Mystical experience

Mystical experience names reports of a direct awareness of, or union with, what is taken to be ultimate: God, Brahman, the One, emptiness or the Dao. The term is modern. Older traditions more often spoke of contemplation, union, vision, realization or awakening, and placed such experiences within a whole way of life.

William James proposed four marks of mystical states: ineffability, a noetic quality, transiency and passivity. W. T. Stace distinguished “extrovertive” experience, in which the many are seen as one, from “introvertive” experience, a unity without content, and argued that both are found across cultures. R. C. Zaehner distinguished nature mysticism, monistic mysticism and theistic mysticism.

Later scholars questioned whether there is a common core at all, arguing that experience is shaped by belief and practice, and that the category of “experience” itself reflects modern Western assumptions. Many mystics, for their part, warn against valuing experiences, and judge them by their fruits in humility and love.