, not any exotic experiences for their own sake, is the concern of mystical ways of life. In sum, enlightenment is related to living in the awareness of the ground of reality, not merely to the intellectual grasp of an idea or to an intellectual conclusion inferred from some religious or philosophical ideas. Conversely, falling out of enlightenment involves not simply forgetting some knowledge-claims—it is a change in one’s state of consciousness and way of being.
Becoming enlightened may be the result of a gradual spiritual development in which the sense of selflessness is finally completed with no special “enlightenment experience.” But there may also be a sudden enlightenment experience—a flash of insight, accompanied by joy and the surprise of being hit by the unexpected. (“Sudden enlightenment” is not necessarily a spontaneous mystical experience—it too may have been preceded by arduous training for a long period of time.) But it is important to note that the insight producing enlightenment occurs outside a depth-mystical experience or the “lucid trances” (jhanas) of Buddhist concentrative meditation (the last of which is formless and contentless): it is an insight into the selfless nature of reality that can occur only when phenomena have returned. Advaitins disconnect the depth-experience as the cause of the insight that all is Brahman. Nor can any event or act force this transformation of consciousness. Even repeated depth-mystical experiences cannot force such a transformation: no self-effort can cause the state of selflessness any more than it can cause mystical experiences. To emphasize the difference in the knowledge allegedly given in these experiences from that given in sense-experience and reasoning, mystics often use terms such as “spiritual gnosis” or even “nonknowledge” (to distinguish this knowledge from everyday knowledge) or “intellect” (to distinguish the mental function involved in mystical experiences from sense experience and reasoning). To stress the transcendent’s otherness, mystics often claim that both the experience and the reality experienced in mystical experiences are ineffable (see chapter 6).
The serenity accompanying mystical illumination is often described as joy, but it usually is not the exuberance normally connected with that concept. Nor is it the happiness of the fulfillment of personal desires.22 There is a sense of peace, contentment, and happiness at whatever is—hence, the common term “bliss.”23 There is a shifting of the emotional center toward loving and harmonious affections, toward “yes, yes” and away from “no” where claims of the non-ego are concerned (James 1958: 216–17). There may or may not be an accompanying sense of awe, beauty, wonder, or amazement at the beingness of the world. The inner calm or coolness of not being troubled by the vicissitudes of life through “detachment” is the principal emotion connected to living a mystical life aligned with “reality as it truly is.” Strong emotional responses (e.g., rage, anxiety, or passion) are squelched. But not all emotions are deadened: temporary joys and sorrows may still occur (and physical pains and pleasures no doubt still occur), but they are now greeted with an “even-minded” acceptance and thus can no longer dominate the inner life. The Daoist Zhuangzi saw his own grieving over the death of his wife as improper and countered by celebrating. But in the end mystics neither grieve or celebrate: they have an inner calm free of the effects of the events swirling around them.
With enlightenment, the experiences and actions we have in the natural world still remain: sensory and conceptual content is present in the mind. Even under Advaita, the enlightened cannot help but see diversity. Advaitins have had trouble reconciling their nondual metaphysics with this persistence of a perception of diversity after enlightenment. Shankara admitted that the “dream” world of multiplicity does not disappear for the enlightened, comparing the situation to a person with an eye disease seeing two moons even though he knows there is really only one (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 4.1.15). Thus, the enlightened see a differentiated realm, not the undifferentiated Brahman. They overcome the perception of duality only during periods of introvertive one-pointed concentration (samadhi).
This also means that the enlightened have not escaped the world into a trance, nor are they otherwise incapacitated. That the enlightened, despite their new awareness and the inner stillness at the core of their being, still live in a world of distinctions is evidenced by the fact that many teach others and leave writings. Speaking involves words, and any language necessarily makes distinctions. While the enlightened’s ability to use language may be in abeyance during certain mystical experiences, their ability to use language in the enlightened state shows that they do in fact make and understand distinctions. However, unlike the unenlightened, the enlightened do not project the language’s conceptual distinctions onto reality. Thereby, they avoid the creation of a false worldview of multiple discrete, “real” objects. That is, they can draw linguistic distinctions concerning the flux of phenomena without seeing ontic distinctions as the result. In the Zen story, the unenlightened see mountains; with extrovertive mystical experiences, the mountains are no longer mountains (i.e., it is seen that there are no distinct objects for the term “mountains” to apply to); but then in the enlightened state, mountains once again are mountains (i.e., the enlightened can use the term without projecting the idea that there are distinct objects in the world). Thereby, they can use language to navigate in the world of diversity. So too, Zen Buddhists continue to think in the state they call “non-thinking”—they simply do not make the discriminated phenomena into reified objects. The enlightened can see a white piece of paper and use the concepts “white” and “paper” without thinking or seeing the paper as an independent object in the world distinct from other phenomena and distinct from the wood pulp it is made of, or seeing whiteness as a reality distinct from the paper that makes it white.
Thus, with enlightenment there still is sensory input and conceptual structuring in the world of diversity, not a pure mindfulness. But the enlightened remain in touch with the reality they have experienced, and they now engage the world with a new mental clarity and calmness. Thus, two layers of consciousness are now operating in them: the depth and the surface. Their lives are reoriented around how reality is now perceived. They greet all circumstances without distractions. They now live in the world in a state of freedom from the attachments and concerns generated by a false sense of an individual ego—they act literally selflessly, i.e., free of a sense of self.24 Their experience of the world is still mediated by conceptual structuring, but that structuring is not taken as representing a pluralistic world of distinct items ontologically cut off from each other. There is an openness to whatever occurs. The enlightened live with all attention focused on the present, free of the background noise produced by the dichotomizing mind. They act toward what is presented spontaneously and effortlessly without reflection as their way of life and values dictate, indifferent to success or failure. All the actions of the enlightened are non-self-assertive actions (wuwei) automatically following the Way and not assertions of personal interests. Think of the Daoist story of Ding the cook carving an ox: with his ego gone, he automatically followed the spaces in the joints without resistance and thus never dulled his knife. In Zen, the action is called “nondual” because there is no sense of a duality of independently real actor and action.
Since the enlightened are no longer imposing their will on things, they often have the reaction common to dying people who accept their impending death: with no self-image to maintain, they are free of any self-preoccupation; their values and attitude toward death may change; they have nothing to lose and no needs to fulfill; they have no feeling of needing to do anything; often they feel an all-encompassing, impersonal love or joy and a tremendous sensitivity to other people’s feelings and sufferings.
To summarize: mysticism involves an inner quest to remove differentiations from the mind, and all mystical experiences involve calming the mind, leading to a loss of a sense of a distinct phenomenal ego. But falling into a common category does not make all mystical experiences the same or of only one type. Philosophers over the years have advanced various typologies for mystical experiences.25 Patterns of descriptions of mystical experiences in accounts from different cultures do seem to exist that permit placing the experiences in certain broad categories. Typologies are typically based on mystics’ claims about the reality allegedly experienced rather than on a bare phenomenology of the features of the experiences themselves. Early attempts distorted the picture by omitting classes of mystical experiences. Walter Stace (1960a) stuck with the basic distinction of “extrovertive” and “introvertive” experiences and ended up with denying any distinctive theistic mystical experiences. As noted above, he and Ninian Smart (1965) took what theists see as a distinctive type of introvertive experience to be theological interpretations of other mystical experiences. R. C. Zaehner (1957) distinguished three types of mystical experiences: profane “panenhenic (all-in-one)” experiences of nature, monistic introvertive experiences in which the soul is united to a nonpersonal absolute, and theistic introvertive experiences of union with God through love. He had to force Samkhya dualism of matter and selves to fit his second category; he also had to argue that all Buddhists and nontheistic Hindus had the monistic “soul” experience but merely interpreted it differently. His typology also omits Buddhist mindfulness experiences, and he later acknowledged that Zen experiences do not fit his typology (1970: 203–4).
But Zaehner appears correct in asserting that introvertive theistic experiences are different from the nonpersonal “monistic” experience that is empty of any differentiated content. As discussed above, in any theistic introvertive experience with a sense of being connected to some reality, there is differentiation, and this differs from the emptiness of the depth-mystical experience. However, both Stace and Zaehner can be criticized for bringing unwarranted value-judgments into the picture. Stace considered extrovertive experiences to be preliminary, partial, or lower-level introvertive experiences rather than a truly separate category; introvertive experiences are more complete mystical experiences and more valuable philosophically and historically (1960a: 62–63, 132). For him, all introvertive experiences are also the same—different accounts merely reflect differing doctrinal interpretations imposed post facto on the same experience. This is central to his “universal core” thesis that all extrovertive and introvertive experiences share a common experiential phenomenology. But there does not appear to be any reason based on experiential evidence to believe that this is the case. For starters, that the physiology of mindfulness meditators and concentration meditators differs strongly suggests otherwise. So too, Zaehner ranked theistic mystical experiences above depth “monistic” mystical experiences and “profane” nature mysticism (since there can no true spiritual experience of the world) for nothing but purely theological reasons.
More recently, “perennial philosophers” have advanced four types of mystical experiences. For Huston Smith, four types of mystics correspond to four levels of reality: beginning mystics engage the depths of nature; intermediate mystics engages angels and demons; celestial mystics have a personal relationship with a personal deity; and infinite mystics unite with the Godhead beyond God (1976). Ken Wilber also has mystics corresponding to levels of reality: natural, theistic, formless, and nondual mysticisms correspond to psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual realities respectively (1996).
But the philosopher William Wainwright offers a more metaphysically neutral typology of four types of extrovertive experiences and three types of introvertive experiences that appears to capture the phenomenological evidence well (1981: 33–40). With a slight modification of terminology based on distinctions in this book, the types are these:
•Extrovertive experiences:
♦The sense of connectedness (“unity”) of oneself with nature, with a loss of a sense of boundaries within nature
♦The luminous glow to nature of “nature mysticism”
♦The presence of God immanent in nature outside of time shining through nature of “cosmic consciousness”
♦The lack of separate, self-existing entities of mindfulness states
•Introvertive experiences:
♦Theistic experiences of connectedness or identity with God in mutual love
♦Nonpersonal differentiated experiences
♦The depth-mystical experience empty of all differentiable content
Also, distinguishing mystical experiences along lines of those with conceptual content and those without will become important in the next chapter.
Not only should the experiences be distinguished, but introvertive and extrovertive types of mysticism result in different types of metaphysics involving different dimensions of reality. Introvertive mysticisms involve a reality that transcends the phenomenal world (e.g., a source of being), while extrovertive mystics are concerned with the phenomena of the experienced world of diversity and need not incorporate transcendent realities. Introvertive mysticism thus involves a timeless, immutable, and changeless “vertical” dimension to reality, while mindfulness metaphysics involves the constantly changing “horizontal” world of becoming.
The difference in metaphysics is reflected in two types of nonduality. There is the depth type (the nonduality of the transcendent source of being and the experienced phenomenal realm) and the extrovertive type (the absence of a plurality of independently existing entities within our phenomenal world). Both involve nonduality, but they are not about the same level of reality: the former involves the depth-dimension of the source of beingness, and the latter the surface-dimension of the phenomenal world. In short, there is a difference between “vertical” and “horizontal” nonduality. So too, there are corresponding different senses of oneness: realizing the one simple, undivided reality of the depth-experience versus realizing that we are not isolated entities but parts of the one interconnected, impermanent whole of the natural realm or that everything is of the same nature, sharing the one beingness common to all. There are also corresponding vertical/horizontal differences in the idea of illusion: in depth-mysticism, the illusion is that the whole natural universe is independently real rather than having a transcendent source; in extrovertive mysticism, the illusion results from conceptualizing discrete “real” entities from the continuous and connected flow of things.26
Also notice that the depth-mystical experience has been interpreted to fit into radically different metaphysics. Contrary to popular opinion, not all mystics endorse Advaita’s nonduality of realities. The Samkhya dualism of matter (prakriti) and consciousness and a pluralism of persons (purushas) was previously noted. Theists have incorporated the depth-experience in two different ways—unison with God’s will or experiencing the ground of the self—while retaining the reality of persons and the distinction between creator and creation. Nor need the depth-experience be weighted more than introvertive theistic experiences or extrovertive experiences when it comes to cognitive value and metaphysics. Buddhists generally weight the insights of extrovertive mindfulness as cognitively more important than those of introvertive mystical experiences, including the depth-experience of “neither perception nor nonperception” in concentrative meditation: seeing phenomenal realm “as it really is” is the reality/truth of highest matters (paramartha-satya). That is more important for their soteriological concern with suffering (duhkha) than any relation of the individual or the natural world to any purported transcendent reality. Zhuangzi’s Daoism is another tradition that has both introvertive and extrovertive mystical experiences but gives more weight to the latter (see Roth 2000).
Theists may or may not weight the depth-mystical experience as the most important ontic insight. For theistic mystics, a personal reality remains most fundamental: there is a self-emptying source of the world’s being—a personal god or a nonpersonal, silent, inactive ground like the Godhead of Eckhart’s Neoplatonist-influenced system. Theistic mystics may value introvertive theistic experiences over “empty” depth-mystical experiences. They may also argue that theistic mystics experience one aspect of a personal divinity and nontheistic mystics experience another, nonpersonal aspect of the same god devoid of all differentiable content (i.e., only God’s own beingness). Or theists may dismiss the depth-experience as noncognitive, treating it as naturalists generally do as a useless spinning of the wheels when the mind is empty of content. Of course, the theists’ interpretation is disputed by nontheists. Advaitins invert the order and place all differentiated experiences, including theistic introvertive ones, on a lower plane: all differentiated experiences involve an incomplete emptying of the mind of dualistic content, and only emptying the mind completely leads to the final insight into the nature of reality. They can treat positive and negative numinous experiences and theistic mystical experiences as projections of the unenlightened mind, including forces in the subconscious. To them, only the nonpersonal Brahman is ontologically real, with theistic experiences being at most a misreading of its nature. But nothing within the depth-experiences themselves can support either view phenomenologically if such experiences are devoid of differentiable content.
Theists may also contend that revelations and other numinous experiences offer deeper insights into what is experienced in depth-mystical experiences—the depth-mystical experiences, in effect, only clear the mind for an infusion of love or other content from God. (The Hindu qualified nondualist Vedantist Ramanuja also appears to have held that the depth-mystical experience is a necessary prerequisite to the theistic mystical experience.) Theistic mystics may also value a continuing extrovertive sense of the presence of God over any introvertive experiences. The medieval Christian Richard Rolle valued the “ravishment without abstention of the senses” over the “ravishment involving abstention from the bodily senses,” since even sinners can have the latter but the former is a rapture of love coming from God. The Christian philosopher Michael Stoeber takes any theistic mystical experiences occurring after the depth-mystical experience to be higher in importance than depth-mystical experiences or theistic mystical experiences occurring before the depth-experience, calling them “theo-monistic experiences” (1994). But nothing in the mystical texts suggests that these theistic experiences are qualitatively different, any more than the paranormal experiences that allegedly occur after a depth-mystical experience are qualitatively different. Even if the depth-experience clears the mind for other mystical and nonmystical experiences, nothing suggests that it changes the character of those experiences, since either way the theistic introvertive mystical experience completely fills the mind of the experiencer during the experience and replaces other states of consciousness. Nor does the transformation of personality in enlightenment appear to be grounds for a change in the character of the “empty” depth-mystical experiences.
In sum, either before or after a depth-mystical experience or enlightenment, mystics may have experiences that theists will see as the presence of a loving god. Indeed, the process of emptying oneself of a sense of self may make it easier for theistic and nontheistic differentiated introvertive experiences to occur. (Whether they actually involve a god or not is an issue for chapter 3.) As noted, theistic mystics may attach more cognitive significance to differentiated introvertive mystical experiences than to depth-mystical experiences. However, theorists in every religious tradition will need to rank the different types of experiences, and ranking either mystical experiences or numinous experiences as a greater insight into a transcendent reality will depend on factors outside the mystical and numinous experiences themselves. Indeed, that the depth-mystical experience is taken to be an insight at all—rather than merely a powerful exotic but totally natural mental state with interesting psychological or physiological effects—depends on factors outside the experience. Thus, in the end any judgment on what such experience reveal will depend on factors other than mystical experiences themselves.