body experiences, telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance. All of these are
acquaintance with objects or qualities of a kind accessible to the senses or to ordinary
introspection, such as human thoughts and future physical events. (A degree of vagueness
enters the definition of mystical experience here because of what is to count as a “kind”
of thing accessible to nonmystical experience.)
In the wide sense, mystical experiences occur within the religious traditions of Judaism,
Christianity, Islam, Indian religions, Buddhism, and primal religions. In most of these
traditions, the experiences are allegedly of a supersensory reality, such as God, Brahman,
or, as in some Buddhist traditions, Nirvana (Takeuchi 1983, 8–9). Many Buddhist
traditions, however, make no claim for an experience of a supersensory reality. Some
cultivate instead an experience of “unconstructed
end p.139
awareness,” involving an awareness of the world on a relatively or absolutely
nonconceptual level (Griffiths 1993). The unconstructed experience is thought to grant
insight, such as into the impermanent nature of all things. Some Buddhists describe an
experience of tathata or the “thisness” of reality, accessible only by the absence of
ordinary sense-perceptual cognition. These Buddhist experiences are sub sense-
perceptual, and mystical, since thisness is claimed to be inaccessible to ordinary sense
perception. Some Zen experiences, however, would not count as mystical by our
definition, involving acquaintance with neither a reality nor a state of affairs (Suzuki
1970).
1.2 The Narrow Sense of “Mystical Experience”
In the narrow sense, “mystical experience” refers to a subclass of mystical experience in
the wide sense. Specifically, it refers to:
A (purportedly:) super sense-perceptual or sub sense-perceptual unitive experience
granting acquaintance of realities or states of affairs that are of a kind not accessible by
way of sense-perception, somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection.
A unitive experience involves a phenomenological de-emphasis, blurring, or eradication
of multiplicity. Examples are experiences of the oneness of nature, “union” with God (see
section 3.2.1), the Hindu experience that Atman is Brahman (that the self/soul is identical
with the eternal, absolute being), the Buddhist unconstructed experience, and “monistic”
experiences, devoid of all multiplicity. (On “unitive” experiences, see Smart 1958, 1978;
Wainwright 1981, ch. 1.) Excluded from the narrow definition, though present in the
wide one, are, for example, a dualistic experience of God, a Jewish kabbalistic experience
of a single supernal sefirah, and shamanistic experiences of spirits. These are not
mystical in the narrow sense, because not unitive experiences.
Hereafter, “mystical experience” will be used in the narrow, more philosophical sense of
these terms. Accordingly, mysticism pertains to practices, discourse, institutions, and
traditions associated with unitive experiences only.