Author

R. C. Zaehner

Oxford scholar of religions who argued, against Huxley, that mystical experiences are of different kinds.

1913–1974

Also known as Robert Charles Zaehner

Biography

Robert Charles Zaehner was born in 1913 in Sevenoaks, Kent, to parents of Swiss origin, and studied Persian and the languages of ancient Iran at Oxford. During and after the Second World War he served as a British intelligence officer in Iran. He became a Catholic in 1946.

In 1952 he succeeded Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan as Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford, a chair he held until his death. He wrote on Zoroastrianism, on Hinduism and on Islamic mysticism, and gave the Gifford Lectures, published as Concordant Discord.

He is best known for Mysticism Sacred and Profane (1957), a reply to Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. Zaehner took mescaline himself under observation, and concluded that the experience was not the one that Christian and other theistic mystics describe. He distinguished three kinds of mystical experience: a “panenhenic” sense of oneness with nature, the monistic experience of the soul in isolation, which he found in Sāṃkhya and some Vedānta, and theistic union with a personal God in love. His typology, and his insistence that mystical experiences differ, shaped the later debate between perennialists and their critics. He died in Oxford in 1974.

Major works

Mysticism Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry into Some Varieties of Praeternatural ExperienceBook, 1957Zaehner’s reply to The Doors of Perception, which argues that mystical experiences are not all of one kind, distinguishing nature mysticism, the isolation of the soul, and theistic union with God, and denies that drugs produce the last.

Philosophical ideas

Scholarship

Mystical experiences are not all the same: oneness with nature, the isolation of the soul and loving union with God are distinct, and should not be collapsed into one “perennial” experience.

Experiences produced by drugs may resemble nature mysticism, but they are not the theistic union the great mystics describe.

Cite this entry

Chicago (bibliography): “R. C. Zaehner.” Author. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 7, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/r-c-zaehner.
Chicago (note): “R. C. Zaehner,” author, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 7, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/r-c-zaehner.
MLA: “R. C. Zaehner.” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 7 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/r-c-zaehner.
BibTeX: @misc{authors-r-c-zaehner, title = {{R. C. Zaehner}}, howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society}, note = {Author. Last modified November 7, 2026}, year = {2026}, url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/r-c-zaehner} }

Related authors

Often compared with: Aldous Huxley
W. T. Stace

Related concepts

Related traditions

Comparative mysticismMovementThe modern study of mysticism across religions, from Max Müller and William James to the perennialists and their critics.

Continue the inquiry

Questions

Can mystical experience be induced?Whether drugs, techniques or practice can produce the experiences the mystics describe, and whether it matters how they come.