PHILOSOPHY

of
MYSTICISM
PHILOSOPHY
of
MYSTICISM
Raids on the Ineffable

Richard H. Jones
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2016 State University of New York

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, Richard H., 1951–

Philosophy of mysticism : raids on the ineffable / Richard H. Jones.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-6119-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-6120-5 (e-book)
1. Mysticism. I. Title.

B828.J73 2016
204’.2201—dc23 2015027728

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Preface
Postmodernist Concerns
Methodological Issues
The Analytical Philosophical Approach

1 Mysticism and Mystical Experiences

Mystical Experiences
Mystical Paths
Extrovertive Mystical Experiences
Mindfulness
Introvertive Mystical Experiences
Depth-Mystical Experiences
Mystical Enlightenment
A Typology of Mystical Experiences
Weighting Mystical Experiences

2 Mystical Knowledge and Religious Ways of Life

Experience and Knowledge
Are There Genuine Mystical Experiences?
Attribution Theory
The Depth-Mystical Experience and Its Conceptualizations
Mystical Experiences and Mystical Ways of Life
Constructivism
Nonconstructivism
Constructivism and the Depth-Mystical Experience
Can the Constructivism Dispute be Resolved?
 The Possibility of Mystical Insight

3 Are Mystical Experiences Cognitive?

Can Nonmystics Judge the Veridicality of Mystical
Experiences?
What Can Mystics Claim to Know?
Mysticism and Empiricism
The Principle of Credulity
The Analogy to Sense-Perception
Problems of Justifying Specific Doctrinal Claims
The Limitation of Any Mystical Claim to Knowledge
Can Mystical Knowledge-Claims Be Compared?
Do Mystical Knowledge-Claims Genuinely Conflict?
Can One Mystical System Be Established as Best?
Is It Rational to Accept Mystical Knowledge-Claims?
“Properly Basic Beliefs”
Ultimate Decisions

4 The Scientific Study of Mystics and Meditators

Scientific Study Versus Mystical Practices
Are New Theories of the Mind Needed?
Can Mystical Experiences Be Studied Scientifically?
Scientific Explanations of Mystical Experiences
Sociocultural Explanations of Mystical Experiences
Explaining Away Mystical Experiences
Problems with Sociocultural Explanations
Problems with Physiological Explanations
Do Natural Triggers Produce Mystical Experiences?
Natural Phenomena and Mystical Insights
The Compatibility Problem
Applying Occam’s Razor
Our Epistemic Situation
Is Naturalism or a Transcendent Alternative More Plausible?
The Neutrality of Science

5 Mysticism and Metaphysics

 Mystical Metaphysics
The Status of the World
The Nature of Transcendent Realities
Consciousness
The Self
The Question of Mystical Union
Mysticism and the Closure of Mystery

6 Mysticism and Language

Ineffability
The Mirror Theory of Language
And Yet Mystics Continue to Talk
An Analogy
Silence
Positive Characterizations of Transcendent Realities
Mystical Utterances and Knowledge
Negation
Defending Mystical Discourse

7 Mysticism and Rationality

Rationality and Styles of Reasoning
Paradox
Resolving Paradoxes
Understanding the Paradoxical
Nagarjuna’s Reasoning
Mysticism and the Question of Universal Reason

8 Mysticism and Science

Scientific and Mystical Approaches to Reality
An Analogy
Beingness and Science
Mystical Experience Versus Scientific Measurement and
Theorizing
Indirect Avenues of Aid
Science, Mysticism, and the Natural World
The Difference in Content
 Science and Mystical Metaphysics
Complementarity
Reconciling Mysticism and Science

9 Mysticism and Morality

The Basic Question of Compatibility
Are Mystics Necessarily Moral?
Mystical Selflessness and the Presuppositions of Morality
Emotions, Values, and Beliefs
“You Are That”
A Metaphysics of Wholeness and Morality
Factual Beliefs, Values, and Mystical Experiences
“Beyond Good and Evil”
Will Any Actions Do?
Mystical Decision-Making
Mystical Selflessness and Morality

Epilogue: The Demise of Mysticism Today

The Antimystical Climate Today
Accepting Mysticism Today
A Mystical Revolution?
A Thirst for Transcendence

Notes

References and Further Reading

Index
 Preface

The greatest blessings come to us through madness, when it is sent as a gift of the gods.
Heaven-sent madness is superior to man-made sanity.
—Plato

There are forces pulling and pushing against the study of mysticism today.
On the one hand, the rise of spirituality has drawn attention to mysticism,
and empirical research has suggested that mystical experiences may be
much more common than is generally accepted (Hardy 1983; Hood 2006).
Mystical experiences that occur either through cultivation or spontaneously
are often considered by the experiencers as the defining moments of their
lives. There also has been a recent surge of scientific interest in meditators
and in the neural and pharmacological bases and causes of mystical
experiences. On the other hand, there have been recent sex and money
scandals involving “enlightened” Zen and Hindu teachers, and there is the
general academic suspicion that mysticism is only a matter of subjectivity,
deliberate obscurantism, and irrationality.
In Anglo-American philosophy, mysticism has remained a constant if
minor topic within philosophy of religion. Not all questions in philosophy
of mysticism are pertinent to more general philosophy, but many are
important to philosophy of religion and to philosophy more generally. What
is unique about mysticism is the purported contribution of exotic
experiences to mystical claims. Are these experiences “objective” in the
sense of revealing something about reality outside of the “subjective”
individual mind? Do mystical experiences reveal truths about the universe
that are not obtainable through science or reasoning about what other
experiences reveal to us? Do they reinforce scientific truths? Or do they
conflict with scientific truths? Or are they noncognitive and only a matter of
emotion? How is it possible to claim that a fundamental reality is
experienced when there is allegedly no experiencing subject or object
experienced? Why do mystics have trouble expressing what is allegedly
experienced in these experiences and not in ordinary cognitive experiences?
Are mystics blatantly irrational, speaking what turns out to be only
gibberish? Is morality ultimately grounded in mystical experiences, or are
mystics necessarily selfish and thus not moral at all? With such questions as
these, mysticism introduces issues not found in considering nonmystical
experiences and general religious ways of life by themselves.
A current comprehensive treatment of the basic problems in this field
is long overdue. No major comprehensive book on philosophy of mysticism
has been published since Walter Stace’s Mysticism and Philosophy in 1960.
The closest is the important collection of essays published by William
Wainwright in 1981. Since then, a number of developments and new issues
have arisen—in particular, those raised by postmodernism and scientific
research.

Postmodernist Concerns
One new issue is the postmodern questioning of the very term “mysticism”
as a useful or even valid category. The term is not common to all cultures
but was invented only in the modern era in the West. This has led
postmodernists to question whether the term can be used to classify
phenomena from any other culture or era. (Wilfred Cantwell Smith spent a
generation trying to banish the term “religion” from academic discourse on
similar grounds. And a generation before that, Gilbert Ryle asserted the
same of “science”: “There is no such animal as ‘Science’ ”—i.e., there is no
“science” in the abstract but only “scores of sciences” [1954: 71].)
However, although the terms “mysticism” and “mystics” are relatively new
Western inventions, it does not follow that no phenomena that existed
earlier in the West or in other cultures can be labeled “mystical.” All claims
are made from particular perspectives that are set up by culturally-
dependent ideas and conceptualizations, but this does not mean that they
cannot capture something significant about reality, any more than the fact
that scientific claims are made from points of views dictated by particular
scientific interests and specific theories means that scientific claims must be
groundless. This is true for any term: the invention of a concept does not
invent the phenomena in the world that the concept covers. The natural
historian Richard Owen invented the term “dinosaur” in the 1830s to
classify certain fossils he was studying. However, to make the startling
claim “Dinosaurs did not exist before 1830” would at best only be a
confusing way of stating the obvious fact that classifying fossils with this
concept was not possible before the concept was devised if dinosaurs
existed, they existed much earlier, and their existence did not depend on our
concepts in any fashion. (Claiming “Dinosaurs did not exist before 1830”
may sound silly, but a postmodernist has made the claim that scientists
invented quarks. And postmodernists do regularly claim that there was no
religion or Buddhism or Hinduism before modern times.)
The same applies to our concepts about human phenomena such as
mysticism. Even if there are no equivalents of “mysticism,” “mystics,” or
“mystical experiences” in Sanskrit, Chinese, or any other language, this
does not rule out that scholars may find phenomena in other cultures to
which the terms apply and reveal something important about them. Nor
does using a Western term mean that we need not try to understand
phenomena from other cultures in their own terms: classifying something
from India or China as “mystical” in the modern sense does not make it
Western or modern any more than classifying Sanskrit or Chinese as a
“language”—another term of Western origin with its own history—makes
them into Western phenomena or mashes all languages into one. A few
scholars deny that there is any “languages” in reality (e.g., Noam Chomsky
and Donald Davidson), but few advocate expunging the word “language”
from English or deny that the cross-cultural study of languages may reveal
something of the nature of all languages. In sum, introducing the modern
comparative category of “mysticism” does not change the character of the
phenomena of a particular culture; it only focuses attention on certain
aspects of cultural phenomena, and this may lead to insights about them.
A second line of postmodern attack is that the use of the term
“mysticism” suggests some unchanging “essence” to all mystical
phenomena when there is none. As discussed in chapters 1 and 2, there is
no generic “mysticism” but only specific mystics, traditions, and
experiences. Nevertheless, we can use a term to classify certain phenomena
without assuming some unchanging essence to those phenomena. Indeed,
by the same reasoning, no classificatory terms of any kind could ever be
used: there are, for example, no “dogs” but only German shepherds, various
breeds of terriers, and so forth and these categories in turn break down with
cross-breeding. Using the word “dog” does not mean that such animals (to
use another classificatory term) have not been constantly evolving
throughout history or have an “essence”—it only means it is a convenient
way to classify some current animals. A term can indicate defining
characteristics, and the phenomena can still be constantly changing. The
borders of what is and is not a “dog” may or may not be clear, and the same
applies to any classificatory term: there may not be hard and fast boundaries
between “mystical experiences” and other types of experiences or between
“mysticism” and other cultural phenomena. Such terms in fact may only
work in terms of what Ludwig Wittgenstein called “family resemblances,”
but this does not mean that they are not useful for classifying some
phenomena or that the classification may not reveal something significant
about the nature of such phenomena. (So too, claiming that concepts from
different cultures fall into the general category of “transcendent realities”
does not mean that they all mean the same thing or that they all are referring
to one reality.)
A third area of concern is the very attempt at any philosophical
assessment of the truth-value of mystical claims to knowledge.
Postmodernists deny that there are any cross-cultural standards for
accepting or refuting the claims made in any “way of life”—there can be no
judgments of truth or falsity from outside a way of life. The justification
and rationality of beliefs are also internal to each way of life. Problems with
the postmodernists’ position on truth will be pointed out in chapters 3 and
7. A fourth postmodern claim—that there are no genuine mystical
experiences or, if there are, they do not add any knowledge—will be
discussed in chapter 2.

Methodological Issues
Today the focus of the study of mysticism is typically on phenomena
connected to unique “mystical experiences.” (The modern sense of
“mysticism” and its study will be clarified in the first two chapters.) Any
focus on individuals’ experiences is out of step with postmodernism’s focus
on cultures as a whole, on texts, and on issues of social and political power.
To postmodernists, the focus on experiences reflects only modern concerns
about the self and the loss of traditional sources of authority. Nevertheless,
science suggests that what postmodernists disparage as the “experientialist
approach” is a legitimate subject: experiencers and their brain states during
mystical experiences are subjects of neuroscientific study today, and there is
neurological evidence suggesting distinctive mystical experiences. If so,
mystical experiences should also be a legitimate topic for phenomenology
and philosophical reflection. In addition, philosophical reflection on
whether such experiences are veridical and on what role they may play in
the development and defense of doctrines cannot be dismissed simply
because it arose only in the modern era—again, merely because the
questions are new does not make them illegitimate or unanswerable when
looking at modern and premodern cultural phenomena.
But studying mysticism involves more than just the study of mystical
experiences. For this, we have to rely on texts from different eras and
cultures from around the world. Some scholars reject the need for any
empathetic approach in favor of focusing exclusively on what can be
observed and measured and thus what mystics actually say can be ignored.
But philosophers are interested in what mystics claim about knowledge and
values. One problem is unique to studying mysticism: the role of allegedly
“empty” yet cognitive experiences. Do we need to have mystical
experiences to study mysticism? Can nonmystics meaningfully study
mysticism? There is the basic problem of studying claims based on
experiences that many scholars have not had. But if we can understand
mystics’ claims without having had a mystical experience of any kind, then
such an experience is not a necessary prerequisite to studying mysticism.
Nonmystics would be in the position of a blind physicist studying light, but
if they can understand mystical claims then the study of mysticism by
nonmystics would not be ruled out.
So can nonmystics understand mystics’ claims? The question of the
truth or falsity of such claims would be bracketed at this initial stage. All
any philosopher can do is focus on the mystics’ writings and public actions.
Getting into another person’s mind may be impossible, but understanding
what is said in texts does not require this: meaning is objective in the sense
that it is independent of the authors’ inner life but expressed in public terms
that others can understand and thus is open to scrutiny by others. That is,
we can get at the meaning of claims even if we cannot now see the full
significance of these claims to the practitioners. Nor is it obvious that it is
necessary to belong to a given mystic’s tradition to understand his or her
claims. That is, outsiders can view mystical claims in terms of the meaning
that a mystic gives a text if we have a sufficient amount of his or her
writings and other texts from that culture and era, and thus an outsider’s
understanding is possible to the extent that such meaning is objective. That
there were debates in India between rival schools does not prove that they
understood each other’s claims without being a member of that tradition
since there is a very real possibility that the debaters created straw figures
and simply talked past each other without engaging each other’s genuine
positions. But less than a conversion is needed to understand—indeed, we
would have to have some understanding of the claims before any
conversion could occur in order to appreciate what we would be converting
to. We cannot assume that because we come from another culture that no
such understanding is possible—i.e., that we cannot suspend our
understanding of the world enough that through study we could come to
understand another point of view. Thus, some initial understanding does
seem possible (although this issue will return in chapters 3 and 6). Any role
of mystical experiences in developing mystical doctrines does not rule this
out. The alternative is that the entire study of history is impossible—e.g., no
one today could understand a Southern slave owner’s point of view in the
American Civil War, and so there is no point in studying the Civil War. The
presence of exotic experiences may increase the difficulty in understanding
mystical claims, but it does not rule out the possibility of such
understanding.
A related issue is that, even if a mystical experience is not required to
understand mystics’ claims, must scholars at least be mystically minded to
understand them? Or is there a low threshold for understanding mystical
claims? Can scholars be “mystically unmusical,” as Max Weber claimed to
be concerning religion, and still understand mystical claims? One does get
the sense from reading many philosophers on mysticism that they have no
feel for the subject at all and that their only knowledge of the subject comes
from reading other philosophers on mysticism—the closest they have
approached a mystical text is reading the snippets in William James’s The
Variety of Religious Experiences. Nothing suggests in most philosophical
works that the author had had any mystical experiences or had practiced in
a mystical tradition. Such a limited background would be unacceptable in
any other field of philosophy. Anyone whose knowledge of science came
only from reading other philosophers of science would not have much of
value to contribute in that field. At best, all they could do is point out errors
in philosophers’ reasoning that anyone ignorant of science could do, but
they could not advance our understanding of science in any way. Only one
who has practiced a scientific discipline or extensively studied primary
sources would be qualified to add to the field. And the same should apply in
philosophy of mysticism. Having a mystical experience would no doubt
help in understanding mystics’ claims on one level. But note that even
mystics themselves must describe their experiences and make doctrinal
claims only outside introvertive experiences in “dualistic” states of
consciousness. They are then separated in time from the experiences and
see them from a distance. So too, mystics themselves can assess whether
their experiences are genuine and determine the role their own mystical
experiences play in justifying their claims only outside introvertive mystical
experiences.
As discussed in chapter 3, being a mystic does not necessarily qualify
one to see the various issues involved in making claims to knowledge. In
fact, any strong emotional impact that mystics feel from these experiences
may make it harder for them to examine their own experiences and claims
critically and to avoid an unwarranted sense of certainty in their own
particular interpretation of their experiences. Thus, a philosophical
examination is especially important in this field. The fundamental role that
a religious commitment plays in one’s life may also adversely affect one’s
objectivity in assessing the truth of mystical claims and the causes of
mystical experiences. Would that interfere with understanding claims from
an alien religion or era? If the religiously committed cannot be objective,
does this not also mean that committed nonreligious naturalists also cannot
be objective? Must one favor one’s own tradition and disparage others?
However, it does seem possible to be both empathetic in order initially to
understand mystics’ claims from other cultures and eras, and also open-
minded enough to judge the possible truth or falsity of the claims
subsequently, regardless of one’s personal broader commitments. That is
sufficient here. To test the results, all one can do is present one’s claims and
see how others within and outside various traditions judge them.
Philosophers are asking questions that mystics themselves may not
have asked, but this does not invalidate those questions or make it
impossible to infer answers. However, one must be cautious regarding any
answer advanced. No one can help but approach any subject from one’s
own contemporary cultural background. Today one basic problem for
anyone who has been influenced by modern science is that we see the world
through the lens of modern science. This can lead to distorting mysticism,
as has happened with many New Age advocates (see Jones 2010,
forthcoming). Moreover, a strong argument can be made that since the
advent of modern science we can never see the world the way that
premodern people did. We simply are not capable of experiencing the
“sacred world” of the medieval Christians, let alone experiencing the world
as early Buddhists, Hindus, or Daoists experienced it. The modern emphasis
on the subjective in religion and on individualism in general also may affect
our ability to enter into another person’s world of meaning. But we still may
be able to understand what others are saying without experiencing the world
as they do. Nevertheless, in the end, the best one can do is to make clear
what questions one is asking and to try to support the answers. This bears
on the problem of translations of mystical texts from premodern and non-
Western cultures. Philosophers see problems in any translation over the
alleged incommensurability of concepts. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz
quipped in response that translating, like riding a bike, is something that is
easier to do that say. I am familiar with the problems in trying to translate
classical Buddhist and Hindu Sanskrit texts into English. A translator can
never be certain that he or she is conveying what the authors truly meant.
The possibility of mystical experiences informing these texts intensifies the
issue. But this problem does not appear insurmountable if one looks at a
large segment of a given mystic’s work in the context of his or her tradition
and culture. Simply reading brief snippets or isolated statements in
translation cannot be the sum of one’s research since one’s general theory of
mysticism would then control one’s understanding rather than letting the
data build understanding. The possibility that we may inadvertently make
other people into mirror images of ourselves cannot be ignored, but this
does not mean that in principle we cannot understand others’ claims or that
we must unconsciously always see claims in our own terms. People today
can in principle grasp the basic outlook of premoderns through study. We
can see what they are saying in their own terms without accepting their
claims. That classical mystics typically believe that their own tradition is
epistemically superior may make them feel exempt from being placed in the
same boat with mystics from other traditions. But we can understand a
claim and reject it, arguing instead that, based on the comparison of the
epistemic position of different mystical traditions, no tradition begins in a
privileged position. That will be the approach adopted here: all mystics will
be treated as being in the same epistemic position until shown otherwise for
other than theological reasons.

The Analytical Philosophical Approach

Mysticism will be examined here philosophically. This is not to say that
other approaches are not valid or useful. No mystical phenomenon is
exclusively mystical or of only one “nature”: like all human phenomena,
mystical phenomena have cultural, social, psychological, and physiological
components. Thus, mysticism can be legitimately approached from different
perspectives in the social sciences, history, humanities, and neuroscience,
with different aspects of mysticism appearing through each. No one
approach is exhaustive. Each is limited by the type of questions asked and
by what counts as an answer, but each can reveal aspects of mysticism that
other perspectives must omit by the limitations of their questions. The
different approaches need not conflict: since different disciplines deal with
different aspects of mystical phenomena and reflect different interests, one
discipline need not in principle deny what is revealed in other disciplines—
only if a discipline claims to be the only explanation needed must there be
conflicts. All that is claimed here is that approaching mysticism by asking
philosophical questions can reveal something valuable of mystics’
experiences, knowledge-claims, and values.
The analytical philosophical approach focuses on one particular
abstraction from total mystical ways of life: the skeleton of beliefs and
values—i.e., the knowledge-claims made by mystics about the nature of
reality, human beings, and so on, and the value-claims about what is
valuable or significant, ethics, and the goals of the ways of life, and their
justifications. Analytical philosophers look at the truth, rationality, and
coherence of such claims. If mysticism were merely a matter of emotion,
mystics’ claims would not be of great interest to most philosophers. But
mystics claim to have experienced some fundamental reality in a way that is
not open to normal experiences. Philosophers look at how mystics use
language, and they also examine how religious claims work and are
justified in order to examine what role mystical experiences may play in the
development and defense of the doctrines and values of a mystical tradition.
They also look to see whether there is any scientific evidence for such
experiences. This leads to making an evaluation of the truth or usefulness of
mystical claims. This is not to deny the fullness of mystical ways of life or
to claim that knowledge-claims and value-claims are the central feature in
the lives of mystics: doctrines may not figure prominently in how one leads
one’s day-to-day life. Nor are mystics out to test a hypothesis or to prove
the existence of God, but rather to lead a particular way of life. Indeed, like
most people, mystics may pay very little attention to their doctrinal
knowledge-claims. Nor does what appears through a philosophical
perspective make the intellectual core the “essence” of a mystical way of
life or its most important aspect for all pictures of mysticism. But this
abstraction is central to our understanding and appreciating any way of life.
(As will be noted in chapter 2 postmodernists today downplay any role for
knowledge-claims in mysticism.) Philosophical analysis can also help
mystics themselves in understanding their own commitments, and by
clarifying issues it may indirectly help create new mystical doctrines.
Thus, both explicit claims and implicit claims entailed by practices and
by the explicit claims are central to the philosophical abstraction of
mysticism. However, although knowledge- and value-claims can be
abstracted from mystical texts, this does not mean that the aim of mystics is
to advance disinterested beliefs about the nature of the world or ethics. Nor
can all the different uses mystics make of language in prayers, instruction,
and so on be reduced to just making assertions. Nor does focusing on
doctrines disparage the rest of a mystical way of life. In fact, we cannot
understand mystical claims outside their setting within a way of life: we
need to look at different aspects of a mystic’s full way of life to understand
the intellectual skeleton—just as the human skeleton can be understood
only in the context of the full body and its activities, so too the
philosophical skeleton can only be understood in the context of the full,
lived way of life. So too, mystical action-guides must be understood in their
context of a mystical goal and beliefs about what is real (see Jones 2004).
Focusing on the intellectual content without considering the lived way of
life would be like focusing on musical notes on a sheet of music and
forgetting the music. But it is the task of historians in religious studies
studying the human phenomena connected to religion to show us the beliefs
and values that are integral to each particular mystic’s way of life, and
philosophers must rely on their findings to understand those beliefs and
values and mystics’ arguments.
Philosophers ask questions that mystics may find irrelevant to how
they lead their lives. For example, the problem of competing knowledge-
claims may be irrelevant to mystics, who typically are convinced of the
truth of their own tradition’s claims. Nevertheless, the philosophical
approach leads to basic questions. Do mystics in fact have unique
experiences? How do their experiences relate to their claims? Are these
experiences cognitive? That is, do mystics gain insights into the nature of
reality, or are mystics delusional in some way? Does the scientific study of
meditation invalidate mystical claims or in fact validate them? Do the
experiences justify belief in transcendent realities? Is only one particular
view of alleged transcendent realities justified? Can mystics express what
they experience? Are mystics irrational in their discourse and arguments?
Do their experiences have any necessary consequences for values and
morality? Thus, all the major areas of philosophy are involved: identifying
the phenomenon being studied (chapters 1 and 2), knowledge (chapters 3
and 4), metaphysics (chapter 5), language (chapter 6), rationality (chapter
7), the relation to science (chapter 8), and ethics (chapter 9). Clarifying such
matters through analysis can also help historians and scientists who work on
the empirical side of the study of mysticism.
 1

Mysticism and Mystical Experiences

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.

Mystical Experiences
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.

Mystical Paths
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.

Extrovertive Mystical Experiences

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
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.

Introvertive Mystical Experiences

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.

Depth-Mystical Experiences
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.
 Mystical Enlightenment
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.

A Typology of Mystical Experiences

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

Weighting Mystical Experiences

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.
 2

Mystical Knowledge and Religious Ways of Life

Mystics claim that their experiences give knowledge of a fundamental

reality, but it is important to note that the knowledge-claims in classical
mystical traditions are not the product of isolated mystical experiences: the
claims are always made in the context of an encompassing way of life
having spiritual practices, rituals, codes of conduct, and a specified goal, all
grounded in doctrines that must be learned about the nature of what is
deemed real. Such doctrines may not be of much interest to most
practitioners, but they hold a conceptually fundamental position in a way of
life. Mysticism is typically part of a religious way of life involving
transcendent realities. But in all cases, while mystical experiences are
central to mysticism, traditional mysticism cannot be reduced to merely
having experiences. The metaphysics of a given mystic’s tradition
determines what he or she takes as the actual knowledge given by a
mystical experience. Thus, a depth-mystical experience may involve an
unconceptualized consciousness, but what insight the experience is taken as
providing will be conceptualized after the experience and will depend on
doctrines and values outside the experience itself, coming from the mystic’s
way of life. That the mystics’ sense of oneness, immutability, and so on in
turn shapes a tradition’s doctrines complicates the picture (as discussed
below, some philosophers deny this), but the fact remains that experiences
alone are never the only factor for addressing the question of knowledge.
Today people argue on many different fronts that mysticism is not in
fact about knowledge at all. Mystical experiences are merely considered
interesting psychological events having no cognitive significance, or
mysticism is only about attaining inner peace or becoming more
compassionate. Or meditation is only about purported psychological or
physiological benefits (but see Ospina 2007; Chen 2012; Sedlmeier et al.
2012). Or meditation only develops the centers of the brain connected to
states of happiness. Or mystical experiences at most increase our interest in
knowing fundamental things about reality, but they do not provide any
knowledge at all. That the Buddha taught one doctrine to beginners on the
path to enlightenment and another doctrine to more advanced followers
(e.g., Anguttara Nikaya 1.10) shows that mystics are not really interested in
doctrines at all but only in attaining the experiences—the doctrines do not
matter but are merely a raft to be jettisoned once we have the experiences.1
More generally, theory in yoga or any spiritual discipline only serves to
attain an experience, and thus ultimately it does not matter what theory one
holds—theory is just a device to quiet the mind, and any theory that does
that will do. Mystical teachings become no more than a pragmatic matter of
“whatever works” in inducing an experience of selflessness, not claims
about what is real. Thus, the doctrines in the end are irrelevant.
However, in the classical traditions, mystical contemplation is
cultivated to gain alleged insights into the fundamental nature of reality so
that we can live in accord with what is actually real. That is, mystical
knowledge is not an end in itself—aligning one’s life with the fundamental
nature of reality is. The objective is a transformed life, not anything about
either disinterested knowledge or “developing our consciousness” per se.
Still, mystical experiences allegedly do ground knowledge about some
fundamental reality necessary to living correctly. All classical mystical
traditions contain doctrines about the ultimate nature of the world and
persons. They also have implicit knowledge-claims entailed by the
doctrines and practices of their ways of life depicting the way the world
supposedly is. For example, the Buddha accepted rebirth, even though it did
not receive an explicit defense in his time and even though the mechanics of
how it works have remained an issue for Buddhists.2 In addition, mystics
make claims about the nature of what is experienced in introvertive
mystical experiences, even while denying that such claims are possible.
Mystical experience is a matter, to quote the title of a Buddhist work, of
“calming the mind and discerning the real”—seeing the world “as it really
is” (according to each particular mystic’s belief-system). Thus, knowledge
is not just central to philosophers’ interest in mysticism but is important to
mystics themselves: only with the proper knowledge can they see and live
properly.

Experience and Knowledge

Mystical experiences are what is distinctive about mysticism, but as noted
in the last chapter classical mystics do not typically discuss their own
experiences or the nature of mystical experiences in general. They are
interested in aligning their lives with what is real. Thus, they discuss
knowledge, what is real, values and virtues, how to cultivate mystical
experiences, and how to follow the path to enlightenment, not their own
experiences. They are no more interested in the experiences themselves
than scientists typically are in theirs. The results—what is learned—are
usually all that matters, not the experiences themselves. Thus, mystical
statements are normally no more about experiences than scientific
statements are about sense-experiences rather than stars, quarks, or
whatever—i.e., something deemed real regardless of the experiences. In
addition, unlike in science, the justification of mystical knowledge-claims is
typically not experiential evidence but the revealed texts or other authority
of one’s tradition (as discussed below).
But to mystics their knowledge comes from mystical experiences, not
from reflection, speculation, other experiences, or “feelings” in the sense of
emotions.3 Nor is a mystical experience an intuition in the sense of an
intellectual jump from a line of reasoning to a conclusion. Rather, there is a
felt sense of contact with a reality, with the proper interpretation of what is
experienced (and thus of what knowledge is actually gained) being supplied
by a traditional authority. As discussed below, some scholars in religious
studies dispute this claim, but many neuroscientists are coming to conclude
that mystical experiences are genuine neurological events that are distinct
from other mental events and are not merely products of imagination
(Newberg, d’Aquili, & Rause 2002: 7), even if they reject alleged mystical
insights. That they are “genuine” experiences does not necessarily mean
that transcendent realities are involved in introvertive mystical experiences
or that mystical experiences provide knowledge, but only that they are not
some more ordinary experience. I can imagine Jacob Marley’s ghost
standing in my room clanking his chains; I can even fabricate a “sense of
presence,” but this does not mean I am experiencing a ghost, and any
neuroscanning of my brain would only show that the areas related to
imagination are active during the event. Mystical experiences are not of that
nature but involve new states of consciousness. Any knowledge from them,
if valid, is not simply a change in our understanding but involves a new
experience of reality of some kind.
What exactly is “experience” or “an experience” receives relatively
little discussion in philosophy or in neuroscience. The general idea is that
an experience is an event having some emotional, volitional, or allegedly
cognitive content. Philosophers typically define “cognitive experiences” in
terms of awareness of an object by a separate subject, as in sense-
experience. We can only have an experience when we are conscious, and
consciousness is “on” only when there is an object of awareness, whether
one is awake or dreaming. Knowledge is knowledge of something, whether
of facts (knowing-that) or by acquaintance of a separate object or person.
But mystical knowledge, if valid, is a third type of knowledge not
recognized by modern philosophy: a receptive knowledge by participation
or knowledge by identity where there is no object separated from the
knower. It is a direct knowledge in the way that knowledge of a distinct
object is not: one has become what is experienced. It is not a matter of
accepting belief-claims, although some belief-claims must follow. To
Christians, there is no apprehension of God as an object; rather, God
becomes active in the ground of the soul (McGinn 2008: 52).
Mystical experiences involve a modification of our consciousness, but
there is no experience of any object (including consciousness) since there
can be no object present that is set off from the experiencer. The dichotomy
of appearance and reality (phenomenon and noumenon) is not applicable.
There is not even an awareness of the experiencer. Only after introvertive
experiences are over does what was experienced become an object of
consciousness for the experiencer’s understanding—then the mind makes a
mental image of the reality, and so what was experienced becomes an object
of consciousness among other such objects. These experiences are not
“objective” in the sense of an awareness of something existing
independently of the experiencer, or “subjective” in the sense of
experiencing something the experiencers themselves create. Rather, there is
a sense of simply being rather than experiencing something distinct from
oneself. Self-awareness is the closest analogy since this cognitive
awareness does not involve an object distinct from the experiencer during
the experience. Mystical experiences may be unique among allegedly
cognitive experiences in this regard.
Philosophers, however, typically see mystical knowledge in terms of
the sense-experience paradigm, and problems result (as discussed in the
next chapter). Even some mystics are reluctant to call a depth-mystical
experience an “experience” since it is empty of all differentiated content;
with no object of awareness involved, some refer to it as a state of
nonknowledge or nonconsciousness. Indeed, such phrases as “experience
of” or “awareness of” do not handle this type of knowledge, but in English
we do not have words to express this without using the idea of knowledge
of something. Thereby, they implicitly accept that the terms “experience,”
“consciousness,” and “cognition” are limited to intentional experiences of
objects—i.e., dualistic situations with a knower and an object known. In
addition, experiences are separate mental events, but the state of
mindfulness and the enlightened state are continuing states of
consciousness, not that “consciousness” and a “state of consciousness” are
any easier to define than “experience.”

Are There Genuine Mystical Experiences?

Three positions in contemporary academia deny that mystical experiences
are what they seem. Most followers of these positions deem mystical
experiences noncognitive. The first position denies that there are in fact any
true mystical experiences or, if there are such experiences, that they do not
play a significant role in religious traditions. It is based on the fact that
classical mystics normally do not discuss their own experiences. At best,
mystics attribute such experiences to traditional figures such as the Buddha
and St. Paul. Indeed, it is often hard to tell from their writings if religious
thinkers have undergone mystical experiences or are nonmystical thinkers
whose systems are not informed by personal mystical experiences but are
merely the working out of the logic of some mystically influenced
philosophical or religious ideas. One has to ask whether the writings of a
given author reveal an inspiration of mystical experiences. I would argue
that the “mystical theology” of the “founder of Christian mysticism,”
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, does not evidence the author having had
any mystical experience; rather, he merely applied the ideas of Plotinus,
who the records suggest did have mystical experiences, to Christian
doctrines (also see Vanneste 1963). But Denys Turner argues this
conclusion for all alleged medieval Christian mystics—he rejects the
“contemporary ‘experientialist’ misreading” of these texts (1995: 5). He
asserts that these texts are actually “anti-mystical” if mysticism is seen in
terms of cultivating certain types of experiences (ibid.: 4). And Robert
Sharf argues that meditative experiences do not figure prominently in the
formation of Buddhist doctrine or in the practice of monks and nuns
historically (1995, 1998). “Transformative personal experience” may not
have been as central to traditional Buddhist monastic practice as modern
exegetes would have us believe (1995: 232). The author of a prominent
Theravada meditation manual, Buddhaghosa, does not refer to his own
meditative experiences, and so Sharf concludes that he probably did not
have any. He argues that the emphasis on mystical experiences comes only
from modern Buddhist apologists after the encounter with the West. And
many observers note that today meditative practices are not prominent
among monks in Buddhist monasteries—work, rituals, recitations, and
memorization of doctrines are considered more important. Meditation is
often limited to only the most senior monks. Buddhist traditions also have
at various points in their history fallen into dogmatism and scholasticism as
much as Christian traditions have, suggesting a focus on doctrine over
actual experiences.
All this fits well with the postmodernists’ attempt to assimilate
knowledge totally to the social. Mysticism can be deconstructed as simply a
type of political writing—a way of expressing opposition to religious
institutional authority and doctrines (Cupitt 1998: 10–11, 57). Moreover,
language goes “all the way down” and there is no cognition prior to
language (ibid.: 11). In Jacques Derrida’s proclamation, “There is nothing
outside the text.” The idea of “mystical experiences” died in about 1978,
“drowned by the rising tide of postmodern culturalism” (Cupitt 1998: 21) as
no more than a modern psychological invention, and thus the possibility of
genuine mystical experiences or states of consciousness can be ignored—
scholars now can focus on just the books.
However, one cannot conclude from the lack of the discussion of a
person’s own experiences that he or she did not have mystical experiences
or that mystical experiences did not shape religious doctrines. Turner and
Michael Sells (1994) rightly point out that Christian mystics discuss the
nature of God and not personal experiences. But one important reason for
this is that, unlike in modern science, experiences were not considered
authoritative for establishing doctrinal claims. Mystics instead appealed to
the tradition’s authorities (the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, the Buddha’s
discourses, and so on). In the words of John of the Cross: “I trust neither to
experience nor to knowledge since they may fail and deceive,” but to
“Divine Scripture” (1958: 94). That the Pseudo-Dionysius wrote under the
name of a New Testament figure shows how little authority he attached to
himself and any experiences he might have had. Nor was this meant to be
deceptive by giving more authority to the works—it only indicated that
authority did not lie with current authors. So too, there are no first-hand
reports from Shankara. For Shankara, the only “means to correct
knowledge” (pramana) for knowledge of Brahman for the unenlightened is
the revealed Vedas (shruti), not personal direct insight (anubhava)
(Brahma-sutra-bhashya 1.1.1–2).4 In India in general, realizing
enlightening knowledge is considered the recovery of past knowledge and
not a discovery of something that was previously unknown and had to be
established; thus, one’s own accomplishment is not noteworthy. So too,
many traditions prohibit boasting about one’s spiritual achievements in
public as contrary to humility, and even mentioning one’s own experiences
in writings would no doubt qualify as a type of bragging.
In such circumstances, one would not expect mystics to discuss their
own experiences. Nevertheless, the writings of such figures as Meister
Eckhart and Shankara make it clear that they value the direct personal
awareness of a transcendent reality as centrally important to their ways of
life, not just the acceptance of a tradition’s doctrines. Interpreting, for
example, Bonaventure’s “journey of the mind to God” or Eckhart on the
“birth of the son in the ground of the soul” as not pointing to mystical
experiences is tortured at best. So too with the medieval Christian mystics’
references to “rapture” and “ravishment.” Eckhart referring to making
oneself a “desert” and to the “unknowing” (unwissen) of all “images” is not
about the “negativity of experience” (Turner 1995: 264) but about an
experience in which all conceptualizations are gone—an experience that is
now filled with a transcendent reality (see Eckhart 2009: 34–36 on
unknowing). God is unknowable in that he is, in Eckhart’s terms, “beyond
every thought and image”—i.e., he is not open to being an object of the
analytical mind—but the beingness of God is not unexperiencable. The
mind is not “empty,” as when one is knocked unconscious. Nor is there
reason to conclude, as the theologian Mark McIntosh does (1998: 136–37,
142), that medieval Christian mystics encouraged their followers to let go
of all experiences: mystical experiences are not necessary for Christian
salvation, and there is more to any religious way of life than cultivating
mystical experiences, but the texts make clear that the experiential “union
with God” and the alignment of one’s will with God’s were still valued.
Eckhart denounced being tied to any technique that claimed to compel God
to act; he valued a life aligned with God’s will over any “ecstatic
experiences”; and he valued doing God’s will in acts of charity over any
experience. But nothing suggests that he ever denounced awakening to the
presence of God in the depth of the soul, i.e., the breakthrough
(durchbrechen) of the birth of God in the soul and of the birth into the
Godhead.

Attribution Theory
A second position is that there are no genuine “mystical experiences”:
alleged mystical experiences are only ordinary experiences, not unique
neurological events. The “mystical” element is only a misreading of what is
occurring. Thus, proponents of this position note the experiential nature of
“mystical experiences,” but they deny that the mystical overlay contributes
anything cognitive—in particular, there is no cognition of transcendent
realities. John Bowker presented this theory, not to discredit the notion of
genuine –mystical experiences, but to discredit the theory that the idea of
God originated in psychotropic drug experiences. He argued that LSD does
not induce genuine experiences of a transcendent reality but only initiates a
state of excitation that is labeled and interpreted from the available cues as
“religious” by some experiencers, due to the setting and the experiencers’
background. The warrant for a particular label thus does not lie in the
experience itself but in the conceptual background that created specific
expectations and supplied the symbols to the structuring (1973: 14457).
However, this idea can also be used to discredit any claim to
knowledge of transcendent realities. Wayne Proudfoot offers this “cognitive
labeling” approach to deny the possibility of any transcendent input in any
religious experiences: experiencers unconsciously attribute religious
significance to otherwise ordinary experiences (1985). Religious
experiences are simply general and diffuse patterns of agitation in states of
our nervous system to which the religious give a label based on their prior
religious beliefs, in order to understand and explain the agitation. Any
extreme emotional state can be labeled “a religious experience” when an
experiencer believes that the cause is a transcendent reality, but in fact only
cognitively empty feelings are present—bodily states agitated in purely
natural ways. For Proudfoot, a transcendent reality is not even indirectly
involved as the source of the agitation (ibid.: 154). That is ruled out a priori:
a transcendent reality, if any exists, by definition cannot be experienced. So
too, Ann Taves speaks of ordinary experiences being “deemed religious”—
there are no inherently religious experiences (2009).5 Religious experiences
are in fact no more than cognitively empty feelings structured by prior
religious beliefs. That is, religious value or significance is given to unusual
but otherwise ordinary experiences. “Religious experiences” are constituted
solely by this-worldly elements and thus are exhaustively explainable in the
same manner as any other experience. This approach allows scholars to
focus exclusively on religious texts and discount any role for any “mystical
experience” in the formation of religious doctrines and practices.
Attribution theory may well explain many alleged mystical
experiences: people may simply be attributing greater significance to
ordinary highly emotional situations in many instances. (This points to the
problem with first-person reports and surveys noted in chapter 4.) And
some evidence in neuroscience can be interpreted as supporting the theory
(Saver & Rubin 1997; Azari et al. 2001). But as noted above, there is also
increasing neuroscientific support for the claim that there are genuine
mystical experiences—i.e., unique neurological events involving altered
states of consciousness. Objections have also been raised concerning
Proudfoot’s use of the psychological data (Barnard 1992; Spilka &
McIntosh 1995). If such experiences are neurologically unique and not
merely other experiences interpreted mystically, they are not reducible in
this manner. Taves lumps all religious experiences together and concludes
that no experience is inherently religious (2009: 20–22). But the issue here
is different: whether there is a set of inherently mystical experiences,
regardless of whether the understanding that a particular experiencer gives
it is religious or naturalistic. And neurological data suggest that some
experiences are inherently mystical even if the experiences are understood
nonreligiously by the experiencer. Perhaps the religious can give a religious
interpretation to virtually any experience, but there appears to be a set of a
neurologically distinctive mystical experiences. If so, there is an
experiential basis to mysticism that cannot be explained away as merely a
mystical varnish given to ordinary sense-experiences or emotions.
Mystical experiences often have an intense emotional component, and
if such experiences are grounded only in the part of the brain connected to
emotion rather than thought (Ramachandran & Blakeslee 1998: 179), it
would help the argument that mystical experiences simply reinforce the
experiencer’s prior religious beliefs. Bertrand Russell saw mysticism in
terms of emotion—a certain intense and deep feeling regarding what is
believed about the universe (1997: 186–87)—and James Leuba advanced an
early reduction of mysticism along these lines (1929). But even if these
experiences have an emotional impact, this does not mean that they are the
result only of emotion or do not have other components. It should also be
pointed out that emotions may be ways of experiencing the world that
contribute to our deepest commitments and our sense of how things are
(Ratcliffe 2006: 101). That emotion and their objects are traditionally chief
objects for meditators to remove since they block spiritual progress also
presents a problem for this theory. So too, the “sense of presence” in
religious experiences is not obviously emotion-based.
For naturalists, this means that all alleged mystical cognitivity is
totally explained away in natural terms. But whether one subscribes to this
philosophical reduction appears to depend more on whether one has a prior
commitment to naturalism than anything inherent in the experiences
themselves.

The Depth-Mystical Experience and Its Conceptualizations

The first two denials of genuine mystical knowledge keep everything of
alleged cognitive value within mystical and religious texts themselves. The
third denial—“constructivism”—also has that effect. The way to introduce
this topic is with the role of experience and conceptualization in mystics’
knowledge-claims.
 Even if the mind during a depth-mystical experience is empty of
differentiated content, depth-mystics in classical mystical traditions do
believe these experiences give a sense of fundamental reality, immutability,
and oneness. Thus, something is retained after the experience is over, and
thus mystical experiences may be cognitive of some reality. If mystics
retained nothing whatsoever from depth-mystical experiences, they could
make no claim about the nature of what they experienced and could not
reject any other claims as objectionable. Indeed, if they retained nothing,
they would not claim to have had an experience—they would have been
simply unconscious. What is retained may be a memory of a “pure”
consciousness of being awake and aware, but without any objects of
awareness. But once they return to a dualistic state of consciousness, their
analytical mind kicks in and what was experienced becomes an object of
thought. As such, it must be conceptualized. Ninian Smart highlighted
different degrees of “ramification” of conceptualization: lowly ramified
terms (e.g., “oneness,” “reality”) and highly ramified terms from religious
traditions (e.g., “God,” “Brahman”).6 Highly ramified terms gain their
meaning in part from a range of statements taken to be true for reasons of
theory, while low-ramified terms do not (1965: 79). Thus, even if a
description cannot be totally separated from all interpretation, some
descriptions are closer to the phenomenological givenness of an experience.
But mystics typically write in highly ramified terms. Mystics usually speak
in concrete terms of a specific personal god or a nonpersonal reality rather
than remain on the level of abstract concepts of a generic “Ultimate
Reality.” But even if mystics confined themselves to such abstract terms as
“reality” or “oneness,” these still have a conceptual element and are the
result of seeing what was experienced from a mental distance and through a
conceptual lens after the depth-mystical experience is over.
If classical depth-mystics are correct, they experience an immutable
reality transcending our natural world, but the reality experienced is
nonetheless open to very different interpretations with values and symbols
from a culture affecting such interpretations. In the West, we typically refer
to spiritual experiences as “experiences of God” because we are raised from
childhood with that concept and it is the only term we know that seems
appropriate. But “God” is not a neutral term for any transcendent reality—a
theistic god has attributes that nonpersonal analogs such as Brahman and
the Way do not, and vice versa. Nevertheless, the brain must affix some
name to anything it experiences to file it into memory (Newberg &
Waldman 2009: 76). But there is a great variety of spiritual experiences, and
most people have their own definition of “God” (ibid.: chap. 4). In addition,
terms from different traditions are not interchangeable—Eckhart’s
“Godhead” and Shankara’s “Brahman” gain their meaning, as all concepts
do, only within the context of a larger system. Early Buddhists translating
Indian texts into Chinese first tried simply substituting Daoist terms for
Buddhist ones, but quickly found that that did not work. Even if the various
terms have the same referent, the referential and descriptive aspects of
concepts cannot be conflated: the concepts behind them may be very
different. The difference between Advaita and Samkhya on the transcendent
“self” is a classic example—the universal atman versus the individual
purusha. So too, most theists would dispute the claim that the depth-
mystical experience is an experience of a fundamentally nonpersonal reality
rather than of a personal being even if nontheists use the word “God.”
After their experiences, members of different religious traditions see
the depth-mystical experience differently, and beliefs and values from
outside the depth-experience must fill out the significance given to the
experience. But because the competing conceptions are equally well-
supported experientially (as discussed in the next chapter), it is hard to
conclude that these more-specific beliefs somehow come from the
experience itself or that any type of mystical experience is evidence for one
interpretation over another. Even if all mystics in different traditions
experience at least the source of the experiencer’s beingness, mystics still
differ on their understanding of the full nature of what is experienced, and
their interpretations in terms of different highly ramified conceptions of
transcendent realities conflict. So too, if no transcendent reality is involved
and mystics experience only the root beingness of a natural self or merely
the sheer “thatness” of the aware mind, this reality is still open to different
interpretations in different metaphysical systems.7
One may argue that theists and nontheists experience different aspects
of the same reality, as with the simile of the blind men and the elephant (as
discussed in the next chapter). But if the mind is truly empty of all
differentiating content during the depth-mystical experience, this is hard to
argue: there are no different aspects to this one experience. The absence of
differentiated features would make it is hard not to conclude that depth-
mystics in all traditions all experience the same reality but interpret the
depth-mystical experience differently according to their tradition after they
have returned to a dualistic consciousness. In the postexperience dualistic
state of consciousness, what was previously experienced now must be seen
even by the mystics themselves as an object of some sort—in this state, the
mind makes what was experienced into one more mental object among
other mental objects. Understanding the depth-mystical experience becomes
subject to the same problems in understanding other phenomena for mystics
themselves. But the experience itself does apparently remain empty of
differentiated content.
Nevertheless, Christians often argue that Christians’ depth-mystical
experiences are phenomenologically unique. One argument is that mystical
experiences cannot be forced or earned but are the result of God’s grace—
God just happens to bestow by his grace a glimpse of himself more often on
those who were cultivating mystical experiences. But mystics of all
traditions, theistic and nontheistic, agree that these experiences are not the
product of human effort: the experience cannot be forced, but requires
letting go of the sense of self. Some mystical experiences do occur
spontaneously, but training that increases the possibility also occurs.
Christian contemplatives too engage in spiritual training and prepare the
way with effort and do not rely exclusively on grace. If no mystical
experiences occurred in other traditions but always occurred spontaneously
for Christians, an argument might be made on these grounds, but this is not
the case. And, as noted above, nothing suggests that non-Christians have a
substantively different depth-mystical experience.
Another argument is that in the depth-mystical experience for
Christians some distinctive residual sense of a loving, powerful, and
personal being is retained from the experience itself and is not simply a
result of differentiated theistic introvertive mystical experiences or of the
transitional state back to the baseline state of consciousness or of a
theological interpretation applied after the experience. But again, if the
experience is truly devoid of all differentiable content and all intentionality
is cut off, this is not possible—there cannot be a loving relationship while
the mind is “empty.” As John of the Cross says, it is an “imageless”
communion. Of course, if Christians on the path to enlightenment believe
that they are being carried upward by love, then they will naturally interpret
any resulting experiences in terms of a loving reality. Thus, while the
different forms of Christian mysticism may be unique, this is no reason to
conclude that there is a unique “Christian depth-mystical experience” of a
loving, personal triune transcendent reality or that non-Christians or at least
nontheists experience some other reality.

Mystical Experiences and Mystical Ways of Life

While the different mystical traditions of the world can be grouped together
under the rubric “mysticism” because of the centrality of similar
experiences, it must be remembered that there is no generic “mysticism” or
“mystical worldview,” but only particular mystics in particular mystical
traditions with concrete beliefs about realities, concrete goals, and concrete
practices. To invert a George Santayana remark, any attempt to have a
religion that is no religion in particular is as hopeless as any attempt to
speak without speaking some particular language (1905: 5). And the same
applies to mysticism: there is no one abstract “mysticism,” but only
particular mystics and mystical traditions. We can still speak of
“mysticism,” just as linguists speak of “language” in general, and we can
discuss its general features (if any commonalities among the phenomena are
found), just as linguists speak of the nature of language, but we must
remember there are only specific evolving traditions, and each mystic must
be understood in his or her cultural context. In addition, classical mysticism
was part of different religious traditions and must be understood in that
context.8 Mystics think of themselves as Christians or Shaivaites or
whatever, not as “mystics.” They practice Christianity or whatever, not
“mysticism.” In Buddhism, the goal of the way of life is to end our
suffering by escaping the cycle of rebirth—something Abrahamic mystics
do not even consider. The different traditions’ particular beliefs and
practices are not merely vehicles to one universal goal any more than
specific languages are merely attempts to voice “language” in the abstract.
Even “perennial philosophy” as a mystical Esperanto is still only one
particular “language.”
Moreover, the world’s religious traditions are made up of multiple
subtraditions that have evolved throughout history. No religion’s mystical
tradition is monolithic: there is no one uniform “Christian mysticism” but
different Christian forms of mysticism. Not all of Hinduism can be reduced
to Advaita or to Vaishnava theism, let alone all Asian traditions to one
abstract “Eastern mysticism.” The religious concepts and values—the
conceptions of transcendent realities, the rewards and punishments, the
ethical norms—within these subtraditions may not remain constant but
change throughout history. There are variations and exceptions in every
religious tradition. Different mystical groups within the same religion often
disagree over doctrines and practices. (Buddhism first split over monastic
rules, not doctrines.) Some doctrines may be common to most schools and
may be “official” to, say, all of Buddhism, but the total configurations of all
the beliefs of each school lead to significant differences and disputes. Nor is
any mystical tradition “pure”: there are nonmystical influences and cross-
fertilization from other religions.
Nevertheless, all religions have mystical traditions: any religious
tradition can accommodate mystics to one degree or another. The influence
of mystical experiences on religious doctrines is especially great in many
Asian religions. But even with a mainstream view of the absolute otherness
of God, the Abrahamic traditions all have had vibrant mystical traditions.
Indeed, a scholar of Judaism, Brian Lancaster, can say, “There is effectively
no such thing as ‘nonmystical Judaism’ ” (2005: 14). In the Abrahamic
traditions, salvation is not a matter of mystical experiences, as in most
Buddhist and Hindu traditions, but many Christians see mystics as living
the Christian life to the fullest. Mystics also influence the doctrines of all
traditions. Many are orthodox—in Christianity, 10 percent of medieval
saints are mystics and another 10 percent are ascetics (Kroll & Bachrach
2005: 203). Indeed, a very strong case can be made that many Christian
beliefs are merely mystical doctrines formulated dogmatically (Louth 1981:
xi).
However, many mystics are in tension with the established tradition of
their time: some react to the apparent worldliness of the faithful; some (e.g.,
women) present a challenge to the power or authority of those in charge or
the accepted roles in society. Some, including Eckhart, were considered
heretical—Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake. Many Protestants,
following Martin Luther, oppose the very idea that God can be experienced
directly or united with in any way, or that there is a spark of the divine in
human beings, or that God can ever be immanent—God remains wholly
transcendent. That is, even if there is a transcendent reality, it may not be
open to any experience. Thus, most Protestants see all mysticism as
inherently anti-Christian. Many have other complaints: they see mysticism
as tainted by the heresy of Gnosticism, overstressing the nonrational in
religion (Otto 1958: 22), pantheistic, self-denying, not sufficiently
prophetic, or escapist rather than socially engaged. In the end, many theists
agree with G. K. Chesterton’s disparagement of “mysticism” as “starting in
mist, ending in schism, with an ‘I’ in the middle.”
In any case, mystical experiences are not tied to any particular set of
beliefs or a particular religion but occur in all traditions. And some
postexperience interpretation must be present even for the mystics
themselves to understand the significance of the mystical experience.9 What
is important here is that the experience alone does not determine its own
interpretation. The experience itself is only one consideration: the doctrines
and practices of a given mystic’s tradition all play a role. Mystical
experiences may well affect the mystic’s worldview or ethos, but the
process of seeing the significance of the experience occurs only outside of
introvertive mystical experiences in a dualistic consciousness, whether
mindful or not. Some interpretation must always be given to the experience
to integrate it into the person’s life, whether the mystical experience occurs
spontaneously or occurs to those who have been practicing in a particular
tradition. An interpretation may in fact be ready-made by the mystic’s own
tradition prior to the experiences, but those outside of any tradition will also
need to work with their prior religious and philosophical beliefs to
understand the significance of the experience.10
That mystics are aware of their tradition’s interpretation prior to their
experiences raises the issue of what is more important in the final claim to
mystical knowledge—the content of the mystical experiences themselves or
the beliefs and values of a mystic’s tradition. Are introvertive mystical
experiences noncognitive in that, even if an awareness of a transcendent
reality is involved, the knowledge-claims themselves come only from other
sources? That these experiences may adjust a mystic’s understanding of his
or her tradition’s doctrines complicates the situation. In the end, mystical
ideas of oneness, immutability, and so on figure in the generation of the
doctrines of different religions, no matter how unmystical the orthodox
doctrines might become if theory and spirituality grow apart. But
disentangling mystical and unmystical influences may prove difficult.
(Mysticism may also influence more purely philosophical circles, as in the
case of later Platonism.)
 All of this means that mystical experiences alone do not determine a
mystic’s knowledge-claims. How an introvertive mystical experience fits
into a worldview depends on what mystics decide its significance is while
outside the experience, and this depends on religious, philosophical, and
other considerations that encompass more than the experiences themselves.
Thus, mystical knowledge will always have a conceptual element that
mystics supply outside the experiences. This in turn means that ideas from
the mystic’s tradition will always play a necessary role in how the mystical
experience is seen and in what is taken to be mystical knowledge. Advaitins
will have to offer reasons other than the depth-mystical experience itself to
conclude that the world is “unreal” in any sense whatsoever, and theists will
have to offer reasons for treating revelation or theistic mystical experiences
as fundamental in interpreting the significance of the depth-mystical
experience. But in all cases, factors outside mystical experiences
themselves are a necessary part of the picture.
In sum, mystical experiences only in the context of a mystic’s
encompassing mystical ways of life allegedly give knowledge. But even if
mystical experiences affect the mystic’s worldview, judgments of the
significance of a mystical experience nevertheless can occur only outside of
introvertive mystical experiences in a dualistic state of consciousness when
the experience itself becomes an object of intentional consciousness. In this
way, the actual knowledge that is allegedly gained in the depth-mystical
experience will involve elements of the mystic’s beliefs outside the
experience itself. Mystical experiences are sometimes considered
“preconceptual apprehensions,” but mystics claim to know what they
experienced, and such knowledge occurs only outside the depth-mystical
state. The experiences may be incorrigible, but the post-experience
understanding of them is not. The depth-mystical experience remains
constant (if constructivism is wrong), and it is the various understandings
and valuations that become distinct to each mystical tradition that must be
studied in religious studies.

Constructivism
Critics of mystical knowledge-claims point out that mystical experiences in
different religious traditions are always taken as confirming the basic
doctrines of the tradition that the experiencer was trained in. Buddhist
monks and Franciscan nuns in one empirical study exhibited similar
physiological changes, but the Buddhist monks described their experiences
in terms of selflessness while the Christian nuns described theirs as “a
tangible sense of the closeness of God and a mingling with Him” (Newberg,
d’Aquili, & Rause 2002: 7), just as their traditions dictate.11 This suggests
that the experiencer’s cultural beliefs control their claims.12
This contention leads to “constructivism” in philosophy in response to
Walter Stace’s “universal core” thesis that mystical experiences everywhere
share some elements (see Katz 1978, 1983, 1992a, 2000; Gill 1984; also see
Jones 1909). Constructivists prefer the name “contextualists,” but as noted
below nonconstructivists can also emphasize the need to examine mystics
in their cultural context to understand their knowledge-claims—it is the
construction of all experiences by cultural concepts that nonconstructivists
deny. Thus, “constructivism” is a better title. As the founder of
constructivism, Steven Katz, bluntly puts it: “let me state the single
epistemological assumption that has exercised my thinking and which has
forced me to undertake the present investigation: There are NO pure (i.e.,
unmediated) experiences” (1978: 26). There can be no experience without
the mediation of conceptualization (also see Proudfoot 1985: chap. 4;
Bagger 1999: chap. 4). (Actually, Stace agreed with this: he too claimed
that “there is no such thing as an absolutely pure experience without any
interpretation at all” [1960a: 203]. But he believed that experience and
conceptualizations can be separated [ibid.: 31–32, 71–76].13)
Constructivists need not deny that mystical experiences are genuine
neurological events, nor need they accept attribution theory.14 The key idea
for strong constructivists is that the alleged cognitive content of all mystical
experiences is totally controlled by the experiencer’s prior religious beliefs.
The experiences can have a huge emotional impact on the experiencer, and
he or she may take them to be cognitive, but doctrines from the
experiencer’s cultural background must be read in, precisely because the
experience itself is void of any of its own cognitive content. That is, even if
there is some amorphous reality that is experienced, that element too must
be structured before it reaches awareness; thus, that element does not
determine or even figure in the alleged cognitive content of the experience
—only learned cultural beliefs do. (Katz and other strong constructionists
do not claim that learned cultural constructs cause mystical experiences or
explain why some people are mystics and other are not.) Thus, there is no
“core” to the experience that is not penetrated by conceptual structuring. No
part of even a depth-mystical experience is unstructured—i.e., untouched
by language or concept. (Mediation must permeate the entire experience;
otherwise, there would be a cultureless core to the experience that would
give nonconstructivists an opening.) This means that a mystical experience
can make no cognitive contribution to the belief-framework. No valid
propositions can be generated on the basis of mystical experiences, and thus
mystical experiences “logically cannot be the grounds for any final
assertions about the nature or truth of any religious or philosophical
position”—“mystical or more generally religious experience is irrelevant in
establishing the truth or falsity of religion in general or any specific religion
in particular” (Katz 1978: 22). In sum, nothing cognitively significant
would remain if the doctrinal and cultural contents were removed from
these experiences. So too, any changes in a mystic’s beliefs must come
from nonexperiential cultural beliefs, not from any new mystical
experiences.
The basis of this position is the view held virtually universally in
philosophy today that all our experiences are conceptually structured.
Constructivists contend that all conscious experiences, including mystical
ones, must have an intentional object. There can be no “pure
consciousness” event: there are no experiences when there is no
phenomenal content in the mind—the “light” of awareness is turned “on”
only when there are objects to illuminate. Following Franz Brentano, all
consciousness is consciousness of something. Even emotional moods have
some vague object. “Contentless consciousness” is an oxymoron: we can
only be conscious if there is something there to be conscious of. There can
be no content-free experience of “beingness.” Nor can our mind reflect
reality “as it really is”—the mind only approaches reality through our own
mental conceptual filters. That is, the concepts we create become part of a
filter by which the mind processes information in every experience—
nothing enters our awareness directly and unfiltered. There is no experience
free of any structuring framework originating from an experiencer. In short,
all experience is “theory-laden.” Sensory input is structured into
perceptions of sense-objects by the concepts developed within the
perceiver’s culture of what types of objects make up the world. And the
same structuring process applies to all extrovertive and introvertive
mystical experiences. Thus, as Wilfrid Sellars said, “all awareness … is a
linguistic affair” (1963: 160).
The roots of the claim lie in Immanuel Kant’s view on sense-
perception: “intuitions without concepts are blind.” He too denied that there
could be a “bare consciousness” devoid of content. Sense-perception is an
active process of selecting and relating what is experienced to our concepts
and beliefs rather than a passive registering of an external reality. Ludwig
Wittgenstein expanded the different perceptions of Gestalt figures to all
perception as “seeing as” (see Hick 1989: 140–42): all sense-perception is
structured. For Kant, all people have certain a priori categories (such as
time, space, substance, and causation) that structure the noumena that affect
our sense organs into perceived phenomena, but the noumena lie forever
outside of our knowledge: no unmediated, direct experience of the noumena
is possible, and so no knowledge of a noumenon is possible.
Constructivists go beyond Kant: they focus on a layer of structuring
beyond the a priori categories to a posteriori ones—our learned cultural
beliefs and concepts. To them, all experiences have embedded
conceptualizations specific to particular cultures. For this reason, strong
constructivists argue that mystical experiences are not the same across
cultures: each mystic’s experiences are conditioned by different elements,
and so they are phenomenologically different from others’. There is no one
universal depth-mystical experience or universal core to all mystical
experiences: all mystical experiences have some phenomenal content, and
each experience is unique to each experiencer.15 The context of each
individual mystic determines all of his or her experiences. Thus, there can
be no comparisons of experiences from different cultures and eras, even if
cultures are uniform in each era. This means that there can be no foundation
for any typology of mystical experiences or phenomenology of mysticism
(Katz 1978: 56). (However, Katz cannot help but make distinctions between
types of mystical experiences—e.g., between “absorptive” and “non-
absorptive” experiences [ibid.: 41].)
Moderate constructivists (e.g., John Hick) insist that the external world
still plays a role in constraining our creations—concepts structure all
experiences, but reality surprises us and resists our expectations, and thus
how we conceptualize an experience is not infinitely malleable. Culture
might explain why religious visions are of Mary or Krishna, but it does not
explain all of the experience—i.e., why some “sense of presence” is there to
interpret in the first place. Nor does culture explain all of the content of
mystical experiences: some content independent of the form is still part of
the content of the experience. For moderate constructivists, this content can
affect the experiencer’s beliefs—beliefs shape the form of the experiences,
and the experiences in turn shape the beliefs—and thus the experiences may
be cognitive of a transcendent reality. But, like all Kantians, they accept that
direct knowledge of noumena is impossible.
Strong constructivists go further: all the belief-content of depth-
mystical experiences is supplied solely by the mystic’s existing tradition.
Transcendent realities contribute nothing, even if they exist and are in fact
experienced (and Katz accepts that possibility [1988: 754]). In the case of
sense-experience, moderate constructivists give the world a role in
scientific and everyday knowledge-claims. For them, as for
nonconstructivists, mystical experiences are also potentially cognitive. But
strong constructivists deny, as do postmodernists, that the world ultimately
plays any role at all: the world-in-itself, if there is such a reality, is
amorphous, and so any configuration of concepts will do for coping with
the world—we can make any “web of beliefs” fit by simply making enough
adjustments to its parts—and thus in the final analysis reality does not
constrain our creations. There is no role for any unknowable noumenon.
Thus, any external “real” world in the end does not figure in determining
our knowledge-claims; instead, our concepts exclusively shape our
knowledge-claims. And when strong constructivism is combined with
naturalism, the issue of a role for a transcendent reality does not even come
up. Attention turns from experiences solely to what mystics write since
“everything is text all the way down.”
Thus, strong constructivists go beyond claiming belief is one
component in religious experiences to claiming it is the only component.
The religious beliefs that mystics bring to their experiences do not merely
contribute to their knowledge but are the only cognitive element. Strong
constructivists thus assimilate knowledge-claims totally to the
nonexperiential and the cultural. Mystical experiences are merely an intense
feeling of our previous beliefs. They become, in the words of Robert
Gimello, “simply the psychosomatic enhancement of religious beliefs and
values” (in Katz 1978: 85). One postmodernist scholar questions whether
memories of “mystical experiences” have any more transcendent “mystical
content” than alien abductees’ “memories” of their alleged abductions have
any genuine content (Sharf 1998). The conceptual framework of a religious
tradition brought to the experience controls the content entirely. The
cognitive content of any religious experience is thereby totally reduced to
that belief-framework. There is no possibility of any independent cognitive
input from a transcendent source. Mystical experiences thus cannot be
sources of any potentially fresh insight for anyone’s system of belief. For
the same reason, prior experiences did not shape the conceptual framework
one brings to later religious experiences. Thus, for strong constructivists,
mystical experiences cannot add anything at any point in the history of a
mystical tradition to its beliefs or values or otherwise enter the cognitive
picture.
Thus, to constructivists, depth-mystical experiences, contrary to the
depth-mystics’ own claims of “empty” experiences, must have at least some
conceptual content or else mystics would not be conscious. Beliefs and
concepts penetrate the experiences themselves and are not applied after the
fact in a separate act of interpretation. Meditation does not involve
emptying the mind of a culture’s framework, thereby permitting new
cognitive experiences, but simply helps the meditator to internalize fully the
culture’s beliefs and values learned on the path. Thus, yoga properly
understood is not an unconditioning or deconditioning of consciousness but
rather a reconditioning of consciousness, i.e., a substituting of one form of
conditioned consciousness for another (Katz 1978: 57).16 The Japanese
Buddhist Dogen told his followers to cast aside their own mind and follow
the teachings of the Buddha; to constructivists, this simply means
indoctrination. Enlightenment is merely the final internalization of a
religion’s framework of beliefs—the culmination of long periods of intense
study, practice, and commitment to those specific beliefs and values.
Strong constructivism, in sum, rules out the possibility that mystics
have any knowledge of a transcendent reality, even if mystics do experience
such a reality: nonexperiential cultural belief-systems control everything
about the experience’s cognitive content. Thus, there is no such thing as
mystical knowledge in any real sense. Any experiential input from a
transcendent source is totally shaped by our concepts and cannot provide
any cognitive content about reality—there simply is no independent
cognitive component in it. All mystical experiential claims thus can be
dismissed as groundless: even if they are experiences of a transcendent
reality, how could they be used to justify beliefs about that reality when the
total cognitive content comes only from cultural beliefs?
In effect, strong constructivists go from the fact that our mind
generates concepts to the conclusion that this is all there is to the cognitive
content of mystical experiences. Mystics’ knowledge-claims are controlled
totally by their concepts, and so in the end any experienced reality drops
completely out of the epistemic picture. Moderate constructivists argue that
the mind contributes to every genuine religious experience but that the
transcendent realities do too. So too, there may be different degrees of
mediation. To Bernard McGinn (1994, 1998), in Christian mysticism there
is a direct mystical consciousness of God, but it is, in the theologian
Bernard Lonegran’s phrase, a “mediated immediacy.” Thereby, the total
cognitive content of religious experiences is not reducible to an
experiencer’s prior doctrines, and mystical experiences of transcendent
realities can offer some input constraining our knowledge-claims. Moderate
constructivists argue that reality and the structuring we supply are
inextricably mixed in our experiences and our knowledge, but strong
constructivists conclude that concepts are simply our creations and have no
connection to anything but the other concepts we create. Strong
constructivists thus reduce the cognitive content of any mystical experience,
while moderates do not.
Moderate constructivism can be applied without much objection to
many types of religious experiences. That experiencers’ prior religious and
nonreligious beliefs shape the experiences they undergo certainly seems to
be the case with visions: experiencers do not claim to sense a vague,
amorphous presence but to see Jesus or some other figure from their own
religious tradition shaped by their beliefs. Their tradition seems to be the
source of the form of what is experienced—Protestants do not have visions
of Mary and Muslims never see Krishna. (Ramakrishna claimed to have had
visions of Jesus and Muhammad, and the Dalai Lama of a smiling Mary at
Fatima, but these also can be the result of prior beliefs.) Such numinous
experiences are enough like sense-perceptions that they should be open to
an analysis similar to ordinary sense-perceptions. Similarly, in the vast
majority of cases, those who pray and hear a voice hear only confirmations
of their prior beliefs. So too, extrovertive mystical experiences involve
structured sensory content, and so constructivism may well apply to these
experiences. That those extrovertive mystical experiences that involve
seeing the world infused with love only seem to occur in traditions that treat
God as love also suggests that these experiences are a cultural product.
Mindfulness too seems amenable to constructivism: mystics can admit that
the mind in mindful states, including enlightened ones, contains
differentiated phenomena and thus may be structured by prior beliefs. The
only exception would be the extreme case of “pure” mindfulness: there
would be differentiable content but no structuring. Other mindful states’
content and structuring would depend in part on concepts and beliefs from
each mystic’s tradition. So too with introvertive differentiated experiences:
they may be structured with concepts from different religious and cultural
traditions. The question is whether constructivism applies to depth-mystical
experiences.17

Nonconstructivism
Nonconstructivists in mystical studies deny that constructivism can be
extended to the depth-mystical experience (see Almond 1982; Forman
1990, 1998b, 1999). They are usually mislabeled “perennialists” after
“perennial philosophy.” But nonconstructivists need not embrace such a
philosophy: they may accept Christianity, Islam, or some other concrete
religious tradition as alone the best, or be naturalists who reject any
transcendent realism. It is affirming that there is an unstructured type of
mystical experience that defines nonconstructivism, not any particular
interpretation of that experience or any one philosophical or religious set of
beliefs or way of life. Conversely, perennial philosophers need not accept
the nonconstructivist interpretation of mystical experiences. Even calling
nonconstructivism “perennial psychology” (Robert Forman’s preferred
term) may be misleading. So too, the label “essentialists” is not applicable:
there is no one identical core to all types of mystical experiences, nor any
core set of essential beliefs about what is experienced that all
nonconstructivists must hold.18
Nonconstructivists deny even moderate constructivism with regard to
the depth-mystical experience and contend that it is different from all other
cognitive states: a state of consciousness free of all content can be inferred
from the low-ramified, more phenomenological descriptions of the depth-
experience, and the more highly ramified accounts can be seen as post facto
interpretations. In general, nonconstructivists also tend to agree with
mystics that the depth-mystical experience is cognitive. But as noted in
chapter 1, the experience is not truly contentless. Obviously, mystics retain
something of the sense of the experience after it is over, even if the sense
can be expressed only in abstract terms—a sense of the direct awareness of
beingness, consciousness, oneness, fundamentality, power, and
immutability. But the experience is allegedly free of any objects or any
differentiable content to structure or anything that could structure the
experience and thus is empty of any content that a particular culture could
supply or shape.
In addition, it is hard to claim that any two experiences with
differentiated content are exactly the same, but if a truly “pure
consciousness” event devoid of all diverse content does occur, then
logically all such experiences must be phenomenally identical.19 That is, if
there is an experience that is indeed truly empty of all differentiable content
that could shape it, it must be, as a matter of simple logic,
phenomenologically identical for all experiencers regardless of culture and
era (assuming all human beings have basically the same type of mind in this
regard). Thus, if mystics are correct, any depth-mystical experience must
always be the same for all experiencers, regardless of one’s culture or
beliefs, since there is no differentiable content during the experience itself
that would distinguish one experience from another for different people. It
is a truly culture-free and history-free experience. If so, there is one
universal, unmediated experience unconditioned by linguistic or other
structuring. (If there is such a common experience, this may say something
about the nature of our mind, but it does not necessarily mean that the
experience is veridical or in touch with a transcendent reality, as discussed
in the next two chapters.)
Nonconstructivists may also argue (contra Kant) that the depth-
mystical experience is an unmediated, direct experience of the noumenon
that is experienced: any postexperience intentional object is the product of
memory and a conceptual scheme, but the experience itself is a direct
awareness of a noumenon. It is an experience of whatever it is that is
experienced unmediated by any learned cultural concepts. There also is no
reason to believe that any unlearned Kantian a priori categories could apply
since there is no differentiated content involved. If the depth-mystical
experience is in fact an experience of a reality, then this unmediated
“noumenal experience” is knowledge by participation free of all learned
concepts. The distinction between experience and conceptualizations
returns only once dualistic consciousness returns after the experience, and
the noumenon then becomes a phenomenon open to understanding and
interpretation. (Whether pure mindfulness involves seeing the sensory
world-in-itself is also an issue.)
Nonconstructivists can readily agree that the images and
interpretations of the depth-mystical experience that mystics form in their
postexperience dualistic consciousness are shaped by the beliefs of each
particular mystic’s tradition that were learned as part of the training on the
mystical path. That is, after the depth-experience the analytical mind returns
and takes over with the cultural conceptions embedded in it. And what is
taken to be mystical knowledge will no doubt be shaped by the tradition: the
postexperience insight will be a combination of the experience and
doctrines. Nonconstructivists may agree that what part is contributed by the
experience and what part is contributed by the doctrine cannot be clearly
separated in the postexperience mystical insight. But that conceptualizations
influence knowledge does not mean that they must be present during the
depth-mystical experience itself. Nonconstructivists can rightly ask, if this
experience is in fact free of all differentiations—as the writings of even
many theistic mystics clearly suggest—what is present to structure it? If
meditation is a process of emptying the mind of conceptual content, as the
mystical traditions claim, what would remain present in the end to structure
any experience?

Constructivism and the Depth-Mystical Experience

Thus, under strong constructivism, mystical experiences are no more
cognitive than when Catholics see the face of Mary in a rusted refrigerator
on a back porch. And many who think that strong constructivism is absurd
in cases of sense-experience—to nonpostmodernists, reality obviously
provides constraints on our everyday and scientific constructions—find
strong constructivism attractive when it comes to mystical experiences.20
Strong constructivism neatly combines a popular philosophical position on
sense-perception with a popular academic view on religion (the reduction of
religion to belief-claims). Strong constructivism also reflects academics’
general love of all things linguistic and their unease over anything that even
hints of the possibility of ineffability—in particular, philosophers see
knowledge as a matter of propositions alone and are suspicious of any
appeal to anything that is nonpropositional in nature.
Constructivists may also argue that experiencers typically report their
experiences in terms of cultural stereotypes that do not really reflect the
experiences themselves—e.g., experiencers may claim a “pure awareness”
when they in fact had none. Thus, we cannot tell with any certainty whether
the conceptualizations point to the same experience or to the same reality
being experienced. It may be that any unusual experience will be described
as “ineffable,” “paradoxical,” or “union with God.” Thus, little of the actual
experiential content may be revealed even by the low-ramified descriptions.
However, this claim is not very convincing: that might be true of “union
with God,” but no culture has “pure consciousness” as a standard trope.21
Indeed, the only real reason strong constructivists can offer for their
position on depth-mystical experiences is that it conforms with the claim
that ordinary sense-experiences are structured. Their position is based on
philosophy and not on any empirical investigation of mystical experiences.
(If the depth-mystical experience cannot be analogized to sense-perception,
as argued in the next chapter, their position is weakened further.) That there
may be a cognitive state of consciousness without an intentional object is
simply logically impossible to philosophers who address the situation with
the presumption that all mental states are intentional. Constructivism is
merely applied to mystical experiences without seriously examining the
possibility that the depth-mystical experience may in fact be unique. This
means that when constructivists claim that the depth-mystical experience
must be structured, they are in effect making only an assumption
concerning this experience based solely on other types of experience (as
Katz acknowledges in the quotation given above [1978: 26]), not reaching a
conclusion based on any empirical research on mystics (contra ibid.: 66).
Nonconstructivists in fact have a very strong case against both
moderate and strong constructivism. First, there is empirical evidence in
neuroscience against the constructivist interpretation of the depth-mystical
sense-experiences: a “pure consciousness” event may in fact be
neurologically possible (Hood 2006; Newberg, d’Aquili, & Rause 2002;
also see Hölzel et al. 2011a: 545). Also, Zen meditation may enable
practitioners to control the automatic cascade of conceptual association
triggered by semantic stimuli (Pagnoni et al. 2008). There is also evidence
that experiences in general occur slightly before both cognition and the
translation of the awareness into language (Newberg & Waldman 2009: 75).
Even a materialist who thinks the brain and mind are identical and that no
transcendent reality is involved in a depth-mystical experience can argue
against constructivism and for a genuine pure consciousness event: the
monitoring activity of the mind continues in the absence of any
representational processing; thus, when the mind is emptied of all sensory,
conceptual, and ideational content, a lucid conscious states results (Peters
2000). The experiences are identical across cultures simply because of the
common biology of the brain of all human beings.22
Second, an argument can be made by the position mystics are in. In
ordinary perception, we do not experience a patch of colors and interpret it
as a rug. There is only one act—seeing a rug. This may also apply to
visions, most types of extrovertive and introvertive mystical experiences,
and mindful states of consciousness: interpretative elements may be present
in the mind during these events. But in the case of the depth-mystical
experience, the mind allegedly is empty of all differentiations, and it is only
after the event that mystics can interpret its significance. Thus, depth-
mystics clearly “perceive” the transcendent (i.e., have knowledge by
identity or participation), but they cannot “grasp” it like an object until the
experience is over—a transcendent reality shows itself, but what it is is only
grasped after the experience. As Teresa of Avila put it, only after her
mystical experience did she know that it was an “orison of union” with God
—during the experience itself the soul sees and understands nothing and
there are no words, but afterward the soul sees the truth clearly, not from a
vision, but from the certitude God placed there (Interior Castle V.1.9). Only
after the experience was she aware of anything; during the experience she
was not. Similarly from Jiddhu Krishnamurti: “The brain is completely
empty; all reaction had stopped; during all those hours, one was not aware
of this emptiness but only in writing it is the thing known, but this
knowledge is only descriptive and not real” (Lutyens 1983: 110–11).
Thus, if mystics are correct, two acts occur here, unlike in sense-
perception: the depth-mystical event and a later act of conceptualization.
Only depth-mystics are in a position to know both ordinary sense-
perception and the depth-mystical experience, and they see a profound
contrast in the natures of the two. For the depth-mystical experience, the
later interpretation can be separated from the depth-experience itself. If so,
the phenomenology of the experience must be distinguished from
conceptualizations of it and beliefs about its ontic status made after the
event, and we cannot infer that the latter must be informing the former.
Believing after the fact that an experience was an experience of x does not
logically require that the concept of x was active in the experience itself.
(Any certainty that the experience itself apparently gives may also only be
an aftereffect.) But being unaware of the content at the time does not mean
there was no content. The mental structuring of sense-experience and most
mystical experiences occurs in the same state of consciousness as the
experience itself; thus, it is harder to see if there is conceptual structuring in
the experience itself. But in the case of depth-mystical experiences, one
must change one’s state of consciousness to see its significance. Thus, it is
clearer to mystics that there is a difference between the experience and its
conceptualization–, which leads to claims of ineffability. Only depth-
mystics are in the unique position to see that there is in fact an “empty”
experience.
Also consider this from Martin Buber. From his “own unforgettable
experience,” he knew “well that there is a state in which the bonds of the
personal nature of life seem to have fallen away from us and we experience
an undivided unity” (1947: 24). But he adds:

But I do not know—what the soul willingly imagines and indeed

is bound to imagine (mine too once did it)—that in this I had
attained to a union with the primal being or the godhead. That is
an exaggeration no longer permitted to the responsible
understanding. Responsibly—that is, as a man holding his ground
before reality—I can elicit from those experiences only that in
them I reached an undifferentiated unity of myself without form
or content. … In the honest and sober account of the responsible
understanding this unity is nothing but the unity of this soul of
mine, whose “ground” I have reached. (ibid.: 2425)

That “responsible understanding” was implicitly dictated by his Jewish

background in which the gulf between God and creature is unbridgeable.
But this understanding only came later and did not change his sense of the
character of the experience itself in which he felt an “undivided unity” that
he initially interpreted to be with the Godhead. His religious beliefs may
have controlled his understanding but not the felt content of the experience
itself.
If this is so, depth-mystical knowledge-claims are “based on
experiences,” but there is both a direct, nonpropositional awareness and
something inferred (the interpretation of the nature of what is experienced),
each with its own epistemic status. This is not to suggest that there is such a
thing as an “ineffable insight”—we must know what the alleged insight is,
and thus an insight must be statable. That is, the alleged insights are always
conceptually structured, even if depth-mystical experiences are not. But the
insight is a postexperience product of two components: the depth-mystical
experience and particular doctrines. Mystical “emptying,” “unknowing,” or
“forgetting” still remains a process of deconditioning consciousness, not
reconditioning it with other concepts. And even if the experience is free of
any conceptualizations, it can still be a fresh awareness with cognitive
import if some reality is in fact involved.
Nonconstructivists can also point out that the content of mystical
experiences often comes as a surprise or even a shock to trained mystics—
the expectations shaped by their teaching do not control the experience. To
Thomas Merton, the experience is a “flat contradiction of all the soul
imagined of God” (2003: 75). This is not what would be expected if their
doctrines controlled the content of the experience but instead strongly
indicates their lack of control.23 Nor can the idea that mystical experiences
are only an intense emotional feeling of doctrines be at all applicable. So
too, the young may have no words for their mystical experiences and only
learn them later (Barnard 1997). Similarly, some extrovertive and
introvertive mystical experiences occur spontaneously to people with no
mystical training or no religious background. This often stuns and confuses
the experiencers—they have entered territory that they did not know
existed. They may have no words to describe the novel event and may use
familiar terms from their culture simply because they have no others, but
there is no reason other than mere fiat to believe those terms permeated
their initial experience. This unexpected event can radically alter the
experiencers’ worldview, expanding their sense of what is real. It can also
alter their values and can lead the nonreligious to adopt a religious way of
life. Simone Weil is an example: she was an agnostic Marxist from a Jewish
family who resisted the mystical experiences she was having but ended up
converting to Christianity. The experiences occurred despite her Marxist
beliefs, and those beliefs did not control her understanding or evaluation of
the experiences.
The fact that mystics are sometimes heretical is also important.
Visionaries, on the other hand, are more rarely heretical. Constructivists
cannot handle heresy easily. For example, some of Meister Eckhart’s
teachings were declared to be tainted by the “stain of heresy” or to be “evil
sounding and very rash and suspect of heresy.” Even if his teachings can
now be interpreted to be orthodox, it is still very hard to claim that the
orthodox doctrines of his time controlled his teachings. His disciples, such
as Johannes Tauler and Heinrich Suso, were more orthodox in their
writings.
Moreover, the heavy-handed interpretations that Shankara gives
Upanishadic passages and the imaginative “mystical interpretations” that
Eckhart gives biblical passages suggest that it is more likely that mystics
interpret their tradition’s authoritative revealed texts to fit what they have
experienced rather than vice versa. Eckhart had no problem finding biblical
passages he could interpret symbolically to illustrate his claims, but this
does not mean that he got those positions from the Bible. Shankara had to
interpret Upanishadic passages that conflicted with his nondualism as being
only of “indirect meaning” to lead the listeners toward the truth, while those
that supported his system were seen of “direct meaning.” In short, Shankara
justified his system with the supposedly revealed Upanishads, but he
interpreted the Upanishads to fit his system. This suggests that his own
mystical system was his ultimate source of justification, not the Vedas, and
his system was informed by mystical experiences. (He also had to give
strained interpretations to the Brahma-sutras and the Bhagavad-gita to try
to make them fit his system, including amending the former text.) That
Vedantins of a non-Advaita stripe, such as Ramanuja and the dualist
Madhva, interpret the same passages differently further suggests that the
revealed texts are not controlling their positions.
Thus, mystical experiences may radically modify mystics’ own
understanding of their tradition’s doctrines: mystics may use the same
language and doctrines as before but now mean quite different things (as
discussed in chapter 6). Even mystics who are conservative and trying to
conform their understanding to orthodoxy thus may end up challenging the
established understanding.24 This in turn may also lead to modifying or
transforming the tradition’s orthodox doctrines for all followers, as
Hasidism did. As Gershom Scholem says, “the mystic speaks the language
of tradition, but at the same time deeply transforms it, giving old terms a
new meaning and producing new ones characterized by their strange quality
and by their emotional appeal” (1967: 9). There is a “dialectic” relation
between the mystic and the tradition (ibid.: 13). Mystical traditions of one
religion may also influence other religions’, as Jewish mysticism influenced
early Sufism (which in turn later influenced medieval Kabbalists).

Can the Constructivism Dispute Be Resolved?

None of these points suggest that mystical experiences are as
“conservative” as Katz argues (1983: 3–60).25 Indeed, nonconstructivists
appear to have the overall stronger case. However, one basic problem
forecloses any definitive resolution: all there can ever be are later accounts
of what occurred during a depth-experience. All experiences are private,
and mystics can only give us a postexperience depiction of the depth-
mystical experience. All such depictions can occur only outside that
experience in a different state of consciousness, and thus mystics cannot
present us with a depiction of the depth-mystical experience free of their
particular conceptual commitments. That is, to communicate, mystics will
have to be in a state of consciousness where they can utilize the
differentiations of language, and they will use whatever conceptual scheme
they have adopted, and this is all we will ever have. To use an analogy: in
mystics’ reports, we are presented with various colored lights without being
able to examine the light source first hand (Dasgupta 1971: 68–69). The
lights may be one white light with various colored coverings (the
nonconstructivist position of a content-free depth-mystical experience, with
different interpretations applied after the experience is over), or the lights
themselves may be colored (the constructivist position of concepts being
embedded in the experience itself)—but all we can ever see from the
outside are the colored lights, and by themselves these cannot resolve the
issue. So too, the mystics’ accounts will always be “colored”
(conceptualized), and thus we are unable to observe the source itself
directly to resolve the issue. Thus, our decision on the question of
constructivism will have to be on other grounds.
 Nonconstructivists conclude that there is a common experience based
on the low-ramified descriptions from mystical accounts from around the
world.26 They must also reject a bedrock principle of modern philosophy—
that all experiences are permeated by conceptualizing. But they operate
with the premise that mystics are in a privileged position for the issue of
whether the depth-mystical experience is free of intentional content, and so
nonmystics should accept their word that there is an experience free of all
conceptual and other differentiated elements. Actual experience trumps
theory. Constructivists counter that people may well misconstrue their own
experiences and that constructivism fits better with the generally accepted
philosophical view of the nature of sense-experience. Thus, they think that
the constructivist reduction of the cognitive content of the depth-experience
to prior beliefs is the best available explanation.
But the assumption that our linguistic concepts penetrate our normal
sense-experiences is actually open to question. Sallie King points out that
one’s first drink of coffee may be “mediated by cultural factors and
expectations,” but she rightly asks, how do these relate to the first taste
itself? How is this experience produced by the pre-existing context of
tradition (1988: 264)? We know the label “taste of coffee” applies, but how
does that label affect the actual experience? Or consider Benjamin Lee
Whorf’s claim that perceptions differ between speakers of unrelated
languages because all observation is theory-laden (1956: 212–13). Merely
because the traditional language of the Hopi Indians classifies all “flying
things” together with one term does not mean that they cannot distinguish
airplanes, pilots, and insects. And the issue of whether there is a
nonconceptual element to ordinary sense-perception has recently been
revived (Gunther 2003). Consider Ptolemy and Copernicus viewing a
sunset: they differed radically about what occurs in a sunset, but whether
they actually experienced a sunset differently is another question—how can
their highly ramified concepts affect their perceptions when we cannot
experience that the earth is turning? Even Katz exempts experiences on “the
most brutish, infantile, and sensate levels” (1988: 755). That admission
opens the door to there being other types of unstructured experiences.
In light of considerations such as these, the constructivists’ case is
severely weakened. If mystics sense a difference in epistemic character
between the ordinary state of consciousness and the “empty” depth-mystical
experience, then the mystics’ accounts of their own experiences are at least
prima facie evidence against constructivism and in favor of the idea that the
depth-mystical experience is in fact a state of consciousness free of all
differentiable content. Nonconstructivists rightly defer to the mystics here:
only mystics are aware of both differentiated experiences and the depth-
mystical experience, and they claim the latter is radically different in type.
All experiencers are in a privileged position for the phenomenology of their
own experiences (but not for their evaluations of the experiences’ cognitive
status, as discussed in the next chapter). This applies equally to mystics. If
mystics sense differentiated phenomena after the depth-experience and are
aware that those were not present during the depth-experience, we should
accept it.
One may also ask how constructivists know that an “empty” state of
consciousness is impossible for human beings the way we are constructed
(Katz 1978: 59). Can philosophers legislate what is possible (Evans 1989)?
A state of consciousness empty of content certainly is not logically
impossible. Constructivists must also counter the empirical neurological
studies suggesting the possibility of a “pure consciousness” noted above.
These studies do not show that these experiences are actually structured
with differences in structuring from each culture being irrelevant but that
the experiences are structure-free. However, constructivists do not rely on
any empirical evidence at all. Indeed, constructivists are not making
empirically based claims at all (contra Katz 1978: 66) but simply
uncritically applying a principle devised for one type of experience to other
experiences. By doing so, they are putting an a priori limit on what is
logically possible, and such reasoning is out of place in a science-based
culture. Nonmystics simply are not in a position to deny that such empty
experiences can occur.
In addition, even in relying on mystical texts alone, constructivists
must reject much of what Asian and Western mystics actually say: they
must dismiss accounts by mystics themselves that entail that some mystical
experiences are empty of differentiable content, and they must also dismiss
any talk of “forgetting” or “unknowing” as obviously wrong. But since
constructivists apply their principle—their “single epistemological
assumption” that there are no unmediated experiences (Katz 1978: 26)—in
advance of any actual study, no amount of mystics’ accounts will ever
convince constructivists they are wrong: with the constructivists’ strategy,
nothing mystics could say could provide counter-evidence to constructivism
even in principle since whatever mystics say after their experiences will
reflect their tradition’s doctrines, and constructivists will automatically take
this as evidence for their conclusion that was already predetermined by their
prior assumption. It would also not be empirical for constructivists to argue
that certain mystical reports must be false merely on the a priori ground that
no experience in principle can be free of content. Even if constructivists had
depth-mystical experiences themselves, the transitional state back to
ordinary consciousness will be filled with content from their beliefs and
emotions, and constructionists may well misconstrue the situation, seeing
the beliefs as permeating the depth-mystical experience itself. Thus,
constructivism applied to the depth-mystical experience ends up being
unfalsifiable in practice, whether by analyzing texts or even by having a
depth-mystical experience itself.
Constructivists correctly point out that there is no one abstract
“mysticism” or one common mystical tradition spanning all cultures, but
instead a variety of more specific mystical systems—in fact, more than one
even within each religious tradition. Mysticism is not identical from culture
to culture or era to era. This diversity, however, does not support
constructivism over nonconstructivism: nonconstructivists have no problem
agreeing that there are genuinely different mystical traditions—they merely
argue that this diversity only reflects the diversity of the interpretations that
mystics apply after the depth-mystical experience is over. That is, mystics
do bring their cultural beliefs and values to their experiences, and these do
influence their own later understanding of their own experiences, but this
does not mean that the concepts must be active during the experiences
themselves. There still can be one common depth-mystical experience that
is independent of culture: the diversity of interpretations only reflects the
diversity of the metaphysics of the world’s different religious traditions
applied after the experience, not differences within depth-experiences
themselves, and this diversity of concrete accounts that mystics employ to
understand their experiences must be studied rather than claims about some
abstract “mysticism” being advanced. Nonconstructivists thus can equally
affirm the need to study mystics in context to understand mystical
knowledge-claims. They can accept Katz’s “plea” for the recognition of
differences (1978: 25)—they only insist that the differences lie in the
postexperience doctrines and values of different ways of life.
 In sum, the importance of context can be affirmed by
nonconstructivists without imposing what becomes in this context a dogma
of modern philosophy onto the depth-mystical experience. Contrary to what
constructivists claim, nonconstructivists are not committed to the position
that all mysticism is ultimately the same: different mystical knowledge-
claims contain different conceptual elements that genuinely distinguish the
claims of different traditions. Thus, mystical traditions remain different
even if all depth-mystical experiences are the same. Nonconstructivism is
also consistent with different positions on the relation of mystical traditions
—constructing a perennial philosophy, accepting one mystical tradition as
the best, accepting a relativism of all existing mystical traditions, or
rejecting all mystical knowledge-claims in favor of naturalism.
The dispute thus comes down to whether we give more weight to what
the mystics say or to what philosophers say about the nature of other
experiences. In the end, whether one subscribes to extending constructivism
to depth-mystical experiences may depend more on whether one has a prior
commitment to reducing mysticism than anything inherent in the depth-
mystical experience itself. But it must be said that constructivists do not
present a strong case. Their case is built only on imposing philosophical
ideas onto mysticism that were developed for other types of experiences,
not studying mystics first and then devising a theory—they had their
conclusion already made before they turned to mysticism. Nor is their
position the result of any firsthand mystical experiences. Thus, in the end
they have no reason other than an argument based on other experiences to
rule out the possibility of an event of an object-free consciousness. This is a
very risky way to rule out the very possibility that mystics might have a
genuine insight into the nature of reality.

The Possibility of Mystical Insight

Of the three philosophical approaches discussed here, two deny any special
mystical experiences, and all three let doctrines negate the possibility that
mystical experiences might provide some unique, genuine knowledge of
reality. Even if any “mystical experiences” remain after their analyses, the
possibility that they might give knowledge is ruled out—any cognitive
content can be supplied only by cultural sources uninfluenced by mystical
experiences. However, none of the three philosophical positions prove to be
convincing. At most, they show that we have to examine both the
experience and the cultural contexts to understand mystical knowledge-
claims, not that such claims must be ruled out a priori. Whether such claims
can be shown to be true or false will be the subject of the next two chapters.
 3

Are Mystical Experiences Cognitive?

A religious way of life is not simply a matter of accepting a set of

knowledge-claims or ideal values, but how one actually lives. Being
religious cuts to one’s very identity regardless of the doctrines held or
rituals followed. Doctrines and creeds may articulate the content of one’s
faith, but they are not the substance of it. Nevertheless, mystical
experiences allegedly do give knowledge about fundamental realities,
thereby enabling one to live in accord with the way things really are. All
classical mystical traditions contain explicit and implicit claims about the
ultimate nature of both the world and persons that are meant to depict the
way reality truly is. These doctrines articulate what one is prepared to
accept if challenged.
Whether mystical claims are valid or justified is the central
philosophical issue here. Are cognitive experiences limited to sense-
experiences and self-awareness, or do mystical states of consciousness
reveal something about the universe that our ordinary, baseline state of
consciousness cannot?1 Do mystical experiences provide insights into
reality, or are they purely “subjective” with no contact with any reality other
than the brain? Do mystical insights trump claims made from ordinary
experiences? Are they more certain than sense-experiences? Do mystical
experiences offer any “objective” evidence for belief-claims, i.e., grounds
that even opponents concede are a reason to accept certain beliefs (even
though the opponents will not accept them as compelling)? Are extrovertive
mystics justified in claiming that things in the everyday world are
ontologically connected and that there is no ego? Are their experiences at
least some empirical evidence supporting those claims? Are introvertive
mystics justified in the implicit claim to have experienced a transcendent
reality and in their explicit claims about the nature of what is experienced?
How can a nonconceptual, objectless experience be cognitive? How do we
know mystics are not having delusions? Do conflicting mystical doctrines
mean that the experiences have no cognitive value? Are there grounds
independent of mystical experiences that justify or refute their claims about
what is real? Are some mystical claims epistemically superior to others?
Strict evidentialists in philosophy object that if there is no clear evidence in
favor of transcendent realities, then it is irrational to believe in God or
another such reality. So are mystics rational in accepting their mystical
claims? Are nonmystics rational in accepting mystical claims? (Whether
natural explanations explain away mystical cognitive claims will be the
subject of the next chapter; whether mystical claims are scientifically
testable will be a subject in chapter 8.)
The most basic set of questions are these: (1) Are mystical experiences
cognitive? That is, are there grounds to accept or to reject the basic claim
that mystical experiences are veridical and thus tell us something of the
nature of reality? Do introvertive experiences offer evidence of the
existence of some transcendent reality? (2) Do mystical experiences favor
one particular interpretation or one set of doctrines over competing claims?
(3) Are mystics at least rational in accepting their experiences as veridical
and as evidence for their particular tradition’s doctrines? (4) Are
nonmystical rational in accepting mystical claims?

Can Nonmystics Judge the Veridicality of Mystical Experiences?

One important preliminary question is whether nonmystics are in a position
to make any judgments about the veridicality of mystical experiences.
Mystics certainly are privileged with regard to the phenomenology of their
experience—anyone is so privileged with regard to his or her own
experiences. But even mystics themselves can evaluate the cognitive import
of their experiences only outside of introvertive experiences in a dualistic
state of consciousness, whether mindful or not, when the mind is aware of
differentiations and can consider different factors. So too, mystics
themselves can assess the role their own mystical experiences play in
justifying their claims only outside introvertive mystical experiences. And
so too, the concrete alleged mystical insights into the true nature of reality
arise as postexperience events occurring outside of introvertive states:
mystics may have experienced a transcendent reality—it is only after
introvertive experiences that mystics see “how things really are.” And all
such evaluations involve more factors than mystical experiences alone.
Even if (contra Kant and constructivists) mystics have direct and
unmediated access to a noumenal reality free of any categories that generate
phenomena and free of our cultural concepts structuring them, what
cognitive significance they see in the experience arises only after the
experience is over.
In such circumstances, the question of whether either mystical
experiences lead to insights into realities lies outside the phenomenological
accounts of the experiences themselves, and there is no reason that the
mystics themselves should be privileged in the dualistic domain. Merely
having a mystical experience is not grounds in itself for its own veridicality.
Indeed, that a mystical experience is taken to provide an insight at all rather
than producing a delusion depends on factors outside the experience: even a
concept-free depth-experience is not necessarily cognitive—some people
today who have this experience reject it as nothing but a delusion resulting
from an empty mind. Thus, even mystics themselves need arguments for
accepting their own experiences as cognitive as well as for their particular
doctrines.
Nor is there a need to have mystical experiences to evaluate the basic
philosophical claim that mystical experiences are cognitive: nonmystics can
do the same weighing of factors that mystics must do. Nonmystics can
readily accept that such experiences are genuine, unique neurological
events and that they are cognitively significant and emotionally very
powerful. Even naturalists and the spiritually blind can be sensitive to the
possibility of transcendent realities and accept the sincerity of mystics.
Thus, mystics and nonmystics are in the same position and meet on neutral
ground on this epistemic issue of whether these experiences are cognitive
and hence whether mystics therefore know more of reality than do
nonmystics.
All of this means that nonmystics are not compelled to accept the
mystics’ own assessment of their experiences. Even if mystics have unique
experiences, they describe their experiences and make doctrinal claims only
once they have returned to a “dualistic” state of consciousness, and in the
end they are not in a privileged position with regard to the justification of
their claims. Being a mystic does not necessarily qualify one to see the
various issues involved in making claims to knowledge. In fact, the strong
emotional impact that mystics often feel from these experiences may make
it harder for them to examine their own experiences and claims critically
and to avoid an unwarranted sense of certainty in their own particular
interpretation of their experiences. Thus, a philosophical examination is
especially important in this field.
That such evaluations occur in a dualistic state of consciousness is not
elevating ordinary consciousness above mystical states in matters of
cognition. It merely recognizes that mystics too make the judgment of the
cognitive value of mystical insights in dualistic consciousness—one may
still conclude that mystical experiences offer greater insights than ordinary
consciousness. Nor do such judgments reduce mystical knowledge-claims
to ordinary claims about natural objects made in intentional consciousness
apart from contemplative states (although philosophers do routinely treat all
mystics’ knowledge-claims as if they are propositions about sense-
experience and ordinary objects in the universe). Evaluations might be
different in certain altered states of consciousness, but even mystics must
make their judgments about the status of those altered states in ordinary
consciousness. That is, during an altered state of consciousness the
experiences may be so overwhelming that one may be absolutely certain
that one has experienced a reality or that one’s doctrines are true, but it is in
the ordinary baseline state of consciousness that one is confronted by
challenges to such claims and must evaluate alternatives, and thus such
certainty cannot be maintained.
Thus, there does not appear to be any reason to deny nonmystics the
right to evaluate the cognitive status of mystical experiences. Having an
experience is one thing; evaluating its significance is another. That
interpretations of these experiences conflict among mystics themselves only
highlights the situation.2 Thus, mystics cannot simply say “Sorry, we’ve
had the experiences, and you have not” when it comes to the cognitive
status of their claims. The justification or warrant for the claim to have had
a mystical experience may be internal to a person, but justification for the
experience being cognitive or for a specific doctrine is external.
 What Can Mystics Claim to Know?
Thus, we can proceed, and the next question is what exactly mystics can
claim to know. Do introvertive mystical experiences offer a credible case
for mystics gaining knowledge of transcendent realities in general? Or of a
transcendent reality of a specific nature? Mystics typically do not
tentatively set forth what they believe they have experienced. But mystical
experiences give knowledge only in the context of wider systems of
thought, and mystics provide “thick” descriptions of what they know about
reality in terms of their system, not “thin” phenomenological depictions of
their experiences. That is, mystics give highly ramified depictions of what
they know through their experiences, and certainty is a general
characteristic of traditional mystics. Theistic mystics typically are not
skeptical or agnostic about the existence of God or their experiences of him;
rather, they have an unshakeable conviction. Traditional mystics in general
tend to be naive realists about their claims, and if they are aware of
competing interpretations they argue that such interpretations are clearly
wrong. But to hold that one account gives a description of the content of a
mystical experience without any interpretive elements will depend on wider
ontic and conceptual commitments. And this leads to the question of what
knowledge-claims the experiences actually justify.
Consider some examples. Does a depth-mystical experience confirm
Advaita’s view of a fundamental consciousness that is the only reality in all
phenomena, or does it confirm Samkhya’s view of multiple centers of
consciousness? Or does it confirm no more than that there is a natural state
of pure consciousness? Do differentiated introvertive experiences confirm
the Buddhists’ typology of inner states, or the Samkhyas’? Do they conflict
with the extrovertive Buddhist view that consciousness is a series of
temporary conditioned events? Are theistic introvertive experiences of a
trinitarian god of Christianity, or of the simpler divine unity of the one-
person god of Judaism and Islam, or of the more immanent god of
Ramanuja, or of just a generic personal “source”? Do depth-mystical
experiences confirm any of these theistic views? How do we decide
between accepting a Buddhist meditator’s discovery “based on their first-
hand experiences” that there is no soul or a Christian or Hindu
contemplative’s claim that through “repeated experiments” that were
“verified” by their meditative experiences that in fact there is an eternal
soul beneath the fleeting apparitions of the personality (McMahan 2008:
210)? Are all interpretations merely speculative “over-beliefs,” as William
James called them (1958: 387–88), that are in no way justified by the
experiences?
The lack of third-party checking of mystical claims is an issue here.3
When it comes to conflicting claims involving sense-experience, others can
test the credibility of the evidence for our claims. No such procedure is
possible for mystics’ claims: unlike sense-objects, no transcendent reality
can be presented for checking by others, and any new mystical experiences
would be taken only as confirming the experiencer’s own tradition’s claims.
For this reason, naturalists rule out introvertive mystical experiences as
possibly cognitive—what is experienced is deemed an hallucination since it
cannot be seen, touched, or otherwise sensed by others. We cannot even tell
if experiences by different persons have anything “objective” in common.
Of course, no one’s inner experiences can be presented for others to see, but
in the case of, say, astronomical observations, others can look into the
telescope and confirm (if trained) an observation or disconfirm it.4 Masters
in meditative traditions may have tests to determine if a practitioner is
enlightened, but from the scientific point of view those tests are still indirect
and subjective; at most they can confirm that an experience occurred, but
they cannot confirm that the tradition’s doctrinal interpretation is correct.
The judgment of whether this lack of third-party checking rules out the
possibility of mystical experiences being cognitive depends on whether one
believes the standards of science apply to all cognitive claims. Obviously,
this is a basic conflict between naturalist and traditional religious points of
view.5
This might be less of a problem if there were one agreed-on
interpretation of the transcendent realities allegedly experienced from the
different mystical traditions of the world, but there is no convergence of the
diverse conflicting doctrines and none is in sight. So too, there do not
appear to be any neutral criteria to adjudicate the disputes between mystical
interpretations (as discussed below). There are theistic and nontheistic
monisms and dualisms, each supported by different mystics. As just noted,
Abrahamic theists are split. In theisms, there is also the problem that the
depth-mystical experience has been interpreted as either an experience of
God or the experience of only the root of the self. Of course, religious
theorists within any tradition will be able to advance reasons to prefer one
interpretation over others, but equally obviously members of other
traditions with other basic beliefs will most likely remain unconvinced and
will offer their own reasons for other positions.
It is because mystical experiences are not self-interpreting that they are
open to being seen as supporting these diverse claims. However, this has
one major consequence: even the mystics themselves are not justified by
their experiences alone in accepting their mystical experiences as
conclusive confirmation of their tradition’s doctrines. Shankara appealed to
the Vedas. Martin Buber interpreted his experiences against orthodox
Jewish beliefs. But can introvertive mystics at least offer their experience as
some evidence that they have experienced some transcendent reality? They
sense something as overwhelmingly more real when compared to what is
experienced in ordinary consciousness. But two points present problems.
First, the mystics’ certainty is in their tradition’s doctrines, not in the
abstract claim that some transcendent reality exists. Even if mystics do
experience the same transcendent reality or the depth of the self, the fact
remains that each mystic typically thinks that his or her doctrine (and thus
doctrines in other traditions that concur with it) is the “best” or “least
inadequate” understanding of the nature of what is experienced and that any
conflicting doctrine is inadequate. Certainty that at least some transcendent
reality was experienced might count as evidence if all mystics agreed on an
interpretation of the nature of what was experienced. But the diversity of
understandings precludes this. And if the mystics’ certitude here is
misplaced, they may also be mistaken in the entailed claim that they
experienced a transcendent reality. Even if an experiencer has no doubts
about his or her interpretation, the resulting certainty is simply irrelevant to
the cognitive issue when there are competing claims. No matter how
powerful the experience may have been to an experiencer, this does not
exempt the experiencer from the possibility of error concerning the status
and nature of what was experienced. Like the prisoner from Plato’s cave
who mistook the sun in all its dazzling splendor to be the author of the
universe, mystics may make mistakes in their doctrinal conclusions.
Second, most mystics have an absolute and unflinching certainty after
the event that the experiences convey the sense of something real—that
what was experienced is not a delusion or dream. Any sense of certainty
during the experience may be explained away by the lack of activity of the
brain’s critical faculties, but the persisting sense of certainty after the
experience must also be explained. For example, experiencers of drug-
induced experiences can differentiate some obviously wrong beliefs (e.g.,
“The entire universe is pervaded by a strong odor of turpentine”) that
seemed certain at the time of the experience from other certainties (Smith
2000: 65). Mystics appear certain that no experience could undercut the
vivid sense of fundamental reality. However, some experiencers think their
experiences are delusions and only result from natural states of the mind.
And naturalists can still claim that mystics are mistaken: the experiences
may well overwhelm mystics, but they are only a natural event resulting
from the brain being emptied of all differentiable content. The character of
the depth-mystical experience would be the same whether a transcendent
reality or merely the natural mind is experienced (since it is empty of
differentiated content), and it is the postexperience evaluation of what is
experienced that determines the emotional impact the experience has on a
mystic’s life.
As discussed in the next chapter, naturalists’ explanations do not refute
transcendent explanations, but they offer a credible alternative to religious
explanations. In such circumstances, how can mystics justify any claims to
have experienced a transcendent reality without advancing an independent
argument? Mystical experiences per se do not seem capable of resolving the
naturalist versus transcendent dispute—i.e., that only sense-experience
combined with reason can discover truths about reality versus seeing
naturalism as grounded, in William James’s words, in the “baseless
prejudice” of supposing that sensory awareness is the only vehicle of
awareness of reality. Even if introvertive mystics have direct, unmediated
access to a noumenon and the content of the experience has an impact on
their later beliefs, how can they be certain that that is so? How can theistic
mystics be sure, in the words of the “Letter of Private Counsel,” that they
have “seen and felt … God as he is in himself”? The claim is about
something real apart from the state of mind. When I have a pain, I may be
certain I have a pain, but that is not a claim about reality apart from my
state of mind or its causes. A mystical experience is self-validating as a
state of consciousness, but how can mystics be certain about the state of
affairs apart from their state of consciousness (e.g., its causes)?
Naturalists point to the diversity in the interpretations of mystical
realities occurring in mystical traditions from around the world and
throughout history as an indication that no reality is actually experienced.
But that does not follow: it only shows that postexperience ideas conflict—
competing interpretations do not rule out the possibility that introvertive
mystics in fact experience some transcendent reality, or rule out that one
account may be the best possible. At most, all that follows is that even
mystics cannot know the nature of any transcendent reality that they
experience. And this would mean that the mystics’ certainty in the highly
ramified conceptions and doctrines that they advance to close off some
mystery is misplaced: it may be that many—perhaps most or even all—
mystics misinterpret their introvertive experiences and thus are wrong.
There may be a common element to all introvertive mystical accounts—
e.g., a profound sense of a direct, unmediated experience of a nondual and
fundamental reality—that transcends cultures, but there is no simple,
neutral account of the full nature of that reality.
Nor is there any empirical way to test mystics’ claims. Even if the
experiences are reproducible by the same experiencer or by others through
training, and even if meditation masters can devise tests to determine if a
student has achieved enlightenment or have had the same experiences they
have had, these procedures do not establish the veridicality of the
experience—even some optical illusions, such as mirages, are public. Nor
could this procedure test the ontic claims of the tradition’s account of
transcendent realities against competing claims or against naturalists’
reductions. As already noted, tests for duplicating first-person experiences
will test only their occurrence, not the resulting doctrines: since any
transcendent realities cannot be presented for examination by others, the
different interpretations cannot be tested in an intersubjective manner. Nor
would any mystical experience falsify a doctrine, since the experiencer
would always interpret the experience as confirming his or her tradition’s
doctrines even if those doctrines must be modified or reinterpreted to
accommodate the new alleged experiential insights. Nor do nonmystical
experiences bear on claims about the beingness of the phenomenal natural
realm or the possible existence of transcendent realities. In short, there is no
empirical way to check mystical implicit or explicit ontic claims. Any
support for such claims will have to come from other sources.
Thus, mystical doctrines may be revisable by nonexperiential sources,
but there is no fresh experiential input to challenge them. In explaining new
phenomena in science, there may be an initial diversity of conflicting
theories, but scientists can test the interpretations against new experiential
input and with generally agreed-on criteria for selecting the better theory;
thus, eventually a consensus usually arises. But in mysticism there is no
empirical way to test the interpretations, and no cross-cultural set of criteria
for determining the best interpretation (as discussed below). Mystics do not
engage the transcendent the way scientists engage the world: there are no
experiments or other input from new experiences as time goes on. There are
no new, genuinely novel depth-mystical experiences to challenge or correct
previous mystical conceptions or otherwise test the various interpretations,
but simply the same “pure consciousness” event empty of differentiated
content recurring over and over again; if it is truly devoid of differentiable
content, the experience remains the same each time for every experiencer
throughout the world. So too for theistic mystical claims. The Abrahamic
theists’ views of the nature of God have evolved over the last 3,000 years.
Arguably, introvertive mystical experiences contributed to this process in
the past. But these experiences can no longer offer fresh input for any future
theological revisions, since theistic introvertive experiences offer no more
than “the presence of a loving reality”—new information is not given in
these experiences, as with alleged revelations. Mystics, in short, are not
learning more about transcendent realities (if they exist) that could help
resolve any of the disputes.

Mysticism and Empiricism

Moreover, if the different interpretations are all equally well grounded in
the same experiences and are equally reasonable (as discussed below), the
problem of competing interpretations rules out any simple empiricism in
mysticism. Mystical knowledge may be grounded in experience, but the
variety of understanding in the world’s mystical traditions shows that
mystical knowledge cannot be deduced in a simple fashion from
phenomenological descriptions of the experiences themselves. Experience
does not dictate a knowledge-claim about the nature of what is experienced
—even here knowledge-claims are always more than what can be justified
by the experience alone. For example, how could Advaitins know by any
experience that a transcendent consciousness is common to all persons and
all worldly phenomena? They would have to offer more than their inner
experiences to identify their self (atman) and the ground of reality
(brahman) or to argue that Brahman is conscious and it alone is real. There
is no agreed-on core of doctrines that is common to all or most mystical
traditions about what is experienced in either type of introvertive
experiences that is derivable from mystical experiences in a
straightforward, empiricist manner. And even if all “theory” of what is
experienced can be totally separated from the experience here (unlike with
sense-experiences), the problem still remains: the “over-beliefs” remain
essential to the understanding that the mystics themselves must have of
their own experiences to lead their ways of life in accord with how they see
reality. Thus, an element that goes beyond what the experiences warrant
remains an irremovable part of mysticism.
Nevertheless, mysticism is often portrayed as a form of empiricism.
Robert Nozick says that Aurobindo “is a mystic empiricist in that he builds
on his mystic experiences, offering us descriptions of them, hypotheses that
stick rather closely to them, and also bold speculations which reach far
beyond the experiences themselves in order to place them in a coherent
world picture” (in Phillips 1986: viii). “Empiricist” and “bold speculations”
are not words normally found in the same sentence. The core claim of
empiricism is that we do not have any knowledge beyond what is justified
by experience alone—empiricists do not accept any alleged knowledge-
claims that go beyond experience, let alone speculation. Buddhism too is
often seen as a form of “radical empiricism.” B. Alan Wallace talks of a
“return to empiricism” (2006: 37). He decries “mystical theology” and any
“leap of faith that violates reason” (ibid.: 36). But he has no problem
utilizing the Yogachara Buddhist concept of the alaya-vijnana—an alleged
substrate “storehouse-consciousness” that precedes life and continues
beyond death in which karmic seeds take root and develop; it is the ultimate
ground state of consciousness, existing prior to all conceptual dichotomies,
including subject/object and mind/matter (ibid.: 33–36). However, it is hard
to see how we could know by any experience that this substrate existed
prior to life and consciousness. How could any experiences prove that there
is a reality that existed prior to the dichotomy of “mind” and “matter,” or
that consciousness has no beginning but has existed since the beginning of
the universe, or that consciousness will never end? Thus, the “storehouse
consciousness” appears to be a bit of Buddhist theorizing: it is an attempt to
answer the problem of how present actions can have karmic effects in future
rebirths when everything under Buddhist metaphysics is momentary.
Moreover, most Buddhists reject such a posit. In other Buddhist schools,
there is no permanent continuum underlying the changing configurations of
the parts constituting a person that can be found in any of our experiences.
Nor does an individual’s constantly changing consciousness arise from a
permanent reality. For example, the Vaibhashikas believe, in Wallace’s
words, that only “brief, irreducible moments of consciousness are the
absolute level of the mind” (2008: 121). In sum, positing a substrate
consciousness is not the simple result of empiricism connected to
meditative or other experiences, but is speculation. An empiricist would
instead remain agnostic about claims beyond our experience.
That classical mystics justify their claims by appeal to their tradition’s
authorities and doctrines and not their own experiences also conflicts with
empiricism. Even Buddhist schools over time came to accept the Buddha’s
testimony (shabda) as a means of valid knowledge, along with perception
and inference.6 If mystics have to check their beliefs against the Vedas, the
Bible, the Quran, or another revealed source to be sure what their
experiences “confirm” and indeed that their experiences are veridical, then
they are not empiricists, and ultimately they are in no better position than
the rest of us for determining the actual nature of what was experienced
since mystical experiences cannot tell us which authority we should accept
as revealed, if any. The decision to accept something as a revelation
typically comes prior to mystical enlightenment, and it is hard to see
mystical experiences verifying the choice when mystics in different
traditions make the same claim for their own scripture. That a mystic had
prior beliefs when a mystical experience occurred does not absolutely rule
out that experience as being cognitive or what the mystic claims it was, any
more than the fact that scientists have prior beliefs invalidates their
observations or rules out their theories as scientific knowledge. But it
dictates caution in accepting the mystic’s claims. So too, that mystics appeal
to scripture does not mean that mystical experiences are not cognitive, but it
does mean that more factors are involved in determining what the insight
actually is than the experiences alone.
“Empiricism” means more than simply “experientially based,” and
knowledge-claims in mysticism are always more than what can be justified
by the experience alone, as empiricism requires. Because there are equally
well grounded competing mystical doctrines, there also cannot be any
simple correspondence theory of truth between highly ramified claims and
experiential facts. Nor can there be any foundation of solid, indisputable
beliefs based on self-evident or indubitable premises concerning mystical
experiences: the sense that one has experienced a transcendent reality may
be incorrigible, but no “thick” description of what is experienced appears
impervious to error. Nor do mystics offer tentative speculative hypotheses
based on their experiences—they experience God, Brahman, or whatever.
Even if the depth-mystical experience is a direct experience of a noumenal
reality unmediated by any structuring, each mystic takes the same
experiences as confirming his or her tradition’s doctrines (even if mystics
must reinterpret those doctrines in light of the their experiences). But if this
and other introvertive experiences are open to numerous competing
understandings, they obviously are not self-interpreting or self-validating,
even if mystics typically think their own experiences are.

The Principle of Credulity

Are there nonempirical grounds to establish the doctrines of a specific
tradition or at least the more basic claim that introvertive mystics
experience a transcendent reality? Some Christian philosophers and
theologians today who subscribe to a reliabilist theory of knowledge invoke
“the principle of credulity” under which we should accept experiencers’
claims until it can be shown that the experiences are based on some
unreliable mechanism or it is overridden by other considerations that defeat
the claims (e.g., Swinburne 1991: 303–18). In the case of transcendent
experiences, a second requirement is that the existence of transcendent
realities must not seem very unlikely on philosophical grounds. But as long
as philosophers are split on the issue, it is hard to argue that one can only be
rational if one concludes that it is very unlikely that such realities exist.
The principle goes back to Thomas Reid’s common-sense response to
David Hume’s skepticism: our beliefs about the existence of the external
world, the past, and other minds are not products of rational arguments or
any inferences; rather, we simply have innate capacities that generate such
beliefs; when these capacities are operating properly and under the
appropriate circumstances, it is rational for us to accept the beliefs they
produce. The skeptics’ unanswerable demands for certainty can simply be
ignored. Thus, these thinkers reverse Cartesian doubt and argue that we
should believe experiential claims unless we have good reason not to. And
mystical experiences apparently do occur in physically and psychologically
healthy persons without damaging their well-being (e.g., Hood 1997). Thus,
this principle, they argue, gives a prima facie reason to believe what mystics
claim to have experienced and shifts the burden of proof to the naturalists to
show that all mystical experiences are somehow pathological and not
reliable cognitive experiences (Franks Davis 1989: 101; also see Newberg,
D’Aquili, & Rause 2002: 146–47).
But naturalists believe that these experiences result from purely natural
neural mechanisms that even if functioning properly mislead experiencers
into thinking they have realized something transcendent, and this ipso facto
shows that these mechanisms are obviously unreliable for generating
beliefs. At a minimum, the plausibility of natural explanations must
undercut the epistemic confidence that mystics may have in their own
experiences—how can they unreservedly commit themselves when there is
a very real possibility of delusion? Why do someone’s mystical experiences
typically just happen to “confirm” the doctrines that that person already
holds and not another tradition’s? Again, mystics believe that it is some
highly specified reality that is verified, not an abstract “ultimate reality” or
“something more to reality.” Thus, the competing interpretations of either
type of introvertive experiences raise a problem here: if mystics disagree
among themselves about what is experienced, why should we treat these
experiences as reliable sources of knowledge? If one interpretation is
correct, then ipso facto all mystics who dispute that interpretation are
wrong. This means that many mystics, perhaps the majority, misunderstand
their own experiences.
One cannot brush aside the issue the way the theologian Richard
Swinburne attempts by claiming that all transcendent concepts are merely
different names for God (1991: 316)—e.g., Brahman is not merely a name
for God since it is nonpersonal in nature, traditionally has no moral
concerns for the phenomenal world and its creatures, and does not hear
prayers or speak to beings. Swinburne also invokes a “principle of
testimony” in order that the faithful can rely on the experiences of others
(ibid.: 322–25). But experiencers can be misled by the phenomenology of
mystical experiences and thus be honestly mistaken as to what is
experienced; they may also automatically read in their tradition’s highly
ramified concepts. Thus, we cannot rely on the reports of others to
determine the truth of mystical knowledge-claims, no matter what we think
of their character.
Also remember that many who undergo mystical experiences today see
no cognitive significance in them at all—to them, they are merely exotic
experiences stimulated by drugs or other artificial triggers that are subject to
a naturalistic reduction.7 That mystics must weigh different types of
mystical experiences against each other (as discussed in chapter 1) also
means that no inevitable judgment of the cognitive significance of any one
type of mystical experience is given.
All of this is very damaging: if many, if not most, mystics must be
misunderstanding their experiences, this radically undercuts the alleged
reliability of mystical experiences and thus the credibility of any mystical
knowledge-claims. How can mystics commit to their own doctrines and
traditions in that case? Agnosticism should result. Thus, critics see the
principle of credulity as a “principle of gullibility” unless mystical claims
can be justified as valid on other grounds—asserting that such claims
should be accepted unless there are grounds to reject them is not enough.
And finding such positive grounds is difficult. For example, as will be
discussed in the next chapter, we cannot determine on neurological grounds
alone whether a mystical experience is an authentic experience of a
transcendent reality or whether experiencers merely mistakenly take it to be
so. So too, the commonality of mystical experiences around the world does
not necessarily mean they are veridical, but only that we are all constituted
the same way with regard to these experiences. The sense of profundity and
bliss and the great emotional impact are also irrelevant, as are any potential
psychological or physical benefits of meditation—these could occur just as
well if the cognitive claims are false and the experiences are the product
only of the brain. Thus, to critics, even if the principle applies to sense-
experience, there are no good reasons to believe that mystical experiences
are not delusional, and thus the principle should not be applied to mystical
experiences. And there is a division over whether mystical experiences are
veridical that does not occur for sense-experiences; thus, the principle may
apply to sense-experience but not obviously apply to mystical experiences.
In sum, saying that we simply should assume they are veridical unless they
are shown to be delusional does seem to be question-begging.
The naturalist view leads to a radical skepticism concerning all
mystical claims. In addition, if all mystical knowledge-claims are equally
well grounded in experiences, the principle of credulity leads to a
paradoxical pluralism among mystics of equally acceptable conflicting
knowledge-claims. That is, even if we use the principle to conclude that we
should accept that introvertive mystics experience some transcendent
reality, nevertheless the beliefs conflict over what that reality is taken to be.
The distinction between interpretation and experience occurs here in a way
it does not in sense-experience. At a minimum, this means that even if
mystics are cognitive of some transcendent reality the principle of credulity
is not a good reason by itself to assume the truth of the specific beliefs of
any particular tradition. The cases for each tradition’s set of doctrinal
knowledge-claims would have to be examined to see if there are good
reasons to accept them.

The Analogy to Sense-Perception

Another popular argument for the veridicality of mystical experiences is
based on an analogy to sense-perception. This is a reasonable approach,
since sense-experience is considered the paradigm of epistemic reliability in
our culture, principally because of intersubjective checkability. In addition,
mystics do utilize sensory terminology—“seeing,” “feeling,” “touching,”
“grasping,” “embracing,” “penetrating” a reality. Some philosophers
attempt to show that it is just as reasonable to accept mystical claims as it is
to accept claims based on sense-perceptions. That is, if we accept sense-
experiences as reliable, then we should also equally accept mystical
experiences as reliable (see Wainwright 1981: chap. 3; Swinburne 1991;
Yandell 1993; Gellman 1997, 2001).
William Alston stresses this analogy, calling the direct, noninferential
mystical experiences of God “mystical perceptions” (1991).8 However, he
does not focus on the experiences themselves but on the belief-forming and
evaluating practices connected to them—“doxastic practices.” (That
mystics traditionally appeal to their tradition’s authorities and not to their
own experiences is relevant here: mystics themselves judge their own
experiences to be veridical by a social practice.) Alston’s position is that if a
mystical doxastic practice as a whole can be shown to be epistemically
similar to the practice of forming beliefs on the basis of sense-perceptions
or memories, then it is just as rational to accept the former as it is to accept
the latter. There is no noncircular way to justify the latter as a whole, since
we must rely on other sense-perceptions or memories to confirm or
disconfirm any claims based on them. Indeed, no doxastic practice can be
justified by outside standards—there is no way to justify all of one’s
justifiers. We must accept the general reliability of sensing and memory,
and he argues that the same holds for some mystical practices. He
concentrates on Christianity and argues that Christian mystical practices
give Christian mystical beliefs the same epistemic status as beliefs formed
from sense-experiences and have nothing to disqualify their rational
acceptance. In sum, the Christian mystical practice is rationally engaged in
because it is a socially established belief-forming practice that is not
demonstrably unreliable or otherwise disqualified for rational acceptance
(ibid.: 194). For Alston, both sense-experience and mystical experience
involve a direct realism, i.e., the perceptions involve access to and a direct
awareness of, its objects, although both, following Kant, are “shot through
with ‘interpretation’ ” (ibid.: 27). In both cases, there is also no independent
way of establishing the purported objects of the experience. Alston accepts
both types of experience as reliable, but he admits that the mystical belief-
forming practice does not have the same degree of reliability as sense-
perception’s since there is nothing comparable in mystical practices to
third-person checking of beliefs based on sense-perception (ibid.: 211–13,
238).
For the analogy to proceed, mystical experiences must be relevantly
similar to sense-experiences. In practice, this has meant that philosophers
have treated transcendent realities as ordinary intentional objects and
mystical experiences as having a subject/object structure—positions that
mystics reject. Mystical claims’ lack of public checkability also remains too
significant for many philosophers to accept the analogy (see Gale 2005:
428–33 for standard objections). As noted, transcendent objects are not
phenomenal objects that can be identified empirically, and thus claims
about them are not checkable empirically.9 Moreover, sense-perception is
universal and unavoidable—we cannot help but have the world impinge on
us and must rely on sense-experience to survive. Mystical experiences, even
if more common than usually supposed, are rare in comparison. Indeed,
even for those who have had more than one mystical experience, they are
rare compared to a lifetime of ordinary sense-experiences. This does not
mean that mystical experiences cannot be veridical, but it does put them in
a separate class from sense-experiences. Alston, however, dismisses any
disanalogies to sense-experience—in particular, the lack of third-person
checking—as an “epistemic imperialism” of importing standards from one
doxastic practice into another (1991: 216). This makes Alston’s argument
very frustrating: it leads quickly to the claim that mystical experiences must
be as reliable as sense-experiences because any differences, no matter how
substantive, can be dismissed as inapplicable. Thereby, mystical
experiences of course end up being analogous to sense-experience since
anything dissimilar is dismissed.
Another problem is that the world appears “religiously ambiguous,” as
John Hick put it (1989:226), both between natural and religious
explanations and among competing religious explanations, but it is not
“physically ambiguous” when it comes to sense-experiences. There simply
are more fundamental metaphysical choices in the interpretation of mystical
experiences than for sense-experiences—mystical beliefs are more diverse
and even incompatible on the very nature of what is experienced in a way
that beliefs about the external world are not. Cultural beliefs may well
shape our sense-experiences and produce diverse catalogs of the objects
populating the world, but beliefs lead to variations in the understanding of
the mystical experiential input in a way that they do not in sense-
experience: identifying the theistic experience as, say, of a trinitarian god is
not given in the experience itself in any straightforward way but depends on
applying a large body of theological background beliefs. Interpretations of
the reality involved in introvertive mystical experiences reflect a difference
about the fundamental ontic nature of what is experienced, not merely a
difference in classification as with sense-objects.
So too, we must trust the general reliability of sense-experience and
memory in a way that we do not have to with mystical experiences. There is
no alternative explanation for the sensory claims, as Alston admits (1991:
275), but not only is there a significant conflict of religious interpretations
of the mystical experiences, the alternative of plausible naturalistic
reductions of mystical experiences that reject them as cognitive must be
taken into consideration. Overall, mystical experiences play a smaller role
in the final determination of knowledge-claims than in the case of sense-
experiences: mystical experiences cannot be reproduced in a third-person
manner for checking mystical claims; because of this lack of testability,
mystics are not as greatly constrained by their experiences in the theories
they hold as in science. And if mystical claims in the end genuinely
conflict, then, as noted above, most mystics are wrong, and thus mystical
experiences, unlike sense-perception, are an unreliable basis for belief-
formation. That is, it is not merely internal inconsistency within a way of
life that would render a practice unreliable—the conflict between
irreconcilable claims from different traditions in effect cancels the
reliability of each claim produced within a mystical practice. This means
that the conflict provides good reason to withhold assent to any doctrines of
any tradition—and this applies to the mystics themselves: they should
withhold assent to the doctrines of their own tradition. Their doctrines are
as unreliable as the doctrines of other traditions even if some doctrines
happen to be correct.
On the other side, those who think that the depth-mystical experience
is unique epistemically as well as physiologically also reject the analogy to
sense-perceptions as fundamentally misleading. The fundamental problem
is that mystical experiences involve a knowledge by “participation” or
“identity,” not anything like a “nonsensory sense-perception” since it has no
object-like content to perceive. It is the exact opposite of being “confronted
with an object or reality that appears to or is present to [mystics] in a
nonsensory way” (contra Gellman 2001: 11). Nothing is presented like an
object distinct from the mind, and to think of mystics as actually
“perceiving God” is to get off on the wrong foot since it establishes a
duality of experiencer and what is experienced that mystics deny. The states
of consciousness permitting participatory knowledge make that knowledge
unique. Transcendent realities allegedly are present in a way any
phenomenon of the world is not. Perception requires some kind of
intentional image, and even if introvertive mystics use the language of
imagery, introvertive experiences do not involve any. Mystics use sensory
terms taken from the everyday world, but this does not mean that any
introvertive mystical experience is in any substantive way like an
intentional sense-experience or that introvertive mystical insights are
formed in a parallel way to sensory claims. Sensory terminology is the only
one readily available for distinguishing a cognitive experience from
“feeling” in an emotional sense or from imagination. Even advocates of the
analogy to sense-experience admit that the analogy is only very loose (see
Gale 2005: 432–33), and Alston in the end concedes that the analogy
amounts to no more than that sense-experiences and mystical experiences
are both “socially embedded.”

Problems of Justifying Specific Doctrinal Claims

One standard argument in favor of accepting the doctrinal claims specific to
one particular mystical tradition offers little help: the “argument from
religious experience” for God’s existence and his attributes. Theists take
mystical experiences as positive evidence, or even conclusive proof, that a
transcendent source exists and has certain features. Christians see any
argument for any transcendent source of the world as an argument for the
existence of a Christian version of God (e.g., Franks Davis 1989; Alston
1991; also see Gellman 1997, 2001). For example, Keith Yandell (1993)
presents an argument based on numinous experiences in favor of a creator
god but must dismiss depth-mystical experiences as empty of cognitive
value.10 The problem with such arguments is that their premises can never
be shown to be definitively better grounded in experience or by reasons
than their opponents’ counter-premises. All mystics appear to be in the
same epistemic position. Thus, even if the argument from religious
experience could counter natural reductions and establish that there is some
transcendent reality, the religious beliefs of the nature of that reality still
conflict—e.g., traditions denying a god have just as strong arguments for
the nonexistence of any god as the fundamental reality as those traditions
affirming a version of a personal creator God.11 Alleged refutations
asserting that these arguments cannot establish anything (e.g., Martin 1990;
Gale 1991) also present counterarguments that the religious believe they
can refute but that do not begin to convince the nonreligious.
The basic problem is that we are simply not in a position to see if
mystical experiences are delusions or veridical or what is their proper
interpretation. Even having the experiences will not help when they can be
easily interpreted to fit various religious and naturalist systems. Moreover,
even if mystical experiences are taken as evidence for there being some
transcendent reality, there is a further problem: seeing mystical experience
as supporting the specific doctrines of any particular tradition requires
dismissing at least some accounts from mystics in other traditions and
arguing that those mystics really are experiencing something other than
what they think. Religious theorists are just as willing as naturalists to tell
mystics that they are mistaken about the content of their experiences. For
example, Caroline Franks Davis has to twist the Advaitins’ and Buddhists’
experiences to claim that mystical experiences really support a “broad
theism”—i.e., Shankara was really experiencing God although he explicitly
argued that the nonpersonal Brahman alone is real, and the Buddha was
totally unaware that he was experiencing a god.12 She ultimately claims that
all mystics, despite what they say, really experience “a loving
presence … with whom individuals can have a personal relationship”
(1989: 191)—just as one would expect someone raised a Christian to see
the true “common core” of the experience to be.13 But we cannot simply
translate one tradition’s highly ramified concepts depicting a transcendent
reality into another tradition’s equally highly ramified but different
concepts, nor can we simply assume that all low-ramified concepts about
the mystical experience support one chosen set of highly ramified
theological concepts over other interpretations and then conclude that all
mystical traditions really support one’s own tradition’s doctrines, although
the outsiders themselves do not know it. Such arguments rest squarely in
theological reasoning and are not based on mystical experiences
themselves.
Nontheists also can just as easily apply the same contorted maneuvers
to the claims of Christian mystics to conclude that a transcendent source is
nonpersonal in nature or is only the mystic’s own transcendent self.
Christians may reject the evidential support of mystical experience for
nontheistic doctrines because the latter are “intertwined with bizarre and
fantastic elements” (Gellman 2001: 37), but non-Christians could do the
same with Christianity, starting with the core idea of a self-existent
transcendent creator who was incarnated through an immaculate conception
as a human being and yet who remained fully God while being fully human,
who died as a ransom for all human beings for the sins committed by the
original two human beings whom God created, and who then rose from the
dead and ascended into heaven. Overall, the vast majority of religious
believers will end up seeing even the depth-mystical experience as
objective support for the tradition they just happen to have been raised in.
Mystics may have to revise their understanding of the tradition’s doctrines
in light of the experiences, but they would still see these experiences as
confirming their beliefs. In such circumstances, the depth-mystical
experience remains neutral on the matter of which interpretation, if any, is
valid.
Thus, religious theorists looking may easily end up arguing in circles
—starting with one tradition’s ideas, then interpreting the mystical writings
of the world to fit those ideas, and finally concluding that all mystical
experiences are objective confirmations of those ideas. But if mystical
experiences are open to what mystics in different traditions depict them as,
no one religious framework of highly ramified concepts and theories can be
imposed on the experiences’ actual content based only on considerations of
mystical experiences themselves. Even ignoring such contentious issues as
whether what is experienced in introvertive mystical experiences is personal
or nonpersonal in nature, what is experienced may not justify any
theological doctrinal elaborations. Certainly the traditional “omni’s” of a
theistic god—omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence—cannot be
justified by any experience.14 The experiences may overwhelm mystics,
and what mystics encounter may seem to them to be the most powerful
reality that a human being could possibly experience. Thus, they might infer
that what is experienced has the maximum amount of whatever a particular
tradition values, but it hard to see how those qualities could be experienced.
How we could know from any experience that the reality is actually all-
powerful, all-knowing, and all-good? Or that it has infinite power,
knowledge, and goodness? It is too facile for Swinburne to claim that
believers who feel the presence of God or hear a voice or recognize God by
some “sixth sense” can know that God is an infinite or all-powerful being
(1991: 318–19)—that mystics enter an experience with a prior belief in an
omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent reality does not give them any
special ability that other mystics lack to discern such a reality.15 Basic
theological problems such as whether a reality can have all three attributes
or how any loving god can be the ground of a world with so much natural
suffering are irrelevant to what mystics experience. In addition, the utter
simplicity of the depth-mystical experience presents problems for
theologians. It is not at all clear how a mystic could know from a mystical
experience that the reality experienced is a creator or designer or that the
designer must be the same as the ontic source of the world. Theologians
also have the problem that if what is experienced is timeless (i.e., existing
outside of the realm of time), how could it know temporal matters or act in
time at all? Mystics also have the sense that the transcendent reality is
immutable and thus cannot be affected by anything temporal such as the act
of prayer. Nonmystical theologians may prefer a god with more personality
and the ability to act in the world. So too, what mystics experience may
seem to be the source of our reality and make them feel secure in the world,
but how can they tell it is the source of all of the universe or does not have a
further source of its own being that was not experienced? Of course,
theologians may simply equate whatever mystics experience with their
theological version of a transcendent source and then jump quickly to
seeing all mystical experiences as support for their full theological
conceptions without seriously considering or perhaps even seeing other
possible options.
And again, the diversity of religious doctrines presents a grave
problem even for those who reject naturalistic reductions of mystical
experiences. Of course, believers in each tradition will be confident that
they are right and any conflicting beliefs are wrong, and they will try to
show that their interpretation is superior to that of other traditions. But such
arguments will have to be based on grounds other than the mystical
experiences themselves. And even if there are theological arguments for
preferring one religious interpretation over others, the important point here
is that mystical experiences will not be evidence for one set of doctrines
over another. The experiences can be added to a “cumulative case” that
incorporates revelations, natural theology, and philosophical arguments for
a “best available explanation” argument for a particular religion’s doctrines.
But the same mystical experiences can be incorporated into a cumulative
case for any tradition. The experience is not self-interpreting but is
interpreted in light of the other elements of the case. In this way, the
experiences add no weight for one cumulative case against those of other
traditions since they give the same empirical weight to all. Thus, the
experiences themselves do not help determine the best available
explanation.

The Limitation of Any Mystical Claim to Knowledge

If transcendent realities are truly unknowable, then mystics would not even
know they exist—we may make a metaphysical posit, but nothing
experiential would be involved. But mystics are certain that they have
experienced some fundamental reality: they are aware of a reality and are
not merely advancing theological posits. Nor do they infer the reality
allegedly experienced: in “knowledge by participation,” transcendent
realities are directly known in that sense. Nevertheless, while the experience
of a transcendent reality may be direct (i.e., unmediated) and not inferred,
the understanding of what is experienced is not—that is a matter of
interpretation. In particular, the depth-mystical experience is empty of
everything but a sense of a nondual consciousness; it is not possible to
deduce in a simple way any highly-ramified concepts from it. More
generally, the articulated knowledge-claims of mystical ways of life are
only indirectly inferred. To give another example: Buddhists claim that
enlightenment is the end of the cycle of rebirths, but do they experience
merely the end of desires and infer the end of rebirths based on the theory
that the cycle of rebirths is driven by desires grounded in root-ignorance?
Buddhists may invoke reincarnation experiences and accept that this is an
empirical basis for the claim that we survive death, but how could Buddhist
contemplatives know on the basis of such experiences alone that they “have
experientially probed the origins and evolution of the universe back to its
divine source” (Wallace 2009: 195)? Why do mystics in the West speak of
ending desires but say nothing of ending a cycle of rebirths? It is easy to
understand that mystics would not normally see a difference between the
experience and the interpretation imposed onto it, but the difference
remains.
Thus, even if we grant that mystics are in touch with a transcendent
reality, the experiences still may give no more than a general awareness of
that reality. One may ask how one can know something exists without
knowing at least some attributes. However, the flexibility of interpretation
limits any claim to any specific knowledge of a transcendent reality.
Mystics may know that something fundamental exists that makes our
ordinary world seem less real, but what it is, beyond being “real,” “one,”
“immutable,” or “beingness,” is not given but instead is open to different
interpretations outside the introvertive mystical states of consciousness.16
As Thomas Merton puts it, one knows (i.e., has the experience of a
transcendent reality) without knowing what one knows (2003: 60). No
doctrine is given beyond being an experience of a profound reality or at best
a general source of the self or of all phenomenal reality. Mystics too are left
with mystery. Mystics in dualistic states of consciousness can remember
that the depth-mystical experience is free of any sense of a surface-level
ego and is filled with another reality, but the full nature of that reality is not
given in the experience. As noted in the last chapter, an “ineffable insight”
is a contradiction in terms (contra Kukla 2005): the awareness of a
transcendent reality may be free of conceptions, but part of any
postexperience insight must be statable to claim that something is known. A
mystic cannot say “I have no idea what I experienced, but now I believe x
because of it.” The minimum properties are statable (real, one, immutable),
but what is the complete concrete insight? What exactly is the knowledge
gained? A mystical theory based only on a core of descriptions common to
all major mystical doctrines would at best be very minimal indeed and
would not satisfy any classical mystics. Any full characterization of what is
allegedly experienced is the result of a mixture of the experienced sense
with elements supplied by a mystic’s tradition’s theory.
But this greatly limits the extent of any specific “mystical knowledge.”
The experience has less cognitive content than mystics realize: even if the
content is not totally ineffable, knowledge-claims are not determined by the
experience itself. Consider the most basic questions: Is what is experienced
the source of something phenomenal? If so, is it the source of all objective
natural phenomena, or just the ground of consciousness or of the self? Is it
nonpersonal, or do depth-mystics only experience the nonpersonal
beingness of a personal reality? Is God the source of a nonpersonal
beingness, or vice versa? Does consciousness underlie matter? Must there
be one source to everything, or are matter and consciousness separate as in
Samkhya? Ralph Hood (2002) argues that from phenomenology alone the
depth-mystical experience involves a transcendent self—but is the
transcendent self the separate individual self of Samkhya or the universal
self of Advaita? Are there no individual selves or multiple ones? Is the
experience just an intense awareness of the natural ground of the self or the
of beingness of the world with no further ontic significance? Is the natural
world a distinct reality in its own right, or, on the other extreme, is
something transcendent the only reality? Is the transcendent source moral or
morally indifferent? Does the sense of bliss in a mystical experience come
from experiencing the infusion of a loving and benevolent reality, from a
more neutral sense that everything is all right as is, from freedom from a
sense of ego, or simply from the mind being undisturbed when it is empty
of all intentional content? Does the fact that mystics may become more
compassionate and loving indicate that they are in contact with a loving
transcendent reality, or does it only indicate that they have ended all sense
of self-importance and self-centeredness and do not feel alienated from the
rest of the world? Do mystics only project a natural human feeling of love
from themselves that results from the joy and selflessness they feel?
As discussed above, only outside the introvertive mystical mental
states are mystics able to decide what sort of insight the experience is, and
what is experienced is then one mental object among many even for
mystics. But this means that mystics in the end are in the same epistemic
situation as nonmystics when it comes to the nature of what was
experienced, even though they have a larger experiential base from which to
make their decisions about what is real. This problem occurs whether the
mystic is enlightened or not and regardless of how mindful his or her
consciousness is. This also raises the question of whether the mystics
themselves after introvertive mystical experiences have a memory of a
transcendent reality “as it really is.” Mystics such as Meister Eckhart say
that transcendent realities cannot be “grasped by the mind”—or as the
Pseudo-Dionysius says, that God is unknown even to those who have
experienced him except in the moment of experience. This can lead to the
position that such realities are not “knowable” since any statable
knowledge-claim seems to make them into objects. But because
transcendent realities cannot be known as objects distinct from the
experiencer does not mean that they are not experiencable (contra Turner
1995).
This in turn leads to the issue raised earlier of whether any mystical
theory with its theory-laden, highly ramified concepts actually “captures”
the reality experienced, since there will always be a human-generated,
nonexperiential element to any knowledge-claim. One of the possible
interpretations may in fact be the best that is humanly possible, but in the
absence of neutral criteria for adjudication, the presence of conflicting
interpretations that have stood the test of time will remain a barrier to our
knowing which one it is.17 The experiences themselves will not supply the
answer. In our situation, all we can do is test whether each system is
internally coherent and able to explain all the available phenomenological
data. Introducing nonmystical considerations only leads to new disputes.
Even if a consensus develops over time for one existing interpretation
concerning what exactly is experienced in each type of introvertive
experience or a new religious option arises in the future, how can we be
sure it reflects what is real? Consensus does not mandate truth—after all,
before Copernicus, there was a consensus in Europe concerning a Ptolemaic
cosmology for over a thousand years. Here we have no way empirically to
test the claims about transcendent realities. It may be that no set of
doctrines is any better than any other with regard to transcendent realities—
all are only our all-too-human attempts to comprehend what is beyond our
ken.
At a minimum, this means that an appeal to more than the experiences
themselves will always need to be made to justify any mystical knowledge-
claim. As noted in the last chapter, religious and philosophical ideas from
the mystic’s tradition thus will always play a necessary role both in how the
mystical experience is construed and in the justifications of claims. Theists
normally treat revelations and other numinous experiences as more
fundamental in interpreting the significance of mystical experiences.
Nontheists will offer their reasons for their positions. But in all cases,
factors outside the experiences themselves remain a necessary part of the
picture and will need their own separate justifications.
Mystics may insist that only they know reality’s true nature or that the
proof of their claims lies within their own hearts and that their experiences
confirm their beliefs. Nevertheless, the problem again is the competing
answers to all the basic questions noted above: mystics cannot get around
the fact that other mystics who apparently have had experiences of the same
nature support conflicting views and have the same personal conviction of
their claims being “self-evident” or “self-confirming.” Even if a mystic is
certain that he or she has experienced a transcendent reality, this certainty
cannot be shifted to certainty about his or her theory. Thus, a mystic cannot
say “Just meditate—you will see that ours is the true knowledge” when
making claims about the nature of what is experienced, since equally
qualified mystics are making conflicting interpretations. The criteria to
verify a mystical cognitive claim are not internal to it: any such internalist
account fails in the face of equally well grounded competing claims. The
certitude and finality that mystics feel from the experience is transferred to
a version of their tradition’s beliefs, but this does not mean that their
interpretation is necessarily true or part of the experience itself. Mystical
claims are about the nature of the reality experienced, and no mystical
experience can guarantee the insight it allegedly provides about that—there
are no “self-confirming,” “self-authenticating,” or “self-verifying” doctrines
about the nature of what is experienced, no matter how powerful the
experiences giving rise to the doctrine are. In short, the conflicting
interpretations preclude there being any experience-based claim to certainty
about a particular tradition’s doctrines. Even accepting that the experience
leads to an insight rather than a delusion requires a decision that the
experience itself cannot determine. As noted earlier, experiences of internal
states of the mind may be self-authenticating (e.g., the immediate, direct
knowledge of having a headache or having a memory) and thus in need of
no further justification or confirmation, but any ontic claims beyond those
for the psychological state itself (e.g., the cause of a headache or whether a
memory is correct) are in need of further justifications. Claims about
introvertive mystical experiences cannot fall into the “self-authenticating”
category when its ontic significance is open to such diverse interpretations
even if one is correct.
Transcendent realities become intentional objects for the mystics
themselves after the mystical experience when what was experienced is
present to the dualistic mind, and the mind attaches a name to the event and
stores it in memory. Thus, the memory of the experience differs in basic
nature from the experience itself: what was experienced becomes an object
of thought, and the memory necessarily involves a conceptualization of
what was experienced. This memory is not any more self-authenticating
about what is remembered than any other memory. No claims about the
nature of the alleged reality are impervious to error or immune to challenge,
even when the “knowledge by participation” of mystical experiences is
involved. Unless strong constructivists are correct, the reality experienced
has a say in such metaphysical matters by adding to the pool of experiences
about which mystics make their doctrines, but what is experienced
nevertheless does not determine one doctrine or one more general
worldview over another. The interpretation and validation of the experience
remain philosophical issues after the introvertive experiences are over, even
for the mystics themselves.
In sum, there is a gap between experience and doctrine—between any
experiential claim and any ontic claim about the reality experienced—that
cannot be bridged even by the participatory knowledge of mystical
experiences. No mystical experience carries its own interpretation. These
experiences radically underdetermine different mystics’ metaphysics. Even
if phenomenologists can abstract some common, universal “thin” core to
each type of mystical experience on which all the experiencers could
concur, this will not solve the problem: any minimalist descriptive account
of the experience itself is free of reference to what is experienced and thus
obviously cannot resolve the problem of which of the diverse “thick”
interpretations of the nature of the reality experienced is best. No account
with highly ramified concepts from any tradition of the nature of what is
experienced can be said to be given in the experience itself. By bracketing
the question of the nature of what is experienced, phenomenological
accounts rule themselves out as being adjudicators of all such ontological
claims.
Nor is there any philosophical or religious point of view that is neutral
to the competing systems. Meditative techniques are doctrinally neutral.
There is no agreed-on nonempirical set of criteria for adjudicating between
competing interpretations, and nothing in history suggests that all theists
and nontheists will ever agree on one. Even conceiving such a common
ground is difficult. And even if such a set of criteria were agreed on, the
application of the criteria would nevertheless turn on the competing
underlying metaphysics from different traditions—i.e., theological or other
metaphysical beliefs would determine how any neutral criteria are applied.
Consider criteria often advanced in philosophy for the acceptability of
scientific theories: empirical accuracy, ontic and mathematical simplicity,
internal consistency, systematic organization, coherence with other accepted
theories, scope, fruitfulness for new research and theories, familiarity, and
the intuitive plausibility of the most basic elements of the theoretical
framework. Some of these might be applicable to the mystical disputes, but
with their broader metaphysical concerns (rather than empirically checkable
claims), utilizing them would be harder to do. For example, all mystical
systems claim to be of the same scope—comprehending all aspects of
reality—even if not all traditions treat the same aspects as fundamentally
real. Or consider simplicity: all will agree that Advaita is committed to the
fewest number of ontologically irreducible elements—one—but this would
not satisfy theists and others as adequate to the complexity of reality.
Coherence with other religious and nonreligious beliefs is important, as the
Martin Buber example noted in the last chapter attests, but this shifts the
problem to justifying those other beliefs. (Also see Jones 1993: 41–46.)
 Can Mystical Knowledge-Claims Be Compared?
Three presuppositions for this discussion are that mystical claims from
different traditions can be compared, that they genuinely conflict, and that
all mystics are in the same boat epistemically. Consider the first issue first.
Unless experiences can be compared in some way as potential sources
of knowledge, they cannot be ranked. And unless mystical knowledge-
claims are in some way about the same subject, they cannot agree or
conflict. Constructivists argue not only that each mystical experience is
unique (because of the unique structuring each experiencer brings to his or
her experience), but also that each experience is unique in type—there is no
meaningful cross-cultural commonality between them that would enable us
to group them in different categories of “mystical experiences.” Context
determines all elements of the experiences. This would preclude any
ranking of types of mystical experiences since there are no types.18
Postmodernists in general deny a second type of comparison: between
knowledge-claims from different cultural traditions. They go from the lack
of any rock-solid foundations of knowledge to a thorough relativism of
knowledge-claims, concepts, rationality, and justifications. They believe
that cultural “webs of belief” determine what is accepted as “truth” or
“knowledge” within a community. All justifications and reasoning are
governed by standards internal to different cultures: there is no common
language, conceptual framework, or set of norms of rationality that would
permit measuring different cultural claims against each other. There can be
no appeal to reasons or evidence across cultural lines, and so no cross-
cultural comparisons are possible. Nor is any neutral standard transcending
all cultures possible. Thus, no agreement or conflict of knowledge-claims is
possible. In the end, the world drops out of the picture for adjudicating
disputes, and we are left with only a collection of incommensurable views,
some of which are useful for particular tasks and some not.
Postmodernism is influential in the humanities and the social sciences,
but surprisingly not in the area from which it arose: philosophy. If nothing
else, its basic claims end up being incoherent—e.g., the claim “there are no
universally true knowledge-claims” is itself presented as a universally true
knowledge-claim (see Jones 2009: chap. 3). Here, different types of
mystical experiences do appear from cross-cultural study to be groupable
into useful categories, and claims made about the experiences within those
categories appear comparable. And there is no reason to rule out any such
typology on the grounds that cross-cultural comparisons must be
impossible: different terms in different cultures may be incommensurable,
as with Ptolemy and Copernicus on what the term “sun” means, but this
does not mean that they cannot be referring to the same reality. So too, we
can use more abstract categories to group mystical terms from different
cultures for comparison that would be acceptable to all, just as Ptolemy and
Copernicus could agree that their term “the sun” refers to the same
“celestial orb” even if they disagreed on its nature. Differences in
interpretations do not mean that depth-mystics do not experience the same
reality. So too, the introvertive theistic experiences must involve the same
reality if they are veridical—or at least it is hard not to assume that there
can be only one creator or only one sustainer god. In addition, extrovertive
experiences involve the phenomenal world, and if they involve a sense of a
transcendent source, that source is either one theistic god or one
nonpersonal reality.
Thus, if any reality is involved in any of the types of mystical
experiences, it is reasonable to assume that the same reality is involved in
all the experiences of that category. Claims are also made of the same scope
for each category—about the nature of the world, the self, or alleged
transcendent realities. The presence of conceptualizations in knowledge-
claims about transcendent realities does not require multiple referents, nor
does it rule out that the claims may express insights any more than the role
of concepts in scientific knowledge-claims rules out genuine knowledge in
that field. The experiences themselves provide the commonality needed to
make the claims within each category comparable cross-culturally,
somewhat like the causal theory of reference would permit the comparison
of competing theories in science. What is experienced cannot be presented
for public viewing, but the experience itself is a “dubbing event”—i.e.,
whatever caused the experience in one person caused it in others even if
interpretations differ radically. (The analogy breaks down if mystical
experiences are not the product of a causal relation.) “Sense” and
“reference” can therefore be distinguished here.

Do Mystical Knowledge-Claims Genuinely Conflict?

So it is reasonable to assume that mystical knowledge-claims can be
compared cross-culturally. The next question is: do they really conflict or
are they reconcilable? The basic controversy for extrovertive mysticism is
over whether God is present or not, but the discussion here will be limited
to the matter of introvertive mystical experiences. Prima facie, mystical
claims do conflict: they are all about the same alleged realities (a
transcendent self, the source of the world), and they are incompatible and so
cannot all be true. Thus, they compete. If presented with a genuine conflict,
mystics should reject competing claims from other traditions, just as
classical mystics would reject naturalism. But it is often noted that mystics
share a friendly camaraderie with mystics from other traditions. They may
simply not want to dispute the proper interpretation of mystical experiences
with friends. Or no matter how confident they are in their own doctrines,
they may have less overall confidence in any human conceptualizations and
so be less inclined to argue with others over them. Today they may become
less dogmatic when they become aware of the epistemic problems
connected to mystical claims or become more aware of the variety of viable
mystical beliefs. Or they may not be overly concerned with doctrines. So
too, being “selfless” may make them less confrontational in general.
But this does not negate the doctrinal differences or mean that mystics
believe that doctrines do not matter or that all doctrines are really the same.
For example, the Christian Thomas Merton, while valuing his Buddhist
friends, placed all Asian mysticism within “the order of nature” and below
theistic mysticism, although he believed that God is involved in all genuine
mystical experiences. Classical mystics tended to see their own view as
“correct” or “best” or “closest to the truth” or “least inadequate,” even if
they denied that any descriptions of transcendent realities are possible and
believed that there is more to a transcendent reality than they have
experienced. And they contested other doctrines. Formal debates in India
between schools included disputes on mystical doctrines. Many of the
writings of such major Advaitins and Buddhists as Shankara and Nagarjuna
are against other schools (including those within their own tradition) as
they try to show how their own views are better and how the others are
wrong.19 Shankara likened dualists who oppose him to deluded fools (Jones
2014c: 72). The Buddhist Aryadeva was supposedly killed by a disciple of
another Buddhist he had just defeated in a debate (Jones 2011b: 187), and
Shankara supposedly died from a curse from another teacher. In Japan, the
great Zen master Dogen rejected the view that all religions teach the same
thing in different forms as un-Buddhist. Also in Japan the Buddhist
Nichiren called for the suppression of other Buddhist groups, and monks
warred with each other. Tantric sects most often were hostile toward other
Tantric sects. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mystics typically did not
believe in the soteriological efficacy of other traditions. Some Christian
mystics also supported the Crusades and Inquisition. If the mystics’ claims
were only about the phenomenology of the experiences themselves rather
than about what is allegedly experienced, there would not be so much of a
problem, but mysticism is not about these experiences but about aligning
one’s life with the way things really are, and this makes doctrines about the
nature of what was experienced central and the subject of sectarian
disputes.
Some classical mystics have held that “all streams lead to the same
ocean” (i.e., all mystical paths lead to the same goal) or, to quote Jalal al-
din Rumi, that “the lamps are many, but the light is one” (i.e., all mystical
teachings have the same content). In the modern West, these ideas were
advanced by Neo-Vedanists beginning with Ramakrishna. This has led
some philosophers and theologians today to argue that mystical knowledge-
claims really do not conflict. One innovative solution is a “multiple
realities” approach: theistic and nontheistic introvertive mystics experience
different transcendent realities—theists experience a theistic god, and
nontheists experience a nonpersonal beingness or a self. This goes part way
toward reconciling competing claims. However, disputes about the
attributes of the fundamental reality persist: theists still insist that, for
example, Advaitins are wrong about the ultimate source of God and the
phenomenal world being nonpersonal and the world being purposeless.
Assuming there is only one transcendent reality and making depth-mystical
experiences merely an experience of the beingness of God or the Godhead
also leads to the same conflict over what properties are ultimately most
basic. So too, if there is only one creator or sustainer god, different theistic
traditions could still disagree over his attributes. So too, the relation of
apparently multiple selves to one transcendent reality remains an issue.
Another modern attempt at reconciliation places all religious traditions
in a “perennial philosophy” framework. Perennial philosophers handle the
mystics’ apparently conflicting claims by accepting a pluralism of paths all
leading to the same summit or different idioms expressing the same truth
(Schuon 1975; Smith 1976; Nasr 1993).20 All religions are “true” in the
sense that each religion is an effective means to experiencing the same
transcendent reality, even if no specific doctrine is the final truth. Perennial
philosophers argue that all traditions have distinct and unique “exoteric”
shells but the same “esoteric” core, like a spectrum of colored lights arising
from one common white light. They propose a metaphysical scheme with
an unmoving Godhead at the center emanating spirit, minds, and lastly
matter. They then interpret all religious doctrines in light of this scheme.
Outside of perennial philosophy, the moderate constructivist John Hick
(1989) proposed a “Copernican revolution” for the relation of religions,
with all religious conceptions orbiting the “Real” in the center. This leads to
a Kantian-inspired pluralism without the elaborate metaphysical overlay of
perennial philosophy but having a similar effect. These thinkers argue that
the Real is beyond all our categories and is experienced differently
depending on the religious context of a particular person. All veridical
religious experiences of the Real are “true,” but we cannot get behind the
different “masks” of experience and know the Real-in-itself. Thus, the Real-
in-itself is not personal or nonpersonal, moral or nonmoral, one or many,
and so on—these masks are only categories imposed on it in different
cultures. To use an analogy from science: we never know an electron-in-
itself; an electron appears as a particle or as a wave depending on which
experimental setup scientists employ; we can never see an electron as it is
in itself, outside of our experiments; whatever it is in itself remains a
mystery—it is not a particle or a wave, but something capable of
manifesting these phenomena when we interact with it in different ways.
Similarly, mystics experience the Real differently depending on their
religious and philosophical beliefs, but the Real-in-itself remains a mystery.
So is what happens to us after death. Thus, each classical mystic is wrong in
believing that his or her view is better than others: all views are imperfect
and dependent on human beliefs.
The root-metaphor for this position goes back to the Middle Eastern
and Indian parable of a group of blind men who touch different parts of an
elephant and mistakenly conclude from their limited perspectives that they
know what an elephant is. In one common version, one man touches the
elephant’s side and concludes it is a wall; a second man touches a tusk and
concludes it must be a spear; a third feels the trunk and concludes it is a
snake; a fourth touches a leg and concludes it must be a tree; a fifth man
feels the elephant’s ear and the breeze it makes and concludes it is a fan;
and a sixth man grasps the tail and concludes it is a rope. The observers
laugh, and the men quarrel, each insisting that he alone is correct, and
eventually fight. The moral of the parable is not that a transcendent reality
has different parts that different mystics experience, but that mystics are
wrong in drawing final conclusions about its true nature from their own
direct experiences. Similarly, perennial philosophers and pluralists require
all religious believers to admit that their formulations are wrong in some
fundamental sense because they do not know the Real-in-itself. All
depictions are penultimate at best. Like Kant’s noumena, the Real-in-itself
is an unknowable mystery, and we have to accept the limited value of any
formulation. Thus, those who argue for a pluralism as the proper epistemic
relation between religious claims usually stress skepticism about doctrines
and a radical ineffable mystery at the core of things.
Perennial philosophy and pluralism may satisfy modern liberal
believers, but these approaches must revise traditional mysticism. A
passage from early Theravada Buddhism represents classical mysticism:
“There is one truth without a second. People, being confused on this point,
claim there are many truths” (Sutta Nipata 884). Introvertive mystics
believe they are experiencing a transcendent reality directly. Thus, there is
less mystery than Kantians suppose, even if there is more to the
transcendent reality than human beings are capable of handling. But there
are no differentiated aspects of what is experienced in the “empty” depth-
mystical experience (as with the elephant), and thus having direct access to
a reality is a problem for any idea of pluralism. Equally important, mystics
also have different soteriological goals with different paths and values—i.e.,
different paths leading to different summits—not just different conceptions
of transcendent realities.21 It is hard to see theists as heading for the same
goal as Buddhists. Like the Buddha, some may not speculate on what
happens when the enlightened die, or all mystics may believe human
conceptions cannot truly reflect transcendent realities, but they nevertheless
all have particular ways of life that do not converge into one generic
“mystical way of life.” So too, classical mystics may be willing to accept
that their doctrines are only “partial truths” and not the complete truth, but
they typically are not willing to accept that doctrines that conflict with
theirs are equally true.
 Overall, no one has advanced a successful way to get around the fact
that the doctrines of the world religions conflict with each other in at least
some core claims.22 There may be one common depth-mystical experience,
and other experiences and aspects of mystical ways of life may fall into
some helpful abstract categories (“transcendent realities,” “soteriological
goals,” and so on), but there is no “concordant discord,” to cite the title of
one of R. C. Zaehner’s books.

Can One Mystical System Be Established as Best?

Thus, mystical knowledge-claims do appear to be incompatible and
genuinely to conflict, not merely diverge. Conflicting and irreconcilable
claims per se do not rule out one mystical system being better than others if
there is a procedure to resolve the disputes in favor of one system. So can
we justify one set of mystical doctrines as epistemically superior? How we
justify any beliefs is itself a thorny issue in philosophy, but two possibilities
can be quickly dismissed. First, even if there are cross-cultural standards of
rationality or neutral experiential evidence, there still are different premises
in different cultures and no agreement on how the standards and evidence
should be utilized in arguments. Different traditions characterize problems
and solutions differently. For example, taking historical events as valuable
is integral to Jewish and Christian traditions, but that area of concern is
screened out in traditional Indian mysticism, where escaping the cycle of
rebirths is central. Beliefs ground the ways of life, and the beliefs on what is
real conflict. For example, for Christians who take the incarnation of Christ
as the central event of history (e.g., Zaehner 1970: 31), any view that
ignores that in characterizing our situation is not being objective. Second,
the religious may see revelations as exempt from all the problems of human
reasoning and experiences. But the appeal to revelations presents its own
issues: the very idea of accepting revelations as cognitive would itself have
to be defended against naturalism; various revelations around the world
themselves conflict, and there does not appear to be a neutral way of
resolving this conflict or testing a revelation rather than relying ultimately
on faith; accepting revelations involves relying on the experiences of others,
unlike in mysticism where in principle each person can have his or her own
experience; and reasons would have to be advanced for ruling out a
tradition such as Buddhism that rejects all revelations.23
If we limit the question of justification to only whether there is a way
within the resources of mysticism alone, is there a way to adjudicate one set
of mystical beliefs as better or best? One proposed test is psychological
well-being. But introvertive mystical experiences do not have a uniformly
positive psychological effect on all people: not all who have had mystical
experiences turn out healthier or live more effectively in the natural world.
One can also have a depth-mystical experience without it affecting one’s
psyche: if one is neurotic before, one may well remain neurotic afterward.
So too, mystical experiences may have negative effects if they are
spontaneous and unexpected: if one is not prepared for them, the shock can
be disturbing. Meditation also can end up aggravating negative mental
conditions and personality traits. And to naturalists, any positive effects are
irrelevant to the question of insight: any positive character changes merely
indicate that mystics believe they are in contact with a transcendent reality,
not necessarily that they actually are.
Thus, psychological well-being fails as a test for the genuineness of
mystical experience. William James proposed a similar pragmatic test for
determining true mystical doctrines (1958: 368): if a mystical experience
produces positive results in how one leads one’s life, then the experience is
authentic and the way of life one follows is vindicated (and so the teachings
leading to a positive life are correct). In short, the “truth” of one’s beliefs is
shown by one’s life as a whole.24 The criterion goes back to the Bible: Jesus
spoke of recognizing a false prophet by the fruits he bears (Matthew 7:15–
20), and Paul spoke of the “harvest of the Spirit”—“love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control”
(Galatians 5:22). Christian mystics have often used this criterion—e.g.,
Teresa of Avila said that one can tell if an experience comes from God or
the Devil by its fruits in actions and personality (along with the vividness of
the memory of the experience, conformity to Christian scripture, and
confirmation by superiors). For her, humility and charity result from an
authentic God-given experience. More recently, John Hick also made much
of an ethical criterion and “saint-making” in his pluralism (1989: 316–42).
However, the “fruits” test has problems. As discussed in chapter 9,
mystical experiences need not make a person moral or more socially active:
while all enlightened mystics shift toward selflessness, not all enlightened
mystics fill their newly found selflessness with a moral concern for others
—the enlightened cannot be ego-centered, but they can exhibit a “holy
indifference” to the welfare of others. In addition, positive actions toward
others may simply reflect the doctrines and values of one’s own religion.
This criterion was proposed by Christians and the specifics reflect
traditional Christian values. Thus, it may end up being a criterion internal to
only some traditions rather than a neutral criterion applicable across
cultures. For example, some traditions do not value this-worldly concerns
centrally. In Jainism, the ideal for the enlightened is to stop harming any
creature and thus to take no actions at all, leading to their death by
starvation: how is this proof that they are not enlightened or had no mystical
experiences? Certainly not just because it conflicts with Christian values for
an enlightened way of life. So too, most mystics try to conform to the
orthodoxy of their tradition because they think their tradition is the best, and
so the enlightened may simply follow their tradition’s values and factual
beliefs that they have internalized. (But there are antinomian mystics in
every tradition.) If so, we cannot see mystical experiences as validating one
tradition’s doctrines. The nonreligious who unexpectedly have spontaneous
mystical experiences may also only reflect the values of their cultures in
their understanding. So too, emotional types of fruit—e.g., joy, calmness,
equanimity—also can arise whether one has had a mystical experience or
not and also whether a mystic has experienced a transcendent reality or not.
That is, psychological or physiological well-being may result simply from
the mind being emptied of worries and other stressful content by focusing
solely on the present and not from an experience of a transcendent reality.
Thus, the “fruits” test cannot be seen as an independent test for any
mystical doctrines. The criterion may be applied only in a question-begging
way favoring one tradition’s values. Other traditions may propose other
criteria for what are the best mystical doctrines that would favor their own
traditions. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine one set of neutral criteria or
procedures to determine one set of mystical doctrines as supreme that does
not reflect the contingent values of one tradition or another. In the end, what
is accepted as a true doctrine turns on theological criteria rather than the
phenomenological content of the experiences themselves or any neutral
criterion internal to the practice of mysticism generally.
 Is It Rational to Accept Mystical Knowledge-Claims?
If we accept that no set of mystical knowledge-claims can be established in
any neutral way to be superior to others, we must accept that no mystical
knowledge-claims can be proven in the sense that it would be irrational for
anyone familiar with the issues of natural explanations and competing sets
of mystical knowledge-claims to reject a set of such claims. But can we at
least determine if it is rational for mystics themselves or for nonmystics to
hold their doctrines based on mystical experiences?25 That is, can we lower
the bar from trying to establish the truth of particular mystical doctrines or
to convince others to accept one’s claims to merely establishing that it is
rational to hold some mystical doctrines? This divides into two questions.
Is it rational for mystics themselves to count their own experiences as
evidence for the basic doctrines they hold?26 And is it rational for
nonmystics to accept the mystical experiences of others as evidence for
their tradition’s doctrines?
What exactly being “rational” is is a matter of debate. It used to be
considered irrational in philosophy to believe something without solid proof
or if it was not at least beyond a “reasonable” doubt; now, believing
something is considered rational as long as one does not hold inconsistent
beliefs or defy well-established evidence. (Today few philosophers are strict
evidentialists for questions other than religion.) Rationality in this sense is
holding a set of logically consistent beliefs (which is harder to do than it
sounds), showing that one’s beliefs are well-grounded experientially, and
giving plausible reasons for holding the beliefs and for countering criticism.
One must also be willing to change one’s beliefs. One’s beliefs should also
be consistent with what is accepted as the best knowledge available,
including established scientific theories.27
The first question is whether it is rational for mystics themselves to
count their experiences as evidence for the doctrines they hold. (If the
depth-mystical experience were truly empty, it would be irrational to treat it
as evidence of anything. But as discussed, it is not truly empty: a sense of
reality, oneness, and fundamentality is usually retained.) The chief
argument in its favor is the traditional “argument from agreement”—i.e.,
mystics from around the world converge on the same claims, once we
discount the differences in expressions due to cultural differences.28 In
William James’s words, there is an “eternal unanimity” among mystics
(1958: 321). But even in we can get around the naturalist explanations of
the sameness of mystical experiences of each type, this argument runs
aground on the hard fact of religious diversity: as with the argument from
religious experience, religious theorists must twist other religion’s
conceptions and doctrines in order to fabricate an “agreement.” In a circular
argument, we end up with an artificial consensus based on some theological
position. At best, this might support a general entailed claim of the
existence of transcendent realities, but such an agreement cannot support
the concrete realities of the doctrines of any specific tradition.
The other arguments in favor are the principle of credulity and the
analogy to sense-experience discussed above. Under these, mystical
experiences are innocent until proven guilty—i.e., it is rational to accept
them until the mechanisms of mystical experiences are shown to be
unreliable or disqualified for rational acceptance by other considerations.
But problems with the principle of credulity and the analogy to sense-
experience were presented above.
Of course, the rationality of a practice does not establish the truth of
its claims—it can be rational to hold a belief at the time that later turns out
to be false when further evidence is gathered. So too, being rational in
holding one set of beliefs does not entail that those holding other beliefs
must be irrational—different rational people can draw different conclusions
from the same evidence. William Alston (1991) holds that it is rational for
Christians to regard the Christian mystical practice as sufficiently reliable to
be the source of prima facie justification for the Christian beliefs it
engenders, and so, in the absence of stronger evidence to the contrary,
Christian mystical perception should be accepted as a reliable cognitive
access to God and the foundation for other beliefs. But he admits that
Hindus and Buddhists are just as rational in engaging in their own socially
established doxastic practices, even though these three traditions are
incompatible in their claims (ibid.: 274–75). The doxastic justification
makes the claim to the equal rationality of all mystics fairly easy to
establish—in fact, it is hard not to be rational by Alston’s criterion of an
established social practice that we do not have sufficient reason for
regarding as unreliable (ibid.: 6), since each tradition has responded
extensively to the scrutiny and criticism of opponents over a long period of
time and natural explanations do not at this time refute all mysticism.
 Each tradition would thus be rational to engage in by Alston’s
standard. In addition, there is no independent non-question-begging way to
establish that one tradition’s doxastic practices are more reliable for getting
at the truth than its competitors, and so all established practices would be
equally rational and well-informed epistemic peers: each has the same or
relevantly similar experiences, each is aware of criticism and alternative
positions, each produces impressive arguments, and each ends up with well-
reasoned positions. Among such peers, no position is more likely to be
correct. In short, all mystics who have produced coherent sets of mystical
beliefs are epistemically equal. Yet epistemic peers can disagree. They can
reasonably draw different—even conflicting—conclusions from the same
evidence. The result is an irresolvable relativism. Alston concludes that
“though it is not epistemically the best of all possible worlds, it is rational in
this situation for one to continue to participate in the (undefeated) practice
in which s/he is involved, hoping that the inter-practice contradictions will
be sorted out in due time” (ibid.: 7).
But this presents a problem. Each mystic has evidence privately
available only to him- or herself, and the result is a conflict of claims.
Alston’s approach does not provide any rational way to prefer one tradition
over another or any way to adjudicate the conflicting knowledge-claims.
His approach is purely defensive. And Alston also has to admit that the
diversity of outputs from religions that are not consistent does lessen the
rationality of all mystical practices (1991: 275). Indeed, the substantive
inconsistencies between traditions undermine the very idea that mystical
experiences are at all reliable as a basis of belief-forming in general—the
beliefs of different traditions still conflict, and if one set is correct, then
most multiple doctrines on each given point must be false. Mystics typically
advance highly ramified concepts and doctrines: if these conflict, how can
we treat any of the doctrines as claims warranted by expert testimony? This
undercuts the rationality of accepting (as Ninian Smart [1965] does) that the
diverge doctrines at least justify the broader, less ramified claim that there is
a transcendent reality even if we do not know what it is. In addition, there is
divergence even within Christian mystical practices themselves—as Alston
realizes (1991: 192–94)—and this is itself a major problem: if these
practices cannot converge even within one tradition, the rationality of
mysticism is even more severely challenged. Alston speaks of the “practical
rationality” of engaging in any socially established doxastic practice that
one does not have sufficient reasons for regarding as unreliable (ibid.: 168)
since there is no noncircular way to distinguish between different reliable
doxastic practices. And as a practical matter, we all of course do have to
choose how to live. But once the religious know of the variety of socially
established but conflicting mystical practices, there is the issue of the
arbitrariness in their choice, and labeling adherence to the tradition one
grew up in as “practical rationality” or “the most reasonable course of
action” does not get around this.
However, the threshold for rationality is low enough that we can
conclude that mystics can rationally accept the knowledge-claims of their
tradition based on their experiences even without the hope that the
interpractice contradictions will be resolved someday. (So too, for similar
reasons naturalists are rational in rejecting all transcendent mystical
knowledge-claims.) Introvertive mystics themselves can rationally accept
their own experiences as cognitive of a transcendent reality until a
successful natural reduction of mystical experiences is established or until
transcendent knowledge-claims are shown to be incoherent. (Whether a
scientific explanation of the mechanisms of a mystical experience can ever
in principle be grounds to reject mystical claims will be an issue in the next
chapter.) Thus, it is rational today for introvertive mystics to believe that
they have had an experience of a transcendent reality if they have a set of
coherent and well-grounded beliefs. (Advaita is a favorite target for the
claim of incoherence.29) The diversity of competing and equally well-
established mystical ways of life and interpretations of what is experienced
does eviscerate the idea that these experiences can uniquely support the
knowledge-claims of any particular mystical tradition and so lessens the
degree of confidence any mystic can have in his or her doctrines.
Nevertheless, it does not make it irrational to hold them if their claims are
rationally defendable. It is rational, for example, to hold “I believe I have
experienced God, even though I know that I might be deluding myself” or
to hold “I believe the doctrines of my tradition, even though I accept that
you are just as rationally justified in holding the doctrines of your tradition
that conflict with mine.”
In sum, it is rational today for mystics in established traditions to
accept their claims as cognitive. But are those who have not had mystical
experiences rationally justified in accepting mystics’ experiences as
evidence for holding the doctrines of their own tradition? Or do mystics
have a greater epistemic warrant than do nonmystics? William James
believed that mystical states are “absolutely authoritative” for those who
have had them but not for those who have not (1958: 324, 382, 414, 422,
424): the experiences are so vivid for the experiencer that the problem of
religious diversity is an issue only for nonmystics. But if the knowledge is
authoritative only for the experiencer, is it not “subjective” in the pejorative
sense? How does the vividness counter the epistemic issues when the same
experience is just as vivid for mystics holding conflicting doctrines? The
experience may be so overwhelming that one is no longer concerned with
conflicting doctrines, but that is only a matter of emotion—it is not
epistemic grounds for rejecting the doctrines of others. That is, the
vividness of the experience or an intense sense of reality or knowledge does
bear psychologically on wanting to hold one’s beliefs, but it does not add
anything epistemically once one knows that others with the same
experience and the same sense of overwhelming intensity hold conflicting
beliefs. Prior to being aware of other traditions being “live options,” to use
William James’s phrase, it may have been rational to hold one’s own
mystical beliefs as in a class superior to all others, but once one realizes that
others are in the same epistemic situation, one cannot rationally treat one’s
own interpretation as privileged without further argument.
Richard Swinburne believes that under the principles of credulity and
testimony it is rational for nonmystics to accept mystical experiences as
veridical until the mechanisms for the experiences are shown to be
unreliable (1991). But nonmystics would have to rely on other persons’
testimony concerning their private experiences for support for their own
beliefs. In addition, the mystics’ private experiences are not the same in
character as the sense-experiences of nonmystics and are open to more
possible objections that would show that mystics are mistaken and hence
may defeat the mystics’ claims. Thus, nonmystics must make a leap of faith
in accepting mystics’ testimony that they do not have to make in accepting
a reliable observer when only sense-experience is involved. And having to
rely on another’s testimony does lessen the degree of the rationality in
accepting mystical claims: as James would agree, nonmystics would not
have the assurance that comes from actually drinking water rather than
merely accepting the claim that water quenches thirst based on others’
experiences. Moreover, why is a nonmystical Christian entitled to accept
mystical experiences as evidence of their doctrines over other tradition’s
doctrines? They do not have grounds to believe that Christian mystics are
more reliable than mystics in other traditions, who presumably have the
same experiences and yet hold conflicting doctrines.
In sum, the presence of competing doctrines brings into question the
epistemic right of all believers, whether they have had a mystical
experience or not, to say that their tradition’s interpretations must be better
than others’. That at least lowers the degree of rationality for mystics and
nonmystical believers alike.30 In general, the rationality of both groups is
on the same footing: since mystical claims are made in a web of arguments,
it should be as rational for those who have not had the experiences but
accept that others have had them to affirm the tradition’s claims that are
ultimately agreed on—mystics are not in a better position on the final
developed claims. Even if nonmystics have a different understanding of a
tradition’s doctrines (e.g., seeing God as a transcendent object comparable
in some way to phenomenal objects), they can still accept that mystics have
experienced that reality.
Another issue is this: can one set of doctrines be established as
inherently more rational than others?31 Probably not. First, no doctrine is
inherently rational but depends on the other beliefs and evidence—it was
once rational to believe the earth was flat and unmoving, but in light of new
evidence it no longer is. Second, it is hard to establish one rational mystical
set of doctrines as being more rational to hold than another, i.e., that it is
better established either experientially or by reasons, in light of the
doctrinal conflicts over acceptable arguments. If beliefs are well-grounded
experientially and coherent, that as a practical matter is the end of the
matter. In principle, there may be better reasons and evidence for holding
one set of beliefs than another, but trying to establish such superiority
would quickly dissolve into a matter of competing metaphysics with no
resolution possible between those who accept different basic principles. We
are not in a position to present transcendent realities for examination. Thus,
anyone can remain confident that no other doxastic practice will be
established as rationally superior to one’s own rational practices. But that
many mystical doxastic practices can be shown to be rational does lessen
the rationality of adhering to the doctrines of any one.

“Properly Basic Beliefs”

This conclusion follows only if all mystics are in the same boat
epistemically. They do appear so: they have the same or relevantly similar
experiences, and all traditions have been tested by criticism and responses
over time. Thus, all mystics appear to be epistemic peers. But the Christian
philosopher Alvin Plantinga disagrees. He offers a different way to claim
that theistic beliefs are rational even while denying that one needs to
present any evidence or argument for those beliefs (2000). In a type of
foundationalism, he takes an idea from John Calvin (also see Otto 1958:
143–54) and holds that core Christian beliefs are not supported by other
beliefs, but they are not groundless: they are supported by a
nonpropositional experience—a “sense of the divine (sensus divinitatis).”
Core Christian beliefs are fallible but supported by this sense. They are
“basic” because they are not derived from other beliefs but are the basis for
inferring other beliefs and for a theist’s reasoning. Thus, commitment to
core theistic beliefs is the epistemic bedrock for a theist’s structure of
knowledge. In addition, the core beliefs are “properly basic” because God
gave human beings a mental faculty similar to sense-perception that
disposes us to accept belief in God and enables us to form properly basic
beliefs about God’s presence and nature when the mental faculty is
operating normally. Theists thus are epistemically entitled to begin with a
belief in God without any supporting arguments or evidence to determine
the rationality of other beliefs. This sense is not a mystical experience; it
includes seeing the majesty of nature or the intricacy of a flower as the
creations of God. It provides a natural knowledge of God and provides
grounds for the belief, but it is not evidence for the truth of one’s specific
religious beliefs, just as seeing a sense-object justifies believing that that
object exists. Thus, core theistic beliefs cannot be criticized for not being
grounded in evidence. Rather, belief in God supports other beliefs and its
truth is guaranteed by the sensus divinitatis. Under a reliabilist theory of
knowledge, this sense warrants belief because it is designed for the purpose
of producing true beliefs and it functions properly in certain circumstances.
As long as this alleged sense has not been discredited, Plantinga claims that
it is just as rational for Christians to hold their belief in God without further
argument as it is rational for them to hold their basic perceptual beliefs—
when their cognitive faculties are operating normally, theists can trust their
beliefs in both circumstances equally. Thus, at present it is rational for
Christians to hold their beliefs since they are supported by a mental faculty
that has not been shown to be unreliable, and it is irrational for atheists to
reject these beliefs since their sense of the divine is malfunctioning due to
sin or some other defect, just as our sense-perception and memory may
malfunction due to our fallibility and self-deception. Thus, atheism is not
properly basic. So too for nontheisms. Atheists, nontheists, and those who
have lost their faith are in this way comparable to blind people with respect
to sense-perception. If Plantinga is correct, Christian mystics, or at least
theistic mystics, are in a superior epistemic position to nontheistic mystics.
Thus, nontheistic mystics are not epistemic peers of theistic ones.
However, it is hard to see bedrock Christian beliefs as not in need of
any support by evidence or arguments from other beliefs when so many
other people do not see them as true. The same holds for a more general
belief in theism. It is questionable that one can be deemed rational when
one can only assert “God has created us all in such a way that my beliefs
are better than yours, and so I don’t have to give any reasons for that!” Such
beliefs do not seem “basic” but in need of support by reasons at least
recognizable to critics. Simply to assert a “divine sense” that requires no
argument seems dogmatic, especially when the examples that Plantinga
gives of its effect may be explainable in natural terms. So too, the alleged
“sense of God” does not seem analogous to sense-perception: even most
theists would admit that we can disagree about the existence of God in a
way that we cannot dispute the general reliability of sense-perceptions. In
particular, all religious claims for transcendent realities are open to
competing natural explanations while the explanation of sense-experiences
has no nonnatural competitor. Nor does his posited sense explain why there
are nontheists—why should a major segment of humanity be “blind”? In his
characterization, the religious sense is not merely a sense of a transcendent
reality, but a sense of the more specific theistic conception of a god. Why
do, for example, people raised as Advaitins and Buddhists respond
differently in circumstances where theists respond with theistic beliefs? So
too, a sense of dread or fear in numinous experiences may come from the
unconscious mind alone or from being brought up with a certain version of
a transcendent reality and is not per se evidence of the presence of a god.
How do we know that the intuition of a designer and creator is a divinely
implanted sense rather than merely an anthropomorphic projection of a
sense of agency and purpose in the natural realm that has evolved in us
naturally for purposes of survival? By introducing a “sense of the divine,”
Plantinga seems to be trying to make what is no more than one
metaphysical belief that needs support into something like an experience to
shield it from criticism.
The diversity of religious traditions also presents a major hurdle.
Plantinga concedes that awareness of this diversity does decrease the
strength with which the warrant of theistic belief is held, although he denies
that it defeats it (2000: 457). To nontheists, their beliefs seem as “basic” to
them in the sense he intends as theistic ones seems to theists. In addition,
the alleged sensus divinitatis leads to conflicting beliefs even among theists
of different religions and different subtraditions within those religions.
Moreover, according to Plantinga only Christians are properly inspired by
the inner witness of the Holy Spirit and saved. But obviously members of
the other traditions can assert something similar for themselves, and here
Plantinga must offer an argument, not a bald assertion of faith. As things
stand, we have nothing to suggest that the cognitive faculties of nontheists
are malfunctioning, damaged, or defective except Plantinga’s fiat. In fact,
he even concedes that his approach only works for those who find that the
belief that God exists is within their own set of basic beliefs. He admits that
people in other faiths will have quite different beliefs that they consider
“properly basic.” But this makes it impossible to offer an argument for the
superiority of theism or any religious tradition—there is instead a pluralism
of competing sets of properly basic beliefs, each immune from outside
judgment. This only hurts the rationality of his position. In addition, having
to rely on the testimony of others for experiences that one has not had
would lessen the degree of rationality in accepting mystics’ claims, as noted
in the last section. And it is hard to see reliance on someone else’s
experiences as constituting a “basic” belief, since such reliance would
require defending.
Nor does Plantinga’s theory seem to account adequately for the
presence of the nonreligious who simply are not interested in religious
matters. Many people looking at the majesty of the night sky may well
think that there must be a designer/creator behind all this to whom we owe
gratitude and obedience, but there are still many others who are awed by the
grandeur of the universe and do not think of anything transcending it; and
there are many who are impressed by science who agree with Steven
Weinberg when he famously said “[t]he more the universe seems
comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” Claiming, as Plantinga
does, that a God-given “sense of the divine” is malfunctioning in these
nontheistic reactions due to sinfulness or spiritual immaturity is simply
question-begging and demands further argument. The theistic reaction looks
more like an inference than the operation of a special God-implanted mental
faculty. And invoking the Calvinist position that God has not chosen those
who do not react theistically is only an ad hoc excuse. Such a position may
follow from his own beliefs, but to others it seems to be arbitrarily
privileging the tradition he just happened to have been raised in.32
Buddhists and Advaitins may respond that it is belief in a personal god that
in fact is the result of a malfunctioning mystical cognitive faculty: the
proper sense of the transcendent is contaminated by theists’ primitive
response of seeing personal agents behind everything in nature. There is no
neutral way to decide the question, but only a battle of competing beliefs,
each of which requires further support.
Plantinga shapes the notion of an innate spiritual sense to fit the
position he was already committed to, and those in other traditions have the
same epistemic right to shape the sense differently to fit their prior
convictions. Everyone again ends up being minimally rational, whatever
their religious tradition’s basic doctrines. Being rational in holding one’s
beliefs is less difficult to justify than trying to justify one’s beliefs as
superior to others’ beliefs. But the great diversity of religious and
nonreligious views is not what one would expect if any religious beliefs
were “properly basic.” And if there are rival sets of allegedly “properly
basic beliefs,” the sheer symmetry of the situation strongly suggests that
none are in fact “basic,” let alone “properly basic,” but only increases the
need for a defense of one’s beliefs. One cannot exempt one’s own beliefs
from a need for reasons by calling them alone “properly basic” once one is
aware of competitors in the same position as oneself. Each competitor has
as much right to claim that its beliefs are “properly basic.” The pluralism of
conflicting beliefs extends even to different theistic religions and
subtraditions: they may all have the supposed sensus divinitatis functioning
properly, yet they still end up with beliefs deemed reliably formed that
conflict. And for Plantinga to claim that the sense is functioning properly
only when mystics reach the doctrines he happens to accept is obviously
question-begging, and members of the other traditions could make the same
claim for their doctrines. He would have to present more arguments for why
nontheistic mystics are not in fact in the same epistemic situation as
Christian mystics with their conflicting beliefs. Indeed, if only one set of
beliefs of one theistic religion is in fact epistemically superior, then all the
other theistic sets based on the same “sense of the divine” are in some way
wrong. This means that the majority of mankind is wrong on religious
matters—but then the alleged “sense of the divine” is not a reliable means
for formulating “basic beliefs,” unlike sense-experience, since the majority
of people are in fact misled by it in their religious beliefs.
As things stand now, mystics of the various religious traditions of the
world appear to be relying on their own equally compelling experiences and
similar conceptual resources, and thus they appear to be epistemic peers or
at least in the same position to deny that other mystics are epistemically
superior. That is, one does not have to advance a compelling argument that
Christian or other beliefs are very likely to be untrue; rather, one only has to
note that mystics in all well-established traditions are just as entitled to
claim that they are in a epistemologically superior position to realize that
none are. The burden would be on anyone claiming to elevate their
epistemic position above others to justify why that is so. Simply asserting
that one set of religious beliefs is superior to all others without some
independent and non-question-begging argument would be arbitrary and not
grounds to claim any epistemic superiority. Without independent arguments
showing that apparent competitors are not epistemic peers, we will end up
with a relativism of “properly basic beliefs,” and in such circumstances no
one would be warranted in claiming that one group of mystics is in a
superior position to others. In the presence of equally rational alternatives,
no set of beliefs in religious matters is exempt from a need for argument—
i.e., none are “basic.” Personal certainty is not enough: one’s experiences,
no matter how vivid or intense, and one’s conviction that no other religious
beliefs could possibly be superior, do not warrant believing that one’s
beliefs are epistemically superior to others without an actual comparison of
the various practices of belief-formation. Other mystics’ experiences are
equally vivid and compelling for them. Only after one has gone through the
trouble of actually examining the epistemic situations of all competitors
could one possibly be warranted in believing others are not one’s peers in
this regard. One cannot simply retreat into one’s faith and fiat.
In sum, those who privilege Christian beliefs under Plantinga’s
approach cannot present a response to people who do not share the alleged
theistic sensus divinitatis but appear equally well-grounded both in
experiences and arguments. We end up with a relativism of competing
“divine senses” and allegedly “properly basic beliefs” and equally rational
believers. But, if anything, this shows that Christian beliefs, and by
extension any other religious beliefs, are not “properly basic” but in need of
further rational support—when everyone can claim that their beliefs are
privileged, none are. One may argue that Buddhism is in a stronger position
than theistic traditions since it has fewer transcendent ontic commitments
(see Webb 2015), but mystical experiences may in fact involve more than
Buddhists claim and so Buddhists too are in the same position of having to
justify their doctrines. In short, the commitments of any specific religious
tradition still depend on beliefs that must be defended on grounds other than
faith.

Ultimate Decisions
The positions arrived at in this chapter are these:

•Mystical experiences cannot guarantee their own cognitivity, and

we are not in a position to determine if introvertive mystics
experience transcendent realities. (This will be discussed further
in the next chapter.)
•Even if mystics do experience transcendent realities, there are
limitations on what mystics can claim to know about the nature of
any transcendent realities.
•Mystical experiences do not favor one tradition’s set of doctrines
over another, and there are no theory-neutral ways of determining
if one set is best.
•It is currently rational for introvertive mystics in established
traditions to accept their experiences as experiences of some
transcendent reality.
•Mystics are rational to accept their experiences as evidence for
the doctrines that they hold, but this commitment is weakened by
the presence of equally rational mystics holding competing
doctrines. Nonmystics also can rationally treat mystical
 experiences as evidence of their doctrines, but with less
confidence.

The strength of mystical experiences may overwhelm experiencers,

and it may be impossible to convince a mystic that his or her understanding
is incorrect. But the philosophical questions are, What are these experiences
evidence of? What is the proper understanding of them? And is it
reasonable to believe in one’s own interpretation when one is aware that
other experiencers have conflicting interpretations? Any certainty about
mystical doctrines is misplaced: no account is impervious to the possibility
of error, no matter now certain a mystic may feel. Mystics cannot claim to
“just know” that they realized God or a nonpersonal reality. Any certainty
here is further damaged by the viability of plausible naturalist
interpretations of mystical experiences. (And it must be noted that it is not
merely those who have not had such experiences who deny any cognitive
value to these experiences: some who have had these experiences also deny
they produce any insights into reality. This points to the role of
postexperience judgments in our evaluation of them.) Even if there is one
transcendent reality and all introvertive mystics experience it, nevertheless
there are equally well grounded but conflicting views of its nature. The
different views are not revealing different aspects of that reality but
revealing both our limitations in knowing its nature and the presence of
cultural ideas in any mystical knowledge-claims. The conflict of claims
does not rule out that one may in fact be superior to all the others, but we
are not in a position to know which one that is. At best, introvertive
mystical experiences offer some evidence for the existence of something
transcendent. Still, mystical experiences should be treated as a matter of
cognitivity and not a matter of emotion alone unless they can be shown to
be cognitively empty. But we are not in a position to determine if mystical
experiences are veridical or are more insightful than ordinary experiences.
Nevertheless, introvertive mystics at present can rationally treat their
experiences as some evidence of transcendent realities. But again,
naturalists will dispute these experiences as evidence, and the experiences
cannot be straightforward evidence of one tradition’s mystical doctrines of
the nature of what is experienced since some equally well grounded
doctrines in different traditions genuinely conflict. Thus, in light of the
diversity of plausible sets of mystical beliefs without any means of
resolution, no certainty in doctrines here is possible, no matter how
powerful and convincing an experience may appear to a mystic. From their
experiences, mystics may have no doubt that they experienced something,
but this certitude cannot carry over to the postexperience attempts at
understanding what was experienced. The diversity of doctrines in turn
leads to the very real question of whether mystical experiences are reliable
sources for generating beliefs. The rationality of accepting the specific
doctrines of a tradition is thus at least lessened. Ninian Smart summed up
the situation as a paradox: “On the one hand nothing seems more certain
than faith or more compelling than religious experience. On the other hand,
nothing seems less certain than any one particular system, for to any one
system there are so many vital and serious alternatives” (1985: 76).
Are we then left with simply a pluralism of conflicting sets of
doctrines and with the basic dispute between naturalists and those
advocating a transcendent realism unresolved? Mystical experiences
themselves cannot help to resolve these disputes: no new information will
be forthcoming from future mystical experiences—they will merely be of
the same nature as those in the past. Even if all introvertive mystical
experiences involve experiencing the same transcendent reality, this does
not change the fact that after the experiences what was experienced is
always seen through some perspective, and we are not in a position to tell
which, if any, is best. Mystics typically see the reality in terms of their
tradition’s doctrines and reject the conflicting doctrines from other
traditions. Theistic exclusivists are not the only ones who reject the idea
that different doctrines are merely different responses to the same reality.
But mystics also routinely accept that there is more to a transcendent reality
than is humanly experiencable or knowable, and so today some may also be
willing to hold their beliefs tentatively and accept that mystical experiences
are not “self-evident” or “self-validating.” They may accept that they see
mystical experiences in terms of their own tradition’s doctrines but realize
that this is but one option and that at least some other ways of seeing them
are equally justified. So too, new religious options may arise in the future.
The only way to assure that one is avoiding error is to remain agnostic.
But it is difficult to remain agnostic on the issue of the nature of what one
experienced when it seems so overwhelming and so important. Nonmystics
also often attach great significance to mystics’ alleged insights in justifying
their faith. In a “religiously ambiguous” universe, we are forced to choose.
William James, for one, thought that we are epistemically entitled to make a
decision on issues of human existence that are “forced, live, and
momentous” when the evidence is inconclusive and the neutralism of
agnosticism is difficult to maintain.33 And even if there is epistemic parity
between disputants, it is indeed hard to suspend judgment.
In addition, no fundamental choice among competing basic belief-
systems can ever be fully justified on rational grounds, since there is no
further mutually agreed-on level of beliefs or values for competitors to
appeal to. Here we reach the level of our deepest bedrock beliefs—the
conflict will come down to our intuitions and judgments about what the
fundamental nature of reality is, what we consider ultimately valuable, and
what types of experiences we accept as cognitive.34 The religious and
nonreligious are in the same boat when it comes to the ultimate
groundlessness of all belief. As Ludwig Wittgenstein said: “If I have
exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned.
Then I am inclined to say ‘This is simply what I do’ ” (Philosophical
Investigations, para. 217). All we can ultimately do is show what we are
committed to by how we live. With all evidence and agreed-on standards of
reasoning exhausted, we have a conflict of starting points for any argument
or justification; it becomes a matter of worldviews and metaphysics, and
philosophy will not be able to resolve the dispute.35 This is not to say that
one’s final decision cannot be well-informed and carefully considered,
including examining possible alternatives and criticisms and advancing
defenses that opponents accept as reasons (even if they are not convinced
by them), but ultimately we do have to make a choice that we cannot further
justify. Such a choice may be deemed nonrational, but it is not irrational
(i.e., contrary to reason).
In such circumstances, it is hard to conclude that introvertive mystics
themselves are irrational today in holding their extraordinary experiences as
evidence of some transcendent reality and also of their own tradition’s
mystical beliefs, even if they accept that they may be wrong about
transcendent realism and that other mystics are equally reasonable and well-
grounded and that the full nature of the reality experienced in introvertive
experiences is a mystery. Thus, mystics may rationally continue to hold the
beliefs of their tradition and continue to practice their tradition’s way of life,
but they must realize that they may be wrong and that they are not in an
epistemologically superior position to other mystics and nonmystics, and
thus they must accept their beliefs only tentatively. Combining such
tentativeness with a full religious commitment may not be easy.
 4

The Scientific Study of Mystics and Meditators

In addition to conflicting mystical claims, the alleged scientific reduction of

mystical experiences to purely natural events is the other major challenge to
mystical claims to valid knowledge. Do scientific explanations of mystical
experiences in fact defeat mystical claims to knowledge? In particular, are
introvertive mystical experiences explained away by natural explanations as
nothing more than internal brain events? Or, conversely, can science supply
support for mystical cognitive claims? In short, does the study of the
physical states of experiencers bear in principle on the truth of mystics’
alleged insights? Scientific research on meditators and experiencers is
growing, but the philosophical issue has not received as much scholarly
attention. Advocates and critics alike typically simply assume without
discussion that the studies obviously validate or invalidate religious beliefs,
depending on their prior convictions.
To address the relevance of the scientific study of mystical
experiences, two assumptions must be made. First, we cannot seriously
doubt that there must be a biological basis enabling these experiences to
occur. Mystical experiences, like all our other experiences, are firmly
embodied. Theists may argue that introvertive theistic mystical experiences
involve a unique input from God alone. Nevertheless, there must be some
basis in the human anatomy that permits God to enter our mind. The Dalai
Lama suggests that there may be no neural correlates for “pure
consciousness” (Gyatso & Goleman 2003: 42). But even if this
consciousness exists independently of the brain, there still must be some
basis in human beings permitting its appearance in us. Thus, even if mystics
realize a transcendent reality, they still need some basis in the brain for this
to occur, and so mystical states of consciousness must somehow be
mediated by the neurological processes in the body. That is, these
experiences are not disembodied transcendent events, but are human
experiences that must somehow be grounded in the human body. In
particular, all experiences apparently have neural substrates and a
biochemical basis in our brain. Mystical experiences do not differ from any
other experience in this regard. As professor of behavioral medicine
Richard Sloan says: “there is nothing at all remarkable about reporting that
ecstatic religious experiences are associated with a neurological substrate,”
since “all human conscious activity, religious or otherwise, has an
underlying counterpart in the brain” (2006: 247–49). Nor is there any
reason to doubt that scientists can study the brain during these experiences
like any others, or that they may be able to identify neural and other
biological bases. Thus, pointing out neurological bases in no way begs the
question against mystical cognitivity: even if these experiences produce an
insight, they need a biological basis to appear.
The second assumption is that whether mystical experiences are
delusory or involve a genuine insight into the nature of reality, today it is
increasingly becoming accepted that they are connected to genuine
observable neurological events that are distinct from other types of mental
events and are not merely products of imagination (Newberg, d’Aquili, &
Rause 2002: 7, 143). Much mental activity involves different parts of the
brain, and mystical experiences may too, but there is objective evidence of
distinctive configurations of brain events uniquely connected to mystical
experiences.
These assumptions also apply to meditation: because of the interaction
or identity of the mind and the body, any calming of the mind during
meditation will probably have effects on the body—at a minimum, calming
and stabilizing some biological functions. Such effects may be measurable
in different ways. Nor is there any reason to doubt that neuroscientists may
eventually identify the exact parts of the brain that are active or inactive in
such experiences, as indicated by blood flow in functional MRI imaging or
the activity of chemicals by PET and SPECT scans. Indeed, that meditation
physically affects brain structures is becoming well established (e.g.,
Davidson et al. 2003; Lazar et al. 2005; Hölzel et al. 2011b; Leung et al.
2013; Kang et al. 2013).
 The picture of neuroscience in this area at present is of an active field
with numerous competing explanations of different types of mystical
experiences, both in terms of the brain mechanisms involved and in the
alleged loci in the brain associated with the experiences. The data are not
always consistent, but there is no reason to doubt that eventually scientists
may end up with a consensus on these matters. Nevertheless, scientists
should be cautious in jumping quickly to a conclusion about the material
basis of mystical experiences. To begin with, there are two different classes
of mystical experiences with different types of experiences within each, and
how the brain functions during the difference experiences may well differ
(see Hood 1997; Dunn, Hartigan, & Mikulas 1999). So too, scientists can
distinguish concentrative and mindfulness meditation (Valentine & Sweet
1999). If, for example, some drug can stimulate some part of the brain and
enable depth-mystical experiences to occur, this does not mean that that
drug can enable mindfulness or that the same areas of the brain are active in
mindfulness and the other types of experiences. And within the two basic
meditative tracks, there is also a plethora of techniques (see Andresen 2000;
Shear 2006); these may well involve different neurological states. In short,
scans of concentrative meditators such as Yogins may well differ from those
of mindfulness Zen Buddhist meditators, and different neurological
explanations may be needed for each case. So too, there may be different
neural states for those introvertive mystical experiences with differentiated
content and those without such content.
First, two points should be addressed concerning the scientific study of
mysticism generally rather than the issue of its relation to the matter of
mystical knowledge-claims.

Scientific Study Versus Mystical Practices

Scientists studying meditators are doing science, not engaging in a mystical
practice. This may seem obvious, but the point is often overlooked. Getting
readings on monks during meditation does not make this science mystical.
Conversely, mystics do not “observe” their consciousness for scientific
purposes. The mental training of meditation is designed to familiarize the
practitioner with specific types of mental processes (Brefczynski et al.
2007: 11,483). Meditators are trying to calm their mind to attain God or
some other such end. Over the centuries Buddhists have developed precise
descriptions and a classification of the mental states relevant to their
practices and goal of selflessness, not out of a scientific interest in how the
mind/brain works, but to aid in taming the mind. The Buddhist
Abhidarmists’ taxonomy of mental states is not part of a “2,500-year
research program in phenomenological psychology” (contra Flanagan 2011:
81) but only related to relevant states for ending suffering. Nor have
Buddhists been pursuing the “scientific study of consciousness” for two-
and-a-half millennia (contra Beauregard & O’Leary 2007: 256). Even the
Yogacharins, the Mahayanists who most concentrated on the analysis of the
mind, did not conduct a general scientific survey; their phenomenology of
experiences focused on such questions as how the mental construction of
“objects” arises from the transforming of consciousness. As the Dalai Lama
says, the purpose of Buddhist psychology is not to catalog the mind’s
makeup or to describe mental functioning but to overcome suffering and
clear away mental afflictions (2005: 165–66). So too, the analysis of states
of mind in the Hindu Yoga Sutras is related only to how to control them and
end “mental activities.” Meditators may permit scientists to scan their
brains while they meditate, but it is not as if they want to develop a new
neuroscientific theory. They witness events in their own mind as if from a
third-person point of view, but not out of a disinterested desire to learn how
the brain works: they are interested in attaining the knowledge necessary to
align their lives with reality. Buddhists have not been studying the problem
of the relation of mind to matter for ages and have not been developing new
hypotheses on that issue (contra Wallace & Hodel 2008: xviii)—they have
been focusing on attaining an insight to end their suffering and not studying
the relation of the mind to the brain at all. (It is not at all clear how
meditation can shed light on the relationship of “mind” to “matter” since
whether mystical experiences are products of the brain alone, as naturalists
claim, or involve something more, they would still be the same
phenomenologically. Thus, it is not obvious how attaining new states of
mind through meditation will help us understand the mind/body relation.)
And putting the word “experiments” in quotation marks when discussing
meditation (ibid.: 142) does not make the meditators’ observation of their
mental states as they attempt to calm their mind into scientific experiments.
It should also be noted that in the Buddhists’ mindfulness type of
enlightenment, the enlightening insight occurs outside of the “lucid trances”
(dhyanas) related to concentrative meditation, although the mind is
prepared by such concentrative exercises. Similarly, the enlightened state of
Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta is not a continuous depth-mystical experience
but a state of consciousness that is outside of that experience: in the
enlightened state, sense-experience remains (perhaps now in a mindful
mode), and the insight is knowing the world’s true status as illusory.1 The
mystics’ interest is in the insight into the nature of reality in order to align
themselves with it, not in any unusual experiences, and whether these
insights can be tied to specific states of mind or body is irrelevant to
practicing their religious ways of life and their ultimate concerns.
José Cabezón reports that there is “widespread skepticism” among
meditating Buddhist monks regarding the value of neuroscientific studies of
meditative states and the long-term effects of meditative practice (2003:
42). From the point of view of mystical practice, such skepticism is
justified. Meditation is part of an encompassing mystical way of life leading
toward enlightenment, and any biological mechanisms enabling mystical
experiences to occur are simply irrelevant to those participating in such
ways of life. It is as irrelevant to mystics as the mechanisms enabling visual
observations are to physicists. Rather, the permanent transformation of a
person to a state in accord with reality is central to mysticism, not any
changes in brain events that may or may not accompany such a
transformation.2
In short, not all introspection is for a scientific purpose: the mystical
objective is a spiritual enlightenment regardless of the findings of how the
brain or mind works. Of course, what meditators report or what scientists
find studying meditators may benefit neuroscience—meditators may have
discovered states of consciousness or other aspects of the mind that are not
known to modern neuroscientists. But this is not why the practitioners are
engaged in meditation. Nevertheless, whether the scientific study of persons
undergoing mystical experiences is relevant to the cognitive status of
mystical knowledge-claims is a legitimate issue.

Are New Theories of the Mind Needed?

Thus, meditation and mystical experiences are potential sources of new data
for neuroscientists. Brain-imaging technology is beginning to identify the
areas of the brain affected by meditation. But it is one thing to study the
brain during previously unexamined states of consciousness or mental
functioning; it is another to come up with a new theory of the mind or of
how the brain works. Efforts at theorizing are beginning regarding the
mechanisms and areas the brain involved in these experiences.
Nevertheless, these studies do lead to a broader question: do mystical
experiences force a revision in the current framework of neuroscience?
It is not at all obvious that scientists must revise any accepted theory of
how the brain works in light of these studies of mystical states of
consciousness (see Harrington & Zajonc 2006). They may be able to
explain the workings quite conventionally. However, mystical experiences
may reveal aspects of consciousness or types of mental functioning that
cannot be explained by existing theories. Perhaps, as many classical mystics
claimed, there is a unique mental functioning in mystical experiences
distinct from reasoning and other experiences (e.g., the “intellect” of
medieval Christian mysticism or the “buddhi” in some Indian traditions).
Meditation may aid in understanding consciousness itself by clearing away
the noise in most conscious states, thereby leaving a “pure awareness,” free
of other activity (Forman 1998a). Some neurological evidence exists for
such a state of awareness free of sensory and conceptual content (see
Sullivan 1995; Peters 1998: 13–16). The depth-mystical experience may be
presenting consciousness in its simplest form. If consciousness can exist
free of input, it is harder to see consciousness as merely a product of
sensory or other bodily activity. A contentless consciousness would also
present problems for functionalism or any information-processing theories
of the mind. Meditation may also be enhancing and extending the faculty of
mental perception through the techniques for cultivating extraordinary
states of concentration (Wallace 2003: 23). It may show that we are capable
of controlling what were thought to be involuntary bodily processes or that
we can train our awareness or compassion.3
And just as high-energy physics caused physicists to rethink aspects of
Newtonian theory, so too developing “high-energy states of consciousness”
may open neuroscientists to the need for new explanations (Wallace 2007:
167). Or maybe not: naturalists argue that no new theory is needed even for
depth-mystical experiences since they involve either a malfunctioning brain
(e.g., Saver & Rubin 1997) or a feedback effect occurring when all sensory
and other differentiated content is removed while one remains conscious.
This may explain all of the experience’s properties and thus explain away
its alleged cognitivity. Indeed, most naturalists need convincing that there is
a state of “pure consciousness” devoid of any intentional object. Most think
there can be no consciousness without an object being present:
consciousness is inherently intentional—when there is no object, there is no
consciousness. Nor is it clear that studying the neural correlates active in a
state of pure consciousness brings us closer to understanding consciousness
itself or how it arises, although it may bring its correlates into clearer focus.
Currently the metaphysical framework for most neuroscientists is
materialist: consciousness is simply an activity of matter or at most its
product. Somehow consciousness emerges from the brain, and thus the
focus in studying any experiences can be exclusively on the material bases
producing our consciousness. Some neuroscientists recognize that
materialism is a philosophical assumption and accept it only tentatively, but
many think it is an empirical finding of science itself and do not qualify
their claims—they immediately go from establishing neural correlates to a
reduction of mental events without an argument (see Hick 2006: 92–103).
However, others reject materialism, and a nonmaterial mind acting on the
brain and having its own causal powers may become accepted as an
intrinsic part of the universe, even if the mind remains dependent on
material bases for its appearance. If so, neuroscience will have to change.
But just because meditation may, for example, lower stress levels in the
body, does not mean that the mind is necessarily not a product of matter. So
too, “pure consciousness” events may be explainable in a materialistic
framework, even if this requires dismissing these experiences as
malfunctions. Mystical experiences in themselves do not require that the
mind be somehow unattached to the brain—even if mystical experiences
are cognitive, the mind may still simply be the product of (or identical to)
the brain.
However, scientists arguably cannot develop an adequate
understanding of consciousness using only the “instrumental/analytical”
functions of the mind and any nonanalytical functions currently recognized
by scientists. Unless mystical experiences can be shown to be the result of
mental malfunctioning, scientists cannot ignore mystical experiences but
also must account for the “receptive/contemplative” modes of both mystical
tracks. If so, then it would only be the experiences themselves as new data
on states of consciousness that scientists would have to accept, not the
alleged mystical insights into the nature of reality. Neuroscientists are
attempting to study mystical states of consciousness as mental phenomena,
not any mystical knowledge-claims. It would be comparable to studying the
nature of sense-experience by scanning practicing physicists—any of the
physicists’ theories based on those experiences would be irrelevant. But if
scientists revise their theories in light of mystical knowledge-claims about
consciousness or perception, this would be an instance of mysticism
contributing to science (see Goleman & Thurman 1991; Austin 1998;
Wallace’s response to Smith-Churchland’s materialism in Houshmand,
Livingston, & Wallace 1999: 33–36).
But neuroscientists to date are using standard Western scientific
techniques to study meditators, not devising a new and different science.
Only facts discerned by the analytical mind and current scientific methods
are accepted into the body of knowledge. Scientists today try to explain the
mind materialistically in terms of material forces acting on the brain’s
constituent parts. There is some first-person self-reporting (e.g., Smith &
Tart 1998), but any first-person approach emphasizing a subject’s actual
awareness has not been fully incorporated into science. First-person
“subjective” experience is not quantifiable or measurable in any exact way
but is something different in character. There is no objective way to assess
the person’s phenomenological claims: first-person claims relate merely
how the experience seems to the subject, and this sense may be misleading.
Instead, only the third-person approach of what is objectively measurable,
with its results being testable by others, is seen as leading to scientific
knowledge in consciousness studies. Indeed, checking and testing by others
is essential to any science. Thus, the focus remains on the processes
accompanying subjective experiences that can be measured in the same way
as any other process in physics and chemistry. Even when a neuroscientist
who had mystical experiences—Mario Beauregard—speaks of a “new
scientific frame of reference” that goes beyond materialism, he still ends up
speaking only of the scientific investigation of the neural, physiological,
psychological, and social conditions favoring the occurrence of mystical
experiences (2007: 294–95), not a new type of science.
A second-person approach through trained interviewers asking
questions about one’s experiences is especially popular in the study of drug
effects. Because such questioning is after the experiences themselves and
relies on testimony, it is only indirectly empirical and thus only “quasi-
experimental” (Hood 2001: i). In the psychology of religion, Ralph Hood
devised a questionnaire (1975) based on Walter Stace’s phenomenology of
mystical experiences (1960a). He revised his “M Scale” later to
differentiate extrovertive and introvertive experiences and postexperience
religious interpretations (Hood, Morris, & Watson 1993). One issue is how
questions are framed. Usually questions reflect a theistic bias. For example,
a recent Gallup poll on religious experiences omitted anything related to
mysticism but only had questions about a numinous experience of a “divine
actor”—i.e., an active theistic god, not an inactive mystical ground.
Classical introvertive mystics do not speak of a transcendent reality set off
apart from the experiencer. Answers also are limited by how the questions
are framed and by the participants’ culture’s framework: subjects may
answer “God” because they have no other concepts for a transcendent
reality even if the experience did not seem personal in nature. Nor is it
always clear what degree of theological ramification participants intend.
They also may simply assume that whatever experience they have must be
the same as others have had when they speak of “experiencing God.”
Participants may not mean the same thing that the questioners mean by such
terms as “mystical,” “oneness,” and so forth. (One is reminded of
Wittgenstein’s problem of public versus private meaning and the example
of a beetle hidden in a box: the word “beetle” has a public meaning, and
each person knows what a beetle is by looking at his or her own beetle, but
this does not mean that what is in the box is what each expects.) For
example, an experiencer may label a premonition as being momentarily
“one with God.” A vague sensed presence becomes seen by Christians as
Jesus or Mary. Any weakened sense of self becomes an experience of
“mystical oneness” or “mystical union.” One may feel “in the presence of
God” anytime one is in church or just feeling happy. Any positive state of
consciousness may be deemed “mystical.” So too, one person’s experiences
of “cosmic consciousness” and LSD experiences may be described with the
same words, even though they seem qualitatively different to the
experiencer (Smith & Tart 1998: 106).
Thus, little of the experienced content may be revealed even by low-
ramified terms. In general, words about transcendent reality are emotionally
loaded, and their meaning may differ from one subject to another and from
the questioner’s meaning. If there is something truly ineffable about
mystical experiences, such problems are only aggravated. In sum, because
experiencers usually learn the vocabulary for “mystical experiences” prior
to those experiences (and Wittgensteinians would add, outside those
experiences in public events), we cannot tell exactly what experience they
had when they label something “an experience of God” or whether they
have had the same experience as others. More questions, more detail in the
questions in surveys, and in-depth interviews can limit this problem but not
eliminate it entirely.
Current neuroscience reflects the standard scientific third-person
approach: it is a matter of studying the neural “hardware” of the brain
through PET scans and so on. However, some argue that neuroscience also
needs supplementary “soft sciences” to deal with the “software” of the mind
(Goleman & Thurman 1991: 57–58). Currently scientists specify and test
theories in the ordinary dualistic state of consciousness, the mind’s default
mode. Charles Tart and Roger Walsh see this as problematic for the
scientific study of any altered states of consciousness.4 They think that the
nature of mystical experiences cannot be judged by the unenlightened in
ordinary consciousness, and they propose that “state-specific sciences” be
developed to understand the phenomena of the altered states that
complement standard neuroscience. Since all sciences depend on methods
appropriate to their subject and on replication by properly trained observers,
scientists would need to be trained to be participant-observers of altered
states of consciousness to report on the experiences (Walsh 1992; see also
Pekala & Cardeña 2000; Wallace 1989, 2007).5 Fritz Staal was an earlier
advocate of the need for first-person experiences to study mysticism:
mysticism cannot be studied seriously only indirectly from the outside but
also directly from within—otherwise, “it would be like a blind man
studying vision” (1975: 124): “No one would willingly impose upon
himself such artificial restraints when exploring other phenomena affecting
or pertaining to the mind; he would not study perception only by analyzing
reports of those who describe what they perceive, or by looking at what
happens to people and their bodies when they are engaged in perceiving.
What one would do when studying perception, in addition, if not first of all,
is to observe and analyze one’s own perceptions” (ibid.: 123–24). One can
study the history of art, the physics of paintings, and the physiology and
neurology of perception, but this collectively would not indicate what it is
like to be an artist or the “subjective” experience of anyone observing a
painting. So too, a science of mysticism would require more. This would
separate the study of mystical experiences from the objective approach of
physics that is the current paradigm for neuroscience. A new science would
not be based in the ordinary state of consciousness but would have state-
specific knowledge. But problems of how to replicate another’s experience
and to test any theories in an altered state persist.
Such a “contemplative science” would not be a replacement for
neuroscience as currently practiced in the ordinary state of consciousness
by studying biological correlates of mystical experiences. Rather, first-
person approaches would fulfill aims that the methods of the current natural
sciences were never designed to achieve (Wallace 2003: 260; see also
Ricard 2003). Thus, it would be part of a new expanded science of
consciousness embracing both neuroscience and personal “subjective”
experience—a collaboration of first-person and third-person approaches
(see Shear & Jevning 1999; Cabezón 2003: 52–55; Lancaster 2004; Dalai
Lama 2005: 133–37). In fact, the basic idea of a research strategy linking
the phenomenological approach with a neurological approach is already in
place (Flanagan 2011: 82); the study of mystical experiences did not
introduce the idea. But some advocates go beyond the supplemental
approach and advocate a synthesis of the two into one new hybrid science
that would change the character of current neuroscience, letting the first-
person approach “reshape” the third (e.g., Thompson 2006: 233).
In any case, little has been done as yet on this front with regard to
mystical states of consciousness. A contemplative science would also be
subject to all of the problems of first-person reports for any science. Such
reports are notoriously unreliable: since we are not aware of all that goes on
in the mind or what influences observations, there is always the problem of
self-deception. How is science to accept any introspective account given
after a mystical experience as incorrigible evidence of a state of
consciousness, let alone any ontic claim? Indeed, whether the “pure
consciousness” of a depth-mystical experience is amenable even to any
first-person introspection is an issue: “awareness itself” cannot become a
phenomenal object—it is inherently subjective. When we “observe
consciousness” in ordinary self-consciousness, we are only aware that we
are aware—if what is observed becomes an object, then by definition it is
not the subjectivity of consciousness or the content of the depth-mystical
experience. The depth-mystical state becomes an intentional object of
thought only after the experience is over.
 But if consciousness constitutes a level of reality that is not reducible
to material bases, then insights into certain aspects of what is real in the
universe could only be achieved in a first-person manner and not by a third-
person approach. If consciousness is accepted as causally real, this raises
another issue: the question is not only whether a new hybrid science
incorporating both first-person accounts of experiences and neuroscientific
accounts of mechanisms is needed, but also whether third-person
neuroscience as currently practiced is fundamentally misguided.

Can Mystical Experiences Be Studied Scientifically?

Naturalists who reduce the mind to the brain or who entirely eliminate
subjectivity believe that studying the brain simply is studying consciousness
(see Jones 2013: 98–102). But for antireductionists, there is an issue here:
can experiences be studied scientifically? If science can study experiences,
the scientific study of meditators and persons undergoing mystical
experience potentially adds a new way to study mystical experiences, not
merely the brain and physiology. But this leads to the very real issue of
whether the subjectivity inherent in any experience can be studied
scientifically at all. It is one thing to identify the neurobiological correlates
of an experience and quite another to study the “lived” experience itself. In
consciousness studies in general, there is the problem of the “felt” aspects
of such states as sense-experience and pains—“qualia”—versus the
physical activity in the brain occurring during those experiences (see ibid.:
106–109, 122–24). Any causal property of consciousness would also be
distinct from the qualia. Because qualia remain experientially distinct from
brain mechanisms, they cannot be explained away by identifying the base in
the brain permitting them to occur—the first-person sensation of seeing the
greenness of grass is not reducible to the sum of the physical events
occurring when we look at grass.
That consciousness is itself a mystery is revealed by the fact that
scientists and philosophers cannot agree on what exactly they are studying
or come up with a common definition. When scientists speak of a “science
of consciousness” today, they are still referring to identifying neural or
other bodily correlates of conscious events, not to studying the subjective
side of these events.6 It is not a science of consciousness itself—in fact,
based on science, there is no reason today to believe that consciousness
exists. Identifying the correlates in the body of particular conscious events
(e.g., identifying the areas of the brain that are active when moral
judgments are being made) or explaining how these events arose is not
getting into the conscious events themselves. Merely identifying the neural
correlates of a conscious event tells us nothing about what consciousness is,
nor does it explain why it exists. Every conscious event may well have a
neural correlate, but mere correlation does not address the fundamental
issues of how or why consciousness emerges or whether changes in
consciousness can cause changes in the neural base or why conscious
events are correlated with material events at all—indeed, a correlation of
phenomena is not an explanation of anything but only something new that
needs an explanation itself.
Most basically, there does not appear to be any way to study the
subjectivity of a person’s consciousness itself by objective, third-person
means. No doubt scientists could conduct brain-imaging studies to
demonstrate the differences in the activity of cerebral structures occurring
while someone is listening to Beethoven or listening to white noise—but
would this mean that this experience is explained by the activity of a
specific brain region and that this is all there is to it (Sloan 2006: 253)?
Subjectivity is not phenomenal, i.e., it is not an object that can be presented
for study. There simply is no way to present subjectivity itself for inspection
or testing by others. Scientists can show that our conscious states are
affected by changes in brain states, but this does not mean that
consciousness is necessarily a product of matter—the brain states still may
be only the material bases needed to allow a separately existing
consciousness to appear in different ways. With their success in the study of
brain activity, it is easy to see why neuroscientists may miss the
philosophical issues and claim to be producing a “theory of consciousness.”
But as things stand, neuroscientists are only studying something closely
associated with the appearance of consciousness in us—its bodily
underpinnings—and not consciousness itself. They study the state of the
brain during an experience, not the experience itself or experience in
general. Even if the mind and the brain are materially identical, there is an
“inside” to experiences that cannot be studied from the “outside” by
examining the brain.
 In short, any third-person experience of brains does not give us
knowledge of anything but an object, and subjectivity cannot be made into
an object. Neurological scanning can only reveal the correlates of
experience—the observable bodily responses—not the “subjective”
consciousness itself. It can only show what the brain is doing or not doing
during an experience, but not the experience itself. Even the emerging
technology that “reads minds” only reads brain states, not experiences. No
scientific account of the mechanisms active during sense-experience or self-
awareness can make us understand what it is like actually to experience
those states. In sum, no accounts of phenomena in purely third-person terms
would ever even suggest the existence of, much less explain, the subjective
qualities that constitute the bulk of our conscious life (Shear & Jevning
1999: 189).
This general inability of one person to witness what another one
experiences applies equally to mystical and meditative experiences. Even if
previous experiences can be reproduced by the meditators themselves
during scientific experiments, the inability of others to see what is going on
will always limit a “science of meditation.” Moreover, even if others could
in fact duplicate the physiological state of the brain of an enlightened
mystic through meditation, how do we know the subjective state of
consciousness is also being duplicated? Identifying what is going on in the
brain when a mystical experience occurs is one thing; what meditators
actually experience—the felt sense of selflessness, unity, timelessness, or
whatever—is another. A science of meditation is not achieved by a science
of a meditator’s brain. Only reductive materialists would disagree. And it
must be admitted that as of yet little is known about the neurobiological
processes involved in meditation and about its possible long-term impact on
the brain (Lutz et al. 2007: 500). The biological studies of meditation have
not produced anything dramatic about what is occurring during meditation.
Indeed, scientific studies to date, as Richard Sloan says, reveal the “entirely
unremarkable findings” that during meditation the areas of the brain
associated with concentration and attention show increased activity
compared to other regions (2006: 247–49).

Scientific Explanations of Mystical Experiences

Nevertheless, two types of reductions discrediting mystical claims have
been advanced in this field: scientific reductions of mystical experiences to
nothing but electrochemical activity in the brain or some other physical or
biological phenomenon, and sociocultural reductions of the experiences to
social, psychological, or cultural phenomena.7 First the former. Scientists
look for the biological or chemical conditions within the body such that
anyone under those conditions would probably have a certain type of
mystical experience. A one-to-one correlation of conscious states with the
bodily states of the brain or other parts of the body would permit the
stimulation of the mechanisms at work in the body during mystical
experiences, thereby inducing an experience. For a true correlation, there
must be a one-to-one relation of changes in states of consciousness with
changes in bodily states. All the phenomenological content of the
experiences also must be accounted for. Different neural and physiological
bases and explanations are currently being proposed (see Cahn & Polich
1999; Wulff 2000; and Lutz et al. 2007 for overviews).8
There are currently five areas of scientific research.9 First, drugs
administered to subjects cause a percentage of them—sometimes 70-some
percent—to have either extrovertive or introvertive mystical experiences.10
From William James experimenting with nitrous oxide (1958: 298) to
Aldous Huxley’s experiences with mescaline (the active ingredient in
peyote) (1954, 1955) to Walter Pahnke’s “Good Friday” experiment with
psilocybin (the active ingredient in “sacred mushrooms”) (1966; Smith
2000: 15–32) to Robert Masters and Jean Houston’s work on LSD (1966),
early advocates claimed to duplicate all the phenomenological elements of
mystical experiences making them experientially indistinguishable—not
merely something “similar to” a mystical experience or a “partial” mystical
experience. Bruce Eisner found that the drug “ecstasy” led patients to a
profound sense of “unconditional love” and to a state of empathy in which
they, others, and the world seemed basically good (1989). Altered states of
consciousness, including mystical ones, have been part of religion since its
early days (see Winkelman 1999). More than 10 percent of the hymns in the
Rig Veda are to soma, a psychotropic plant used in rituals. Indeed, many
claimed that drug-induced experiences among early shamans and others are
the source of religion.11 Terence McKenna (1992) has argued that we have
deep genetic roots for a need for intoxicants and that psychoactive drugs
played an important part in human evolution (see also Weil 1986; Siegel
1989).
Drug studies were revived in clinical studies in the 1990s, first with
DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) (Strassman 2001). The effect of drugs on
the production of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which plays a role in
regulating consciousness, has been of special interest because they inhibit
prefrontal cortex activity. LSD apparently deactivates regions of the brain
that integrate our senses and our sense of a “self.” It may also loosen the
“reducing valve” of the mind that permits in only the data we need
(Goodman 2002). In addition to more intense visual and aural sensations,
this can lead to an extrovertive sense of being united to the rest of reality
without any memory loss. But drugs can also have disturbing and terrifying
effects. In addition, “cosmic consciousness” and LSD experiences may be
qualitatively different states of consciousness (Smith & Tart 1998).
However, in one psilocybin study, three-fifths of the participants had what
the scientists considered “complete” mystical experiences; one-third of the
participants considered it the most significant spiritual experience of their
lives, and for another quarter it was one of the top five; and the significance
lasted more than a year (Griffiths et al. 2006, 2008). A long-term study of
Pahnke’s experiment also showed that the induced mystical experiences had
lasting positive effects (Doblin 1991). Other studies also found that
experiences occasioned by psilocybin caused persisting positive changes in
attitudes, mood, life satisfaction, behavior, altruism/social effects, and
social relationships with family and others (Griffiths et al. 2006, 2008).12
Such experiences have also led some drug users to adopt a mystical way of
life.
Many in the religious community are enthusiastic about these drug
results, claiming that drugs induce the same experiences induced by other
means such as fasting and meditation by producing the same biological
effects in the brain as those activities do and that this proves mystical
experiences are veridical. However, since James Leuba (1929), others have
argued that these are nothing but subjective brain events. Others object on
theological grounds that these are not “genuine” mystical experiences but
only a superficial copy with no spiritual component—true mystical
experiences are different in nature and content and come only from God. R.
C. Zaehner tried mescaline and ended up only with an upset stomach (1957:
212–26). (But this does point to the issue of a proper dosage and supportive
conditions [Griffiths et al. 2011].) He concluded that “nature” and
“monistic” mystical experiences may be triggered by drugs, but “theistic”
introvertive mystical experiences can be produced only by acts of grace
from God (1957: 14–29)—no set of natural conditions such as ingesting a
drug can compel God to act.13 To some, drug-induced mystical experiences
seem unearned and undeserved (see Pahnke 1966: 309–10). But all agree
that the “set and setting” (the psychological disposition and beliefs of the
subject and the physical setting) are important and at least partially account
for the great variation in the experiences: drugs more often facilitate
mystical experiences when the subject is prepared for one by pre-
experience spiritual practices and beliefs and in a religious or otherwise
favorable setting, but the disruption caused by drugs cannot guarantee a
mystical experience will occur even then. Also, most volunteers for such
experiments are spiritually inclined and seek mystical experiences, and thus
they are already predisposed to having such experiences.
A second area involves other alleged “triggers” producing mystical
experiences. Such events as listening to music, contemplating the beauty of
nature, illness, stress, or despair can trigger extrovertive or introvertive
mystical experiences. On the other hand, many meditate daily for years
without producing any mystical experiences. But from John Lilly’s sense-
deprivation tanks in the 1950s to Michael Persinger’s “God helmet” (1987),
scientists have produced devices that appear to be able to induce mystical
experiences in a significant percentage of subjects. As discussed below,
nothing can force a mystical experience to occur 100 percent of the time,
but naturalists use the mere possibility of artificial triggers to conclude that
mystical experiences are purely natural events that are touched off naturally
without any transcendent realities existing.
The third area is the study of brains damaged by trauma and psychotic
and schizophrenic states of mind. The neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran’s
focus on microseizures in the left temporal lobe of patients is a prime
example (1998). The classic account of this type of epileptic seizure comes
from Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who put it in the words of a character in his
novel The Idiot: “His mind and heart were flooded with extraordinary light;
all torment, all doubt, all anxieties were relieved at once, resolved in a kind
of lofty calm, full of serene, harmonious joy and hope, full of understanding
and the knowledge of the ultimate cause of things.” Michael Persinger also
found that brain-injured patients sometimes had a “sense of presence”: if
the damage is to the left hemisphere, the presence may be a voice and be
positive; if the damage is to the right hemisphere, the presence is more
likely to be frightening and to be seen as an evil ghost or demon (Horgan
2003: 95). Religious experiences are thus simply the left hemisphere seeing
the activity in the right hemisphere as a separate religious entity. Early in
the twentieth century, William James derided the “medical materialism”
that explained away Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus as a discharging
lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic; Teresa of Avila as a
hysteric; and Francis of Assisi as a hereditary degenerate (1958: 29). It
remains common to conclude that there is “little doubt” that the experiences
of at least some mystics from history, such as Teresa of Avila and Catherine
of Siena were the result of temporal lobe epilepsy even though scientists
must admit that their biological details are “too meager to allow an accurate
assessment” (Dewhurst & Beard 1970: 504). More refined attempts to
explain all features of all religious and mystical experiences in terms of the
stimulation of the temporal lobe structures are still popular—Persinger sees
the experience of God as nothing but “a biological artifact of the human
brain” (1987: 17). Isolated mystical experiences are explained by short
bursts in the relevant locus in the brain, and longer-lasting states are
explained by chronic disturbances.
The fourth area is the recent neuroscientific scanning of meditators’
brains and physiology during meditation, which is central to the budding
field of cognitive neuroscience.14 In particular, “mindfulness neuroscience,”
which examines the neural mechanisms and systems supporting
mindfulness meditation, has become a “hot topic” (Tang & Posner 2013a:
1). More and more neuroscientists today are concluding that mystical
experiences are unique “genuine, neurobiological events” worthy of study
(Newberg, d’Aquili, & Rause 2002: 7). And with advances in noninvasive
technology (especially neuroimaging), the last few decades have seen a
marked increase in studies of the effect of meditation and other spiritual
exercises (e.g., fasting, contemplative prayer, and liturgical practices) on
brain activity and on other parts of the body. The experiences apparently
have reproducible and measurable biological effects, and advanced
meditators can produce more stable and reproducible mental states than can
the untrained (Lutz et al. 2007: 257). The effect of meditation on various
functions can be studied (e.g., changes in blood flow or in metabolic or
respiratory activity), as can changes in the autonomic nervous system and
neurochemical activity in the brain as with any other physical event, since
such activity is subject to the same laws of physics and chemistry as any
other activity. Meditation’s effect on such mental activities as attention,
perceptual sensitivity, responses to stimuli, and the regulation of emotional
states can also be studied. Meditative practices may also induce short-term
and long-term neural changes (Lutz et al. 2004). Different structures (e.g.,
the left amygdala and right hippocampus) are now drawing attention.
Lastly, scientists are also asking whether there is a genetic base to
mystical experiences (e.g., Hamer 2005) or at least a genetic propensity to
having mystical experiences. There may not be a unique “God gene,” but
there may be a genetic basis for mystical experiences or for pursuing
spiritual goals. Whether there is some evolutionary basis for the continuing
presence of these experiences in human history (i.e., some genetic
advantage in cultivating such experiences or spirituality in general) is also
being examined (e.g., Hardy 1979).

Sociocultural Explanations of Mystical Experiences

Social scientists look for social or psychological conditions responsible for
mystical experiences. They note that people with certain psychological
dispositions or in certain groups are more inclined than most people to have
mystical experiences. Social scientists who are naturalists may, like Émile
Durkheim and Carl Jung, find religion to be a positive force for a person or
society, but they believe only natural realities are involved. Psychological
naturalists may explain ecstatic religious experiences as, for example,
surrogates for sex.15 Some naturalist social scientists go beyond using
social conditions to explain tendencies to have religious experiences—e.g.,
I. M. Lewis’s theory that religious ecstasy is a means of access to political
and social power for disenfranchised and marginalized groups (1989)—to
conclude that social factors are the only causal forces producing such
experiences (e.g., Fales 1996a, 1996b, 1999a). Mystical experiences are
reduced to mere “projections” of the true natural source behind them,
whether it is our own mind, our society, or some particular cultural
phenomenon. Our projections do not hit any realities outside of natural
phenomena, and thus the religious are deluded as to the actual causes of
their experiences. (For more on sociocultural reductions, see Jones 2013:
160–71, 174–75, 188–89.)
Thus, reductive social scientists go beyond correlating mystical
phenomena with other sociocultural phenomena into denying any
transcendent element to mystical phenomena. Thereby, they are not only
explaining the occurrence of mystical experiences by specifying their
correlated sociocultural conditions but are explaining them away. Thus,
what they are doing is not comparable to a neuroscientist finding
correlations between brain states of meditators and their experiences.
Instead, it is like a neuroscientist making the philosophical judgment that
meditation involves no insights into the nature of reality but only involves
noncognitive internal brain events and thus is reducible to neural or
chemical correlates.

Explaining Away Mystical Experiences

The naturalists’ view can be foreseen in the words of Voltaire: religious
experiences are “supernatural visions permitted to him or her who is gifted
by God with the special grace of possessing a cracked brain, a hysterical
temperament, a disordered digestion, or, most of all, the art of lying with
effrontery.” Or as Bertrand Russell put the point more exactly: “From a
scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who
eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks a lot and sees snakes.
Each is in an abnormal physical condition, and therefore has abnormal
perceptions” (1997: 188). Naturalists argue that scientists can duplicate
every experiential feature of the various types of mystical experiences
through normal, well-understood neurological mechanisms and can also
explain the strong emotional effects these experiences have on the
participants. Naturalists then conclude that any mystical experience is
nothing but natural phenomena: the only realities involved in the
experiences are the experiencer and elements of the natural world. This
means that, even if a transcendent reality does happen to exist, an
introvertive mystical experience is still not an experience of anything but
natural phenomena. Mystical experiences are not only internal events but
“merely subjective” in a negative epistemic sense that no reality but the
brain is involved. Thus, the alleged cognitive content of these experiences
—i.e., any beliefs based on them regarding the existence and nature of
transcendent realities—is radically discredited.
Besides the “damaged brain” explanation, one popular way to explain
the phenomenology of the depth-mystical experiences is as an illusion
resulting from a feedback effect: our brain has evolved to produce an
intentional consciousness to deal with problems of survival; thus, when the
mind is “on” but has no content with which to work, it malfunctions badly,
producing the illusory sense of mystical oneness, timelessness, and so on.16
Thus, even if no mental disorder is involved, the depth-mystical experience
is at most simply the brain spinning its wheels when it has no mental
content to work with. Another explanation is based on empirical research:
during mystical experiences, the area of the brain connected to our sense of
a distinction between oneself and the rest of the world (the junction of the
temporal and parietal lobes) receives less input and thus is less active; this
also affects our temporal and spatial orientation. At the same time, the area
of the brain connected to tagging events as significant (the limbic system in
the temporal lobes) is more active. Thus, it is only natural that there is no
sense of a boundary between the self and the world and also a sense that the
experience is of great importance. The sense of ineffability results simply
from the temporary dominance of the brain’s nonlinguistic right hemisphere
(in right-handed males) over the left when the two hemispheres are not
operating properly in tandem: the right hemisphere is still cognitive and
processing information, but it cannot put that information into words. Thus,
at best, what is experienced is our own consciousness. But consciousness is
only the product of the brain, and hence a mystical experience is not an
experience of a transcendent reality. The “pure consciousness” event is not
even an insight into the nature of consciousness, since the brain is
malfunctioning during this experience. The experience may well have a
powerful positive or negative impact on experiencers, even transforming
their personalities, but this is no reason to believe that a transcendent reality
rather than purely natural ones is involved. Mystical selflessness could end
a sense of self-centeredness and self-importance and thus lead to a sense of
a selfless connection to the rest of the universe, but there is no need to
invoke any transcendent reality to explain this. Mundane brain activity
explains it all.
Other natural explanations are also popular.17 For example, certain
meditative techniques may consistently produce the experience of an
intense internal light, but naturalists argue that the experience is simply a
self-induced physiological change that experiencers misinterpret as
involving a transcendent reality. So too, the effects of meditative techniques
on the body do not depend on the beliefs of the meditator—the repeated
recitation of any phrase can produce the same effect regardless of the
content (Jesus prayer, Hindu mantra, Sufi prayer, or gibberish), and so the
content can be ignored. Any sense of presence is simply anthropomorphized
into a separate divine figure. Or if some “God gene” is found for having
religious experiences of self-transcendence, then naturalists conclude that it
has evolved in us only to enhance the genetic advantage of its practitioners.
Thus, mystical experiences can even be seen as a positive force in our lives
but treated as totally natural phenomena—ultimately, their only purpose, as
with all sociocultural phenomena, is what they do for our survival. The
mental processes of mystical experience are predispositions programmed
into the neural apparatus of our brain by thousands of generations of genetic
evolution. No transcendent realities are in any way involved, only nature
working itself out. Thus, mysticism as a product of an encounter with
transcendent realities is explained away, even though it may well be
valuable as a sociocultural phenomenon for its effect on the genetic level.
One way or another, naturalists explain away all mystical
phenomenology, and thus mystical experiences present no reason to accept
any transcendent reality or a consciousness apart from the physical base that
produces it. Nor is there any reason here to deny the existence of time or of
a real and distinct self: the experiencer is simply unaware of them during
the experience. Mystical experiences may reveal an innate human mental
capacity and may be the same across cultures and eras, but this is only
because our brains are basically all the same, at least with regard to these
experiences. And the fact that these experiences are open to such diverse
doctrinal interpretations by mystics themselves in different traditions from
around the world only shows that no alleged transcendent reality is involved
that could shape the content of the experiences or constrain beliefs—
mystics simply are unaware that they are making up the cognitive claims
out of a mixture of cultural beliefs and unusual but purely natural brain
events. That is, not only will the biological bases permitting mystical
experiences to occur be identified, thereby explaining how introvertive
mystical experiences can occur in the human body, but the experiences
themselves will be explained away. Any supernatural explanations are
rendered groundless, and thus any claim to mystical knowledge should be
rejected.
The scientific explanation of seeing a tree does not undercut the
possible validity of the experience as evidence that the tree exists, but
naturalists distinguish this from natural explanations of mystical
experiences.18 In the case of sense-experience, there is no alternative
explanation to a sense-object existing externally to our mind as part of the
causal chain leading to the perception (short of endorsing idealism or
solipsism), while in the case of mystical experiences a successful natural
explanation provides an alternative to a transcendent realism, and a
transcendent reality would thus not be necessary for these experiences to
occur. Being able to produce mystical experiences from purely natural
events also makes the occurrence of such experiences more predictable,
further solidifying the claim that the experiences are nothing but natural
events. The naturalists’ position also avoids one difficult problem: how
could “subjective” meditation or mystical experience cause changes in the
“objective” physical brain? Drugs and electrical stimulation are physical,
and thus these are in the same ontic category as the brain. Naturalists in fact
argue that a transcendent reality is not a possible cause at all: the
experiences’ complete explanation in terms of a set of necessary and
sufficient natural causes means that there is no place for a transcendent
cause to act, and so it renders any causal role for a transcendent reality
impossible even if a transcendent reality exists.
Different types of mystical experiences may require different
explanations (i.e., different sets of biological or sociocultural mechanisms),
but to naturalists only natural phenomena will be involved, and the job of
scientists is to identify the set of natural processes at work in each type of
experience. If successful, scientists will be able to duplicate the
phenomenology of experiences of God without God or another transcendent
reality. And if the experiences can be completely explained in terms of
natural causes and conditions, then there are no experiential grounds to
believe that mystics have experiences of any transcendent realities. In sum,
if scientists can replicate something by natural means that is presented as
being caused by God, why would we think that mystical experiences have a
divine origin? Rather, such experiences would be only a purely natural
event.
 In sum, naturalists, as their name indicates, deny that a transcendent
reality is among the causal roots of any introvertive mystical experience.
But naturalists need not doubt the sincerity of the experiencers or deny that
people in fact have such purported experiences—they must simply argue
that experiencers are honestly mistaken about the real causes. Just as seeing
a rope as a snake is a genuine experience and can produce a real emotional
kick that in turn produces real physiological effects even though there is no
snake, so too mystics have genuine experiences even though only natural
phenomena are involved. The mistake that advocates of a transcendent
realism make, however, can be explained, and thereby the alleged insight
can be explained away: the only realities involved in these experiences are
the experiencer and elements of the natural world.
So too, naturalists may even consider meditation to be valuable, but
only for its purported psychological or physiological benefits, not for
alleged insights. In fact, it is possible to give a positive naturalist
interpretation of both extrovertive and the depth-mystical experience—i.e.,
accepting that such experiences give an insight either into the nature of our
mind (perhaps revealing our purely natural consciousness free of all
intentional content) or into the beingness of the natural world. That is,
under this interpretation, mystical experiences cannot be explained away
any more than any other cognitive experience. In fact, much of mysticism
can be reconciled with naturalism and even with a reductive materialism.
(See Angel 2002; also see Wildman 2011 for a “religious naturalist” reading
of mystical claims that makes them into only symbolic statements about the
world.) Leonard Angel argues that the phenomenology of “universal self
consciousness mysticism” (i.e., the depth-mystical experiences) can be
explained even assuming that the only causal factors involved are physical
(2004: 20–26). Angel argues that strong evidence supports the principle of
the physical completeness for all human psychological functioning. (But
whether this principle is based only on experiences such as sense-
perception where possible nonnatural causes are not an issue is still a
question.) However, while this approach treats a mystical experience as a
positive occurrence rather than a brain malfunction and can also preserve
much of mystical ways of life, it still rejects the transcendent elements of
classical mystical metaphysics, thereby negating introvertive mystics’
cognitive claims.
 Thus, naturalists are not forced into affirming either that mystical
experiences are cognitive or that they must be the product of a mental
disorder. There is a third option: mystical experiences are unusual but
perfectly ordinary products of the brain that mystics typically misinterpret.
Thus, naturalists think they can account for mystical experiences within
their psychology better than do those who see a cognitive value in such
experiences. For naturalists, other experiences and nonexperiential factors
prevail over mystical ones on the cognitive issue. Thus, even if naturalists
themselves had mystical experiences, they would understandably dismiss
them as mere hallucinations, no matter how vivid, powerful, or “real” the
experiences felt afterward. Or the experience may cause them to rethink
their position but not change their minds, as A. J. Ayer’s near-death
experience toward the end of his life did not cause him to change his belief
in the lack of a life after death (or his hope that there is none), but it did
weaken his “inflexible attitude” toward that belief a little (1990). His
experience contained two beings and a bright but painful red light that he
took at the time as governing the universe (with space seeming to be
disjointed and the laws of nature to be not functioning properly), but his
later assessment was that this was all epiphenomena of a dying brain. The
psychologist Susan Blackmore had an extrovertive mystical experience and
practices mindfulness meditation, but after studying the issues she also
concluded that they have no ontic value or lasting therapeutic effects (see
Hogan 2003: 106–18).
Thus, in constructing their metaphysics naturalists are weighing all
experiences, including mystical ones—they simply reach a different
conclusion about which experiences are cognitive than do advocates of a
transcendent realism. Reaching different conclusions than mystics do does
not make them any more dogmatic than those mystics who dismiss
everyday perceptions as not reflecting reality in the most fundamental
sense: everyone—including mystics themselves—must weigh all types of
experiences in constructing any metaphysics.

Problems with Sociocultural Explanations

Naturalists, in sum, deny the possibility of mystical experiences being a
potential source of knowledge of any transcendent reality. If naturalists are
correct, then even if transcendent realities exist, introvertive mystical
experiences are still nothing but natural events. Even if mysticism
contributes to mental well-being, that is no reason to believe that
transcendent realities are involved. That is, if mysticism is explained
exclusively in natural terms, e.g., as enhancing social solidarity or
compensating for the lack of social power, the alleged cognitive value of
these experiences that are used as epistemic grounds for mystical ways of
life is undercut. Indeed, it becomes difficult in such circumstances to treat
any commitment to a way of life based on mystical experiences as even
minimally rational. But before adopting this conclusion, certain problems
with the naturalists’ reductions should be addressed.
One such problem is often overlooked: there is no one generic or
abstract “natural explanation,” but numerous competing candidates. One
cannot dismiss the issue of which one is correct with a wave of the hand,
exclaiming “Well, one must be right!” without revealing the metaphysical
nature of one’s commitment to naturalism. Instead, one must determine if
any of the various physiological, psychological, social, and philosophical
explanations is plausible at this time.19
It is easy to see why social theorists may be inclined to discount
mysticism. From a psychological point of view, certainly anyone who
would want to overcome a sense of self could only be classified as
“pathological.” So too, major differences in values might put mystics out of
step with a society at large. Crises or imbalances may have impelled
mystics to choose their path. But psychosocial causes and functions are in
themselves irrelevant to the possibility of genuine mystical experiences and
the possible truth or falsity of mystical claims. The same arguments could
be applied to science. For example, the scientific interest in the repeatable
and the predicable may reveal a neurotic fear of the unique, the unknown,
the erratic, and the unexpected, as Abraham Maslow argued (1966: 20–32).
Few would consider this sufficient grounds to dismiss all of science. Or
consider Sir Isaac Newton: he was not a paradigm of psychological health
—he was vain, ambitious, humorless, and extremely competitive—but
some of these very traits may have been instrumental in him becoming
arguably the greatest scientist of all time. Equating “true” with “arising
from psychosocial healthy conditions” would be unwarranted for scientific
or mystical claims. So too, finding the evolutionary or genetic basis
enabling human beings to conduct science (see Shepard 1997) is not
grounds to reject science.
Social theories exhibit another problem: broadness and looseness.
There is never anything comparable to the tight predictions in natural
science—theorists can correlate social groups with the inclination to have
mystical experiences, but they cannot predict exactly what percentage of a
given group or which specific individuals will have such experiences.
Theorists may note that religious experiences come disproportionately to
members of certain social groups—e.g., older, college-educated, wealthier,
black, Protestant males in America (Greeley 1975), or perhaps from
socially oppressed and disenfranchised groups (Lewis 1989), or introvertive
mystical experiences may be more frequent among females (Hood 1997),
with extrovertive experiences of feeling at one with the universe more
common among men and atheists (Kokoszka 1999/2000). But the theories’
predictive element is always a matter of very broad percentages—the
theories can always handle any specific experiences occurring inside or
outside the groups with the highest occurrences.
Such theories do qualify as explanations since they help our
understanding even if there are no exact predictions. But the sociocultural
theories will at best only explain why certain persons are prone to having
them, not explain why or how mystical experiences appear. This may
explain all that sociocultural naturalists want to know, but this has no
bearing on whether mystical experiences may really involve transcendent
realities. Nor do the social origins of religious beliefs and practices in
general explain why we have a physiology with a capacity for mystical
experiences to occur in the first place. Nor do evolutionary theories of
religion. So too, whether religious beliefs have a positive or negative value
for a group’s survival or for an individual’s well-being does not bear on the
question of whether a transcendent reality exists or not: as long as the
mystics simply believe that they have experienced transcendent realities,
the consequences would be the same whether such realities exist or not.20
Merely noting factors in our psychological or social makeup that may be
responsible for why certain people or members of certain groups are more
likely to have mystical experiences does not impress many people as the
final explanation of the experiences. Nor does it affect the question of their
possible cognitivity any more than the fact that some social groups may be
more likely to produce scientists or that people with certain psychological
dispositions are more likely to become scientists undercuts the validity of
science.
In addition, as noted in chapter 2, culture may explain why Christian
visions are of Mary and not Krishna, but it does not explain why there is
some “sense of presence” to experience in the visions in the first place
(Bowker 1973: 42–43). Thus, culture does not explain all of the experience,
including what may be its most significant part. If so, the cognitive content
of religious experiences is not reduced to the cultural framework, and new
knowledge is possible. Conceptualizations from our everyday life will
always be needed for our mind to feel it has comprehended what has
happened in a mystical experience, and to achieve this the religious may use
their social or parent-child relationships or some other sociocultural
phenomenon as models for transcendent realities. Thus, the religious
symbols and theories that experiencers construct may well reflect the
culture in which they were raised. These conceptualizations thus will
always have some psychological or social basis, and there is no reason
social scientists will not be able to identify and explain them. This,
however, does not mean that that is all there is to mystical experiences.
Even if the models are an active component of the experience itself, as
constructivists claim, this cannot rule out a transcendent reality as an
additional cause. Similarly, mystics may agree that many of our traditional
conceptions of a transcendent reality are merely projections of our egos or
social groups, but they would deny that such projections alter the
transcendent reality experienced in mystical experiences.
Thus, social scientists may be studying only how sociocultural factors
shape a mystical experience and the disposition of some people to have
these experiences, not everything about the experiences themselves.
Sociocultural reductionists believe that their explanations render
transcendent explanations redundant and thus dismissible as superfluous.
Sociocultural explanations can be deemed sufficient for explaining
mysticism only if we have already accepted that mystical doctrines are
false. But these natural explanations may at most explain only the “form”
that mystical experiences take or who is likely to have one, but not the
“content.” We must still ask whether a mystical experience involves a
transcendent reality or not.21
 Problems with Physiological Explanations
Even in neuroscience today, with our present state of knowledge of the
brain, there is an absence of any complete, detailed explanation of the
occurrence of mystical experiences. In fact, scientists have not established
exact correlations of brain states with everyday states such as emotions.
Talk of a genetic basis to mystical experiences—a “God gene”—as an
explanation may also be risky. Apparently even simple human traits involve
hundreds of different genes (Beauregard & O’Leary 2007: 47–55). Perhaps
there is no single “God gene complex” either. Or consider V. S.
Ramachandran’s identification of epileptic microseizures in the left
temporal lobe as the neurological basis of mystical experiences reveals
another problem: not everyone who has this type of epileptic seizure has
religious experiences (1998: 186)—most in fact only have epileptic
seizures. Few even have visions (Kelly & Grosso 1997: 532; Horgan 2003:
99). Any explanation of mystical experiences in terms of epileptic activity
in the temporal lobe would have to explain why only a few people have
these experiences and so many do not, and why the mystical experiences
are positive in tone while the seizure state is not. Seizures may be only
another way that the mind becomes open to mystical experiences.
Something in an individual’s personality or background may be a factor in
whether that person with this type of epilepsy has a religious experience.
Moreover, this type of epilepsy involves areas of the brain associated with
speech; at most, it is associated with triggering numinous visions and
voices, not the silent, inner experiences of mysticism. One clinical study
found that while most patients in the study had some subjective experience
during their seizures, none of their descriptions met the criteria of a
“mystical experience” (Greyson et al. 2014).22 One the other hand, the
meditating Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns studied by Eugene
d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg exhibited no signs of this or any other
pathology, and one cannot simply assume that they must have had this type
of epilepsy because that is what causes these experiences without arguing in
a very tight circle. The same issue applies to all identifications of the brain
mechanisms of mystical experiences: scientists must actually study a large
number of experiencers of each type of mystical experience before drawing
any conclusions and not simply uncritically generalize from only a few
examples.
 So too, mystical and numinous experiences may not be associated with
only one spot in the brain (Beauregard & O’Leary 2007: 255–88). LSD
affects virtually all areas of the brain (Goodman 2002), and mystical
experiences may do the same. The “corroborative evidence to support a link
between the temporal lobe and mystical experience has been rather sparse”
and “a much more complex picture of mystical experience involving
extensive neocortical involvement” may be needed; neuroimaging studies
of people undergoing mystical experiences show “complex patterns of
widespread activation in the cortices, midbrain, and brainstem” (Greyson et
al. 2014: 11, 12). Thus, mystical experiences may not be associated with
one region of the brain or one simple pattern of brain activity.
Ramachandran realizes that scientists are still a long way from showing that
there is a “God module” in the brain that might be genetically specified—
scientists are currently in a “twilight zone” of neurology (1998: 188). Thus,
any simple explanations in terms of, for example, temporal lobe activity
may not elucidate the neurological base of all types of mystical experiences
in both of its classes. Arguably, it should be easier to find biological bases
for the depth-mystical experience than for numinous experiences such as
revelations, since the latter experiences seem to be more complex events
involving sensory-like activity (visions, voices, tactile sensations, or a
combination of these), memory, emotions, and motor activity. Depth-
mystical experiences seem simpler in this regard, but even they may be
complex. The extrovertive state of mindfulness combines mental calming
with sense-experience and internal mental operations. Introvertive mystical
experiences may also involve different parts of the brain. If so, they too
would have no simple neurological explanation of any mystical experience.
And considering the different physiological effects that the same type of
meditation often produces, the picture may be a good deal more complex
than could be handled by any simple explanation.
In sum, there are many different types of extrovertive and introvertive
mystical experiences, and there is no reason to believe the physiological
base is the same in every case. For example, research shows that EEG
indices differ in mindfulness meditation from those in the concentrative
meditation connected to the depth-mystical experience. Consistent
differences in neurological readings between different types of extrovertive
and introvertive mystical experiences strongly suggest a difference in the
states of consciousness involved (but this does not prove this, due to the
multiple-realization problem and its inverse discussed below).
There also are other problems. First, if electrical stimulation or a drug
could produce a given mystical experience 100 percent of the time,
naturalists may be confident that there is a natural reduction—no “grace of
God” would be needed. But that has not occurred: no triggers approach that
figure—only significantly lower percentages are ever attained, and the
exact experience apparently depends on the setting and the experiencer’s
beliefs. This leaves room for grace or some other explanation of why some
participants have these experiences and others in the same setting do not.
Thus, this affects the issue of whether natural factors cause mystical
experiences and whether the experiences can be explained away or are
cognitive.
Second, note again the gap between brain conditions and
consciousness. Mystical experiences no doubt share this gap with other
conscious phenomena. Again, this means that scientists do not study
mystical experiences at all when they study the biological correlates of an
experience (see also Jones 1986: 219–22). In addition, apparently different
states of the mind can have the same biological bases. Consider Herbert
Benson’s finding that there is a great variety of “subjective” (i.e.,
experiential) responses—including no change of consciousness at all—
accompanying the same physiological changes produced by his simple
relaxation technique (1975: 115). Different states of mind apparently share
the same bases in the brain. According to Stanislav Grof, no subjective
phenomena are an invariant product of the chemical action of LSD (Smith
2000: 81). The placebo effect also holds for some psychotropic drugs: once
we learn a response, we can be given what we think is the drug (when in
fact it is a placebo) and the response will occur; conversely, we can
unknowingly ingest the active ingredient and no change in consciousness
occurs. In short, the same state of consciousness may occur with different
biochemical bases and vice versa. Thus, the “multiple realization” problem
from the mind-body field (see Jones 2013: 38–39, 76–78) and its inverse
are both possibilities in the case of mystical experiences. This does not rule
out finding more exact neurological bases of these experiences in the future,
but without a one-to-one explanation, a natural reduction is not possible: all
mystical experiences will, of course, be grounded in some bodily state, but
simply identifying those states will not explain why the same state can be
realized in more than one biological state or vice versa. Thus, the
explanation of the experiential level would still be missing, as would an
explanation of why reality permits the higher-level events to occur at all.
At this time, that a complete biological explanation of a mystical
experience is even possible is a speculative assumption. Each scientist’s
proposed explanation of mystical experiences is disputed by a majority of
other scientists. Some scientists question the empirical findings of other
scientists. (One recurring problem in these studies is to make sure that
scientists are actually measuring activity connected to mystical experiences
and not merely to any intense experiences producing emotional effects.)
Some investigators express skepticism over whether technology is able to
produce a genuine mystical experience or activate all the subjective aspects
of such experiences. For example, Michael Persinger’s “God helmet”
generates a weak magnetic field that triggers a small burst of electrical
activity in the temporal lobes; this causes about 40 percent of his subjects to
experience a sensed presence of a vague separate spectral entity; this entity
is interpreted by the religious (but not by others) as a religious figure
(1987). Critics have had difficulty duplicating Persinger’s results and
suggest that the “sense of presence” is due only to suggestibility (Granqvist
et al. 2005). This might support attribution theory: the neuroscientist Mario
Beauregard dismisses such numinous experiences as merely the products of
suggestibility and not genuine religious experiences at all (2007: 96–99).23
But apparently no one stimulated by the God helmet has publically reported
anything resembling the phenomenology of a mystical experience—bliss,
sense of unity, and ineffability (Horgan 2003: 98–99). Edward Kelly and
Michael Grosso also question the entire focus on temporal lobe epilepsy,
since even “garden-variety levels of euphoria” are rare in such epileptic
episodes, not anything truly mystical, and such euphoria lasts only a few
seconds out of a total epileptic episode; moreover, the emotions more
typically shown are fear, terror, anxiety, apprehension, and anger (1997:
531–34). They also slam the work of Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew
Newberg as bad science unpublished in peer-reviewed publications and
their “model” as “little more than a neurological fairy tale” (ibid.: 537–38).
Richard Sloan also thinks that Newberg and d’Aquili’s studies (1999, 2002)
speculate too broadly based on two small SPECT studies with a total of
eleven subjects and no control group (2006: 247).24 Indeed, some critics
today dismiss the entire enterprise of trying to locate a locus in the brain of
any behavior or complex mental event as “the new phrenology.”
Nothing today except a metaphysical commitment to naturalism can
rule out the possibility of a transcendent reality as part of the causal chain
of introvertive mystical experiences. Of course, someday a complete and
detailed explanation in natural terms may be worked out and agreed on by
most scientists. But at present, naturalists’ reductions are based on no more
than an assumption. They are in the same position as reductive naturalists
on the mind: the explanations are complete only in the sense that their
metaphysics dictates the possibility of such an explanation. We are left at
present with only an “in principle” reductionism, and this is simply a
restatement of the reductionists’ metaphysical beliefs.
One other problem is often overlooked: all experiences have biological
explanations, and no type of experience can be rejected as a possible
vehicle for insights because of that. No one argues that sense-experiences
are illusions because they have a neural base. EEG examinations of
scientists doing research are irrelevant to the possible veridicality of their
observations or the truth or falsity of their theories: the readings would be
the same in the case of correct or incorrect observations and for insights or
mistakes.25 And the same holds for meditators. As William James said,
“Scientific theories are organically conditioned as much as religious
emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should
doubtless see ‘the liver’ determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as
decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about
his soul” (1958: 29–30). The truth or falsity of a claim is simply
independent of such accounts and turns on other considerations.
Finally, another fundamental problem touched on above concerning
experiences in general applies here: merely establishing correlations of a
mystical experience and neural events does not prove that the neural events
cause the experience or vice versa. So too, changes in a state of
consciousness may correlate one-to-one with changes in brain states, but
this does not mean that the latter cause the former. Correlating does not
explain anything—only metaphysics leads naturalists to conclude that
biological changes must be the cause of the experience. Based on
correlations alone, whether bodily events cause experiences or vice versa
and whether experiences are reducible to only bodily events or accompany
physiological events remain open issues. In short, reductions cannot
proceed by merely establishing correlations.

Do Natural Triggers Produce Mystical Experiences?

Consider further the “multiple realization” problem and its inverse. Not
everyone who meditates or ingests a drug undergoes a change in
consciousness even when they have physiological changes. Meditative
practitioners well along the path to enlightenment may have the same
physiological reactions as beginners, but they still may have very different
subjective experiences. Conversely, it may be that enlightened states
produce only very subtle differences or no differences at all in physiological
reactions than do unenlightened states in advanced meditators. In sum,
meditators, including those within the same religious tradition, may be
undergoing different experiences when their physiology registers the same
state. Also consider the inverse of the multiple-realization problem: in one
study, Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns exhibit similar changes in the
brain, but the Buddhist monks experienced selflessness while the Christian
nuns experienced “a tangible sense of the closeness of God and a mingling
with Him” (d’Aquili & Newberg 2002: 7). This suggests that the
introvertive experiences were different (one an “empty” depth-mystical
experience and one a differentiated theistic one), but that they had the same
physiological bases and effects—if so, a duplication of these bases would
not guarantee duplicating one subjective experience. The opposite of this
problem also cannot be ruled out in advance of actual study (if possible):
meditators may undergo similar subjective reactions while having different
physiological reactions. That different meditative techniques can lead to the
same effect should also be noted, e.g., sensory overload and sensory
deprivation apparently both lead to hyperactivity in the limbic system.
Thus, scientists may be able to trigger changes in brain states or other
physiological changes, but it is not obvious that they can produce a given
experience or subjective state.26 So too, meditation may rewire the brain’s
neural system (Austin 1998), but mystical experiences may be a different
type of event. There is also the related issue of whether all of the
experiences induced by drugs or another artificial stimulation are in fact the
same as those cultivated by meditation or those occurring spontaneously.
(Again, for theological reasons, theists will want to claim that the
phenomenal content of true mystical experiences is different.) The artificial
production of a mystical experience may duplicate the chemical reactions of
a mystical experience but not the “subjective” experience. Drug-induced
experiences may also have less of a long-term impact on a person’s
physiology than do experiences resulting from cultivation on a path. May at
least some of the experiences differ in nature too? It may be that
experiences produced by artificial stimulation do not duplicate all the
features of spontaneous or meditation-cultivated mystical experiences but
only their biological features—i.e., the stimulation may indeed activate the
areas of the brain involved in genuine mystical experiences, but there may
still be more to the subjective side of these experiences than is enabled by
the laboratory procedures. There is also the very real issue of whether a
laboratory setting affects the subjective side of the experience since “set and
setting” matter. In sum, scientists may in fact not be duplicating the full
phenomenology of any mystical experience. Or it may be that some people
who have the artificial stimulation administered to them do indeed have
genuine mystical experiences and other people do not. That is, perhaps
some experiences are triggered that are not similar to genuine mystical
experiences but are in fact genuine mystical experiences. However, other
types of experiences may also be triggered.
At a minimum, more is involved in a mystical experience than merely
brain activity being altered. Drugs may produce some of the necessary
conditions for a mystical experience to occur by altering the brain’s
chemistry, but they may not provide all of the necessary and sufficient
conditions. If that is the case, as the psychologist Ralph Hood notes, it
would be naive to claim that mystical experiences are drug-specific effects
(2005: 354). That is, drugs would not cause the experiences. Hood
concludes that the weight of evidence is that drugs elicit brain states that
permit religious awareness but do not necessitate it (1995: 584). At most,
ingesting the drugs sets up the conditions enabling or permitting the
experience to occur by disrupting the conditions for ordinary experiences,
or however the chemicals in the brain do what they do. And once the
experience is learned, the drug may no longer be necessary to set the
conditions. But the ingestion of a drug cannot guarantee a mystical
experience, even if it is administered in a conducive setting to a person
actively seeking mystical experiences. Neither drugs nor anything else so
far can produce the experience on demand. Thus, a drug or electrical
stimulation of part of the brain is not a deterministic trigger of such
experiences.

Natural Phenomena and Mystical Insights

In addition, even if scientists do discover, say, a drug that triggers a depth-
mystical experience 100 percent of the time, the basic issue concerning
physiological studies still remains: is an introvertive mystical experience a
purely natural phenomenon, or have the scientists merely identified the
conditions in the brain making a person receptive to the infusion of a
transcendent reality? Near-death experiences may set off a mystical
experience.27 Even stress, despair, or another severe psychological crisis
may be a way of breaking the grip our everyday life has on our mind,
thereby setting up the physiological conditions necessary for a mystical
experience. Unusual psychological states may be sufficient to set up the
base-conditions, but it does not follow that therefore the experiences do not
permit veridical mystical insights. Indeed, perhaps chemical imbalances or
other abnormal bodily states brought on by drugs, breathing exercises or
other meditative techniques, fasting or other ascetic practices, or whatever,
are needed to permit mystical states to occur. It is question-begging to assert
without further argument that only experiences occurring in the states of
consciousness evolved to deal with survival give knowledge of reality.
Drugs impair our ordinary cognitive and perceptual apparatus, but does this
rule out the possibility that they must do so to open the doors to other types
of cognitive consciousness? As William James noted, for all we know, a
temperature of 103 or 104 degrees Fahrenheit might be much more
favorable for truths to germinate and sprout in than is our ordinary body
temperature (1958: 30). Or as C. D. Broad put it, maybe we have to be a
little cracked to have peepholes into the super-sensible world. This may be
true at least for certain truths.
Moreover, even if it turns out that mystical experiences are associated
with parts of the brain that more commonly produce hallucinations,
advocates of mysticism can turn this situation around and argue that the
hallucinations are the product of the malfunctioning of brain mechanisms
that when functioning properly enable veridical mystical experiences to
occur, even if the former are more common. For example, some
psychologists argue that dissociative states of schizophrenia and some
psychoses result from the same implosions of a transcendent reality that
occur in mystical experiences, but that the patients are not equipped to
handle them, and so the disconnect from a self or mundane reality produces
confusion and panic. Mystics, on the other hand, have a belief-framework
and the training or psychological preparation needed to handle the
disintegration of the mundane worldview and so can later successfully
reintegrate into the normal world (Brett 2002: 335–36). However,
naturalists may take the connection of mystical states and psychosis and
conclude the opposite: a mystical episode is only a perfectly natural, if
abnormal, state of mind resulting from a problem with the brain: psychotic
breakdowns and mystical states result from the same material processes and
cannot be differentiated in content (e.g., the loss of subject/object
boundaries). Simply because mystics have the mental training and
framework of beliefs to expect and handle the disintegration of the
mundane worldview calmly and thus can successfully reintegrate into the
normal world does not mean that any insights are involved. Mystics’
conceptual frameworks merely act like circuit breakers that keep the purely
natural disruptions under control. Thus, drugs and mystical techniques open
the same dangerous waters as in a mental breakdown, but mystical
selflessness is a more coherent mental state, and mystics do not conclude
that the experiencer alone is God. This would also explain the difference
between the mystic’s feeling of calm and bliss versus the psychotic’s feeling
of confusion and fear with the same loss of a sense of self, and why the
former can think rationally and live productively. However, it should be
noted again that these studies involve states of mind with visions and
voices, not the mystical states devoid of such content. In addition, the
mindful perception of the world can be explained without appealing to
psychoses (Deikman 1980; Austin 1998; Hölzel et al. 2011a).28
However, the point of interest here is that once again the scientific
findings on the locus or brain activity of any particular mystical experience
will not themselves answer the philosophical question of whether the
experience is cognitive or not. Perhaps something like the parietal lobe (or
whatever the locus of a given mystical experience is) or disrupting the
activity in the brain is necessary for a being to have any mystical
experience, but this does not mean that therefore the experience is only a
product of that lobe or the disrupted mechanisms or that cognitive
experiences may not result.

The Compatibility Problem

The last point is the most significant problem for scientific reductions and
should be elaborated: whether natural and transcendent explanations of
mystical experiences are in fact compatible. Naturalists argue that if
scientists can identify a set of conditions causing a mystical experience to
arise in a significant percentage of participants, then the experience is
totally natural and a transcendent reality cannot be a causal factor in the
chain of events producing the experience. One response is simply to deny
that any complete natural explanation is possible in practice (Alston 1991:
230)—the complexity of any human phenomenon renders it impossible for
scientists to be certain that they have identified all the necessary conditions
for any experience (Wainwright 1981: 73–76). While this strategy definitely
raises a very real problem with these explanations, the approach here will
be to assume that some complete and detailed natural explanations for
mystical experience will someday occur, even if each type requires a
different natural explanation.
The question then is: does a scientific explanation of these states
undercut their cognitive claims? Consider mindfulness. Arthur Deikman
plausibly explains mindfulness in terms of the “deautomatization” of the
habitual mental structures that organize, limit, select, and interpret
perceptual stimuli leading to an expanded awareness of new dimensions of
the total stimulus array (1980). Thus, deautomatization removes precisely
the conceptual elements that constructivists argue are the total cognitive
substance of mystical experiences. In the mindfulness mode (unlike in the
normal “manipulative” mode), one is more receptive to sensory input and
responds more immediately. Deikman uses this mechanism to explain
features associated with mystical experiences: the sense of ultimate
realness, unity, ineffability, the heightened sensitivity of sense-experience,
and so on. All are simply the result of the mind being unconstrained by the
usual structuring. If so, the sense of selflessness in the mindful state is no
more grounds to reject belief in a self than the fact that mystics are unaware
of time in their experiences means that time is not real. Deikman thinks the
available scientific evidence tends to support the view that all mystical
experiences are only a subjective “internal perception” (ibid.: 259). James
Austin offers a similar theory about the circuits of the brain associated with
self-awareness and those associated with monitoring the environment being
deactivated during meditation (1998), leading to a sense of a selfless
connection to the world. But do these theories by themselves rule out the
possibility of cognition of the unreality of a self and of our connection to
everything else in the universe? Perhaps deautomatization permits an
extrovertive insight to occur into the nature of the mind by its decentered
perspective (Bishop et al. 2004: 234). Based on the science of the brain
alone, can we conclude that mindful awareness cannot be cognitive?
Without more evidence, can we definitely rule out that mindfulness mystics
are not seeing that there is in fact no real everyday ego?
It is not clear how the science itself could possibly answer such
questions: whether the experiences are cognitive or not, the scientific
findings would be the same. In the end, mindfulness is a process of inner
observation, not “self-knowledge” (Bishop et al. 2004: 235), and any ontic
claims are a matter of reflection. Thus, it appears that these questions
remain matters of philosophy, not science. The issue then is this: what do
any scientific explanations actually accomplish? If we assume that scientists
can duplicate every feature of an introvertive mystical experience by natural
causes so that a stimulated experience is phenomenologically
indistinguishable from “real” mystical experiences, does the naturalists’
conclusion follow? No. Advocates of a transcendent realism can still
respond that at best all scientists have done is to locate the
neurophysiological bases that, when stimulated, permit a genuine infusion
of a transcendent reality. If genuine experiences of a transcendent reality do
occur, then obviously some mechanism in us permits them to occur—all
that scientists may have done is demonstrated how to stimulate those
mechanisms by means other than the involvement of a transcendent reality,
thereby permitting a transcendent reality to appear. The science cannot in
itself rule out the possibility that other causes—transcendent ones—may
also produce the same physiological effects or otherwise invalidate a
mystical claim to a genuine insight. Only the metaphysics of naturalists
requires that conclusion.
This issue involves two points. First, if, for example, during some
mystical experiences our brain produces a certain chemical, scientists may
well be able to identify this chemical and to manufacture a drug that will
substitute for its natural production in the brain during a mystical
experience; this drug can then produce the same neural effects when it is
artificially introduced into the brain. But scientists cannot conclude that
during mystical experiences occurring outside the lab, a transcendent reality
is not involved in the production of the same chemical. For example, in an
introvertive theistic experience, God may somehow use the normal
neurochemical channels of our brain to produce a mystical experience. The
artificially administered drug can then produce the same effects in the brain,
thereby permitting the possibility of a genuine mystical experience. If the
experience of transcendent realities is veridical, the awareness involves
natural processes occurring in our body, and all that scientists will have
done is locate the parts of our brain that are involved and identify the
chemical conditions necessary for a genuine experience of a transcendent
reality to occur. Such findings would mean only that some chemical
conditions are necessary to set up a genuine experience of a transcendent
reality, not that no insight could be involved.
In short, how do we know that the chemical reaction of the drugs in the
brain does not simply reproduce the same chemical reactions that mystics
have when they are aware of a transcendent reality? Naturalists cannot
conclude from the science alone that science has demonstrated that there are
no other ways to activate the same exact conditions. Ingesting the drugs
may be a final sufficient cause when all the necessary conditions for the
experience are in place, but how could the science itself show that other
sufficient causes are not possible? Only if the scientific explanations by
themselves could in principle rule out the very possibility of a transcendent
reality being a factor in a mystical experience could such explanations
definitely be grounds for a naturalists’ reduction of those experiences, and
there does not appear to be any way that any scientific explanation could
accomplish this. In sum, the science alone cannot, even in principle, refute
the mystical claim to cognitivity.
Thus, scientists will at best only reveal some necessary natural
conditions and one set of possible causes for the mystical experience to
occur. It still is simply the naturalists’ assumption that these conditions are
the only possible sufficient causes. All that the scientists have demonstrated
at best is something comparable to an electrical stimulation of the arm
causing it to jerk: scientists have located the mechanisms at work in the
event and have stimulated them; they have not proved that no other cause of
the event is possible (the mind moving the arm). Naturalists can push the
button stimulating the arm movement all they want, but they cannot
eliminate the possibility that there may be other ways nature causes that
same movement. In short, scientists can never demonstrate scientifically
that they have located the only possible causes. So too with mystical
experiences: the naturalists’ metaphysics requires them to conclude that
something transcendent cannot be a cause, but nothing in the actual science
requires this philosophical judgment.
This leads to the second basic point: stimulating certain parts of the
brain may be necessary, but this does not mean that natural events are all
that is involved. Perhaps by their actions on the brain the drugs merely set
the stage to permit something transcendent to enter the subject’s
consciousness. That is, a stimulation prepares the brain, but something more
is still needed for a mystical experience to occur. (Also remember that at
present mystical experiences do not occur every time an artificial
stimulation is applied. This strongly suggests that more than the physical
base is involved in these experiences.) Without more argument, naturalists
cannot conclude from the fact that some chemicals set up the physiological
conditions that the resulting experience must be a purely natural
phenomenon and no nonnatural factors are involved. Scientists cannot
determine that what they find is all there is to an experience, and so they
can never demonstrate that they have eliminated a transcendent reality as a
possible element. The event generated by the drug, whether administered
artificially or generated by the brain, thus may permit true insights into a
transcendent reality, or the experience with or without artificial stimulation
may in fact only be the source of a delusion—the biochemical bases alone
will not determine this. In short, science can never prove that these
experiences are only purely natural phenomena.
Science also cannot determine the cognitive status of mystical
experiences even if no nonnatural elements are involved: nature-mystical
experiences, mindfulness, and even introvertive mystical experiences may
not require the intervention of a transcendent reality into the natural order
and yet still be cognitive. Extrovertive mystical experiences involve a new
sense of the nature of the phenomenal world. If a transcendent reality
grounds the reality of the experiencer, the experience of it is not a matter of
any sort of signal or energy being injected from a transcendent realm into
the natural realm or any sort of interaction with an outside source, any more
than with sense-experience. Instead, experiencers can become aware of the
reality already immanent in them through the relevant parts of the brain in
another manner. The same would hold for a theistic god that is the sustainer
of the natural universe. The depth-mystical experience involves emptying
the mind of all differentiated content and letting the transcendent ground
implode in it (whether it is the ground of the self or of all phenomenal
reality). No contact with a separate reality or action by a transcendent
reality is involved—the experience leads simply to realizing what has
always been the case. Before, during, and after the mystical experience the
experiencer has the same ontic relation to the transcendent reality. Even if
the brain is only a natural product that evolved to help in our survival, there
still may be a configuration of the brain’s parts that also enables us to
become aware of a transcendent reality. Indeed, for all we currently know of
the brain there may be a dedicated circuit in the brain—a “God receptor”—
that has evolved solely for the purpose of enabling mystical experiences.
Either way, both the mystical experiences and subsequent states obviously
will be as open in principle to as complete a scientific account as
nonmystical experiences and states. And any identification of the bodily
correlates that form the base for these experiences will not necessitate the
conclusion that no insight into the nature of reality is involved.
In sum, the scientific explanations per se are perfectly compatible with
theistic and other mystical explanations. Perhaps all that scientists may be
doing is identifying the locus where a transcendent reality becomes
involved with the brain and then artificially stimulating the neurological
mechanisms permitting a mystical experience on some occasions. Such an
identification cannot by itself rule out this possibility. Nor can it rule out the
possibility that something transcendent is involved even in artificially
stimulated experiences that result in cognitive insights. Thus, even a
complete scientific account of any mystical experience will not determine
whether mystical experiences might provide insights into the nature of
reality. That issue will still have to be decided on philosophical grounds.

Applying Occam’s Razor

The compatibility of scientific explanations and the possibility of mystical
insights means that there is no forced either/or choice between accepting
mystical experiences as either neurological events or authentic cognitive
awareness of reality—the experiences may in fact be both. Naturalists
might concede this point and admit that science alone cannot determine the
issue of cognitivity. But they would then turn to philosophical grounds to
reject any transcendent option, starting with Occam’s razor. That is, they
will counter that it is improper to invoke a transcendent reality when an
ontologically simpler explanation in terms of natural factors alone does the
same job. If scientists can duplicate all the phenomenological aspects of a
mystical experience by drugs or other natural means, why should we think
that a transcendent reality is ever involved? The naturalists’ position also
brings coherence to our picture of the mind: no special mental function is
needed for these experiences—mystical experiences are explainable in
terms of the same ordinary mental capacities that explain all our other
experiences, even if naturalists may have to argue that the brain is
malfunctioning during these experiences. This, they argue, at least puts the
burden of proof on advocates of transcendent realism to show that
transcendent explanations are needed when plausible natural explanations
either already exist or at least the inklings of them are being established and
it is only a question of when, not if, a complete natural explanation will be
forthcoming. Thus, they argue that even if the scientific accounts do not
absolutely rule out a transcendent cause as impossible, such accounts do at
least render such a cause more unlikely than natural explanations since
ordinary natural factors can accomplish precisely the same thing, and thus
there is no reason to invoke a transcendent reality. Natural explanations thus
are the best available option.
And naturalism does seem to have the initial advantage on this point.
Surely a laboratory duplication of all of a mystical experience through
natural means (if in fact this is possible) would at least count prima facie
against the idea that some experiences have a nonnatural cause. In addition,
the naturalists’ monism is ontologically simpler than ontic dualisms of this
world and transcendent realities, and, everything else being equal, we do
believe that the universe is more likely set up with a simpler ontology. In
naturalism, no new entities or processes are involved. The religious
introduce an entirely new order of reality, and with it a new mystery that the
religious probably never will be able to solve: how a transcendent reality
could act in nature. Naturalists have no corresponding mystery.
But advocates of transcendent realism will counter that we make
exceptions to the principle of parsimony when we think we have reasons to
believe that it does not apply. Everyone agrees that it is not a violation of
Occam’s razor where a more complex phenomenon requires a more
complicated explanation—no one in chemistry accepts Thales’s claim “all
is water” even though it is simple. Most obviously, we think sense-
experience requires reference to sense-objects to be complete, even though
solipsism is ontologically much simpler. Transcendent realists argue that a
similar exception is needed here: they argue that there are compelling
reasons other than these experiences to believe that transcendent realities
exist; and if such realities do exist, explanations of the neurological
mechanisms of experiencers undergoing mystical experiences do not cover
all that is actually involved in the experiences. To naturalists, this is
precisely the type of situation where Occam’s razor should apply, but to the
religious the naturalists’ account of the universe is not simple but simplistic
and should be rejected.
In addition, transcendent realists will argue that at least introvertive
mystical experiences are indeed unique mental events, and so these
obviously require their own explanation—to treat them as any other
experience would be to distort them. Thus, transcendent realists argue,
asking for a unique explanation of these experiences is not a strategy
designed simply to protect certain religious beliefs but something that
reflects what in fact needs explaining. Transcendent realists argue that
naturalists consider their own explanations satisfactory only because these
explanations account for all of the aspects that naturalists think on
metaphysical grounds are actually involved, but all that scientists may be
accounting for are the conditions that permit a mystical experience to occur.
Naturalists consider the fact that they can predict on physiological or
sociocultural grounds when a mystical experience is likely to occur to be
very pertinent—it shows that only natural factors are at work—but
transcendent realists consider that fact to be irrelevant to the issue since
they too can accept such findings. The science would not demonstrate a true
trigger that would compel the transcendent to become manifest in the
mystic’s mind but would only be identifying the conditions present when a
transcendent reality infuses an experiencer. The key to any explanation is
that it makes us believe that we understand why what occurred did occur. A
transcendent reality is an explanation in that way, even though the fact that
a transcendent reality cannot be empirically tested forecloses it as a possible
scientific explanatory posit.
Indeed, since naturalists think in terms of scientific explanations only,
there will be a permanent dispute between transcendent realists and
naturalists here. At a minimum, the principle of parsimony should be taken
as favoring naturalism only if we have other grounds to favor naturalism.
Standing alone, the principle is merely located at the center of the basic
metaphysical dispute. Similarly, other pertinent philosophical arguments
will also end up being grounded in matters of a conflict of metaphysics and
thus beyond the scope of a scientific resolution.

Our Epistemic Situation

It follows from the above that the religious can provide an understanding of
scientific and sociocultural explanations consistent with a transcendent
realism: identifying the bases of mystical experiences does not by itself
explain away alleged mystical insights any more than identifying the social
bases for the origin of science as a social institution or the physiological
bases enabling someone to have the capacity to undertake scientific
research explains away scientific insights. Thus, the religious can endorse
scientific explanations as providing an understanding of the occurrence of
mystical experiences but never as a complete explanation of them. So too,
naturalists must accept that scientific analysis is not inherently reductionist:
scientists can provide analyses of the makeup and causes of phenomena
without making the additional metaphysical claim that only the causes are
real or that the phenomena are in any way not real (see Jones 2013: chap.
3).29 Transcendent realists will also have to accept that science per se
cannot verify their position either. Naturalists who believe that scientific
explanations refute mystical claims will have to defend their position on
considerations that are metaphysical in nature. The naturalists’ commitment
to sense-experience and science as the only means to knowledge of reality
does not get them out of this situation—indeed, this commitment itself will
have to be defended on philosophical grounds. The consequence of this is
that arguments on the beliefs and alleged insights connected to mystical
experiences or their rejection will depend on grounds other than scientific
accounts themselves.
It should also be noted that it is not only some naturalists who believe
that science alone justified their view. Many contemporary New Age
advocates enthusiastically conclude that scientists studying the physiology
of meditators have validated age-old mystical claims.30 For example, the
general shift of mental functioning in meditation from the left to the right
brain hemisphere—a shift from the site of linguistic and analytical activity
to that of nonverbal and synthetic activity—has been popular since the
1970s as establishing a physiological basis proving the truth of mystical
claims. But the grounds of this claim are as shaky as for the naturalists’.
Science does not establish that any insights into the nature of reality
accompany the shift: the right hemisphere functioning without contact with
the left may in fact be no more than a useless spinning of mental gears
incapable of any true insight into the nature of reality; if so, any claim based
in such brain activity would then be inherently unreliable. (Also, science
does not support this position: meditation may lead to greater activity in the
brain’s right hemisphere, but the overall pattern is one of interhemispheric
integration and synchronization [Winkelman 1999: 417–18].)
The upshot is that scientific explanations do not bear on the issue of
the possible truth of any transcendent explanations of mystical experiences
even in principle. Even if neuroscience can be taken as verifying that
distinctive mystical experiences occur, it does not either validate or
invalidate any mystical knowledge-claims related to selflessness and so
forth: merely establishing the nexus in the brain of the event and the circuits
involved is irrelevant to the issue of whether the stimulated area of the brain
permits a mystical experience of a transcendent reality to occur or whether
the experience is no more than an internal function of that mundane brain
activity. We are left with a metaphysical question: does our brain naturally
cause us to create these experiences (e.g., somehow to aid in our survival or
because of the brain is malfunctioning), or did a transcendent reality create
our brain to permit genuine experiences of a transcendent reality? To
oversimplify: if the brain is not malfunctioning, we may be hard-wired for
mystical experiences or for experiences of self-transcendence (Hamer
2005), but did God wire us to experience a transcendent reality, or did
evolution wire us just to think so because it somehow aids in our survival?
31 So too, mystical experiences may in fact be common, as sociological
research suggests, but this does not mean that a transcendent reality is
involved. A demonstrated commonality may bear on the question of
whether mystical consciousness is a more normal mental state of healthy
people than naturalists typically accept, but may not bear on the question of
the experiences’ proper explanation: even if mystical experiences are the
result of a malfunctioning brain, they still may be quite common. The
commonality of mirages does not make them any less delusional. The
frequency of such experiences is simply irrelevant to the philosophical
question of what scientific explanations accomplish.
Some scientists who study meditators agree that their research cannot
answer such questions and thus cannot prove or disprove the existence of a
transcendent reality (e.g., Ramachandran & Blakeslee 1998: 185; Newberg,
d’Aquili, & Rause 2002: 143, 149–51, 178–79; Beauregard & O’Leary
2007: ix, 38, 276).32 It is not that they consider science incapable of settling
the broad philosophical issue of whether a transcendent reality exists.
Rather, it is a more specific issue: the neuroscientific study of experiencers
cannot settle the question of whether mystical experiences are veridical, let
alone determine the validity of any specific mystical interpretation.
Scientists studying the same data or colleagues working together may draw
diametrically opposed conclusions on the epistemic and metaphysical
implications of the data. Such conclusions are simply not part of the science
of the mechanisms, nor are they determined by the scientific results. So too,
arguing merely that demonstrating that specific brain states are associated
with mystical experience at least shows that it is reasonable to believe that
mystics are aware of a transcendent power does not help: naturalists could
just as easily argue that the demonstration shows that it is reasonable to
conclude precisely the opposite—that mystical experiences are nothing but
purely natural brain states. Neither side is being more reasonable based on
the science alone.
However, even though a scientific identification of the biological bases
of mystical experiences does not per se prove that mystical experiences are
not genuine, it does render transcendent explanations less probable since an
alternative plausible natural explanation is in principle available. Religious
explanations are no longer indisputable or the only candidates but now must
contend with a real competitor, and so the experiences’ evidentiary force is
weakened. Of course, this in itself is not evidence against transcendent
explanations of mystical experiences. However, this does neutralize
mystical experiences as uncontested evidence of a transcendent realism.
Introvertive mystical experiences may be veridical, but if scientists can
duplicate all the features of the experiences, perhaps artificial stimulation
does not merely permit the infusion of a transcendent reality but only
natural conditions are involved. Thus, if mystical experiences can occur
whether or not a transcendent reality is present, these experiences lose any
epistemic presumption of being evidence of a transcendent reality that they
might have enjoyed in the absence of a natural explanation. These
experiences may or may not be experiences of a transcendent reality, but we
can never be confident one way or the other. In sum, these experiences are
not unambiguous evidence for transcendent realities and thus not an
objective warrant for believing in them. We are left, not with proof that
transcendent explanations are wrong or proof that some naturalist reduction
must be right, but in a more uncertain situation. Thus, the damage of a
natural explanation is not to the possibility of a genuine mystical experience
but to the experience’s philosophical value as evidence in an argument in
favor of transcendent realities.
Transcendent realists can reply that merely because mystical
experiences are not unambiguous evidence it does not follow that they may
not in fact be genuine. And they can point to the problems discussed above
concerning natural explanations as an alternative, thus raising the issue of
whether today there is in fact an “equally plausible” alternative. At most,
natural explanations, if ever demonstrated, mean that mystical experiences
cannot be used as decisive in a deductive proof, not that mystical
experiences might not be used by the religious as part of an argument about
the best explanation of mystical phenomena.
Thus, whether natural explanations do in fact destroy mystical
experiences’ evidential value turns on whether at present the naturalists’
option is at least as plausible as the religious ones or perhaps moreso, or
vice versa. In short, only if one side can show that the other’s argument are
today implausible or at least less plausible than its own will it win. If not,
neither has an upper hand in commanding our assent. To assess the overall
plausibility of naturalism and any transcendent realism, one must look at all
their elements, and that is well beyond the scope of this book. (And whether
that is resolvable is itself an open question [see Jones 2009: chaps. 6 and
7].) Here the question must be limited to the plausibility of only one
element: their handling of the scientific study of mystical experiences.
 Is Naturalism or a Transcendent Alternative More Plausible?
So, does one side have better arguments than the other here? The
naturalists’ position is far from readily convincing. Even if one ignores the
problems with natural explanations raised earlier, one still must concede
that such explanations are at present questionable. Naturalists have to
assume some natural explanation is possible just to get to the question of
whether one of them permits the naturalists’ reduction. With our current
state of knowledge, nothing suggests that all mystical experiences are
obviously explainable by a few simple natural mechanisms. And whether
scientists could ever gather all the detailed neurological and physiological
data on the people whose experiences are to be explained to advance with
confidence a solid explanation is highly problematic. Transcendent realists
thus can argue that at present and for the foreseeable future it is only a
matter of metaphysical commitment to naturalism that makes the possibility
of any natural explanation seem plausible at all. Naturalists may also have
to accept the troubling prospect that no detailed explanations will ever be
forthcoming—the current situation may be the best we can expect.
Naturalists can counter that transcendent explanations are examples of
metaphysics pure and simple and always will be. For example, even if God
uses the normal causal channels of nature to effect theistic mystical
experiences, still theists would have to explain how this is possible if any
particular theistic explanation is to be plausible. Naturalists will argue that,
even though natural explanations are currently incomplete, they at least are
better by default than the theists’ broad metaphysical attempts. Certainly,
the naturalists’ contention that the depth-mystical experience is nothing but
mental gears spinning without any mental content to engage is plausible:
the brain evolved to help us survive in the natural world, and if we succeed
in removing all sensory and other content from the mind while remaining
awake, the brain may well malfunction badly. At best, the state may be
simply awareness of consciousness and nothing more. But naturalists
contend that any view of consciousness as a searchlight independent of
content and independent of matter conflicts with our best knowledge of how
the brain works. To them, this is part of a cumulative case to accept that all
cognition is exclusively natural. Thus, naturalists may see the experiences
as self-induced delusions that seem so powerful to the experiencers that
they cannot help but consider them to be insights: if we stare and
concentrate hard enough and long enough with nothing but a mental image
of a purple gorilla dancing in the corner of the room where there is none,
our mind will eventually become stressed out enough that we will no doubt
see a purple gorilla dancing in the corner—and, according to naturalists, the
same may be happening when mystics meditate for years with some
mystical goal in mind.
Advocates of mystical experiences as cognitive believe that mystical
experiences “feel so vividly real” and cognitive after mystics return to their
baseline state of consciousness—indeed, they feel even more in touch with
what is fundamentally real than experiences in ordinary consciousness—
that they must be rooted in a direct contact with a reality and thus are not
merely the subjective product of our brains (Strassman 2001; Newberg &
Lee 2005: 485). They do not have the feel of a dream or hallucination,
which is seen to be an illusion after the experiencer returns to a normal state
of consciousness; rather, the memory of mystical experiences has at a
minimum the same sense of reality as memories of ordinary “real” events
(Strassman 2001: 312–13; Newberg, d’Aquil, & Rause 2002: 112). To
advocates of mysticism, that scientists can in principle identify the neural
correlates no more explains away the insights than a neurological
explanation of perception explains away claims based on scientific
observations. In fact, neurophysiology arguably helps the mystics’ case by
showing that the experiences are grounded in unique configurations of the
neural bases of a healthy brain and are not the product of speculation or a
faulty brain. Meditative techniques may simply rewire the brain to permit
certain insights that are unrelated to the survival functions of the brain to
occur more easily.33
This appears to be the end of the argument. For example, if our
ordinary consciousness has evolved for our survival, how can a state of
consciousness empty of all differentiable content possibly permit a
cognitive insight into reality? How can it be anything other than the result
of the brain malfunctioning, or at best a spandrel, i.e., a useless evolutionary
byproduct of some useful adaptation of the natural brain, that does not
produce knowledge? But on the other hand, how could it not be cognitive
when we have evolved a capacity for it? Indeed, even if it is a spandrel, this
in itself does not mean it cannot be cognitive of fundamental beingness.
Ordinary consciousness evolved for our survival and thriving, yet we are
able to learn at least something about the scientific workings of nature
underlying what we actually experience well enough to make successful
predictions even though this is not necessary for our survival. (Depending
on its nature, mathematics might also be included as a useful mental
product unconnected to our survival.) So too, our capacity to have mystical
experiences also arose as we evolved. So how, without the support of a
further philosophical argument, can we give ordinary consciousness priority
in determining all matters of what is ultimately real? Or consider evolution.
An evolutionary explanation for the existence of mystical experiences may
be that they lessen a fear that death is the end of our existence, thereby
increasing the willingness to sacrifice ourselves for our social group and
thus increasing the survivability of the group (Persinger 1985). Even if only
a small percentage of a group had mystical experiences, they could add
more possible options for action, and this flexibility may enhance
survivability (Murphy 2010: 505). Or certain types of meditation may have
directly affected the areas of the brain critical to attention and working
memory (Rossano 2007), even if they did not necessarily produce mystical
experiences. Thus, even if our capacity to have mystical experiences is an
adaptive feature, transcendent realists will argue that this is irrelevant to the
issue of mystical claims’ truth-value. They will also argue that such
explanations do not explain why we have the physiological capacity for
mystical experiences to begin with. The same is true for aspects of mystical
experiences other than the alleged insights. For example, does the bliss in
mystical experiences mean that mystics are connected to a fundamental
reality, or are mystics simply “blissed out” when the brain is not functioning
properly because of the lack of differentiated content? Any scientific
account of the brain events occurring during this sense of bliss will not help
resolve this question.
More generally, how science could test the claim of an insight into
transcendent realities is not at all clear since transcendent realities cannot be
tested scientifically: such realities, if they exist, are not an object in the
universe and thus cannot be presented for examination by others or even by
oneself subjectively. It is certainly difficult to see how any possible
scientific studies of consciousness could establish a metaphysical claim like
Advaita’s that consciousness constitutes all of reality and is in fact the only
reality. Producing measurable physiological effects in Advaita meditators
does not confirm this claim—it is simply irrelevant to it. Nor is it clear how
such studies could more generally determine one of the competing
interpretations of the cognitive significance of the depth-mystical
experience as superior to its alternatives. Establishing that mystical
experiences are a distinct set of genuine neurological events does not settle,
or even bear on, which understanding of their status is correct. Nor can
research on the circuits of the brain that enable mystical experiences to
occur tell us anything even in principle about transcendent realities, if that
is indeed the cause, no matter how often research on the neural bases of
mystical experiences and spirituality is called “neurotheology” or research
on the neuropharmacology of psychotropic drugs is called
“pharmatheology”—the sciences tell us nothing theological. Andrew
Newberg envisions a broader neurotheology that is like a natural theology
(2010: 45–46, 221–47), but the important point here is that the
neuroscientific study of experiencers itself will not reveal anything
theological. Nor is such research “bridging the gap between mysticism and
science” or “uniting religion and science”—the two endeavors still involve
distinct types of questions (as discussed in chapter 8). Of course, scientists
may step out of their role as scientists and, qua philosophers, devise a
metaphysics based on Advaita nonduality or some other belief-system. But
nothing in the science itself requires any such interpretation: nothing in the
science can establish anything about the nature of any possible transcendent
reality or otherwise aid religious theorizing. Identifying objective
physiological changes is simply not the basis for affirming or denying any
transcendent claims.
The issue comes down to whether natural explanations account for all
aspects of the experience or merely delineate the underlying physiological,
psychological, and social forces also at work in the experiencers, or whether
they can identify the sociocultural bases that experiencers employ as
conceptualizations to make sense of the experience, and these issues remain
unsettled by the natural explanations themselves. It is the philosophical
question of substantive reductionism, not a scientific issue.34 In the end,
advocates of mysticism will appeal to the principle of credulity discussed in
the last chapter until mystical experiences have actually been demonstrated
to be the result of the brain malfunctioning or a pathological state.
Naturalists will counter that naturalism is the best explanation, given
everything we know from science about how the world works. In addition,
naturalists see the mystics’ incompatible truth-claims as evidence that
mystical experiences do not convey any true knowledge at all: how could
mystical experiences be a source of any knowledge if conflicting claims
have persisted unresolved for millennia? To naturalists, this indicates that
obviously mystical doctrinal claims must come from other sources.

The Neutrality of Science

In sum, merely identifying the bases in the body that permit mystical
experiences will not determine whether the experiences are insights, and so
it does not provide a stronger empirical case for either side of this
philosophical dispute.35 Granted, if it turns out that people who have
mystical experiences all have brain lesions or otherwise have defective or
damaged brains or suffer from other pathologies, then the naturalists’
approach becomes a compelling argument that no mystical insight is
involved, even if no one particular natural explanation has yet gained a
consensus. It is hard to argue that a physically damaged brain can gain a
new insight into reality that a healthy brain misses—that God, as it were,
only discloses himself to people with defective brains. Despite William
James’s argument concerning fever (1958: 30), it would be hard to imagine
a severely damaged brain as a vehicle for insights into a reality. Thus, if a
damaged brain produces these experiences, we should conclude that they
are in all likelihood delusory. If, however, these experiences are common
among people who are free of pathological conditions and have perfectly
healthy brains, this argument fails. And there is no evidence that mystical
experiences occur only to people with physiological damage. Instead, there
is empirical evidence that mystical experiences are widespread among
normal persons (Hardy 1983; Hay 1994; Hood 2006).36
Thus, the bottom line is that science cannot answer whether a mystical
experience is a purely natural phenomenon. As discussed, merely
establishing the nexus in the brain of the event and the neural circuits
involved or finding some trigger that causes mystical experiences in a
certain percentage of subjects is irrelevant to the issue of whether the
stimulated area of the brain permits a mystical experience of a transcendent
reality to occur or whether the experience is no more than an internal
function of that mundane brain activity. It is not merely a matter of our
current incomplete knowledge of the brain: even a complete mapping of the
brain’s mechanisms will not enable us to address the philosophical issues.
Finding a trigger may make the experience seem natural and ordinary, but it
may only be setting up the neural correlates necessary for a genuine
mystical experience.
Both a naturalist reduction or a transcendent realism can be equally
grounded in the science. A depth-mystical experience may be an event
internal to the brain alone or it may involve a natural capacity for an
infusion of a transcendent reality. Again, scientists may be merely
identifying the conditions that make a person receptive to the experience.
Science cannot close the gap between understanding bases of the
experiences and the epistemic judgment of their significance. Most
scientists and academics reviewing neuroscientific studies of religious
experiencers dismiss visions, arguing that they have been successfully
reduced as either subjective delusions or mere interpretations of ordinary
experiences. At most, there is a sense of presence (which naturalists may
dismiss as based on some purely natural reaction that has evolved in us) that
is structured by experiencers according to their beliefs. However, many
scientists and others remain open on the issue of mystical insight. And it is
not surprising, given what we now about brain chemistry, that after thirty-
five years of interest in psychotropic drugs, Huston Smith was no closer to
answering the central problem of whether psychotropic visions can be
validated as true (2000: 127).
One may choose one option concerning what natural explanations can
accomplish based on one’s prior commitment to a naturalist or religious
metaphysics. Or one may try to remain open on the matter by being
agnostic. The extent to which the commitment to a metaphysics determines
what is accepted as true or reasonable or even possible will not be entered
into here. The point for the issue at hand is simply that our choice regarding
what natural explanations can, at least in principle, actually accomplish will
turn on prior metaphysical commitments—the natural explanations
themselves will not contribute to this choice. In short, being religious or
antireligious is logically prior to one’s decision on the import of natural
explanations concerning whether mystical experiences are an insight into
reality.
Ultimately, one’s decision on such metaphysical matters may in turn
depend on one’s intuitions of what in the final analysis is in fact real. But in
any case, the conclusion for the issue at hand is this: the situation here is a
case of conflicting metaphysical interpretations of the significance of
empirical data. The scientific and sociocultural explanations themselves
will not determine our choice regarding what they accomplish. Obviously
something is going on in the brain during these experiences, but simply
showing the neural grounding of these experiences cannot answer the
question of whether they have some cognitive content. Science may show
that mystical experiences are in fact genuine in the sense of involving
genuine and unique neurological events that are distinct from other type of
events, but scientific findings per se cannot resolve the metaphysical
conflict unless there is a finding of pervasive pathology in mystics. Thus,
accounts of the brain wiring and events or any physiological findings, no
matter how complete, will remain neutral on the matter of the cognitive
value of mystical experiences. We will have to determine the epistemic
value of these experiences on other grounds.
 5

Mysticism and Metaphysics

For this chapter, let’s ignore the issues of chapters 3 and 4 and simply
assume that mystical experiences are not delusional and that there is some
cognitive substance to these experiences independent of a mystic’s prior
belief-system. Do these experiences then dispel any of the mysteries
surrounding what in the final analysis is real? These experiences give an
overwhelming sense of direct awareness of fundamental reality—a reality
that is one, powerful, immutable, permanent, and ultimate (i.e., not
dependent on another reality). The experiences also give the experiencer a
sense of selflessness—i.e., that the everyday ego is not part of the true
makeup of reality. A sense of experiencing the source of one’s
consciousness or of all phenomenal reality, accompanied by a sense of bliss,
may also be added to this list.
This leads to one common thread in both extrovertive and introvertive
mysticism: realism. What is real is what grounds experiences and what we
cannot get around in our final analysis of things. This realism contrasts with
solipsism or with everything being a dream or an illusion with no
underlying reality. It is not the opposition in Western philosophy between
realism and idealism: its only claim is that something exists that does not
depend on our individual, subjective consciousness. That is, if we remove
all subjective illusions, something real abides, whether this something is
conscious or is material. (Indeed, even if everything phenomenal had the
nature of an illusion or a dream, there is still something there that we would
have to account for, even if it is only affirming its dependence on something
else.) Classical mystics of all stripes were realists in this general
metaphysical sense. They typically made a distinction between
“appearance” and “reality” and dismissed appearances as unreal in some
sense, but they always affirm a reality behind the appearances. In
introvertive mysticism, the entire phenomenal realm may be downgraded as
only appearance in favor of a transcendent reality. In Advaita, Shankara
dismissed the phenomena of the universe as illusions (mithyas) generated
by our root-ignorance (avidya), but he affirmed the reality “behind” the
appearances (brahman) as real—the “clay” behind all the different states of
the illusory “pot.” Indeed, he said that we can deny the existence of
something only in favor of something else being real (Brahma-sutra-
bhashya 3.2.22).
Among extrovertive mystics, the unreal appearance is the
disconnection of entities from other phenomena that we generate by our
conceptual differentiations. The Buddhist Perfection of Wisdom texts use
analogies of mirages, dreams, optical illusions, echoes, reflections, and
magicians’ tricks to explain that the phenomena of the world are empty of
anything that would give entities any type of permanence or independence
and to explain how phenomena can be mistaken to be independent “real”
things. The Buddhist Nagarjuna’s doctrine of emptiness (shunyata) leads
many to portray him as an antirealist. And he can be seen as a linguistic
antirealist: he believed the world does not correspond to the conventional
entities (bhavas) that we carve out of the phenomenal world through our
conceptualizations (see Jones 2014b: 136–43). But he was not an ontic
nihilist who argues that in the final analysis there is nothing real. That is,
there is something real, even if the discreteness of entities that we project
onto it is not real. Entities are empty of anything giving them independence
and self-existence (svabhava) and thus are unreal in that sense, but there is
something real there (tattva), and it can be known and seen as it truly is
(yathabhutam), even if there are no real borders in the phenomenal world
for our concepts to mirror. So too for other extrovertive mystics: the world
of appearances is not irreducibly real, but it is not completely unreal either.
However, an extrovertive mystical experience is needed to see things as
they really are.
Moreover, there is tension between all mystical experiences and all
doctrines of what is real: mystical experiences require an emptying of the
mind of all conceptual content—for Meister Eckhart, all “images” are to be
destroyed—and yet mystics advance doctrines about what is experienced
both so that they themselves can understand what they experienced and to
lead others to the new awareness. Not all mystics are particularly interested
in doctrines, let alone the details of religious theory, any more than most
members of any religious tradition are. Jiddhu Krishnamurti believed that
we are weighed down by such doctrines as rebirth—his only concern was in
inducing a “choiceless awareness.” He avoided reading religious literature
to protect himself from beliefs. But, as discussed, classical mysticism is
about more than special “mystical experiences”: it is about trying to align
one’s life with the way things really are. And this means having the correct
view of the ultimate nature of things. The nature of three things in particular
is central: a human being, the world in general, and any transcendent
realities. Mystical metaphysics thus is not about what is beyond experience
but about the most general nature of reality.

Mystical Metaphysics
A tradition’s worldview outlines the nature of reality in a way that makes
the other components of its religious way of life (the values, action-guides,
rituals, and goals) seem plausible and reasonable to the practitioner. No
religion has only one such worldview—different traditions have different
ideas on the metaphysical questions, and all worldviews evolve over time.
For example, Christianity has embraced Platonism, Aristotelianism, and
more modern metaphysics as its “official” metaphysical framework at
different times in its history; today it does not have only one metaphysical
frame. The metaphysical frame of reference presents a picture of reality
within which the religious way of life makes sense; one’s way of life
thereby seems grounded in reality. Thus, such metaphysics affect how one
lives. Indeed, William James went so far as to say, “The question is not
whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long
run, anything else does.” He added, “A man’s vision is the single great fact
about him.”
All forms of classical introvertive mysticism conflict with naturalism,
i.e., the belief that only what in principle can be studied by science is real
(see Jones 2009: 191–202). Transcendent realities are by definition either
beyond the phenomenal realm or, if immanent to this realm, beyond
empirical checking or worldly characterization.1 Classical introvertive
mystics are transcendent realists. What is transcendent is not merely an
infinite amount of something natural or some part of the natural realm that
we cannot know, such as “dark energy,” but something of another type
altogether—something that in principle cannot be open to scientific study in
whole or in part. Nor is it in a space beyond our spatiotemporal realm that
encompasses it, although philosophers often treat it that way: it is
something to which any phenomenal categories such as “space” would not
apply. It is in an ontologically unique category. Naturalists deny any
transcendent realm or transcendent explanation of natural events.2 They
consider explanations in terms of natural entities and processes as the best
available explanation of all events, including mystical experiences, given all
our knowledge. Against the naturalists, all classical mystics insist that
introvertive mystical experiences involve direct access to a reality that is
beyond any scientific testing in at least some regards. However, beyond
rejecting naturalism, introvertive mysticisms disagree among themselves on
the three central topics of mystical metaphysics noted above.
Mystics can also be philosophers or theologians—it is not an either/or
choice. Meister Eckhart is an example of a mystic who was a philosopher
(McGinn 2001: 21–22). But mystics are not typically speculative
metaphysicians constructing systems for the intellectual comprehension of
the universe—Plotinus’s elaborate Neoplatonism being the prime exception.
Rather, they typically are religious practitioners trying to live a life attuned
to reality. Transcendent realities are not presented as explanatory posits but
as realities that have been experienced. However, as discussed, mystics
themselves must go beyond the experiential evidence given in a mystical
experience to a fuller understanding of what is experienced. Thus, mystical
accounts of what introvertive mystics experience must be “speculative” in
one sense—i.e., the accounts must go beyond the experiential content—but
the speculation must be grounded in what is experienced. However, any
theoretical posits or unexperiencable noumena in mystical doctrines would
be the result of input from nonmystical sources, and mystics may dismiss
much of such input as worthless human rantings. Still, even mystical
doctrines are the result of the interaction of mystical experiences (if
constructivists are wrong) and nonmystical considerations within a religious
tradition, with ideas from multiple sources.3 Theologians and religious
theists in nontheistic traditions often have very unmystical concerns, but
they end up shaping the doctrines that mystics accept as the orthodox
standard for understanding their own experiences. In the extreme, the
unenlightened end up deciding the doctrines that mystics accept, although
mystics may adjust their understanding of those doctrines in light of their
mystical experiences.
This leads to an interesting fact: most mystical knowledge-claims are
the same as some nonmystical religious and philosophical claims. Virtually
every claim that mystics have advanced has also been advanced in
nonmystical forms by nonmystics for philosophical reasons totally
unrelated to mystical experiences. Indeed, many mystical claims are, from a
metaphysical point of view, unexceptional.4 So too, mystics quote mystics
and nonmystics alike on philosophical and theological issues. In sum, there
is nothing particularly mystical about many “mystical” claims. Many claims
come from simply working out the logic of, for example, the idea of a
“wholly other” creator god who alone is ultimately real. Nor do we need to
hold any particular metaphysical belief to have mystical experiences. One’s
understanding of the experiences can be fitted into any metaphysical system
(including naturalism, as noted in the last chapter). The fact that some
claims about a creator or sustainer or an idealism are congenial to both
extrovertive and introvertive mystics does not transform them into
inherently “mystical” claims. But this makes it difficult sometimes to tell
whether a particular thinker actually had mystical experiences of the
oneness and power of a transcendent reality, or if he or she is only a
speculative thinker. It also leads to asking whether such early philosophical
figures as Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Plato were mystics.
Consider a few examples. Parmenides argued “All is one” on logical
grounds. He also argued that all change is an illusion, despite appearances
to the contrary. John McTaggart and others have argued that time is unreal,
for philosophical reasons.5 Nonmystics have also argued that “All is
impermanent” ever since Heraclitus first noted that we cannot step in the
same river twice—part of what constitutes the river (and part of what
constitutes us) will have changed by the time we try stepping into it a
second time. Alfred North Whitehead’s “process philosophy” has been
likened to Buddhist metaphysics. Immanuel Kant maintained that we can be
certain that a transcendent reality-in-itself exists, but we cannot know
anything of its nature because of the antinomies that reason produces. So
too, the problem of how language operates if there are in fact no permanent
entities in the world to denote is now prominent in philosophy. And even
the via negativa has returned to contemporary theology without any
reference to mysticism.
Even if mystical experiences lie at the historical root of our ancestors’
initial sense of a cosmic “wholeness” or “unity,” nevertheless that all things
share the same one beingness, or that the natural universe is a structured
organic whole free of ontologically distinct entities (especially no “self”), or
that the natural universe is constituted only of interconnected and
impermanent parts, are points that nonmystics can easily accept today.
Different nodes within the whole can be conceptually separated in order to
live in the world, but it is an “illusion” to think that they are ontologically
distinct and independent entities. Indeed, the impermanence and
interconnectedness of the external world is obvious to anyone on some
reflection. Even naturalists can readily agree that everything is
interconnected, impermanent, and dependent on other things, although they
see no point in emphasizing this since this general metaphysical observation
does not help scientists devise new theories. In fact, naturalists argue that
we, along with everything else in our solar system, are connected natural
products made only of the refuse of some earlier supernova and that all of
our universe in fact came from the same matter/energy of a Big Bang.6
That this world is dependent on a transcendent reality is not a claim
unique to mysticism, nor do we need to be mystics to follow the analogy of
the dream and its dreamer to envision that there is a reality underlying this
world and giving it being. Talking about “beingness” is difficult since there
is nothing real to contrast with it.7 But Milton Munitz can say things about
“being-in-itself” that sound very mystical, even though his ideas are based
on analytical philosophy alone (1965, 1986, 1990; also see Jones 2009: 24–
27)—indeed, he borrowed his preferred term (“Boundless Existence”) from
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s description of his extrovertive mystical experience.
So too, we need no mystical experience to realize that there is no
permanent substratum to a “person”—the mind and body are constantly
changing, giving rise to the perennial issue in philosophy of personal
identity over time. To Albert Einstein, the sense that we are each a distinct,
self-contained entity is an “optical illusion of consciousness.” Many
philosophers since David Hume have rejected the idea of a unified center to
consciousness—the sense of a “self” separate from the rest of the world is
merely a point of reference concocted by the brain to help us deal with the
world and does not correspond to anything real. Many psychologists and
neuroscientists claim today that there is no “self” in our mental makeup—
i.e., no one unified center of awareness, and no one locus in the brain to our
sense of “self.” Rather, there may be multiple “selves”—i.e., each conscious
type of mental functioning can produce a self-awareness of that activity, but
there is no one command center overseeing all such acts of self-awareness.
Extrovertive or introvertive mystical experiences are not needed to
devise these philosophical points, nor will having such experiences help us
to understand the philosophical arguments for them. Thus, there is no need
to credit mysticism as their source. Mindfulness highlights impermanence
and interconnectedness, and all mystical experiences highlight beingness,
but experiences of beingness are not necessary to validate the naturalists’
points. Nor will adopting any of these ideas by itself aid in inducing any
mystical experience—we can remain as unmystical as before. The
philosopher Derek Parfit finds the neuroscientific denial of any “self”
within our mental makeup quite liberating without any resulting hint of
mysticism.
But it is important to remember that mystics may well understand
these claims differently, since they see the concepts in terms of experienced
realities and not explanatory posits. Introvertive mystics experience the
oneness of being and may say “All is one,” but they do not mean that “All
things have the same substance” if what is meant is that “substance” is a
type of objective thing, although that may be how the unenlightened
understand the claim. Mystics do not see transcendent realities as objects
distinct from them. The difference with extrovertive mystical states of
consciousness is that the beingness of things is brought into awareness, and
then the impermanent and interconnected beingness of all of the everyday
realm of becoming is seen more clearly and becomes prominent. In short,
mystics realize something experientially and make it part of the framework
of their lives; they do not merely see some logical points about everyday
phenomena that nonmystics also may acknowledge as true. Thus, their
understanding may be significantly different even when using the same
language that nonmystics use to depict what is real. Conversely, the
unenlightened, who look at mystical doctrines through the lens of various
philosophical “isms”—idealism, monism, and so on—may well be
distorting the mystical ideas by thinking in terms of distinct entities, selves,
and other nonmystical philosophical ideas. (The issue of the limit of the
unenlightened’s understanding of mystical claims will be discussed in the
next chapter.) This at least raises the issue of whether mystical claims are
substantively different from nonmystical ones, even if the same words are
used by mystics and nonmystics.

The Status of the World

As noted above, classical mystics in general are realists. It is a caricature of
mystics to see them all as world-denying. True, in introvertive mysticism, a
transcendent reality is affirmed, but the contingent reality of the world and
life is not necessarily denied as an illusion. In extrovertive “cosmic
consciousness” and mindfulness, the idea of a world of permanent, distinct
objects is seen as an illusion created only by our mind incorrectly seeing
what is really there, like taking a rope to be a snake, but there is a reality
there, just as there is a rope in the analogy. There are no hard and fast
boundaries between objects, and all objects are in flux, but this is not to
deny that there is some “objective” reality there that is normally
misinterpreted.8 Phenomenal reality is seen as lacking any permanent parts,
but it is seen as an interconnected, constantly changing web constituted by
impermanent “entities.”9 Entities become merely temporary eddies in the
flow of phenomena. In our unenlightened state, we do not directly see
things as they really are, but in mindful states the impermanence of entities
is central—in Prajnaparamita terms, the “thus-ness” (tathata) of things
(bhavas) is seen. In nature mysticism and cosmic consciousness, the glow
of beingness or the presence of a god shines forth. In all cases, what is real
is a beingness common to all that exists in the universe. How the simplicity
of the reality experienced in the depth-experience is related to our vast and
complex universe is an issue, but beingness is the “one” and its diverse
phenomenal manifestations are the “many.”10 (Thus, phenomena qua
phenomena are not identical to each other.) The one common beingness can
be seen in a grain of sand or any other object since it is the same in
everything.11
Thus, extrovertive mystical experiences eliminate any metaphysical
options related to permanent phenomenal entities, including a phenomenal
ego. But other metaphysical options remain viable. For example, is time
real or merely a phenomenal illusion? That is, is time merely part of the
fabric of the “dream” realm and not applicable to what is finally real?
Mystical experiences appear timeless in the sense that temporal categories
are not part of the experience, but extrovertive mystics could accept that
time is part of the fundamental structure of the phenomenal world—
beingness is outside of time, but structured phenomena are not. Introvertive
mystics treat time the way they treat any this-worldly phenomenon. Mystics
also can follow the Buddha in leaving questions about the origin and extent
of the universe unanswered as simply irrelevant to their basic soteriological
concerns. Extrovertive mystics may also treat the phenomenal realm as the
ultimate reality with no transcendent source. They can also accept some
types of permanence within an impermanent and constantly changing
phenomenal realm. For example, Indian mystics could accept that the law
of karma is permanent—what it applies to is impermanent, but it itself is a
permanent structure lasting as long as the phenomenal world lasts. The
natural structures of scientific laws and any “natural kinds” would also fall
into this group. So too, according to Advaitins, the realm of illusion is well
ordered. In fact, although creation in Indian thought is the “play” (lila) of
the creator, even the creator is bound by rules manifested in creation.
Abhidharmist Buddhists accept the “factors of the phenomenal world”
(dharmas) that are to be observed and analyzed in meditative states of mind
as merely momentary flashes, but real. Dharmas are not the same as entities
(bhavas), which are composite and thus not real in the ultimate sense. They
are not atoms of matter, but relate to how we experience the world.12 They
exist but are impermanent, and there is no unexperiencable noumena behind
them. We create the phenomenal world by giving phenomena “name and
form” (nama-rupa), but we do not create in some solipsistic manner the
beingness of reality behind the names. Mahayanists emphasize that all
dharmas are empty of independence and self-existence (svabhava) and arise
dependently on other dharmas, but they do not deny their existence as
“unreal” in any other sense (e.g., Mula-madhayamaka-karikas 24.19).13 In
the extrovertive Madhayamaka tradition, the phenomena of the world are
treated as dependently arisen, and thus the doctrines of “it exists” (i.e., that
phenomena are unarisen and thus permanent and eternal) and “it does not
exist” (i.e., that phenomena are totally nonexistent) are both denied (ibid.:
15.10). So too in early Buddhism (Samyutta Nikaya 2.17). With a
concentrated mind, one knows and sees things as they are (ibid.: 2.30)—one
sees their true nature (dhammata) free from any defect. This is considered
the highest knowledge (Anguttara Nikaya 5.36) or wisdom (prajna). In
terms of the Buddhist “two truths” doctrine, the entities we experience are
conventionally real—they are not totally nonexistent like the son of a barren
woman (which logically cannot exist) or the horns of a rabbit (which
empirically are not found to exist)—but ultimately they are not real in a
final sense either because they are not eternal, independent, or permanent.
(This criterion for what is real is shared by Advaita.) Buddhists do not
discuss the nature of being but leave the subject with noting the thus-ness
(tathata) of what we experience—i.e., its impermanence and interconnected
dependency.14
In general, for extrovertive mystics only the “illusions” arising from
misreading what is real by our conceptualizing mind are denied. Thinking
of a tree as a distinct reality is erroneous, but there is a reality behind the
concept “tree,” even though it is impermanent, dependent, and connected
with the rest of reality: a tree is not identical to the earth, water, and sunlight
that it depends on for its life, but neither is it an entity totally distinct from
these; its configuration of elements remains a unique and identifiable part
contributing to the interconnected whole of reality. And so the concept
“tree” is still useful for directing attention to part of reality—the world does
not become a featureless blob simply because things share the same one
beingness and are interconnected. So too, modern extrovertive mystics
could treat matter, energy, and consciousness as different manifestations of
one cosmic “stuff.” From cosmic consciousness, the bliss of the experience
may lead one to see the universe as fundamentally compassionate or that an
innate self-giving love is the driving force underlying all of the world—a
theism or deism with pure love as the source. Richard Bucke saw the
experience as revealing that the universe is not “dead matter” but is a
“living presence” based in love; everyone and everything has eternal life;
God is the universe and the universe is God, and no evil ever entered into it
or ever will; and the happiness of everyone in the long run is absolutely
certain (1969: 17–18).
But with introvertive mysticisms, there are different valuations of the
world in different religions. In Abrahamic theisms, the world is now seen as
created ex nihilo by God. But although the creation is “good” (Genesis
1:25), after the encounter with Greek thought traditional Christianity ended
up with the idea that the world is of no value in itself but is merely the stage
for the training of the soul for our return to our true home in heaven (or to
suffering eternally in hell). Indian mysticism generally also treats the world
as valueless—indeed, as a negative place to be escaped from.15 Daoism
gives a more positive valuation of the world, with all emanating from the
root Way (see Jones 2004: 229–30). Extrovertive mystics are able to ground
a real world in a transcendent idealism (see Marshall 2005). Or they can
follow the qualified nondualist Ramanuja: Brahman has no attribute-free
aspect but transforms itself into the phenomenal world. Or they can,
following Advaita, treat the underlying consciousness alone as fully real,
with all worldly phenomena classified as an illusion. In the Upanishads, the
phenomenal diversity of the world is real; for Shankara, it is an illusion.
Emanation is popular in mystical traditions as the relation of a
transcendent source to the phenomenal world: the world is emitted from a
transcendent self-emptying “womb” or “abyss” or “nothingness.” If the
world is considered eternal, then emanation does not occur in time.
Extrovertive mystical experiences then are experiences of the surface
beingness, and introvertive experiences are experiences of the root depth
source of beingness. Emanationism is prominent in the West through the
mysticism of the Neoplatonist Plotinus: being (the totality of phenomena)
emanates from the One automatically by necessity, like the sun radiating
light. Meister Eckhart’s theology was based on the “ground of being”
(McGinn 2001: 37), and his metaphysics was an emanationism of an
outflowing of being (ibid.: 71–113; Eckhart 2009: 155): God “boils over”
into a trinity, and all phenomena “spill forth,” while the Godhead does not
act. Emanationism is also the basic position of the Upanishads and
Samkhya (concerning matter) in India and Daoism in China.16 To Shri
Aurobindo, unlike in Advaita, maya is a creative power arising from the
attributeless (nirguna) Brahman that produces the phenomenal world.
Treating the world as a distinct creation of a transcendent reality
generates an unmystical ontic dualism: mysticism would tend to unite the
phenomenal realm with a transcendent ground. Samkhya is an exception,
with its dualism of eternal matter (prakriti) and a pluralism of eternal
persons (purushas) consisting of consciousness, which do not merge into
one reality. The Vedantist Madhva also gave a theistic dualistic
interpretation to the Upanishads. In the West, a separate creation was the
norm, but some theists, such as Bonaventure and Meister Eckhart, adopted
an emanationism. This can lead, as it did for Plotinus, to affirming the
reality of the emanated world and creatures, or it can lead, as it did for
Eckhart, to affirming that what is created is “nothing” apart from the being
shared by God. It can also lead to theorizing about a hierarchy of degrees of
being or consciousness.
Christians can adopt a form of monism by adapting Acts 17: 28: in
God “we live and move, in him we exist.” But theists in general do not want
the world, with all its imperfections and suffering, to be part of God
—“corrupt” creation is usually kept completely separate from God, and any
ontic monism is rejected. Even Eckhart accepted souls as separate from
God, although they share one being. In general, theists reject anything
smacking of pantheism or anything that would contaminate the purity of a
creator god. The theologian Paul Tillich is an exception when he speaks of
the “God beyond the God theism”—i.e., the nonpersonal “power of being-
itself” (1952: 188). Nevertheless, in traditional theism God is present in
some way in his creation, since he sustains it (creatio continua)—the world
is ontologically dependent on God and would cease to exist without his
support. Thus, God is both transcendent and immanent even for theists, but
theists want to maintain paradoxically that God is in all things and yet all
things are not in God.
Thus, God in theism is “more real” than the world in that the world
could not go on existing without him—the alternative is that the world is
somehow independent and autonomous, which theists do not want to
accept. However, this devaluation of the world in theism can also lead to
Shankara’s conclusion: only the transcendent being is real, and an
independent world is only an imagined illusion. God created separate souls
and the phenomenal universe, and so God can remove their contingent
existence by withdrawing his ontic support, which gives them being. Some
Sufis, along with some medieval Muslim and Christian theologians
espousing “occasionalism,” deny any real causal order to nature: the
admission of such “secondary causes” would deny the absolute control over
all things by the only real cause—i.e., God. To theists, the world is not
inherently evil as it was to Gnostics, but it is still merely something God
created and something he can end. In Plato’s allegory of the cave, what we
focus on every day are only the unreal shadows on the cave wall and not on
the source causing the shadows: we are preoccupied with the images and
forget their true status and their true source.
For Advaita, the world is mere appearance—Brahman alone is real.
Advaitins do not explain why there are structures or any orderliness at all in
this realm, since Brahman has no properties. Nor do they explain the
violence and cruelty of the natural suffering of the phenomenal realm when
its only reality is Brahman. Even the appearance of a realm of illusion
(maya) is a problem, since Advaitins reject any sort of emanation from a
source. Rather, the phenomenal world and our bodies are the products of
our root-ignorance (avidya). From the highest point of view, the
phenomenal world is simply an illusion. But why there is a root-ignorance
at all that creates this “dream” realm of maya is unexplained. Nor has
Advaita an adequate answer to the question of who has the root-ignorance:
it cannot be Brahman because the real cannot possess anything unreal; and
it cannot be individual persons since they are nonexistent. So too, what
would be an optical illusion if all is mind-stuff is not clear. There is also the
problem of why the general illusion of this differentiated realm persists
after one is enlightened (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 4.1.15)—it should vanish
when ignorance is replaced with knowledge of Brahman (vidya), since
according to Shankara this knowledge destroys ignorance and cannot
coexist with it. But according to Shankara, diversity is still seen even
though the enlightened know better, just as people with an eye-disease see
two moons even when they know better (ibid.: intro.). This means that even
the enlightened still perceive a diverse realm. To Shankara, Brahman in the
form of the god Ishvara projects a totally illusory phenomenal world that
persists after an (equally illusory) individual gains enlightenment.17 The
enlightened know this world is really Brahman—the root-ignorance
(avidya) of the unenlightened is seeing the world as real (i.e., existing
independently from Brahman) and consisting of multiple distinct entities.
The enlightened still see Ishvara’s projection, but now it is a matter of
“lucid dreaming”: they still see the phenomenal “dream” world, but they
now know its true ontic status as only Brahman. Shankara’s answer for why
the enlightened remain in the world after enlightenment is that karma that
has begun to bear fruit must run its course even after enlightenment before
the enlightened can die (Bhagavad-gita-bhashya 4.20–21). That is, once
karma begins to produce effects, nothing can stop it. But this would mean
that karma can overpower knowledge—i.e., karma has some reality with
power even over the enlightening knowledge of Brahman. But that is
something that Advaitins should reject. All that Advaitins say about the fate
of the universe as a whole is that it will disappear when all (illusory) selves
are enlightened by ending root-ignorance and are thereby removed from the
(equally illusory) chains of rebirths (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 2.2.41)—there
then will be no more karmic desires driving the generation of new worlds.
Thus, to Advaitins, an eternal, all-pervading consciousness constitutes
the appearance of the world.18 The world is the “play (lila)” of Brahman
and has no other explanation: the world appears for no reason or purpose
(Brahma-sutra-bhashya 2.1.33)—manifesting the world is just what
Brahman does naturally and without an act of will, like breathing is for us.
To Shankara, the phenomenal world is not a creation or emanation of
Brahman in any sense, but only an appearance that our root-ignorance
imposes on Brahman, the unchanging and inactive knower that cannot be
part of the phenomenal universe. Thus, Brahman is not a cause of the
universe, since what is real cannot cause something unreal and phenomenal
appearances are unreal. All of reality is contained in each “object,” just as
the sun is reflected in full in each ripple on a pond (e.g., ibid.: 3.2.11). But
just as the clay is real and the form of the pot is unreal, so too the being of
this realm that is Brahman is alone real (ibid.: 2.1.14). The natural realm
thus is neither real nor unreal—neither the same as Brahman nor totally
nonexistent—and thus its ontic status is indeterminate and indescribable
(anirvachaniya).
The doctrine of the world as “play” points to another issue: mystical
experiences in themselves do not answer why we are here, how we fit into
the scheme of things, or what the meaning of the world is. Mystical
experiences may give an overwhelming sense of reality, but these
experiences focus attention totally on the present, not on the history of the
universe as a whole or on the question of how things might fit into a big
picture. The experiences may convey a trust in reality but not any future-
oriented hope for a specific course of events. No plan or purpose to the
natural realm is given in the empty depth-mystical experience or in the love
of a theistic experience. Theistic mystics may feel loved, but there is no felt
sense of any teleological causes at work in nature. Rather than feeling self-
centered and isolated from the rest of reality, mystics may feel fully
integrated into the natural world or more connected to a cosmic source, and
any fear of death may end. They may feel complete and at home in the
universe and that everything is all right.
Thus, after having a mystical experience, mystics may think
everything in the world is as it should be or is even inevitable as it is.
Mystics often have a sense of a fundamental rightness at the deepest level
of things as they are, and a sense that the universe is meaningful. This can
lead to the idea that creation is perfect. But this may lead theistic mystics
who have an overwhelming sense of a loving source to deny that evil is real
—everything is actually perfect as is. Suffering and death may cease to
matter, if they are considered real at all, since they do not affect what is real
(i.e., what is eternal). (That this may negatively influence a desire to help
others will be noted in chapter 9, as will the fact that an experience of an
underlying love or joy only deepens the mystery of natural suffering.) In
fact, the acceptance of life as “meaningful as is” may end our mind’s search
for any specific meaning or purpose or any other explanation of reality. A
sense of connectedness may end the existential quest to find life’s meaning,
even though no new facts or a statement of a meaning is given in mystical
experiences. After a life with only the instrumental mode of consciousness,
awareness of the beingness of reality may make one’s life seem to make
sense or make one feel more connected to others and the world. The sense
of euphoria in the nonconceptual experience of beingness may give a sense
of meaningfulness to reality—that everything is imbued with significance—
even if one realizes after the experience that no specific “secret of the
universe” has been revealed.19 Mystics may be content with the world as it
is, and any resulting claims on the “meaning of life” may sound trite since
no new information is given. In any case, mystical experiences do not
provide a specific answer to the meaning of the universe, to whether there is
life after death, or to the basic philosophical question in cosmology of why
there is something rather than nothing. Each religious tradition’s ideas of
the purpose of life, like its understanding of the mystical experiences
themselves, come from considerations outside of these experiences,
although the experiences may be one such consideration.
In addition, the basic mystery of the nature of beingness is not
dispelled by having any type of mystical experience. Beingness may be
apprehended in a mindful state or its simplicity directly apprehended in the
depth-mystical experience void of any differentiated content, but no new
information about its nature is provided in either experience. No answer is
given to the question of the relation of an underlying “being” and the realm
of “becoming”—the problem of “the one” and “the many” remains as
profound for mystics after even depth-mystical experiences. Extrovertive
and introvertive mystical experiences may increase a sense of awe and
wonder at the that-ness of things, but they may not—one may serenely or
joyfully accept the mundaneness of all of the phenomenal world. And
introvertive mystical experiences may lead to a sense that the natural world
is not ultimately real. If anything, the mystery of beingness is increased, not
diminished, by such experiences.

The Nature of Transcendent Realities

If transcendent realities exist, can introvertive mystical experiences
contribute to any knowledge of their nature? Do the phenomenological
depictions entail any specific doctrines beyond being real, one, immutable,
and transcendent, or are all doctrines on the nature of what was experienced
more speculative?
The lack of any highly ramified conceptions of what was experienced
common to all or most traditions is again the problem. The depth-mystical
experience may entail seeing the consciousness that is experienced there as
the ontic ground of the true self, but seeing that consciousness as
ontologically more than that requires further considerations. How could we
tell from the experience that it is the source of the rest of the universe? The
experience may seem overwhelmingly powerful and profound, but any
metaphysical claim remains a theory going beyond the experience. So too,
as discussed, mystics differ on exactly what is the relation between the
transcendent reality and the phenomenal world: emanation, creation, or the
world as appearance? In addition, how could we conclude that what is
experienced is inexhaustible? Mystics may be experiencing “pure
beingness,” but how could they know they have reached the ultimate
ground of being? Perhaps there is no one source to everything, but a
pluralism of basic realities as with Samkhya. And whether there is a further
reality grounding what is transcendent to our world cannot be ascertained
by these experiences, even if the overwhelming sense of reality in what is
experienced naturally leads mystics to believe that they have experienced
the ground of the self or of this world and to the conviction that they have
touched the ultimate ground.
If the “empty” depth-mystical experience is in fact an experience of a
transcendent reality, it would also be hard to conclude that members of one
religion experience one transcendent reality while members of other
religions experience other realities—e.g., theists experience a loving reality
while nontheists experience a second, morally neutral reality. It is certainly
hard to believe that there are multiple creators of the natural world or
multiple sources of beingness—as if different gods in different theistic
traditions created the parts of the world where each theistic tradition
predominates and different nonpersonal sources created the nontheistic
parts. Nor is there any other reason based on the experiences themselves to
conclude that more than one reality could be the subject of the experiences.
But how can theistic mystical experiences tell us that there is only one
god, or that all theistic mystical experiences are of the same god? The
simplicity of the depth-mystical experience suggests that only one reality
could be involved, but theistic introvertive experiences have some
differentiated content. Perhaps Muslims experience Allah and Vaishnavites
Krishna. Of course, theists may reject polytheism or other multiple
transcendent realities, the conclusion being that theistic mystical
experiences are all of the same god with only different flavors depending on
the experiencer’s doctrines. But this will be for theological reasons, not
mystical experiential ones. Theistic mystical experiences may be
justification for accepting the source as a loving creator/sustainer god, but
no other theological doctrines are entailed. For example, such experiences
would not favor a trinitarian Christian view of God over the simpler Jewish
and Muslim monotheism. So too, as mentioned in chapter 3, the traditional
omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence of a theistic god cannot
be justified by any experience. Mystical experiences suggest a simplicity to
God, not an active Wizard of Oz–type designer god with many different
properties, powers, and functions pulling levers behind the curtain. (The
theological sense of “simplicity,” in which theologians argue that virtues
converge, is different from the simplicity of the “emptiness” of the depth-
mystical experience, but is an attempt to overcome the tension between
theological ideas of a god and the experienced simplicity.) Similarly, as
noted earlier, no mystical experience of beingness can entail that there is a
purpose or design to the universe. Nonmystical considerations will decide
such issues. For example, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s scientific interest in
evolution led him to try combining teleology and mysticism into one
speculative system (1959).
In addition, introvertive theistic and depth-mystical experiences lead in
opposite directions on the basic issue of whether what is experienced is
personal or nonpersonal. Perhaps there are two realities: the ground of
being experienced in the depth-experience and a theistic god experienced in
theistic experiences. As Gershom Scholem says, it “takes a tremendous
effort” to identify the source of the revelations received by Moses and
Mohammed with that received by the Kabbalists and Hasidic Jews or by the
Muslims Ibn Arabi and al-Hallaj (1967: 10). If they are not two separate
and equal realities, this leads to the issue of which is ontologically more
fundamental: is Brahman the “abode” of Vishnu or vice versa? If we take
the depth-mystical experience as more insightful, then the ultimate ground
of reality is not a personal, loving god. But nothing in the experiences
themselves can determine which type is deeper. The depth-mystical
experience may be the experience of only God’s nonpersonal being, or it
may be the experience of some deeper reality.20 Nonmystical theological
considerations will prevail on that issue. For example, theistic religion
requires an active personal reality with whom the faithful can have a
personal relationship—in effect, a living being with a mind and will who is
worthy of trust and worship. Any Neoplatonist One or Eckhartian Godhead
may make the transcendent reality seem more majestic by being constant,
inactive, and remote, but this can also make it seem indifferent to the world
and its creatures—“beyond good and evil” rather than loving and moral. If
one values personhood, one may see a transcendent reality as personal; if
not, one may emphasize consciousness without the limitations of a person.
Mystical experiences of God as a source may suggest that more feminine
symbolism would be appropriate, but theists also believe that God is
causally active in nature and human history, answering prayers and
performing other miracles—ideas not given in mystical experiences even of
a loving God in which God loves the experiencer and everything else as is.
Even if God is pure love, how a god who is unchanging, inactive, and
existing outside the realm of time can possibly act in the temporal universe
is a topic for theologians, but nothing on this subject could be revealed in
mystical experiences—an “empty” experience of only beingness or a sense
of being loved could not supply any information on the mechanisms of how
this is possible. The idea of special incarnations of God or Vishnu would
also come from nonmystical sources—if anything, from mystical
experiences, we would conclude that all beings are emanations of a god.
There is also the danger that, while theistic mystics may rationally believe
that a transcendent person is involved, we may simply be projecting our
own beliefs of what a “person” is onto that reality—in fact, an “empty”
experience may give anthropomorphism the opportunity to run wild.
Moreover, even if mystics know something of the nature of a
transcendent reality, they typically affirm a depth to it that is unfathomable
and thus not fully knowable. The reality is still “deep and profound,” to
quote Laozi on the Way, although we can align our life with it. If a
transcendent reality is open to unmediated experience, then there is no
unknowable Kantian noumenon to it, but there may also remain an
unknowable aspect, as with the Eyn Sof of the Kabbalists. The reality is not
ontologically “wholly other” since we can experience it directly: our natural
realm shares its beingness, but its nature or mode of existence is different,
and so the mystery surrounding it ends up being impenetrable by either our
thought or our experience. That is, it can be known in the sense of being
directly experienced, but its full abundance cannot be known with the
analytical mind or in a mystical experience. The otherness of its nature from
all worldly phenomena leads to the denial that any terms can apply to it (the
via negativa) in dealing with its nature, as discussed in the next chapter.
Thus, even with mystical experiences the mystery of any transcendent
realities remains: even knowledge by participation of such a reality does not
help finite beings such as ourselves to know the ultimate depth of reality.
What is experienced may be a paradigm of the “God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob” rather than the explanatory posit of the “God of the philosophers
and scholars,” but the experiences remain “shafts of light” coming from an
unfathomable “darkness” that remains mysterious even to mystics. What is
experienced is not terrifying, as in many numinous experiences, but its
nature remains unknowable in the sense of being the subject of propositions
concerning attributes.
Religious theorists in all traditions end up running into trouble when
trying to flesh out the implications of basic doctrines. For example,
Christian theologians have the problem of how God can be all-powerful
without wiping out our free will. Advaitins have the basic problem that if
Brahman alone is real, then how and from where did the root-ignorance and
the realm of illusion arise? Mystics would tend to try to cut the veil of
doctrines and return the conversation toward directly experiencing
transcendent realities. They may treat terms such as “God” as only
placeholders for the mystery they experienced, and they may treat any
attempt to make transcendent realities into knowable objects as idolatry. But
mystics too need conceptualizations to ground a way of life and a
soteriological goal. They obviously are not agnostic about the existence of
what was experienced, but they also cannot remain agnostic or completely
skeptical about the nature of what is experienced: they must have some
conceptions in dualistic consciousness of what was experienced in order to
align their lives with reality. Thus, even classical mystics must take
doctrines with some seriousness.

Consciousness
Whatever else the depth-mystical experience may involve, there is a “pure
consciousness,” i.e., an awareness empty of all differentiable content and
functions. This would lead classical mystics to deny the naturalists’ view of
consciousness as evolved from matter (see Flanagan 2011: 84–90; Jones
2013: 98–105). This also presupposes that all consciousness is one:
regardless of the “state” of consciousness or its content, awareness is
always the same light. To many mystics, the consciousness in one person is
the same in all persons—there is only one consciousness. To reductive
naturalists, consciousness is not a fundamental category of reality—in fact
some, such as Daniel Dennett, deny an inner subjective awareness really
exists. To other naturalists, the mind is a systems-property with the ability
to control parts of the body (including “involuntary” functions such as the
immune system through meditation) as part of one causal order. Thus,
naturalists can accept that experiences are real (i.e., not reducible to
material processes alone) and even causally efficacious. William James
believed our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of
consciousness that is separated by the filmiest of screens from other
potential forms of consciousness, and no account of the universe in its
totality can be final that disregards these forms (1958: 298). Henri Bergson,
C. D. Broad, and Aldous Huxley thought the brain does not produce
consciousness but is a “reducing valve” that permits in only the data
necessary for survival—our mind evolved on a need-to-know basis, but a
“mind at large” exists independent of our bodies. That is, the brain is a
receiver of consciousness, not its generator (also see Strassman 2001), but it
also prevents the mind at large from flooding our consciousness and making
it impossible to operate in the world. Some mystics and perennial
philosophers speak of a hierarchy of levels of consciousness—e.g., the
function that enables experiences of God (e.g., the Plotinian nous) being
higher than ordinary dualistic consciousness. To perennial philosophers,
consciousness is more fundamental than matter: matter emanates out of
consciousness, not vice versa.
The Buddha, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant agree that no “I” is
found in the world we experience: the “I” is not an object of any experience
but is pure subjectivity. The analytical mind may try to make subjective
awareness into an object by making an image of blankness or by thinking
“The mind is still and empty.” But we cannot be aware of subjectivity:
when we observe consciousness, we are aware of nothing but whatever
object we are aware of (Searle 1992: 96–97). In the phenomenology of
“self-awareness,” we are never aware of the subject as an object—we are
only aware that we are aware. As the Upanishads and Ludwig Wittgenstein
said, the “I” is never an object of awareness, just as the eye is never within
the eye’s field of vision.21 However, in classical depth-mysticism, the
nature of consciousness is open to radically different interpretations. To
classical Indian mystics, consciousness exists eternally and is not the
activity of the brain or in any way dependent on the brain. Consciousness is
not a “subjective” product of each individual but a fundamental “objective”
reality. To the Dalai Lama, “pure luminous consciousness” is a subtle,
primordial, and fundamental consciousness that exists prior to its
appearance in human beings through evolution (Gyatso & Goleman 2003:
42). (Theravada Buddhism treats consciousness as a matter of unconnected
temporary and contingent events.) Such consciousness exists even when
there is no intentional content to be aware of. To Advaitins, this
consciousness is eternal and constitutes all existence: all “subjective” and
“objective” phenomena—both the individual subjective observer and what
is observed—are only appearance; the inactive, nonpersonal consciousness
is all that is real. It is partless and has no other features. It is more
“objective” than the “subjective” awareness of an individual, since it is the
same awareness of all persons and also constitutes the reality of all
“external” phenomena, but it can never be an object of awareness—it is
only known by participation.
Theists may take the depth-experience to be of a created individual’s
consciousness or of the uncreated “spark of the soul” identical to God’s
being. A basic mind/body dualism is exemplified by Samkhya metaphysics:
there is no one common consciousness, but rather multiple conscious but
inactive persons (purushas), each totally distinct and independent of eternal
unconscious matter (prakriti). The individual consciousness that constitutes
each person is only an unchanging, eternally observing awareness—most
activities that we consider “mental” (e.g., reasoning and sense-experience)
are actually different modes of unconscious matter. To Advaita,
consciousness is the only reality and is eternal with no need for a creator
god. Nor is it a “field” within the illusory natural universe—it is not a part
of the “objective” material universe in any way. Nor does it reside in some
super-space, since that would still make it an object. Nor does Advaita
justify solipsism, since no individual truly exists.22 But, as discussed, one
cannot claim that consciousness constitutes “objective” phenomena based
on the depth-mystical experience alone when that experience is equally
open to simply being the ground of the self or simply an individual’s
ordinary awareness void of content.23
Indeed, if anything, the depth-mystical experience shows
consciousness to be featureless: consciousness is simply what observes and
cannot be observed. Mystics consider it real, but its exact ontological status
is not given in any mystical experience. The depth-mystical experience
alone does not constitute grounds for a panpsychism in which every object
has at least some rudimentary consciousness, although it can easily be fitted
into such theories. But for Advaita, a stone in the “dream” is constituted by
consciousness, but it is not aware.24 Samkhya metaphysics contrasts with
any panpsychism. So too, a “pure consciousness” does not prove that
consciousness must exist independently of the body or matter: it may seem
eternal when experienced, but it could still be merely a naturally evolved
state of the brain free of all differentiated content. Even treating
consciousness as a “field,” modeled on magnetic fields, requires a physical
base—a brain or matter more generally.
That the status of consciousness is open to wide interpretation can be
seen by considering René Descartes’s “I am conscious, therefore I am.” The
same experience that Descartes took as solid proof of the one irrefutable
fact—that an individual exists—is taken by Shankara as the experience of
the unchanging transcendent consciousness (Brahman) proving that no
individuals exist (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 1.1.1–2). All we can safely infer
from reflective awareness alone is that something conscious exists—what
we take its nature to be will depend on more considerations.
 The Self
When we consider the nature of a person, the first thing to note is that all
classical mystical traditions are opposed to any purely natural evolution. In
all traditional views, conscious beings are squarely part of the fabric of the
cosmos, not a chance result of material forces.25 We developed from
something greater, and currently we are alienated from our true self and
from our true state. Aurobindo saw two movements of evolution: one
material, for the emergence of the body, but also an “involution’ of the
divine in nature upward leading to a return to our divine state. So too, the
Dalai Lama accepts that the body evolved, but natural selection acting on
the random mutation of genes to increase the genes’ chances of survival or
any other material explanation is not the cause of consciousness (2005: 97).
Under traditional Buddhism, human beings devolved from celestial beings
through the process of karma and rebirth (ibid.: 107–8)—it was truly “the
descent of man”—and not evolved upward from less complex life-forms.
Karma plays a central role in the origin of human sentience (ibid.: 115). In
introvertive mystical traditions, there is something in us that is uncreated—
e.g., a “soul” or the “person” (purusha) of Samkhya—and our final state is
not of this world. Mystical experiences are not necessarily the source of
these ideas, but they are generally accepted. Nor do all traditions treat the
body as evil, as in Plotinus’s Neoplatonism or Buddhism—both Christianity
and Daoism are more affirmative. Plotinus wanted to be released from time,
but Eckhart said he would accept eternal life in this realm.
In classical mysticism, the inner stillness of a mystical experience
reveals our true nature. The sense of a separate phenomenal “self” or “ego”
that we normally identify with is then seen as simply something that our
analytical mind has patched together from the ideas and feelings arising in
our stream of experiences—i.e., the “self” is an artificial creation having no
reality. In mystical experiences, there is a loss of this sense of a separate
entity within the phenomenal world that is somehow attached to a body.
(Naturalists can easily account for the loss of a sense of a self if they,
following Daniel Dennett and many neuroscientists, deny that there is any
one command center to our consciousness.) But does this mean that this is
empirical evidence of the nonexistence of an ego, or is our awareness of a
self merely in abeyance during these experiences (as with a sense of time)?
Are these experiences any more relevant to the issue than Cotard’s
Syndrome? Most unenlightened people may be willing to accept the
impermanence of material objects but not of a self. In addition, without a
self, there are philosophical problems of identity and continuity over time.
Traditions accepting rebirth also have to deal with the problem of karmic
effects occurring in different lifetimes. But as previously noted, many
neuroscientists and philosophers today deny such an ego: the sense of self is
merely another mental function and not an indication of a separate entity.
The concept of “I” is, as in Buddhism, simply a useful convention for a
constantly changing bundle of aggregates.
But most mystical traditions accept that there is an underlying
transcendent self that is discovered once the false sense of a phenomenal
ego is destroyed: we are not our thoughts and emotions—there is an
underlying silence and stillness to our consciousness that is the real us.26
Buddhism may be an exception, although the Buddha did not talk about the
state of the enlightened after death.27 To Christians and Muslims, there is an
immortal soul, and most reject a cycle of rebirths (although some early
Christians and many Sufis accepted it)—our fate in the eternal life that is
awaiting us is based on our actions or beliefs in this one life, after perhaps a
temporary side trip to purgatory. Judaism does not have as strong a tradition
of belief in any life after death, but the mystical Hasidic Jews do accept it,
and some Kabbalists seemed to have accepted a form of multiple rebirths.
To Indian mystics, enlightenment ends our cycle of rebirth, although there
is no agreement on what happens after our final death. All agree that the
enlightened are out of the realm of rebirths generated by desire (unless they
voluntarily choose to remain), but they may be an isolated self (as in
Samkhya and Jainism), or disappear (as in Advaita), or have a life in
communion with God (as in bhakti theism). Or the issue simply is not
discussed (as in Buddhism). Thus, while all mystics speak of the experience
of the end of desires generated by a false sense of ego, the theories on
human destiny after death depend in part on conceptions of a person and of
transcendent realities.

The Question of Mystical Union

One popular misconception is that all mystics treat their experiences as
uniting them with the power underlying the natural world. Advaita
Vedanta’s radical monism of consciousness (i.e., a nonduality of the
consciousness that constitutes the subject and the consciousness that
constitutes objective phenomena) is the classic instance of a metaphysical
system based on overcoming even the duality of subject and object—
indeed, in this interpretation, there is only one reality and thus no duality to
overcome, no dependence of one reality on another, and no emanation of
phenomena or “degrees” of reality. However, most mystical systems do not
involve an all-encompassing nonduality in which all of the apparent
diversity in the world is in the final analysis unreal. In particular, for
Samkhya there is no underlying creator or common ground to both matter
and consciousness; rather, there is an irreducible dualism of two
fundamental substances and a plurality of distinct selves. Nor, as is also
commonly believed, has any classical mystical tradition adopted a
pantheism equating the transcendent reality with the natural world (creator
with creation, Brahman with maya), thereby making the natural realm fully
real in the final analysis.28 Neoplatonism is often considered pantheistic,
but the material universe is an emanation of the One, not the One itself.
Pantheism is in fact a modern concept that was devised within a theistic
framework by John Toland in the eighteenth century to contrast that idea
with classical theism and does not reflect any classical mystical tradition. It
does not capture the idea of emanationism, Advaita’s nondualism, or the
role of the Buddha-nature in Mahayana Buddhism.
Contrary to another popular idea, classical mystics do not speak in
terms of a union of two substances—a fusion of the experiencer and
another reality that had previously been two realities into one reality. On the
extrovertive level, the sense of barriers is broken down, and one perceives
“oneness”: one realizes that we always have had the same substance
(beingness) as everything else (and so are the same as them in that way) and
that we are joined to everything else in one interconnected whole. Thus, one
has always been united to everything in sharing one being. But we are not
united or identical with everything on the level of differentiated objects.
With the loss of the sense of self, the conceptual boundaries we habitually
impose on phenomena disappear, and thus we feel we are “merging” with
the rest of the cosmos or feel that our being is the same as the being of
everything else in nature. Robert Forman gives a personal instance of
“becoming” what he saw: while driving, he was the mile-marker he saw
(2010: 164–65). But he was still driving the car—he did not physically
become the mile-marker. There is the lost of a sense of a separate observer
witnessing a distinct object. There simply was no boundary between the
marker and himself—no “something other” set off over against him (ibid.:
165) as a distinct object. But when he drove beyond the sign, it did not
continue with him: it remained distinct—there was no new uniting with
another reality that had previously been distinct or any other ontic change.
We were already ontologically connected through being with everything
else, and with the extrovertive experience we are now realizing what has
always been the case. This state of consciousness is structured, and the felt
sense of unity does not replace ordinary knowledge of the world—e.g., one
can still tell how far away an object is (Forman 2014: 114).
Thus, there may be a sense of union or a sense of individuality melting
away, but there is no ontic change in nature from what was already our true
situation all along—only the false conceptual boundaries that we ourselves
had created soften or disappear. Through experiencing the commonality of
being, one gains a knowledge by participation, but there still is no new ontic
union of substances. With the loss of a sense of ego, the experiencer may
feel for the first time the true connection we all always have had to the rest
of reality, but our true situation has not changed: experiencers do not attain
a new ontic state but merely realize what was actually always the case. A
fiction has simply disappeared from the mind. Our consciousness and focus
change: a Gestalt-like shift occurs to being aware of the beingness of things.
There may also be a change in the brain. For example, if the mind is a
“reducing value,” the brain’s wiring may be changed by mystical
experiences to allow in more consciousness. But otherwise we remain the
same: there is no mental “merging” of our mind with another. So too, the
spatially diverse phenomena of the sensory realm remain intact even if there
is now seen to be no hard and fast boundaries reflecting our cultural
concepts. There is no amalgamation of all phenomena being identical to
each other: there is nothing real on the level of phenomena to be identical
to, but only a common beingness that one already has—thus, things remain
distinct in their “unreal” thingness.
So too for introvertive experiences. In no major mystical tradition do
two previously distinct substances or “natures” become united into one in a
mystical experience. There is a participatory knowledge of a transcendent
reality, but there is no ontic transformation or transubstantiation of an
“essence” converting the person into a transcendent reality. The standard
position in the Abrahamic mystical traditions is to maintain the idea of
creaturehood and insist that we creatures cannot be united to God—our
“nature” does not change into God’s. This dualism is necessary to enable
the theists’ emphasis on creatures loving God. One only becomes aware of
the divine being that has always been immanent in us. In medieval
Christianity, common images included two lovers, fire heating an iron rod,
and the air pervaded by the warmth of the sun. But there is no literal
“merging” or “absorption” of one reality into another resulting in only one
entity (Jantzen 1989). Nor is one transformed or converted into God like the
sacrament of bread is converted into the body of Christ (as Eckhart’s
condemners understood him to claim). Jan van Ruusbroec makes clear in
his later writings that there is a distinction of natures and that the union with
God is only in “one spirit and life with him” (1985: 240, 246). Few
Christian mystics used the term unio mystica before the modern era
(McGinn 2001: 132). It is only in the modern study of mysticism that unio
mystica attained a central place (McGinn 2006: 427). Christian mystics
struggled over what “becoming one with God” meant, but they usually
meant it in terms of a loving union of wills with God’s or even a fusion of
the mind with God’s (ibid.: 427–29), but this is an alignment of spirit, not
an ontic union of substances. To Eckhart, there is a loving union of two
spirits, one created and one uncreated (McGinn 2001: 46); oneness with
God is a matter of the likeness of his image in beings with a created nature
(Eckhart 2009: 319). To Bernard of Clairvaux, it is like a drop of water in
wine taking on the taste of wine, but he added that no doubt the substance
of the person remained distinct, if now in a new form—only the will is now
melted with God’s (McGinn 2006: 436; also see Eckhart 2009: 316). In
often erotic imagery based on the biblical Song of Songs, Christian mystics
speak of a mystical experience as a “kiss” and of a “marriage” of God or
Christ with the soul. For John of the Cross, the consummation of the
spiritual marriage is the union of two natures in one spirit and love (ibid.:
462). God’s will and the mystic’s will are now simply in “unison”—
becoming one in spirit (I Corinthians 6:17). This is how Christian mystics
understood the biblical passage from Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
In Judaism, any type of identity with God is considered impossible—
as in much Protestant Christianity, there is a unbridgeable gap between
creator and creation. In Islam, Sufis speak of “the annihilation of the self”
(fana) and the replacement of the self with the abiding presence (baqa) of
Allah as the multiplicity of the phenomenal world becomes visible again
after fana. But the self is not annihilated—only the sense of a self not
dependent on Allah is. Under one interpretation, Allah is the only reality
and thus is the true agent of all of “our” actions—i.e., not only is there only
one Allah, there is nothing else but Allah, and so we have no independent
reality. However, the more common interpretation among Sufis is that the
world is not an illusion and neither is each self; rather, both the world and
each self are mirrors reflecting Allah and thus are themselves separate and
real. The self is a created entity and thus distinct from Allah even if Allah is
“closer than the pulse in one’s own throat,” to quote Husayn al-Hallaj. The
orthodox Sufi goal is a loving communion of two realities—Allah and the
soul—not a return to “oneness of being,” as with Ibn Arabi. Indeed, for a
mystic to claim to be one with Allah or actually to be Allah is a heresy
punishable by death, as al-Hallaj found out the hard way for claiming “I am
the Real!” (al-Haqq).
In Neoplatonism, the opposite of emanation—absorption—is a type of
union, but as adopted by the Western theistic traditions the reality of a
separate self remains the orthodox position for mystics.29 For Abrahamic
theists, our individual creaturehood always remains a distinct reality, even
though all beingness is supplied by God. Thus, for Meister Eckhart “God’s
is-ness [isticheit] is my is-ness,” the “ground of the soul” is the same as
God’s ground, “all creatures are one beingness” (contra Aquinas), and all
creatures are in themselves “pure nothing” since they get their being from
God. But he did not deny our creaturehood or a dualism of creator and
created (2009: 315, 319–20): we remain created and distinct entities since
the soul also has a created nature in addition to its uncreated nature (the
same being from the Godhead as God has)—the sense of self is simply
“idle” during a depth-mystical experience while God works in the inner,
silent, uncreated part of the soul. That is, the experiencer is not aware of his
or her self during a mystical experience, but nevertheless it is still there.
Things remain ontologically unchanged: the experiencer, by “forgetting” a
sense of “I” and all knowledge, now simply knows the transcendent reality
that has always been present in us. The correction of our knowledge and the
end of our “self-will” and all its accompanying emotions are the only
changes.
 The situation is the same for South and East Asian traditions. Evelyn
Underhill’s classic definition of mysticism as “the art of union with Reality”
(1961b: 23) does not apply even there. For Advaita, only Brahman is real,
and thus there is nothing else to unite with it. There is no “absorption” of an
independent self into “the Absolute.” Nor is the universe the pantheistic
body of Brahman. The Upanishads have an emanationist position, but
Advaita and Samkhya interpret the situation differently. The popular image
of a drop of water merging in the ocean does not fit the metaphysics of
these traditions. In fact, one image used by Shankara is the exact opposite:
just as the entire sun is reflected in full in each ripple on a pond (e.g.,
Brahma-sutra-bhashya 3.2.11), so too all of reality (Brahman) is entirely
contained in each part of the world.30 There is still the reflected and what
does the reflecting, with the latter eventually disappearing when all sentient
beings become enlightened, thereby ending the unreal realm of rebirth.
Phenomenal objects also remain distinct in this metaphysics: one object is
not in another—the sun and the moon are not in us—but the same beingness
is in everything. So too, all reality present at any time is present in each
“eternal now” transcending the temporal continuum. Nor would Shankara
speak of “attaining union or identity” with Brahman: enlightenment is
merely coming to realize what one already is. Realizing that “you are that”
(Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7) is realizing what has always been the case:
there is nothing for the self (atman) to unite with, nor can it be changed in
any way—all we need is a change in our knowledge and awareness. Under
Samkhya, each self is a distinct, silent witness that is to be isolated in the
state of kaivalya from matter and not united to anything. For Daoists, the
Way is already “in” us—we simply need to align ourselves with it. Nor is
the extrovertive mindfulness state in Buddhism taken to be a “union” of
anything with anything: there are no selves or “real” entities, and thus no
things to become united. Nirvana is not an entity in any sense, although
many Westerners treat it as an analog to God: it is the state of the person
(before and after death) in which the fires of hatred, greed, and delusion
have been exhausted—it is not a reality that could be “united” with.
In sum, the way modern nonmystical writers have framed the situation
in terms of “mystical union” only introduces problems. There are less-
conceptual differentiations in the extrovertive mystical states and no
differentiations during the depth-mystical experience, and with the absence
of differentiations in the mind there is a sense of unity to our being: we
finally realize that all of reality shares one simple and partless beingness or
the same ontic source, or that our true transcendent self is isolated from the
rest of reality. With a mystical experience we are not “united to God” or
another transcendent reality in any ontic way that was not previously
always occurring. With enlightenment, only our sense of individual
existence and of self-will is abolished. That is, all that changes are our
knowledge, our will, and our unenlightened emotions—the experiencer
does not “obtain” or “become” anything ontologically new.

Mysticism and the Closure of Mystery

We are more aware today of the variety of viable mystical metaphysics, and
this should lead to more caution about any one particular metaphysics being
accepted as obviously correct. Nothing new about any transcendent reality
is being discovered today through the replication of mystical experiences.
And since there can be no further original mystical experiential input, there
is no way to test claims empirically. Any future changes in mysticism will
come about only by reflecting changes in cultural interests. Thus, mystics
should accept the central mystery of transcendent realities: what is
transcendent cannot be like anything our dualistic mind can conceive.
In such circumstances, mystical doctrines become a shield against the
openness of this mystery in order to live in the world. One tradition’s
speculation about transcendent realities is no more reasonable or likely to
be correct than any other informed guesses. Even mystics are not in a
position to supply the answers to metaphysical matters. What conclusions
about the general nature of the phenomenal world can we draw on the basis
of inner experiences alone? Thus, the mystically minded should avoid
delving into theological intricacies. In addition, as Agehananda Bharati
said, mystics as theologians are as good or bad as they were before they had
their mystical experiences (1976: 59). Only one aspect of reality is
illuminated in mystical experiences (beingness), and the experiences do not
make mystics experts on all things metaphysical. Nor do mystics have to
deal with all metaphysical issues of interest to nonmystical persons. Even
an issue considered indispensable in the West—the origin of the universe—
has been ignored by traditions that assume the universe is eternal and
uncreated but dependent on transcendent realities. The classical Chinese
basically ignored the whole issue (although the Daodejing has a little on it,
e.g., chap. 42). And many mystics have gotten along perfectly well without
addressing the issue. But most importantly, in light of the diversity of
mystical metaphysics, metaphysics for the mystically minded should be
seen today as inadequate human efforts at understanding, and the mystery
behind our efforts should be given more prominence—a mystery that
remains greater than any experience. Mystics are not moving toward a
consensus in metaphysics, and any consensus would not necessarily be the
correct answer. It would still only be speculation. Even if one worldview
does happen to be better than others, we are not in a position to prove which
one that is.
Thus, mystics should accept that they have no certainty about the
nature of any purported transcendent realities. This lack of certainty
concerning doctrines may lead to the conviction that inducing experiences
alone is important: introvertive experiences can lead to one’s own certainty
that there is more to reality than the natural realm, but no further
understanding is possible, and so attaining the experiences is all that
matters; thus, there is no point in describing the experienced state. But
metaphysics does matter as long as mysticism is about more than simply
cultivating experiences: mystics need beliefs to align a way of life with how
they see reality. Thus, each mystic will have to accept some set of beliefs at
least provisionally. However, the fact remains that even if there is an
unvarnished contact with transcendent realities in mystical experiences,
mystics are not in a position to know the full nature of what was
experienced.
Overall, any metaphysics that directs attention away from experiences
does not lead to edification in mysticism. Metaphysics in mysticism starts
out as a way to remove mental clutter, but there is always the danger that
the metaphysics may ossify and become a block to mystical experiences by
becoming a new form of mental clutter. Such a hindrance is especially
possible when the metaphysics that is adopted is from a tradition whose
interests are primarily in nonmystical matters. But dogmatism occurs in
Buddhism as well as in theisms such as Christianity. To be true to
mysticism, mystics today should keep experiences central and accept any
doctrines related to the experiences only tentatively and with caution.
Experience should not be replaced with conceptualizations: one can
experience transcendent realities without conceptualizing them or when
accepting incorrect doctrines.
However, mystics may suffer from the same compulsion as the
religious in general to stifle mystery. To accept that we know little of the
nature of transcendent realities is not spiritually satisfying. But the thirst for
transcendence in religion is not necessarily a thirst for mystery. (As the quip
goes, religion is like vaccination: it gives people a small dose of mystery in
order to avoid any bigger attack.) Theology, in particular, squelches
mystery. As paradoxical as it may seem, in the words of David Burrell, the
“quintessential theological task” is “to know the unknowable God” (1986:
2). If William Alston is correct, contemporary Anglo-American
philosophers of religion exhibit considerable confidence in their ability to
determine what God likes and his basic attributes, purposes, plans, values,
and so on, and to determine these in some detail (2005: 99). Theologians
will no doubt continue to pontificate on the “mind of God.” And
theologians have become quite ingenious in dealing with the problems that
basic doctrines generate—e.g., God is both timeless (i.e., existing outside of
time) and temporal (existing eternally throughout time and so knowing all
temporal matters); or God voluntarily limits his omniscience and
omnipotence to permit our free will; or God voluntarily limits his being to
permit room for creation; or the Godhead is not nonpersonal but
“transpersonal”—but all of this must be deemed nonmystical speculation.
Thereby, the sense that we understand is substituted for the reality of
mystery. The analytical function of the mind is substituted for receptive
stillness, and words are substituted for silence. Theological constructs
become the center of attention, not the experiences that would keep
theological construction tied to a transcendent reality. Mystical experiences
in the end have not slowed theological speculations. Mystics may remain
humble before the mystery of transcendent realities, but tentativeness can
be especially difficult when one believes that one has been in contact with
the supreme reality. Add to this the religious authority of their tradition that
mystics routinely accept: revelations answer some mysteries, and a mystic
may well conclude that his or her tradition has the final answers to religious
mysteries. This in turn can also easily lead to intolerance of other traditions’
answers.
Thus, the mystics’ bedrock religious commitments can lead to
imposing some closure on the mystery of transcendent realities. In addition,
due to the power of their experiences, it is difficult for mystics not to ask
more about what they have experienced, or to maintain openness and a
sense of mystery when they think they have been in contact with the
ultimate reality, or to maintain a skeptical stance and renounce all
substantive transcendent beliefs and be silent. Indeed, the writings of
classical mystics indicate that they were not at all skeptical: they typically
believed that their particular system is correct or at least the least
inaccurate, and that anyone having a mystical experience would confirm
these beliefs.
But again, the conflicting claims of the different mystical ways of life
indicate that mystics, despite their experiences, are still not in a position to
comprehend the fundamental nature of what they experience. Thus, the
mystery of a transcendent reality remains even for mystics who are aware
of such a reality. Paradoxically, here is a case of something that is “bright
and dazzling” to the mystics and yet is equally deep and mysterious. In the
end, mystics may have a broader base of experiences from which to judge
what is real, but they know very little about the nature of any transcendent
reality, even if these experiences are genuine.
In sum, the search for understanding easily replaces the experiential
orientation of mysticism. There is a very strong urge to supply an answer
and not remain agnostic. Even the mystically minded are liable to end up
with the philosopher’s disease of demanding a “because” for every “why”
question, even when we are not in a position to supply one. And theologians
can get caught up in epicycles of their own constructs generating new
intellectual mysteries. Mystics too can fall prey to this problem: over time,
doctrines and explanations can become as central to mystical traditions
within different religions as to nonmystical religiosity. Affirmative theology
can push out the via negativa, and doctrines can eradicate any experiential
urge.
 6

Mysticism and Language

Mystics can be very confusing when it comes to language: they can write
copiously and impressively on the subject of what they have experienced
and then immediately turn around and claim that nothing can be said on that
topic. How can the Daoist Laozi say “those who know do not speak, and
those who speak do not know” while introducing the Daodejing, a book on
the Way? To Plotinus, nothing can characterize the One, including calling it
“one” (Enneads 5.3.13–14, 6.9.5). To Meister Eckhart, God is nameless,
and to give him a name (as he appears to have just done) would make God
part of thought and thus be an “image” (2009: 139). How can he say “God
is above all names” (ibid.: 139, 153) when he identified the reality by
name? Some reality is dubbed “God.” Shankara can claim that Brahman is
unspeakable (avachya) and inexpressible (anirukta) while creating a
metaphysical system about Brahman (Taittiriya-upanishad-bhashya 2.7.1).
For him, even the words “atman” and “Brahman” are only superimpositions
on what is real (Brihadaranyaka-upanishad-bhashya 2.3.6). Even
“Brahman without attributes” (nirguna-brahman) is a concept devised in
contrast with “Brahman with attributes” (saguna-brahman), and so even
that concept must be denied as inapplicable to what is real—what is real is
beyond both of these concepts, as are Advaita’s standard characterizations
of Brahman as reality (sat), an inactive consciousness (chitta), and bliss
(ananda) (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 3.2.22; Brihadaranyaka-upanishad-
bhashya 2.3.1). For Shankara, the whole phenomenal realm of the root-
ignorance (avidya) arises entirely from speech (Brahma-sutra-bhasya
2.1.27).
 Why do mystics have trouble here that most people do not when they
experience something phenomenal? Why is what is experienced considered
inexpressible and even unnameable? It will be argued here that the tension
arises for two basic reasons. First, conceptualizations must be advanced for
even mystics themselves to understand what is experienced, but all
conceptualizations are inherently dualistic (since they distinguish one thing
from others), and so they all must also be jettisoned from the mind for a
mystical experience to occur. In short, all conceptions must be both
advanced and abandoned. Second, both the experiences themselves and
what is experienced in these experiences seem “wholly other” than any
worldly phenomena, and so any language applicable to worldly phenomena
is deemed inapplicable to what is experienced. The states of consciousness
in which the experiences occur are different from the mindful and ordinary
states of consciousness in which mystics can depict what is experienced.

Ineffability
Mystical literature is quite varied (see Keller 1978), and not all mystical
uses of language are declarative—prayers, parables, poetry, instructions,
and other aids for transforming others or evoking experiences fall into other
categories. But what is of interest here are the mystics’ cognitive claims,
i.e., the assertions about the nature of the experiences and of what is
experienced.1 But the “wholly other” nature of both mystical states of
consciousness and what is experienced there leads mystics to believe
language cannot apply. Mystics are caught in the dilemma of needing
conceptualizations but realizing that any conceptualizations introduce a
foreign state of consciousness. There are two problems. First, using
language requires a dualistic state of mind, and thus introducing language
drops mystics out of introvertive states of consciousness. This does not
occur with ordinary utterances, since experiences of objects and declarative
utterances about them both occur in the same state of consciousness. Even
mindful states involve awareness of distinctions and thus permit the use of
language. But any image of a transcendent reality is foreign to the reality
itself in a way that images of phenomenal objects in the natural universe are
not—transcendent realities are simply beyond our dualistic mind, and any
attempt to conceptualize them introduces mental objects. Second, any
concepts or statements about something transcendent will be misinterpreted
by the unenlightened as referring to an object among objects in the
phenomenal universe—an unusual object, granted, but simply like
something in an unchartered part of the phenomenal realm. All that the
unenlightened have are the mental objects produced by the analytical mind.
Thus, in an important sense the unenlightened do not know what they are
talking about when they use mystical concepts. The problem is not with one
particular language, but with any language: no language can be devised that
circumvents the problem, since all languages must have terms that make
distinctions, and any terms make what is experienced into an object of
consciousness, while what is experienced is free of distinctions and is not
an object of consciousness.2
This causes mystics across the world to claim ineffability, i.e., what is
experienced is inexpressible in any words.3 In the words of Taittiriya
Upanishad 2.4: “Words and the mind turn back without reaching it.” In
many everyday contexts we often find that language is inadequate. The
strong emotions one feels cannot be adequately stated. Indeed, all
experiences are ineffable in one sense: we cannot adequately communicate
the subjective feel of any experience even if we know the appropriate labels
of our culture. Describing the taste of a banana to someone who has never
tasted one is impossible: we know the taste through experience, but how do
we describe it? Only once one has had the experience will any description
be understood. Similarly, stopping and trying to communicate what is
happening at the moment often drops us out of even ordinary experiences.
So too, any object of experience is ineffable in one way: any attempt to
describe what is utterly unique about anything—what differentiates it from
everything else—will necessarily fail, since descriptive terms all involve
perceived commonalities and general categories. Using any terms to
describe it will automatically group it with other things. Nominalists in the
West and Buddhist logicians in India were aware of this problem—to them,
“universals” are only a product of language and not components of reality.
But any object is also not ineffable: it is accurate to call a pen “a pen,” even
if it is only crudely “captured” by language. Thus, we do not consider
phenomenal objects to be “utterly beyond words.”
Mystical experiences of course share these problems. So what is
unique to mystics’ claims of ineffability? Mystics allegedly directly know a
reality through their mystical experiences—so why can they not say
something about it? Why do they deny “the One” or “Brahman” works for
transcendent realities the way “a pen” accurately communicates for
phenomenal objects? It is not that mystics sense a vague, amorphous
“presence,” or have only a nebulous insight that is hard to put into words or
an inarticulatable sense of knowing something—the experience is a
“dazzling ray of light.” Again, the problem begins with the fact that by
speaking or even thinking, mystics must switch from a mystical awareness
to a dualistic state of consciousness: the mere use of language introduces a
mode of awareness foreign to experiencing the reality mystically. When we
speak of phenomenal objects, we merely rearrange the content of our
ordinary awareness—the state of awareness remains the same. The
abolition of the duality set up between subject and object causes the
problem in mysticism with language. Maitri Upanishad 6.7 sums it up:
“Where knowledge is of a dual nature (a knowing subject and a known
object), there indeed one hears, sees, smells, tastes, and also touches. The
self knows everything. But where knowledge is not of a dual nature—being
without action, cause, or effect—it is without speech, incomparable, and
indescribable. What is that? It is impossible to say.” Only by removing the
dualities by which both language and thought operate can we realize a
transcendent reality or experience beingness in an extrovertive mystical
experience. Thus, mystical experiences and what is experienced both
transcend language and thought.
However, mystics do make knowledge-claims. If transcendent realities
exist, much about them may in fact not be relatable or comprehensible to
the analytical mind, but the works of mystics suggest that they think
something is. If what was experienced were truly ineffable, there would be
no basis for mystics to make any knowledge-claims or value-claims about it
or to deny other such claims. Ineffability cannot be the basis for any
insights—something vague might be retained from the experience, but there
would be no statable claims for mystics to make. What knowledge other
than that something real exists and is profound could there then possibly
be? What would be the insight into the nature of that reality that is given?
An “ineffable insight” is not possible. However, the insight occurs in
dualistic awareness when enlightened mystics see the significance of what
they experienced. There they can use language to state the alleged insight.4
Even if language cannot “capture” the ever-active flow of reality,
enlightened extrovertive mystics still use language, as their writings on how
language fails show. Introvertive mystics also speak of the nature of what is
experienced, even if the concepts used are of an abstract nature (e.g.,
oneness) or are terms from their religious tradition.
Theistic mystics believe they have experienced a reality that is
personal in nature, and so they claim some definite things about God. God
is indescribable only in that he is so much greater than they can say, not
because they know nothing of him. That is, human formulations are not
wrong but hopelessly inadequate (Johnston 1978: 81). But theistic mystics
know that his mode of existence is utterly different than that of creatures,
and so they believe that all terms mislead: we make God into a being
comparable in some way to worldly beings, which he is not; hence, the
concept “a being” does not apply. Even just denoting a transcendent reality
as “transcendent” or “real” makes it an object, which it is not. Thus, mystics
deny the adequacy of all terms. Meister Eckhart said that we cannot say
anything true of God because God has no cause, no equal, and nothing from
creatures is comparable to God (2009: 197–98). Indeed, he said that God is
so much greater than anything that can be said that everything said about
him is more like lying than speaking the truth. For example, he can say that
God alone is good (2009: 300), but: “When I call God ‘good,’ I speak as
falsely as if I were to call white black” (see 1981: 80). God, the creator of
being, is so far above being in nonbeing (unwesen) that “I would be
speaking as falsely in calling God ‘a being’ as I would if I called the sun
pale or black” (2009: 342, 343).
Thus, if mystical experiences were truly ineffable, a transcendent
reality may still be experienced and have a nature and we could still label it
“Brahman” or “God” or whatever, but it cannot be said to be known in any
other sense. There could be no insights to state and nothing to believe. No
mystical statement could be true or even meaningful. Mystics could not
answer David Hume’s question “How do you mystics, who maintain the
absolute incomprehensibility of the Deity, differ from sceptics or atheists,
who assert that the first cause of all is unknown and unintelligible?” The
result could be Ludwig Wittgenstein’s position: “A nothing would serve just
as well as a something about which nothing could be said” (Philosophical
Investigations, pt. 304). The experiences could not be evidence of any
reality—there could be nothing to say to support any claim or its denial.
William James’s characteristics of mystical experiences as both ineffable
and cognitive (1958: 380–81) would conflict. Nor could different
experiences be compared. Nor could what is experienced in one mystic’s
experience be identified with, or differentiated from, what is experienced in
another’s. But the fact that mystics, both theistic and nontheistic, still
distinguish what is an appropriate description from an inappropriate one
indicates that what is experienced has some distinctive character and that
mystics believe that they have experienced it. That is, something is retained
from even the depth-experience that is free of all differentiation, and thus
these experiences are not ineffable in this strong sense.
In this way, the mystics’ use of “ineffability” is different from more
usual uses of the term. It is not simply hyperbole or an expression of the
emotional power of these experiences but something more substantive
about its mode of existence. However, what is experienced is not literally
“ineffable.” The mere fact that it can be labeled “ineffable” trivially means
that it is something in some sense that can be experienced. If such realities
were not experiencable at all and thus absolutely unknown, there would be
no experiential basis to believe that they existed or to say that they are
“unknowable” or “ineffable.” But to say “x is ineffable” means there must
be an x that is experienced. Or as Augustine said, God cannot be called
“ineffable” because this makes a statement about him. As the fifth-century
Indian grammarian Bhartrihari put it: “What is sayable (vachya) by the
word ‘unsayable’ (avachya) is made sayable by that word.” Many
philosophers think that this defuses the problem of ineffability: to say “x is
indescribable” is to describe it, and hence it is not ineffable.5 But more
remains to the issue here. Ineffability in mysticism should be understood in
another sense: as highlighting the wholly otherness of what is experienced
—i.e., nothing phenomenal can be predicated of what is experienced, and so
it cannot be expressed. In short, mystics are simply claiming that a reality
lies outside the domain of phenomenal predication.

The Mirror Theory of Language

Thus, a problem with language is present for both extrovertive and
introvertive mystics. To extrovertive mystics, the conceptualizations
crystalized in language come to stand between us and what is real, and so
the conceptualizing mind must be stilled to see phenomenal reality as it
truly is: there are no real (i.e., independently existing) entities to be
referents of words. But language fixes our attention on the thingness of
things and not on their beingness. Naming freezes the flow of reality; it
marks off a referent from what it is not and thus separates the continuity of
reality into a series of disconnected objects—it gives things a standing
distinct from their surroundings. That is, naming cuts the flux of reality up
into distinct units when in fact reality is continuous. Terms are reified and
reality is reduced to a collection of discrete objects. Language, in short,
generates a false world of multiple changeless and independent “real”
entities and even makes beingness into a thing among things. To mystics,
the conceptual creations embodied in language that we invent and impose
on reality are “illusory” and blind us to what is actually real. All this makes
language the enemy of extrovertive mystical experiences: it fixes our mind
on unreal “things” when what is needed is to see that reality is not so
constructed. Conversely, experiencing the flow of an impermanent and
connected reality makes the discreteness of any linguistic denotation seem
hard to reconcile with reality as it truly is. How could we describe the
dynamic and continuous reality that we are part of in terms that are
necessarily static and distinct?
With introvertive mystical experiences, the complete ontic otherness of
transcendent realities becomes the center of the problem. Hans-Georg
Gadamer says that “we can express everything in words,” but mystics
question this with regard to transcendent realities. They would insist that to
give expression to what is experienced in introvertive mystical experiences
changes its ontic nature: it seems to make it of the same nature as
phenomenal objects. Thus, transcendent realities are “beyond the domain of
language” in a way that phenomenal objects, from quarks to galaxies, are
not. To mystics, language creates something false out of what is
experienced. Whatever mystics say renders a reality that is not a
phenomenal thing into a phenomenal thing for the unenlightened, and hence
every assertion must be denied. Mystics want to speak, since something real
and profound is allegedly experienced, but how can they do that without
making that reality into something like a phenomenal object? How can we
express oneness in a dualistic language? How can an Advaita sentence have
the word “Brahman” as its object when Brahman is the eternal subject? God
is not “invisible,” “unlimited,” or “infinite” because these terms apply to
possible phenomenal realities and make God seem like merely an unusual
phenomenal object. Indeed, if “existence” applies to things in the
phenomenal world, how can we even say something transcendent “exists”?
How do we say it is real and not “nonexistent” without admitting some
terms that apply in the phenomenal world also apply to what is
transcendent? If a transcendent reality’s mode of existence is wholly
different, how does even the worldly term “is” apply? That is, how can even
formal concepts (e.g., “it exists”) rather than substantive ones about its
nature apply? Conversely, how could even “nonexistent” or “is not” apply,
since these terms depend on terms for phenomenal objects? Thus, is not
even the via negativa ruled out? Or how can names or pronouns apply?
Whenever we talk about something real, we talk about an it, which is ipso
facto wrong since this makes “it” into an object. Any pronoun—male,
female, or neuter—makes transcendent realities into objects. Doesn’t
referring to the Way make it an object? So too, if a transcendent reality is
utterly unique, then terms applicable to anything else cannot apply. Does
this not mean that all substantive characterizations, no matter how abstract
(“beingness,” “immutable,” “real”) are necessarily wrong since all our
terms are derived for things within the natural realm? The problem of the
ontic otherness of transcendent realities is supplemented by the problem of
the necessity of another mode of consciousness to experience it. Whenever
we say anything about what is allegedly experienced, we are in the wrong
state of consciousness to know that what is said is true. Any attempt to
“grasp” or “conceive” a transcendent reality makes it into something it is
not, and hence is a losing battle.
However, both the extrovertive and introvertive problems can be
resolved if we consider an error in our common understanding of how
language works. The problem is not that language necessarily differentiates
items, but the implicit assumption that grammatical status dictates the ontic
status of the referents. That is, we go from the fact that denoting terms are
distinct to believing a world of Humean “loose and separate” entities, each
real and independent. Of particular importance, because we have such terms
as “I,” “me,” and “mine,” we tend to believe in a distinct entity that
corresponds to them—otherwise, why would there be such terms? In
Sanskrit, the word for noumenal self—atman—started as simply a reflexive
pronoun. Bertrand Russell believed that the whole idea of substantive
entities arose in that manner: “ ‘Substance’ … is a metaphysical mistake,
due to the transference to the world-structure of the structure of sentences
composed of a subject and a predicate” (1945: 202). Indeed, even saying
“Nothing exists”—rather than saying “There is nothing real”—seems to
make nothing into a something (and philosophers are indeed puzzled by
that). It would be absurd to maintain that words about water must be wet or
that the word “big” cannot refer to bigness because it is small, but believing
that static concepts cannot in principle apply to dynamic reality or that
applying a name or attribute to a transcendent reality “imposes” an ontic
“limitation” upon the referent or fundamentally changes its nature is only a
short step away.
Under this view, for knowledge-claims to be accurate or useful, there
must be a correspondence between reality and words or statements in the
sense of mirroring. This leads to a correspondence theory of truth: true
statements mirror the differentiated facts in reality. According to Arthur
Danto, every metaphysical system he knew presupposes that the deep
structure of language and the world share the same form (1973). Certainly
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-philosophicus with its “picture
theory” of language is a classic case: there is a shared logical form between
the linguistic structure of statements and the structure of reality on the level
of facts, and this structuring itself cannot be expressed. Language is a
picture of the logical structure of reality; each element of a statement
corresponds to an element of our world (Prop. 2.15), but this structure
cannot be pictured because it is not itself an item in the world.6 The mirror
theory is apparently implicit in early Indian philosophy concerning
language for the phenomenal world (see Bronkhorst 2011). The Indian
grammarians Jaimimi and Bhartrihari basically used the mirror theory to
defend the Vedic worldview. The mirror theory is also behind the claim that
in Buddhism final truths cannot be stated but are beyond words, and also
behind Dignaga’s claim that words do not refer to anything in the world.7
The opposite of a metaphysics of “atomic facts” can also lead to a type of
mirror theory—i.e., going from the fact that language is an interconnected
fabric of terms operating in relation to each other to the conclusion that
what is designated must also be interconnected. So too, in China the early
Daoist Zhuangzi saw the nonfixity of nature reflected in the changing
meaning of words (Zhuangzi 2).
To the Buddhist Nagarjuna, people who accept the notion of self-
existent entities believe that language reflects the nature of things: if we
have a word for something, then it is an independent, self-existent part of
the world (Vigrahavyavartani 9). On the other hand, in his metaphysics the
interrelation of concepts shows that no entity (bhava) or factor of the
experienced world (dharma) is real because they lack anything that would
give them self-existence (svabhava) (Mula-madhyamaka-karikas 1.10,
13.3, 24.18–19). That is, we project conceptualizations (kalpanas) unto
reality and then discriminate out fictitious “real” entities and become
attached to them. Only by undermining all mental props can we be freed
from the suffering we cause ourselves by taking this fabricated world to be
real. But reality as it truly is (tattva) is free of all conceptual projection
(prapancha), and nirvana is simply the cessation of such projection (ibid.:
18.9, 25.24). In short, nirvana is the cessation of seeing the world as
constructed of multiple independent entities based only on our
conceptualizations (see Jones 2014b: 136–44, 151–57, 162–63).
For the enlightened, the result is a form of linguistic antirealism. No
“thing” is designated by language. The problem is that there are no self-
contained, “real” things for terms to denote—there is thus no match of
categories and reality. In short, language cannot map what is actually real. It
cannot “capture” the flux of reality, and we distort reality if we start
thinking in terms of distinct permanent “entities.” Nevertheless, language is
not meaningless or useless. It still works as a tool for directing our attention
and for navigating through the impermanent configurations within the
phenomenal world. The Zen analogy of language as merely “a finger
pointing at the reflection of the moon in a pool of water” accepts that there
is in fact a moon and that we can direct attention to it by pointing. The
lesson is simply not to get attached to the pointing finger, let alone mistake
it for the moon, but to follow the direction indicated. Some terms work
better than others because of what actually exists in the world. Saying that
words are mere “names” or “designations,” as Buddhists do, does not
change the fact that something real in the world can be “designated.” The
word “moon” works in the analogy only because there is in reality a moon
(albeit not an independently existing or permanent entity) being reflected in
the pool that we can refer to. But mystics remind us that we should not get
caught up in the words and thoughts—they are no substitute for what is
real.
The same problem occurs for introvertive mystics. To speak of a
“mystical union” surely would lead the unenlightened to think of God as a
distinct object and a mystical experience as a fusion of two entities. So too
with the language of “touching” or “grasping” God. To Shankara, Brahman
is the sole reality, and thus terms from the phenomenal realm cannot apply
for many reasons: the real is simple and has no attributes to describe; the
real is unique and so terms capable of describing anything else could not
apply; and no phenomenal (“illusory”) attributes could apply to the real.
The problem with transcendent realities is not merely the reification of
abstractions into concrete entities—another byproduct of the mirror theory
—but the transformation of their ontic status. Mystics speak of transcendent
realities as more than subjective, and we normally think there is only one
alternative: externally existing real objects. The idea of any referent is that
there is an object in the world: if God is not a thing, then he is a no-thing—
i.e., nothing—and so does not exist. Transcendent realities are ontologically
incommensurable with any results of dualistic awareness, and any words
may be taken as indicating such realities’ ontic status—i.e., the realities are
automatically reduced to differentiated objects among other phenomenal
objects. Thus, for Laozi the Way is nameless (wuming) and cannot be
named (Daodejing 1, 32, 37). The Way that can be told is not the eternal
Way; the name that can be named is not the eternal name (ibid.: 1). That is,
what can be spoken of, even when discussing the Way, is different in nature
from the Way. The Way is formless and beyond the senses and
comprehension and thus cannot be named (ibid.: 14). Names only come into
play with the opposition of objects (ibid.: 32), i.e., when we are aware of
opposites such as “beauty” and “ugliness” or “good” and “bad” (ibid.: 2).
But the Way is an “uncarved block” that is prior to all opposites and thus
free of all names (ibid.: 2, 43).

And Yet Mystics Continue to Talk

But again, the copious writings of mystics from around the world indicate
that enlightened mystics do continue to speak. If talking about transcendent
realities or the phenomenal realm as it really is distorts their nature, why
speak at all? Because of the importance mystics attach to their insights. But
how can mystics speak at all about what they experience? Because after
introvertive mystical experiences and even during extrovertive mystical
experiences, they sense diversity. That is, the enlightened state is not an
undifferentiated awareness, and in that state it is possible to use language.
But when introvertive mystics are in even mindful states of consciousness
with differentiated content, their minds make transcendent realities into
objects. Plotinus spoke of afterward seeing an “image” of what is
experienced, but he makes it clear that this seeing (which must involve
duality) is distinct from being “oned” (Enneads 6.9.11). Such images, like
all images, are necessarily objectified: some mental distance exists between
the perceiver and the perceived. But transcendent realities are wholly other
than any objectified conception and hence are unimaginable. Thus, the
“One” cannot be grasped by any thought (ibid.: 5.5.6, 6.9.6).
Nevertheless, they succeed only if mystical cognitive utterances can
refer to transcendent realities and the phenomenal realm as it really is
without distorting their ontic status. But this is possible: we can reject the
mirror theory of language without rejecting language. And this appears to
be what mystics implicitly do in practice, even if they do not realize it. To
cite the Theravada canon, the enlightened can make use of current forms of
speech without “clinging” to them or being led astray by them (Majjhima
Nikaya 1.500, Digha Nikaya 1.195). Thus, the Buddha could use “I” (aham)
and first-person verbs without believing in a separate and real self—“I” is
merely a useful shorthand for one constantly changing bundle of aggregates
in the flux of phenomena. The prime illustration in the Theravada tradition
is the word “chariot” for the temporary and changing parts assembled into a
working chariot (Milindapanha 2.1.1). In the Prajnaparamita tradition,
bodhisattvas too can use language, although the results are sometimes
strange. For example, Subhuti can say, “I am the one whom the Buddha has
indicated as the foremost of those who dwell free of strife and greed [i.e., an
Arhat]. And yet it does not occur to me ‘I am an Arhat, freed of greed’ ”
(Diamond-Cutter Sutra 9). That is, Subhuti could accept the description of
himself as “an Arhat” and say the words “I am an Arhat,” but he does not
see this as indicating a distinct, self-existent entity. Denotative words and
statements are now taken not to refer to permanent objects but to fairly
stable configurations in the flux of phenomena that we group together for
attention. These “conventional designations” can still indicate what is
“conventionally real,” although from the point of view of the highest
concern (paramarthatas) the conventional is ultimately empty of
permanence and thus is not real. That is, Buddhists affirm that there are
denotable factors of the phenomenal world (dharmas)—dharmas simply
lack the independence of being self-existent.
 In short, what has been implicitly rejected is only the mirror theory of
how language works, not language itself. That is, using language does not
itself entail any ontic commitments—only a theory of the nature of
language does—and we can reject the theory and still utilize language.
Thus, the word “God” can be a grammatical object even though theists do
not treat God as a phenomenal object or as a transcendent object set against
the phenomenal world. But this means that how the enlightened view
concepts has changed. They see language about the phenomenal world as
useful for negotiating the world and for leading others toward
enlightenment even if there are no permanent referents for nouns in the
ultimate makeup of reality. (And since the enlightened do speak, we cannot
dismiss all mystical statements as products of ignorance and therefore false.
This also means that the enlightened should have no problem talking to
each other.) This is possible since there are configurations in the flux even
if they are only temporary: buildings may only be impermanent
assemblages, consisting of equally impermanent parts and not “entities”
unto themselves—and thus are not “real” in that specific sense—but the
word “building” is still useful for directing attention to parts of the present
flux of reality as we move through the world. Buildings do not exist in a
way different than how Santa Claus does not exist—there is some reality
there even if the reality is constantly changing and thus there is no
permanent referent for any term. Different languages make different
distinctions, but all languages must make distinctions and categorize things.
Thus, there is no reason for mystics to try to invent a new language since all
languages present the same basic problem of dividing the indivisible and
labeling transcendent realities as things. Mystics can simply employ the
language of their own culture; their only change may be to use the passive
voice more than the active one. But the enlightened now use language
without projecting the linguistic distinctions onto reality and creating a false
ontology of unreal distinct “entities.”8

An Analogy
We can see the introvertive mystics’ dilemma by means of an analogy that
parallels the situation in one important respect. Imagine beings who
experience the world only in two dimensions. Now imagine claiming to
them that three-dimensional objects exist. They cannot form mental images
of three-dimensional objects any more than we can form images of four-
dimensional objects. Perhaps some of them will accept the possibility of
such objects even if they cannot picture one, just as we can accept the
existence of colorless objects such as atoms even though we cannot picture
them without adding a color. Now consider drawing the two-dimensional
Necker stick drawing of a cube for these beings, and the problem of trying
to explain it to them.

This is a mixture of correct and misleading information—the straight lines

and number of vertices reflect the cube, but the angles are not all 90
degrees, and some edges intersect. More importantly, the drawing distorts
the cube’s basic nature by omitting a third dimension. Being forced to draw
in two dimensions introduces this omission and these inconsistencies, but
there is nothing we can do about it. We might add more detail by shading
some sides, but this will not help since the hypothetical beings still cannot
imagine a third dimension. And any verbal description will sound odd to
someone who has never seen a real cube: “All the angles are really the
same, and it is not ‘flat’ (a term that may have no meaning to these beings),
and the six sides are all the same shape and touch only on the outside.”
We might even conclude that the cube is ineffable since the drawing
seems to distort what it really is like and changes its nature from three
dimensions to two. But the drawing is in fact an accurate representation as
far as it goes—we simply need to realize that it is only a drawing and that
there is a dimension not conceptualizable in “two-dimensional language”
the way two-dimensional objects are. But most importantly we need the
experience of actually seeing and handling a cube to see how the drawing is
correct. The drawing cannot convey its own flatness: the missing third
dimension cannot be captured by a drawing. Thus, studying the drawing is
no substitute for experiencing a real cube. Those beings who are
sympathetic may come to understand that the drawing is not the cube, and
thus they would not assimilate the drawing to their normal reactions.
Nevertheless, without actually experiencing a cube, they cannot know why
this drawing and not others is appropriate and in what sense it is accurate.
Only with such an experience will the odd and contradictory features be
understood in a nondistortive manner. Without it, the drawing is like M. C.
Escher’s drawing of four waterfalls flowing into each other—something
that can be drawn but cannot correspond to anything in the real world.
This predicament parallels that of introvertive mystics in one way:
since the unenlightened do not have the requisite experiences, they can do
no more than reduce any talk of transcendent realities to a kind of unusual
phenomenal object. Because of the linguistic “drawings,” transcendent
realities are relegated to the status of a familiar phenomenal object. And
because the “drawings” seem impossible and contradictory, many reject the
possibility that transcendent realities can be real. But just as some of the
features of the cube are captured by the drawing (the six sides, straight
edges, eight vertices, and some angles) and the drawing overall is accurate
if understood properly, so too linguistic descriptions of a transcendent
reality can be accurate if we reject the mirror theory of language: mystical
statements do not falsify, but we need a mystical experience to see properly
how they apply and are correct, and even to understand the claims properly.
Some features of transcendent realities (nonduality, realness, immutability,
transcendence of the phenomenal realm) are accurately conveyed if we
overcome the tendency to project grammar onto reality. This mixture of
correct depictions with distortive possibilities accounts for the mystics’
hesitancy to affirm the adequacy of any conceptualizations of transcendent
realities. Again, the problem is not remedied by introducing a new language
—a different map projection, as it were—since all languages are dualistic
and thus cannot mirror the ontic nature of what is nondual.9
Having a mystical experience reorients how we understand mystical
cognitive utterances, just as seeing a cube reorients how we see the
drawing. The language is no longer as confusing, but it remains the only
way mystics could convey anything about what was experienced. The ontic
status of transcendent realities is not “captured” by any language, and their
mode of existence would be altered by the unenlightened, but the
enlightened can use language free of the metaphysical mistake to convey
some alleged knowledge of alleged realities, just as we can draw the cube
without being misled by the distortive aspects of the resulting drawing. (If
mystics can see the “drawingness” of their “drawings,” they may become
less attached to the prevailing concepts and symbols of their culture.) And
those without mystical experiences can come to understand something of
what mystics are saying (and even to distinguish accurate descriptions from
inaccurate ones) by following analogies and seeing what is negated. But
without having the experiences the unenlightened’s understanding will
always remain tainted.
Thus, the mirror theory explains the problem labeled “ineffability.”
The experience is not vague or nebulous—it is a bright light. The problem
of putting what was experienced into words after the experience revolves
around the fact that words will make the reality experienced into a
phenomenal object, which it is not. This leads to the paradox of mystics
denying that language applies to what is experienced and yet continuing to
talk about it. Mystics can acknowledge the “wholly otherness” of what is
experienced and yet can also deny that it “defies expression” if they reject
the mirror theory.10 The language used is as adequate as any denotative
language is if we can reject the mirror theory of how language operates.

Silence
There are four responses mystics can make to their dilemma with language.
Two involve adhering to the mirror theory (silence and negation of all
characteristics), one implicitly rejects it (positive characterizations), and
one combines the two (paradox). Paradox will be discussed in the next
chapter.
If the mirror theory were strictly adhered to, the result for introvertive
mystics should be silence about mystical realities.11 But the silence of
mystics is the opposite of the silence of skeptics: it is based on knowing
something that cannot be expressed adequately. Plotinus claimed that all
predicates must be denied: even “the One” does not apply to what is
transcendent since “one” is a number among numbers, and thus it may
suggest some duality; silence is ultimately the only proper response
(Enneads 5.3.12, 5.5.6, 6.7.38.4–5). As already noted, even “is” would not
be applicable to transcendent realities or the phenomenal realm as it really
is since phenomenal objects are. So too, vice versa: if only the alleged
transcendent reality is deemed real, we cannot say that worldly phenomena
exist. In Buddhism, only reality as it truly is (tattva) is real, and so the
differentiated phenomena of the world cannot be said to “exist.” So too with
Advaita for Brahman and the “dream” realm.
Mystical silence is not merely not speaking but also inner silence—i.e.,
not even any thoughts about the transcendent. No words seem applicable.
Treating “the Way” or “the One” or “Brahman” as names does not solve the
problem. Plotinus tells us that it is precisely because the One is not an entity
that “strictly speaking, no name suits it” (Enneads 6.9.5). (To the
Neoplatonist Plotinus, names are like Platonic “forms” rather than simply
conventional labels we apply to things.) Indeed, Eckhart said that by not
being named, we named God (2009: 219). According to Shankara, the idea
of Brahman as an entity is superimposed (adhyasa) on the name “Brahman”
(Brahma-sutra-bhashya 3.3.9). Laozi’s distinction between a “private
name” (ming) and a “public name” (zi) (Daodejing 25)—i.e., “the Way” is
used only in the first sense since there is no public name for it—does not
get around the problem: private names still mark off an object.12 Similarly,
even if Nagarjuna is referring to “dependent-arising” (pratitya-samutpada)
as merely a “designation” (prajnaptir) (Mula-madhyamaka-karikas 24.18),
this does not help. Neither does treating “God” as merely a placeholder for
the mystery experienced in theistic experiences. In short, language appears
under the mirror theory to be a Procrustean bed, and so what is experienced
is declared ineffable.
Shankara quotes from a now unknown Upanishad the case of Bahva,
who when asked to explain the self said “Learn Brahman, friend” and fell
silent. When the student persisted, Bahva finally declared: “I am teaching
you, but you do not understand: silence is the self” (Brahma-sutra-bhashya
3.2.17). Here silence itself becomes the thing known, not merely a part of
the meditative techniques to attain mystical experiences: the inner silence
does not merely reflect the mystic’s mental state resulting from stopping the
noise of the discursive mind, but indicates the nature of a transcendent
reality. Brahman is silent, as Eckhart also says of the transcendent ground
(McGinn 2001: 46). And by Bahva speaking of silence in this way, the
problem with language is reintroduced. Also notice that Bahva did not
remain silent for long. Silence here is a teaching technique, and teachers
seldom end up taking a vow of silence. The same is shown by the tale
known as the first Zen story of the Buddha silently holding up a flower and
only Kashyapa understanding. The Buddha too did not remain silent but
extensively taught verbally. The Buddha was called “the silent one of the
Shakya clan” (shakya-muni), but this referred only to his training on the
path; in the enlightened state, he was “silent” only in the technical sense
(following the mirror theory) that words are not real and thus he did not
utter a “real” sound when he spoke. This also means, as Madhyamikas
emphasize, that there is nothing real (sat) to teach and that the
Madhyamikas advance no theses (pratijnas) (e.g., Mula-madhyamaka-
karikas 25.24) since nothing is self-existent.
Silence protects both the experiences themselves and the reality
experienced. But it is hard to remain silent about something that mystics
consider fundamentally important. In Jalal al-din Rumi’s words, “There is
no way to say this, … and no place to stop saying it.” Indeed, claiming that
one must be silent only enhances the otherness and importance of an
alleged transcendent reality. Moreover, our analytical mind’s innate
tendency to conceptualize takes over after introvertive mystical
experiences. Both mystics themselves and the unenlightened want to know
what the mystics are being silent about. Hence the paradox of ineffability:
in order to claim that a transcendent reality is beyond all names, we must
name it. Merely saying that there is something “transconceptual” is not
itself to form a conception of anything, but in our unenlightened state we
will form a mental object for thinking about “it.”

Positive Characterizations of Transcendent Realities

The extreme opposite of silence is the affirmation of some positive features
of transcendent realities. In Christianity, affirmative theology is called
“kataphatic,” from the Greek “kataphasis” meaning “speaking with.” And
mystics do ascribe positive properties to transcendent realities—if nothing
else, they are “real,” “one,” and “immutable,” even if such abstract
properties may not be very helpful to the unenlightened. Indeed, mystics
may believe that what was experienced is profoundly significant and yet
have only flat platitudes to say about it. But if absolutely no features were
given in mystical experiences, there would be nothing retained and nothing
to express or to deny. But from what is retained, some descriptions are more
accurate than their opposites, although the danger remains that, due to the
mirror theory of language, the unenlightened will misunderstand the nature
of the ontologically incommensurate transcendent realities. Still, some
concepts and statements are better or more appropriate in the sense that if
these realities were phenomenal objects, they would be denoted by those
concepts and statements in the same way phenomenal objects are denoted.
For example, transcendent realities are “one” and “real,” not “multiple” or
“apparitions.” So too, if a god exists, it is “personal,” not “nonpersonal” or
“unconscious.” Thus, some descriptions reflect better what was
experienced, but since any “image” is in the same class as images of objects
while transcendent realities are ontologically different, any descriptions of
what was experienced is held to be distortive. For example, Plotinus used
“one” only to contrast the One with multiplicity, but even “the One” only
indicates a lack of plurality, not one object among objects. “One” is used to
start the mind toward simplicity, not to designate one thing among many
phenomenal objects (Enneads 5.5.6), since any property is a characteristic
of the universe’s being, not of the One (the source of being).
The problem is that all images are formed in the same way while
transcendent and phenomenal realities are ontologically distinct.13 Certainly
any analogy of proportionality—e.g., human goodness is to us as God’s
goodness is to God—reduces a transcendent reality to an unusual but still
phenomenal object, since it would make such a reality in effect an item in
an equation.14 We will always react to any alleged feature in terms of our
normal understanding of things. Such a danger is present when using any
concept or imagery with which we are familiar. God is experienced as a
reality personal in nature, and so some personal imagery is appropriate.15
But using personal images can easily lead to a crude anthropomorphism
(i.e., making a transcendent god into a copy of a human being): we quite
naturally read in features from our own culture and time of what we
consider an ideal human person to be and so end up ascribing our way of
thinking and feeling to God—e.g., he loves what we love and hates what we
hate. Thereby, we end up projecting human qualities without any
experiential basis and end up with an entity that is the product of our
imagination. Any images of a being can lead to other forms of idolatry by
reducing a transcendent reality to a phenomenal reality or by associating
anything worldly with God. Familiar images have to be used, but the danger
is that our attention is directed away from the transcendent referent to the
worldly phenomena of the image itself. So too, the Christian practice of
giving symbolic interpretations to biblical passages may not be an effective
mystical strategy since it may only plant our normal frame of reference
more firmly in our mind: when Eckhart sees Jesus cleansing the temple of
moneychangers as a symbolic statement of cleansing the soul of all images,
listeners will now be thinking in terms of Jesus and the temple. We may
also read too much from a metaphor into a transcendent reality, since the
unenlightened do not have the experience that shows how the metaphor is
used. More generally, the mixture of applicable and inapplicable aspects of
any metaphor to transcendent realities keeps them from being accurate
representations in toto of any such realities.16
The strategy that mystics employ to avoid this possible reduction of
transcendent realities to phenomenal objects is to maintain that positive
descriptions merely “point to” rather than directly or literally “describe” the
realities. Plotinus said that we can speak of “the One” only to give direction
—to point out the road to others who desire to experience it (Enneads
6.9.4). Shankara says that the positive characterization “truth/reality”
(satya) cannot denote Brahman but can only indirectly indicate it
(Taittiriya-upanishad-bhashya 2.1.1). Words do not properly “describe” or
“signify” Brahman but “imply” it or “direct our attention” toward it (ibid.:
2.4.1, Brahma-sutra-bhashya 3.2.21). So too, the word “self” (atman) is
qualified by “as it were” (iti) to indicate that the word does not actually
apply (Taittiriya-upanishad-bhashya 2.1.1, Brihadaranyaka-upanishad-
bhashya 1.4.7). Plotinus likewise noted that we need to add “as if” when
speaking of the One (Enneads 6.8.13). One of Shankara’s disciples,
Sureshvara, said that Brahman is indirectly signified just as the statement
“The beds are crying” indirectly indicates the children who are lying on
them. But he conceded that this type of suggestiveness based on literal
meaning only inadequately implies the self, since whatever is used to refer
to the self becomes confused with it (also see Shankara’s Brahma-sutra-
bhashya 1.2.11, 2.1.17).
The problem of potential distortion persists whether the positive
features that are ascribed are abstract (e.g., “oneness”) or more relatable
imagery (e.g., God as a shepherd, or the One as a “wellspring”). But both
classes are broadly metaphoric in the sense of using a term with an
established meaning concerning phenomenal objects to direct attention to
something else.17 Even if mystical experiences are quite common,
metaphors are still needed because transcendent realities are ontologically
distinct and so concepts that apply to phenomenal realities must have their
meaning extended to something different. As the medieval English author
of The Cloud of Unknowing wrote concerning the use of spatial terms to
indicate transcendence (“up,” “down,” and so on), the terms are not meant
literally but “as human beings we can go beyond their immediate
significance to grasp the spiritual significance they bear at another level”
(Johnston 1973: 128). Many in philosophy argue that all language is
metaphoric and that metaphors permeate our thought, but the above
mystical passages suggest that these authors assume there is a literal use of
terms in addition to a symbolic use—that calling a man “a lion” is different
from calling a lion “a lion.” That is, these terms have established meanings
and apply literally when phenomenal objects are the referents.
However, if transcendent realities are ontologically totally distinct
from the phenomenal world, how could anything from the latter realm be
used even symbolically to refer to the former? The answer must be that
mystics see some similarities in the properties of the ontologically
incommensurable realities. For example, God is ontologically
incommensurable with created human beings—to Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite he is beyond (hyper) human nature—but God and human beings
share properties that enable both to be called “personal” or “conscious.”
That is, God is more like our personhood than a nonperson and more like
our consciousness than what is nonconscious. In short, transcendent
realities and worldly phenomena are ontologically disparate in their ontic
natures, but this does not preclude them being alike in some properties.
Without such commonality, there could be no good reason why certain
concepts and images are more appropriate than their opposites or other
images. As the cube and its drawing have some features in common even
though their modes of existence differ, so too some features of the
phenomenal world share properties with transcendent realities and so can be
used to explicate something of transcendent realities. This is why “one,”
“immutable,” and “real” are more applicable than their opposites. God is
“personal” in nature because he is experienced that way, but he is not a
being like a human being is—he is simple and without differentiable
features (thus giving rise to the theological problem of how what is simple
can have numerous properties).18 Otherwise language could not function
even figuratively to refer to something one is not familiar with.
So too, symbols are not true or false, but any symbols indicating a
source (“ground,” “womb,” “abyss”) are more appropriate and useful than
symbols indicating a product, just as a loving God is more like a “shepherd”
than a “wolf.” Symbols from different cultures and eras will differ and may
change, but the experienced reality would remain the same. And the
problem always is that the unenlightened will construe the terms literally,
and, since they have not had the necessary experiences, they may not be
able to follow them well enough to understand mystical claims about
transcendent realities. Terms we use get their meaning first in applying to
nonmystical realities, but even if some new terms were invented for
referring only to mystical transcendent realities, the unenlightened would
still think in terms of phenomenal realities and the terms could still be used
mystically only by a metaphoric extension. Theists using old terms (“thy”
and “thou”) and arcane word order may point to the otherness of God, but
beyond that this does not help. This problem would occur even if poetry,
music, or nonrepresentational visual art is used: it may open us to
transcendent realities, or our unenlightened mind may still think in terms of
phenomenal realities.

Mystical Utterances and Knowledge

The congruence of transcendent and phenomenal properties is the basis for
claiming that mystical utterances state cognitive claims about a
transcendent reality. Even if all mystical utterances have a metaphorical
component, the experiences can still provide the foothold needed to make
the statements meaningful. As mentioned in chapter 3, in an analog to the
causal theory of reference for scientific claims, what is experienced in
theistic or nontheistic mystical experiences can be seen as grounding the
cognitive utterances despite changing symbols and conceptions. It would be
like the seeing and handling of a cube grounding drawings of the cube. No
literal statements—i.e., statements that do not need a metaphoric extension
—would be required to ground meaningfulness.19 The “sense” of the reality
may be specifiable only through changing and limited metaphors, but the
referent does not require literal depictions if the reality can be experienced
directly.
But again, because of the ontic difference between the world and
transcendent realities, mystics must always stretch everyday concepts and
images. Plotinus’s figure of the One as an ever-full spring shows the
problem. We know what a spring is, but how are we to understand a spring
that has no origin, is never emptied, is ever-flowing, and yet always full?
Perhaps we can mentally extrapolate the everyday properties into infinite
ones, but we would still be thinking in terms of phenomenal objects with
infinite properties. Positive remarks will always be limited in that regard.
So too with more literal, nonfigurative descriptions. We know how material
objects “exist,” but how do transcendent realities “exist”? An analogy such
as the dreamer being “more real” than the characters in the dream and being
the source of whatever reality the dream characters have can only take us so
far in understanding how a transcendent reality exists and is a source. So
too with the Advaita image of the world as a magical illusion (maya) to
show its lack of independent existence and its outwardly deceptive
character.
This highlights the problem of whether nonmystics can understand
mystics when mystics give positive characterizations. Whether such
utterances are meaningful to the unenlightened ultimately depends on
whether the metaphoric discourse supplies a meaningful mystical content to
them. Arguably such discourse does. The unenlightened can understand the
point of a metaphoric utterance well enough to understand mystical claims
even if they do not know exactly how it is applicable and why it is
appropriate. But as David Hume said, a blind person can form no notion of
color or a deaf person of sound. So too here: the unenlightened cannot stand
in the shoes of mystics. But mystics form appropriate conceptualizations of
what they experienced after their experiences, and nonmystics may be able
to follow these statements and images in the direction of transcendence.
Understanding any mystical use of metaphor requires some imagination.
Sympathy for what mystics are trying to do is not enough. The
unenlightened will always be stuck having to rely only on their nonmystical
understanding of the terms. Any metaphor used to communicate something
beyond what the listener has already experienced only becomes clear once
the intended experience has occurred. Mystics can do no more since a new
experience is required to reorient the sense and use of the images and
concepts. Thus, there are limits, but following the analogies and metaphors
in the direction of transcendence (i.e., away from the phenomenal world
via, for example, the “dream” analogy) seems sufficient to make mystical
utterances minimally intelligible to the unenlightened.
This also raises the question of whether the normal meanings of terms
are transformed in attempts to denote transcendent realities. The drawing of
the cube points to a three-dimensional cube, but the drawing works only if
we uproot the implications that a two-dimensional object is involved, and
the same is true with mystical utterances. In effect, a concept or statement is
emptied of its normal denotation and filled with one given in a mystical
experience. Does this mean that, for example, “good” means something
different when mystics say that God is good? But if God’s goodness is
utterly unlike ours, then the term “good” does not apply and we have no
idea what God is like in this regard. Mystics often say things that suggest
that the transcendent’s properties are so different that the phenomenal
meaning of the terms does not apply. As Eckhart said, God is not “good,”
“better,” or “best,” or “wise” (2009: 463). But if this is more than simply
hyperbole, there is a problem: only if the meaning of the terms remains the
same can any analogies or metaphors work, just as some features of the
drawing of the cube (e.g., the straight lines) remain the same in the cube
itself. If our terms do not apply to the new subject, we are consigned to
silence. Even “exists” or “is” could not be used.
However, if the mirror theory of language is rejected, mystics do not
need to take that route: terms for worldly phenomena could be used while
stressing the wholly other ontic nature of transcendent realities without any
change of meaning. For example, theists can affirm that a transcendent
reality is personal in nature: God may be “transpersonal,” but he was some
personal quality in the human sense. So too, God’s and humans’ goodness
are alike in some way, even if God’s is greater and purer. Similarly, the
words “exists” and “is” mean the same for transcendent realities as for
phenomenal ones even though their modes of existence differ. The problem,
in sum, is not the literal meaning of the terms when it comes to transcendent
realities, but that these realities are not phenomenal objects and that only by
a mystical experience can we see how the terms apply.20
 Negation
The primary way that introvertive mystics counter such positive
characterizations is by negating any possible characteristic of transcendent
realities since such realities are unlike anything phenomenal. Hence images
of “darkness” and “nakedness.” In a remark echoed by Augustine about
God, Plotinus said that we can state what the One is not, not what it is
(Enneads 5.3.14). To Shankara, words like “Brahman” and “self” are
superimposed on the real (satya) since describing the real without recourse
to limiting adjuncts (upadhis) is an “utter impossibility” (Brahma-sutra-
bhashya intro., Brihadaranyaka-upanishad-bhashya 2.3.6). But he asserted
that all “positive” characterizations of Brahman—reality, knowledge, and
infinity—are only meant to remove other attributes: Brahman cannot be the
agent of knowing, for that requires change and denies reality and infinity;
knowledge merely negates materiality; and reality and infinity negate
knowledge (Taittiriya-upanishad-bhashya 2.1.1). It is all a process of
negation (apavada). And since the real is in fact free of all differentiations,
we are left with describing it as “not this, not that” (neti neti) to remove all
terms of name, form, and action. More generally, mystics want to say that
“human language”—as if there were another kind—does not apply and so
must be negated.
Thus, mystics are major advocates of the via negativa—the denial of
any possible positive description of the transcendent. In the
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, brahman/atman is famously described as “not
this, not that” (2.3.6, 3.9.26, 4.2.4, 4.4.22, 4.5.15), thereby denying all
features to it. So too, as discussed in the next chapter, the Buddha denied
that any concepts concerning existence “fit the case” of the state of the
enlightened after death (Majjhima Nikaya 1.431, 2.166). Affirming any
option—the enlightened “exists,” “does not exist,” “both exists and does
not exist,” or “neither exists and does not exist”—would show a
misunderstanding (since these terms apply only to dharmas and after death
the enlightened have no dharmas) and give a mental prop to which we may
become attached (Samyutta Nikaya 4.373–402). Buddhists later developed a
theory of meaning based on excluding what is not intended by a word. The
via negativa approach was introduced into the Western theistic traditions
through Neoplatonism. Plotinus said no words apply to the One (Enneads
6.8.13). For example, the One cannot be a “cause” since that term applies to
phenomenal actions. He repeated this regarding “the Good” and even “the
One” (ibid.: 3.8.11.12–13, 5.5.6.22–23). Any property is a characteristic of
being, not the One, and so all properties must be denied (ibid.: 6.9.3).
Eckhart said that God is “neither this nor that”—God is a nongod, a
nonspirit, a nonperson, a nonimage detached from all duality; he is not
goodness, being, truth, or one (2009: 465, 342, 287). So too, God is beyond
all speech (ibid.: 316–17).
If a transcendent reality is indeed utterly unlike the components of the
world, one can ask why negative terms (e.g., nonpersonal) would then not
apply. If Brahman is not a person, then the statement “Brahman is not a
person” is true. Philosophers, thinking in terms of phenomenal objects,
naturally believe that if x is not p, we can affirm the negative statement “x is
not-p.” However, problems arise when it comes to mystical discourse. First,
mystics may assume that if we affirm the negative claim, the unenlightened
will always be thinking in terms of discrete entities (contra extrovertive
mysticism) or in terms of phenomenal objects and not be directed toward
transcendent realities (contra introvertive mysticism). We could affirm the
negation as true, but unless we reject the mirror theory of language it would
still be misleading. We can say “The number 4 is not blue,” but to start
thinking of numbers in terms of color only directs the mind away from the
true nature of numbers. So too with any affirmation of negative
characterizations of transcendent realities. The problem again is that a
transcendent reality is not a phenomenal object to which the idea of
“nonpersonal entity” would apply. The danger is that any negative
characterizations would still render a transcendent reality an x—a thing
within the world among other things. Thus, mystics would object even if an
exasperated philosopher exclaimed “Well, at least Brahman is not a rock!”
(And if Brahman is the true substance of all phenomena, then a rock is
Brahman.)
Second, if there is only one transcendent reality, it may appear to be,
for example, personal in some experiences and nonpersonal in others.
Theists will assert that the transcendent-in-itself is personal and only
appears nonpersonal in experiences of its beingness; Advaitins will assert
the reverse. Thus, to assert that the transcendent is nonpersonal would be to
side with Advaita in this dispute on the true ultimate nature of the
transcendent and not merely to make a formal remark about the logical
status of a reality that is “wholly other.” And Advaitins even object to
labeling Brahman nonpersonal: through the mirror theory, this makes
Brahman into an entity. Even Brahman without features (nirguna) is a
conception from the analytical mind and so does not reflect the transcendent
reality-in-itself. This means that the transcendent reality is not personal or
nonpersonal: in itself, the reality does not possess contradictory
phenomenal properties but is beyond any conception we can devise or its
negation. (Also see the electron example in chapter 3 and in the next
chapter.) In sum, it is not possible to say that a transcendent reality-in-itself
has any phenomenal property or its opposite.
The via negativa thus protects openness and the mystery of the
transcendent. It also directs the listener’s mind away from the natural realm.
But maintaining a pure via negativa is difficult for mystics—even Zen
eventually adopted a more positive approach. It is especially difficult to
maintain for theists who see what they have experienced in terms of a
moral, caring person. The theologian Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the
father of the via negativa in the Christian tradition, claimed God is
ultimately a “divine darkness” beyond any assertion or negation, but he also
wrote a book on the symbolism of divine names (although he stressed that
God cannot be fully captured by any names). To Shankara, the process of
negation leaves something real since we can only negate something by
reference to something real (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 3.2.22). Thus, he
maintains that there is a real basis to superimposition while asserting that
Brahman as an object of thought is a product of root-ignorance, either in the
lower form as the god Ishvara (Brahman as qualified) or the higher form
(Brahman as the opposite of all qualifications) (Brahma-sutra-bhashya
1.1.11, 1.2.21).
Indeed, for mystics there is always a basic affirmation beyond the
negations—a reality that is experienced. Thus, although the via negativa is
a movement beyond affirmations, it is never merely a denial—there is a
“negation of negation.” Plotinus introduced the notion of “speaking away”
(aporia apophasis) in the West, but it was never entirely negative.21
Certainly the reality of a transcendent reality is not denied by theistic
mystics, even if it is Eckhart’s “Godhead beyond God.” Rather, the
transcendent reality is beyond both the affirmation and negation of worldly
attributes. Negation thus may be applied because a mystic thinks what was
experienced is so much more than any terms for phenomenal reality could
convey. That is, a reality is known but cannot be described because it is
greater than anything any description could capture. Eckhart, even while
utilizing the word “God,” said that God is nameless because he is “above all
names”—if we gave him a name, he would have to be thought (2009:
139).22 So too, saying God is “beyond good” does not mean he is evil;
rather, even the label “good” cannot be applied to him because he is so
much more. Dionysius said that we attribute an absence of reason and
perfection to God because he is above reason and is above and before
perfection (The Divine Names, chap. 7). Nevertheless, the negation of
phenomenal attributes does indicate the direction of another dimension of
reality and thus has soteriological value.
However, one must ask how a “negation of negation” differs in the end
from the affirmative approach discussed above, and whether, as Plotinus
said, the “sheer dread of holding to nothingness” forces mystics back to the
everyday realm of language (Enneads 4.7.38.9–10; see also 6.9.3.4–6). This
approach does not deny that there is some positive reality but only
emphasizes its otherness and its lack of phenomenal properties and directs
attention away from the phenomenal realm. And the basic danger of the
mirror theory will remain that the unenlightened will translate anything
mystics say into a statement about an object within the world. To say
“Brahman is not open to conceptualization” does not conceptualize
Brahman, but it involves a conceptualization, and our conceptualizing mind
will treat it as any other conceptualization. The danger is of merely
separating one object from other objects by the process of negation. We
would still think in terms of a phenomenal entity without certain attributes.
We would merely attribute a negative property to the new entity, and as
Walter Stace (1960b: 134) and others point out, there is no principled way
to make an absolute distinction between positive and negative attributes—
we still take negation as affirming another property. Even attributing
“nonbeing” to a transcendent reality or saying that “it does not exist” still
produces an image in the mind of an object set off from other objects.
Perhaps this is why Dionysius said that neither affirmation nor negation
applies to God (Mystical Theology, chap. 5).
Nonmystical theologians besides Dionysius have also emphasized the
via negativa. Thomas Aquinas wrote “we cannot know what God is but
rather what he is not” (Summa Theologiae 1a.3). Anselm could make “that
than which nothing greater can be conceived” into an object of reasoning
and comparison.23 Today books can be written on the via negativa without
any reference to mystical experiences (Turner 1995; Franke 2007). Part of
this is the postmodern contention that mysticism is nothing but a matter of
language, but this also shows that the via negativa is not a device utilized
only by those who have had mystical experiences. It can be simply a
speculative theological strategy for working out the logic of ideas about a
supreme being.
The negative approach has never been the predominant trend in the
Abrahamic religions, although it has more prominence in Eastern Orthodox
Christianity. Even Muslims, who stress the unknowability of God to all but
prophets and mystics, do not emphasize this approach. Theists always
attribute positive features to God. In Christianity, in the beginning was the
word (logos) (John 1:1), not silence. Theologians try to tame the via
negativa by treating it as only a supplement to the positive approach.
Mystics, however, see the negative way as a corrective to any positive
depictions of a transcendent reality since all attributions must of necessity
come from the phenomenal realm. This approach does not merely affirm
that there is more to a transcendent reality than is known but affirms its
absolute otherness from all things natural. Positive characterizations may
direct our attention away from other objects, but this still makes a
transcendent reality into one object among objects. The second step—the
negation of all positive characterizations—corrects that and directs our
attention away from all objects and toward transcendence.

Defending Mystical Discourse

Either claims about realities as experienced by mystics do accurately reflect
something of those realities or nothing can be uttered about them—one
option has to be rejected. But the usual alternatives—rejecting mystics’
claims as nonsense or rejecting language—can both be discarded if the
mirror theory of how language operates is rejected instead. Mystics
apparently believe that what they utter is not in vain. Eckhart closed one of
his sermons saying “Whoever has understood this sermon, good luck to
him! If no one had been here, I should have had to preach it to the offertory
box” (2009: 294). This he would have done to proclaim something that he
felt to be true and of utmost importance. Mystics also find language to be
useful in verifying whether others have had the prescribed experience (by
seeing what they say and how they say it) and in guiding others to having
mystical experiences. The different strategies with regard to language are
meant to direct the unenlightened mind away from the world and toward
beingness or transcendent realities. To modify the Zen analogy, assertions
about mystical realities are more than a finger pointing to the image of the
moon reflected in a pool of water: they are pointing to the moon itself, and
it is only the unenlightened who, like those mistaking the drawing for the
cube, mistake the pointing finger (the words) for the moon. Advaitins claim
that no language can apply to Brahman since all languages involve
distinctions and Brahman is nondual and free of distinctions. But while no
statement can be a substitute for experience, one in a dualistic state of mind
can state such “ultimate truths” as “Brahman is nondual” or “There are no
self-existent entities.” To use an analogy: to know that the statement
“Drinking water quenches thirst” is true, we need to drink water, but, while
the act of drinking “surpasses” that statement, it does not make the
statement only “conventionally true” or make the act of drinking “beyond
language” or an “unstatable higher truth” in any sense other than the
obvious and uncontroversial one that the act of drinking water is not itself a
statement.24 Otherwise, mystics could not say anything about the nature of
reality, because if they use words they would be ipso facto stating only
conventional truths. Thus, mystics would be consigned to silence.
Because of the concern for possible misunderstanding by the
unenlightened, it may seem that introvertive mystics want things both ways
—that statements and symbols both apply to transcendent realities and do
not apply. But the claims to ineffability are only meant to emphasize the
“wholly other” nature of transcendent realities to the unenlightened, who
may yet misconstrue the nature of the intended realities. So too, with the
rejection of any metaphoric statements based on worldly phenomena:
claims cannot apply positively or negatively to transcendent realities
without unenlightened listeners misconstruing the ontic nature of such
realities.
The mystical condemnation of language can be seen as an expansion
of the Christian and Jewish prohibitions against creating physical images of
God (Exodus 20:4–6) and the Islamic prohibition against the deification of
anything phenomenal (shirk) to include all mental images. Such idols of the
mind also inhibit having mystical experiences. But if we reject the mirror
theory of how language works, language and everyday symbols can be used
to reveal at least something true of alleged transcendent realities, even if
there must be metaphorical extensions to a new referent and even if we
need the requisite experiences to see why these are accurate or appropriate.
That all claims must be false and language must be rejected and that we
must be resigned to silence is entailed only by accepting the mirror theory.
However, in trying to show how such claims as “The Godhead is
empty of phenomenal qualities” may be meaningful to the unenlightened,
accurate, and put into words as well as can be expected when dealing with
such an alleged reality, the danger remains that we unenlightened folk will
still think of transcendent realities in terms of unusual objects akin in their
ontic nature to phenomenal objects. Far from aiding in inducing mystical
experiences, focusing on how mystical utterances are intelligible may well
embed conceptualizations more firmly as acceptable to the analytical mind.
If so, this has an antimystical effect, even though mystical discourse must
be intelligible to the unenlightened to be helpful. We are still squarely
entrenched in the realm of language, and, as the Zen adage goes,
“Wordiness and intellection—the more with them, the further we go astray.”
 7

Mysticism and Rationality

It is very common today to claim that mystics are irrational: their discourse
is “beyond reason,” “logic does not apply to mystical discourse,” mystics
are “unconstrained by logic” or have “abandoned the intellect.” They are
claimed to have “their own unique logic,” or to be unable to speak without
falling into “contradictions and gibberish.” Scholars routinely declare that
mystics are by definition irrational, without further discussion (e.g.,
Garfield & Priest 2003). Indeed, mysticism is often considered the very
paradigm of irrationality, and conversely any irrational claim is label
“mystical.” Mystics’ alleged irrationality is taken as grounds to place
mystical experiences among the emotions rather than among cognitive
activities. However, such claims do not hold up when mystics’ writings are
actually examined. In fact, their writings are typically rational by traditional
“Western” standards. This is not to deny that mystics often revel in paradox,
but only to claim that mystics can also produce rational arguments on
occasion and that the paradoxes can be explained.1
In chapter 3, one question was whether it is rational for mystics or
nonmystics to accept mystical cognitive claims or to adopt a mystical way
of life today. Here the issue is whether mystics themselves “think
rationally” in the statements and arguments they make. As noted in chapter
3, today persons usually are called irrational only if their thoughts or actions
defy the well-established knowledge of their day or if their beliefs are not
coherent but contain blatant contradictions. Of course, what is considered
the “best knowledge of the day” varies from culture to culture and era to
era. Thus, what it is to be rational will depend on the reasons and beliefs of
a particular culture and era: they determine what is “reasonable,” “natural,
“logical,” and “plausible.” It was once rational to believe that the earth was
flat and did not move, but that is no longer rational. Mystics from classical
cultures will differ from modern “common sense” in the premises of their
arguments and perhaps in what is taken to be a reasonable inference, both
because their experiential base is broader than ours and because the beliefs
of different premodern cultures differ from modern science-inspired beliefs,
and what is accepted as “rational” in science may change as research
progresses. But that does not mean that mystics are necessarily irrational in
their reasoning. Today naturalists may equate “being rational” with “being
scientific,” but it is not obvious that accepting experiences as cognitive that
cannot be checked in a third-person empirical manner, as scientific claims
in principle should be, necessarily make mystics irrational in their
reasoning. (Mystics must also find transcendent claims meaningful, even if
philosophers today raise objections.)
Logic was not a major topic of concern to classical mystics.2
Nevertheless, mystics can be as logical as nonmystics. For example,
Shankara argued that contradictory properties cannot exist together
(Brahma-sutra-bhashya 2.1.27), and much of his commentaries on the
Upanishads deals with resolving apparent contradictions. So too, mystics’
arguments may be logical in their structure by Western Aristotelian
standards. A culture need not devise an Aristotelian syllogism to follow the
rules implicitly. And mystics’ writings do typically implicitly abide by the
three basic principles central to Aristotelian logic: the law of identity (x is x
and not not-x), the law of noncontradiction (that nothing can be both x and
not x), and the law of the excluded middle (that anything is either x or not x
with no third possibility). In Indian philosophy, all schools accept some
form of inference (anumana) as a means to at least the conventional kind of
correct knowledge. But the reasoning is in terms of concrete things found in
our experience of the world rather than in terms of necessities and
probabilities, and there are no discussions of logical principles in the
abstract or why these laws should be accepted. The syllogisms in the Nyaya
Hindu school and Madhyamaka Buddhism differ in form from Western
ones; in particular, examples (both positive and sometimes negative
examples supporting a premise) are an element in the formal syllogism.
What counts as a “necessary truth” or an induction does vary because of
differences in the premises accepted and in what is considered important.
Thus, even if there are some cross-cultural standards of reasoning, the
criteria that each mystic employs to make judgments concerning different
experiences and the views of other traditions may be internal to that
mystic’s tradition.3 But the deductions themselves (i.e., truth-preserving
inferences) obey the Aristotelian rules. If so, this is a bulwark against any
complete postmodernist relativism in rationality in an argument.4
In sum, rationality requires having good reasons for one’s beliefs and
actions, but such reasons and some aspects of valid arguments will be
defined by one’s culture. However, if classical mystics accept the best
knowledge of their culture and era and are logical in their reasoning, then it
can be concluded that they are rational in the only way that can be judged
today. (Note that this does not mean that classical mystics are being judged
rational by alien cultural standards; rather, what would be shown is that the
Aristotelian rules of logic are in fact implicit in their own standards of
reasoning. Nor is the issue in the present chapter the one considered in
chapter 3 of whether we would deem mystics to be rational today in
believing the mystical claims of an earlier time and culture.) Whether
mystics accept the best knowledge of their culture and era does not seem to
be an issue. The metaphysical premises that classical mystics in various
culture endorse may seem problematic in light of our modern beliefs, but
they too are not an issue for rationality. Rather, the issue is how mystics
argue. This question will be addressed here by looking at two topics: the
alleged paradigm of mystical irrationality (paradox), and a case study of
one mystic’s way of arguing (the Madhyamaka Buddhist Nagarjuna). But
first a note on differences in the general style of reasoning among cultures.

Rationality and Styles of Reasoning

Most works by mystics, like most writings, do not contain developed
arguments. Many are works of poetry. But mystics can write books of
argument if the occasion calls for it, as shown by Shankara’s commentaries
on the basic Hindu texts in which he takes on various opponents. In
classical mystical traditions, appeal is often made to authoritative religious
texts; this does undercut rationality since rationality is associated with first-
hand experiences and reasoning, but it does not go so far as to make
mystics’ reasoning irrational or illogical in structure. (It should be noted
that mystical experiences are not considered means to “correct knowledge”
in most Indian mystical schools, and as noted earlier, mystics in general do
not appeal to their own experiences in arguments.) The important point here
is that when mystics do construct arguments they do not defy logic. India
also has a tradition of debates (vadas) over religious and related
philosophical matters that includes pointing out alleged logical
inconsistencies and conflicts with ordinary experiences in the doctrines of
opponents (see Motilal 1998). (And it must be admitted that in the past such
debates often included contests of miracle-working.) Buddhists such as
Nagarjuna valued logical consistency and utilized such sophisticated
arguments as reductio ad absurdum and the problem of infinite regression
that rely on the law of noncontradiction to draw out logical inconsistencies.
Thus, although the process of reasoning conflicts with actually having
introvertive mystical experience at the same time and would at least
interfere with receptivity in extrovertive mystical experiences, outside those
experiences some mystics, as part of their mystical way of life, have written
works advancing arguments for their understanding of what is experienced
and against their opponents’ views that are logical in form.
But mystics are not typically trained in Aristotelian logic, although
logic was part of the medieval Christian and Muslim curricula. Mystics will
also use the styles of arguing and forms of formal presentation that are
particular to their culture and era. The physical environment we have
evolved in shapes our thinking and what we all consider real and
reasonable; we all may also have evolved certain innate structures in our
psyche. But cultures also shape what we consider reasonable and what
styles of reasoning we adopt.5 If the social psychologist Richard Nisbett is
correct, there is a basic difference between Western and East Asian ways of
understanding and perceiving the natural world (2003). He is not saying
that everyone in a given culture thinks the same way, but only that there are
general cultural patterns of thinking: Westerners typically engage in
“analytical thinking” that involves detaching an object from its context and
categorizing objects by their attributes, whereas East Asians typically
engage in “holistic thinking” that involves an orientation to context and
environments as a whole. Analytical thinkers explain and predict in terms
of rules governing an object’s attributes; holistic thinkers explain and
predict in terms of the relation of an object to its context and to other
objects. The former utilize chronological and historical relationships; the
latter, causal patterns. The former are drawn to objects; the latter, to a
perceptual field as a whole. The former decontextualize an object and
manipulate its environment; the latter adjust themselves to their
environment. The former try to understand the whole by how the parts
work; the latter understand the parts by starting with the whole. The former
see a logical contradiction between true and false; the latter see some merit
on both sides and look for a middle way between them. The former
naturally see distinct objects; the latter see a common substance. The
former look for causes and agents; the latter, for relationships. The former
come up with models simplifying how things work by removing things
from their environment; the latter accept the complexity of the world.
Western thinking fed Greek curiosity about how the world works and led
naturally to the development of science; the latter are exemplified in
Daoism and Zen. (Note that Nisbett does not place the origin of the holistic
approach in mystical experiences or tie it in any way to such experiences.6)
There may be such broad cultural differences in how different people
think and perceive particular to each culture.7 Such differences in outlooks
would affect the premises and reasons in arguments. Moreover, every
person may employ unique mental steps in his or her own reasoning. But
the issue for rationality comes down to whether mystics must reject the
basic rules of logic in how they reason. And they do not appear to do so.
The early Buddhist Points of Contention (Kathavatthu) and Questions of
King Milinda (Milindapanha) are good examples. In the latter, the questions
posed by the Greek-influenced king often reflect a concern that Buddhist
claims directly violate the law of noncontradiction. Questions are posed in
the form of two-prong dilemmas, and the Buddhist monk Nagasena’s
answers are implicitly based on the basic rules of logic. For example, he
reconciled the apparently conflicting claims that the Buddha had no
teachers and had five teachers by asserting that the Buddha did have
teachers but none instructed the enlightening knowledge and thus he had no
teacher of that (Mlp 235–36). Nagasena relied on similes in his arguments.
That points to a difference in the style of argument, but many passages
implicitly involve the law of the excluded middle in the form “If x, then y;
if not-x, then not-y.” The arguments implicitly accept that these two options
exhaust all the possibilities. We may not find all the reconciliations
convincing—there is often no good reason to believe that arguments based
on analogies or similes illuminate the subject being explained. But this is
not to deny the logical structure of the arguments. The questions reveal an
awareness of logically problematic aspects of mystical claims, and the
answers reveal a rational response to them. Nothing in that text exhibits an
“alternative logic” or cannot be explained to be logical.8 We may not agree
with their premises, but the form of the arguments is logical by Western
standards. Similarly, the Daoist Zhuangzi is not, as is often alleged, being
“antirational” or “anti-intellectual” in using reason to show that reasoning
cannot establish one limited point of view as absolute, universal, or
otherwise uniquely grounded in reality. John of the Cross represented more
than Christian mystics when he said in Ascent of Mount Carmel that “all
matters must be regulated by reason save those of faith, which, though not
contrary to reason, transcend it” (2.22.13).9 He also repeatedly used the
principle that two contraries cannot coexist in the same subject (e.g., ibid.:
1.4.2). Or as Abu Hamid al-Ghazali said, “Reason is God’s scale on earth.”
So too, a “love” mystic such as Hadewijch of Antwerp can value reason as
a “gift from God” and claim that “reason never deceives” while still
claiming that the limited reason-guided life of virtue must be transcended.10
One Buddhist strategy that is regularly cited as a rejection of two-
valued logic is the “four options” (catush-koti).11 It came up when the
Buddha tried to remain silent to persistent questioning but finally responded
by rejecting any answer to certain questions (such as whether the universe
is eternal or not), claiming that none “fit the case” (upeti)—even though the
options exhaust all the logical possibilities. Thus, to the question of whether
the enlightened exist after death or not, the Buddha rejected as “Not so”
(ma h’evam) the four options that the enlightened exists, does not exist,
both exists and does not exist, and neither exists nor does not exist
(Majjhima Nikaya 1.485–87, 2.166).12 This appears clearly to violate the
law of noncontradiction, and numerous attempts have been made to show
that it does not. But the reason that all four options are rejected is simple:
when all factors of the phenomenal world (dharmas) are removed at death,
there is no means of knowledge and thus no means of description (Sutta
Nipata 1075–76). We might affirm the second option that the enlightened
do not exist after death at least as the factors of the world do, but because of
the mirror theory of language, an unenlightened listener might take any
affirmative answer as referring to a “real” entity that exists or does not exist
after death, and so the second option also must be denied. This style of
argument is not irrational since it is perfectly reasonable for the Buddha to
assume (under the thrall of the mirror theory of language) that any
affirmative answer would be misleading because to describe x by predicate
y or by the denial of y would still lead the listener to think in terms of y
when y in fact does not apply and there is no real x.13 (More on this below.)

Paradox
The most often cited instance of mystics’ blatant disregard for reason is the
violation of the laws of logic in paradoxes. And mystics do frequently say
something about what was experienced and then immediately deny it. But
paradoxes are not any counterintuitive claims or inadvertent
inconsistencies.14 Rather, they are purposeful combinations of the positive
characterizations of what is experienced and their denial. That is, positive
affirmations and their negations are knowingly linked in concise
contradictory statements.15 To many philosophers, mystics speak in
paradoxes simply because they have no coherent insights to state and so
they deliberately obfuscate. Critics take such remarks to be the height of
irrationality since we cannot consistently hold at the same time two beliefs
we believe are inconsistent. Thus, paradoxes are grounds for rejecting
everything mystics say about alleged transcendent realities.
Consistency of statements and coherence of all of one’s beliefs do
seem to be basic to the idea of rationality.16 As a simple matter of the logic
of belief, to believe a claim is to believe it is true and to reject genuinely
conflicting claims as false. In dissent, some recent “dialetheists” in
philosophy argue that the law of noncontradiction should not be applied in
all cases, because some contradictions at the limits of our knowledge are
true and there may be adequate grounds for holding explicitly contradictory
beliefs. Walter Stace also believed that while some mystical statements are
true (1960a: 182–183, 298–99, 305), they are inherently paradoxical (ibid.:
270–74). If so, consistency would not be a necessary condition of
rationality. Graham Priest (2002, 2004) argues that all attempts at closure at
the boundaries of thought and of what is knowable in science lead to
contradictions—any conceptual process crossing those boundaries results in
the paradoxes of self-reference—but that these contradictions state truths,
and something contradictory about reality itself renders such contradictory
statements true. This position tolerates at least some inconsistencies in a
rational system of thought. Mysticism would be one such attempt at closure
leading to paradoxes. But if mystical paradoxes can be shown to have a
noncontradictory content, such a view of logic is not needed. To most
philosophers, even if the world itself is inconsistent, this does not mean we
should abandon reasoning about it in a self-consistent way—an
inconsistency in our assertions indicates only that we do not know what we
are talking about on that issue (Rescher & Brandom 1979: 139).
For the vast majority of philosophers, no contradiction can state a true
fact. Most philosophers think that a statement cannot be intelligible without
obeying the laws of noncontradiction and the excluded middle. Any
“veridical paradox” requires “a repudiation of part of our conceptual
heritage” (Quine 1976: 9). How can two claims be true if they contradict
each other? How can I believe both that the Mets won the 1969 World
Series and that the Yankees won that series when I know there can be only
one winner? What exactly would my belief be about who won the series
that could comport with the facts? Even at the boundaries of thought, what
can a person be said to believe if his or her beliefs are a contradictory
muddle? How can a person believe what he or she cannot understand
coherently? Indeed, the basic principles of logic may merely make explicit
how language operates. And Bertrand Russell can rightly ask how can we
tell the difference between a paradox that veils a profound truth and one
that is simply nonsense? As Ronald Hepburn put it: “When is a
contradiction not a mere contradiction, but a sublime Paradox, a Mystery?
How can we distinguish a viciously muddled confusion of concepts from an
excusably stammering attempt to describe what has been glimpsed during
some ‘raid on the inarticulate,’ an object too great for our comprehension,
but none the less real for that?” (1958: 17).
But are mystical utterances really incoherent? It should first be noted
that not all mystical utterances are in fact paradoxical. Paradoxes occur less
often in “thin” phenomenal descriptions of mystical experiences’
characteristics and more often in “thick” accounts of mystics trying to
understand what was experienced.17 Nevertheless, mystics do easily end up
speaking in paradoxes: they ascribe something to a transcendent reality
because it seems appropriate to what was experienced, but then because the
mirror theory of language they must immediately deny it since the reality is
not a phenomenal object and the unenlightened will assume words apply
only to such objects. Thus, they may say God is a person and not a person,
and so on. Or mystics may combine symbols in a way that appears
paradoxical, as with John of the Cross’s “ray of darkness” or Laozi’s “dark
brightness” to express the sense of experiencing a profound reality that
cannot be comprehended with the analytical mind. In introvertive
mysticism, the problem arises from the otherness of the transcendent
realities that are experienced. In extrovertive mysticism, the problem arises
from the fact that phenomena exist but are not distinct and self-existent, and
hence they are not “real” in that sense. From the Diamond-Cutter Sutra (3):
“However many sentient beings there are in the world of beings, … all
sentient beings will eventually be led by me to the final nirvana. … And yet
when this unfathomable number of living beings have all been led to
nirvana, in reality not even a single being actually will have been led to
nirvana.” This paradox of saving “nonexistent” beings plants a
contradiction at the very heart of the Buddhist bodhisattva way of life:
bodhisattvas see that sentient beings “do not exist” and yet they do not
abandon them but lead them to (an equally nonexistent) nirvana. And the
paradoxes do not stop there: the Prajnaparamita texts are replete with such
confusing claims as “Dharmas are not dharmas,” “The teaching is a
nonteaching,” “The practice is a nonpractice,” “The nature of all factors is a
nonnature,” “Bodhisattvas strive for enlightenment, but there is nothing to
strive for,” and “I am enlightened and yet it does not occur to me that I am
enlightened.”18 The Sanskrit in each case makes it clear that contradictions
are intended, even when consistent forms could have been stated in
Sanskrit.19 And the sheer length of the texts testifies to the fact that these
writers did not reject language in general. Thus, contradictions seem to be
part of their program (see Jones 2012c: 220–23).
Sometimes paradoxes arise because a particular language cannot
express something nonparadoxically that another language can express
without contradiction. For example, in ancient Egyptian the word for
“south” was “to go upstream” and the word for “north” was “to go
downstream,” reflecting the direction of the northerly flow of the Nile
River. So when Egyptian soldiers encountered the Euphrates River, which
flows south, they had to call it “that circling water that goes downstream in
going upstream” (Wilson 1949: 45–46). The physical situation itself was
obviously not paradoxical, but their language simply could not handle what
the soldiers clearly saw. That is, a coherent idea may simply not be statable
in one particular language (see Henle 1949). (Also note that the soldiers’
conceptual framework did not control what they saw, contra constructivism:
it was because they could plainly see what direction the Euphrates was
flowing that they had a problem.)
Perhaps the Egyptians came up with new terms to handle the situation
without contradictions, but the problem with mystical paradoxes does not
seem solvable by devising a new language. In practice, no language appears
to be more “mystical” than another—mystics East and West have the same
problem whatever their native language is. New uses are given to old words
through metaphoric extensions, and occasionally a new word is coined
(e.g., being “oned” with the One), but the denials of the applicability of
language to transcendent realities go on unabated. This indicates that the
problem mystics see with language lies with the very nature of any
language, and this explains why apparently no mystic has tried to invent a
new language. To be more precise, if the problem lies with how we
normally view language as working (i.e., the mirror theory), the problem
would remain even if some mystic did invent an entirely new language. No
new language will be exempt, since all languages must operate by making
distinctions: we would still tend to project onto reality whatever categories
the new language differentiated (and so extrovertive mystics would object),
and the unenlightened would still tend to reduce any designated
transcendent realities to merely unusual phenomenal ones (and so
introvertive mystics would object). And the paradoxes of affirming features
of reality and then denying them would remain.

Resolving Paradoxes
Some mystical paradoxes result from using different senses of the same
word in both their affirmative and denial halves and so can be paraphrased
consistently. For example, “knowing without knowing” can be unpacked as
“experiencing a transcendent reality without being able to conceptualize or
‘grasp’ it after the experience.” So too, when Meister Eckhart said “no man
can see God except he be blind, nor know him except through ignorance,”
he is talking about mystically experiencing a transcendent reality by first
“unknowing” sense-experience and worldly phenomena (see 2009: 140–
41). Through such emptying, one attains the “inner desert” or “darkness”
where God shines (ibid.; McGinn 2001: 153). Or when he said “Let us pray
to God that we may be free of God” (2009: 422), he meant that God existed
but he wanted to be free of even the idea of “God” so that he could be
empty of all “images,” and thus let the inward “birth of the son” occur.
Thus, one is full in one sense and empty in another: to be empty of all
created things is to be full of God, and to be full of all created things is to be
empty of God (Eckhart 1981: 288). The recurring plenum/vacuum paradox
can be treated similarly: the source of the world’s being is empty of
differentiated phenomena but full of beingness—the source is empty in one
respect and full in another.20 The role of different senses can be seen in the
matter of depth: God is present everywhere (in the depth of beingness) and
nowhere (in the diverse surface phenomena). It is like a common light
source being present in all of the colored spectrum: red is not blue, but their
substance is identical in being from the same source. To imagine
transcendent realities as the same in nature as phenomenal objects (as
philosophers routinely do) would make this paradox unresolvable—we
would end up with a bizarre nonmystical pantheism in which each object is
identical to every other one. But beingness is not a matter of identity on the
“surface” phenomena of the world: here objects remain differentiated. In
Eckhart’s words, objects are distinct in their “creaturehood,” but they are
the same in their “is-ness” (istigkeit). So too, he can paradoxically refer to
creatures as “pure nothing”: they all exist, but their being comes only from
God, and thus in themselves they are ontologically nothing. The same
occurs with respect to the nature of transcendent realities. Thus, theistic
mystics may deny that God exists in the way that phenomena exist and yet
not want to deny that God exists at all, and so they may say “God both
exists and does not exist” or “God is both real and unreal” when they mean
only that the mode of existence of a transcendent reality is different from
that of phenomenal objects.
In short, such paradoxes can be restated consistently and so are not
evidence of inherent irrationality in mystics’ thinking.21 But many
commentators have no problems accepting, for example, the Prajnaparamita
paradoxes noted above, and in fact embrace the idea that these texts were
not meant to be understood by “ordinary logic.” Edward Conze can say that
a passage in the Heart Sutra propounds “just plain nonsense” (2001: 88)
and that the Diamond-Cutter Sutra “has left the conventions of logic far
behind” (1978: 19). Thich Nhat Hanh translates a passage from the
Diamond-Cutter Sutra as “What are called ‘all dharmas’ are, in fact not ‘all
dharmas.’ That is why they are called ‘all dharmas’ ” (2010: 21), and he
later states “When we look at A and see that A is not A, we know that A is
truly A” (ibid.: 118). Conze too thinks the laws of logic are violated in the
Heart Sutra: “ ‘A is what A is not,’ or ‘what A is not, that is A’ ” (2001:
90). If this were the case, then the texts would indeed make no sense.
Conze’s overall assessment is that the Perfection of Wisdom “had resorted
to the enunciation of plain contradictions as a means of expressing the
inexpressible” (1967: 141), and “In a bold and direct manner the
Prajnāpāramitā Sūtras explicitly proclaim the identity of contradictory
opposites, and they make no attempt to mitigate their paradoxes” (1953:
126).
But is Prajnaparamita thought in fact consistent? It is one thing to say
that writers intentionally use paradox as a rhetorical device or for
soteriological purposes (i.e., to free unenlightened minds of concepts), but
as long as the content can be explained or the texts can be paraphrased
without contradictions, the texts are rational.22 It is another thing to say that
these writers intended nonsense (see Sangharakshita 1993: 24). Is the
Diamond-Cutter Sutra really just simply meant to be chanted for esoteric
reasons and never meant to have an intelligible message? In fact, it is fairly
easy to render intelligible the contradictions presented above by
paraphrasing and explaining them. The central point is that the factors of
the experienced world (dharmas) do exist as parts of the phenomenal world
but are not “real” only in one particular metaphysical sense: they do not
exist by their own power or have some unchangeable intrinsic nature
(svabhava) that separates each from other things, as the untutored mind
normally supposes. It is then no mystery that the texts state both that there
are dharmas but that they do not “exist” in the sense of existing through
their own self-existence. All that is meant is the readily intelligible claim
that there are dharmas in the world, but they all depend on other
phenomena and thus do not exist separately and permanently. There is
nothing paradoxical about the factual content of the claim, even if the form
—“there are dharmas, but there are no dharmas”—is contradictory: there
are dharmas in one sense (as dependently arisen parts of the world) but not
in another (as self-existent entities). So too with the claim “The practice of
the Perfection of Wisdom is a nonpractice”: there is a bodhisattva practice,
but nothing about it is self-existent and thus it is not “real.” And so too with
the basic bodhisattva paradox: there are no self-existent beings, but there is
something there (impermanent configurations of “persons”) to point toward
nirvana (which also is not self-existent). To generalize: there are things in
the world, but they are free of any self-existence. Thus, the actual claims
stated in paradoxical forms are resolvable consistently and intelligibly. The
same with the apparent paradoxes resulting from the Buddhist “two truths”
strategy when the conventional point of view is combined with the point of
view of highest purposes: conventionally, there are impermanent
configurations that can be labeled “houses” and “trees,” but from the
ultimately correct ontic point of view there are no such self-existent units
and thus such entities are not real.
Thus, the Prajnaparamita paradoxes resolve in a manner similar to that
of the theistic paradoxes: the affirmative phrase and the denial phrases of a
paradox involve different subjects or different senses of what is referred to.
Here, there are dharmas, but they do not have any self-existence and so do
not “exist” from the point of view of highest matters, since they are not
permanent and independent—thus, they are first affirmed as part of the
experienced world and then denied as self-existent. But these statements
can be restated consistently: “There is no real, self-existent ‘I’ (or dharma,
teaching, beings, and so on), but the conventional term is still useful for
denoting fairly coherent but constantly changing parts in the flow of
phenomena.” The “paradoxes” result from juxtaposing two senses of, for
example, “a being”: beings in the ordinary sense that the mirror theory
requires do not exist, but there is still some reality there. There is no
separate and enduring entity to lead to nirvana, but the reality underlying
the “illusion” of a self-existent entity is still there. In sum, things do exist
but not in the way we normally imagine.
Some mystical claims appear paradoxical due merely to
misunderstanding what the writer intended. Nagarjuna’s claim that “All
statements are empty” (shunya) is often taken to mean that all statements
are empty of any intellectual content, and thus paradoxically “it is not
reasonable to take any statement seriously—including the one that states
that all statements are empty” (Biderman & Scharfstein 1989: x)—or that
“the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth” or that he was
profoundly skeptical about our ability to arrive at the ultimate truth about
reality (Siderits 1989: 213, 247). In short, no statements are true. However,
Nagarjuna never said anything of the sort. In saying statements are empty,
he said only that they are not ontologically self-existent (svabhava),
certainly not that they are empty of intellectual content or meaning. His
claim is that statements, like all phenomena in the world, could not function
if they existed self-existently (e.g., they would be permanent and never
arise), not that they are meaningless. In fact, he addresses this objection in
his Overturning the Objections (Vigrahavyavartani).
Jay Garfield and Graham Priest apply dialetheist ideas to Nagarjuna
(2003), but they can do so only by making up statements in their “rational
reconstruction” of Nagarjuna’s thought that he never made: “There are no
ultimate truths, and it is ultimately true that everything is empty,” “Things
have no nature, and that is their nature,” and “There are no ultimate truths,
and that is one.” Nagarjuna instead said things that were consistent—to
make up statements as they did: “There are ultimate truths, e.g., all things
are dependently arisen and empty of anything self-existent,” and “The
nature of things is that they have no self-existence.” To claim as they do
that “Things have an intrinsic nature of having no intrinsic nature” would
be to distort the nature of Nagarjuna’s arguments: to him only things that
are self-existent have an “intrinsic nature” (svabhava), and so dependently
arisen things can have no intrinsic nature. Garfield and Priest needlessly
make a clear point paradoxical by combining two senses of “nature”: it is
the nature (in the ordinary, nontechnical sense) of all phenomena that they
are empty of anything—any “intrinsic nature” (svabhava)—that would give
them self-existence. What Nagarjuna actually said is consistent (the “four
options” is dealt with below). In short, Garfield and Priest are introducing
paradoxes into Nagarjuna’s thought where there are none. And as they have
to admit, later Madhyamikas do not help their case: Chandrakirti explicitly
said never to accept contradictions, and they could not point to any Indian
Buddhist commentators who accepted their alleged paradoxes (Deguchi,
Garfield, & Priest 2013: 429). They also assert that such Tibetan
commentators as Tsongkhapa explicitly worked to defuse apparent
contradictions and that the Buddhist logicians Dignaga and Dharmakirti
explicitly endorsed the law of noncontradiction. Chandrakirti wrote that
there should be no debating with one who persists in maintaining a
contradiction when confronted with it because there is no debating with
someone who is out of their mind (unmattaka) (Clearly-Worded
Commentary 15.10).
Sometimes translations create paradoxes where there are none.
Consider Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation of part of the Diamond-Cutter
Sutra: “What are called ‘all dharmas’ are, in fact, not ‘all dharmas.’ That is
why they are called ‘all dharmas’ ” (2010: 21). The last sentence makes the
claim sound absurd. And a phrase with that structure appears often in the
Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines and has been translated in that way by
many. But the proper translation of one Sanskrit word dissolves any
paradox. For example: “The Buddha has taught that the factors specific to
buddhas are not in fact (self-existent) factors of buddhas. In this sense
(tena), the factors specific to the buddhas are spoken of.” Tena means “by
this” or “in this way,” and to translate it as “that is why …” only needlessly
introduces a paradox. Thus, unless one is committed to requiring the
Diamond-Cutter Sutra to be paradoxical, the last line can be translated
nonparadoxically to mean simply “Thus is the case with the factors” or
“That is how we treat the factors of a buddha.” The actual point that there
are no “real” (i.e., self-existent) factors of a buddha can come through the
translation clearly without absurdities.
We certainly do not have to conclude that the Diamond-Cutter Sutra is
meant to be an unintelligible and meaningless mantra only to be chanted
and not to be understood (although its popularity may be in that regard).
And the same is true of the other Perfection of Wisdom texts. Nor do we
have to endorse Bhikshu Sangharakshita’s conclusion concerning the
Collection of the Highest Qualities: “if it resists our attempts to make sense
of it, if it refuses to be contained by our intellectual expectations, this is
because it is not supposed to be useful to us in any way that we can
understand” (1993: 24). He claims that perhaps the text only seems
confusing because “we are locked into linguistic … conventions which
require the text to offer itself in one specific sequence,” but “if we insist
that the requirements of the logical mind be satisfied, we are missing the
point” and if the text “were all set forth neatly and clearly, leaving no loose
ends, we might be in danger of thinking we had grasped the Perfection of
Wisdom” (ibid.: 44). But there is no need to argue that these texts are using
paradox to convey an underlying irrationality of mystical insights. The
Perfection of Wisdom’s message can be stated simply and consistently: all
things are impermanent and dependent on other things; there is nothing self-
existent in the world; and bodhisattvas try to guide the impermanent chains
of dependent factors that we conventionally label “persons” toward the final
rest that we conventionally call “nirvana.” No special experiences, mystical
or other, are needed to see the rationality of the actual claims or to
understand them.
 Many alleged paradoxes arise from mixing points of view in this way
and can be restated free of contradiction by indicating the differences in the
affirmative and denial halves of the paradox. Implicitly accepting the mirror
theory of language while knowing that language does not really mirror
reality may be behind many paradoxes. Mystics do accept that some terms
reflect the experienced reality as it is (“real,” “one,” “immutable”), but they
also see the problem of the possible misunderstanding and distortion by the
unenlightened, and so they immediately deny the applicability of the terms,
resulting in a paradox. But the content of the paradox can be restated
without paradox if the mirror theory is rejected—i.e., the denial half is not
actually needed. A theistic mystic may say “God neither exists nor does not
exist” when what is meant is that God neither exists in the manner
phenomenal objects do nor does not absolutely not exist; in short, God
exists but his mode of existing differs from that of anything else.
Shankara’s explanation of negation can also be explained by the mirror
theory. Paradoxes result from superimposing attributes upon Brahman that
are known to be false so that no one believes that Brahman does not exist,
but these attributes must then be negated to show that they in fact do not
apply to what is not an object (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 3.3.9). The mirror
theory also accounts for his paradox that the world neither exists nor does
not exist but has an indefinable or inexpressible (anirvachaniya) status:
anything describing the status of the world that is not self-contradictory
would indicate that it is real—which it is not since it does not meet the
criterion of being permanent and unchanging—and so it must be denied,
leaving its status inexpressible. If the mirror theory is rejected, Advaitins
can consistently affirm that the world exists in some sense and deny it is
either real (sat) in the way that Brahman alone is real (permanent and
unchanging) or totally unreal (asat).
Many alleged paradoxes of the transcendent are simply conflicts with
everyday ideas, which is only to be expected if transcendent realities are
ontologically “wholly other.” Some claims appear paradoxical until they are
explained, because they conflict with our currently accepted beliefs or have
a conclusion that does not seem to follow from accepted premises. But if a
claim can be explained in terms of analogies from the natural world (e.g.,
how a dreamer both is immanent to everything in the dream and yet
transcends it), the apparent paradox disappears. But many religious people
are not bothered by the contradictions in their theology. In fact, Christians
have no qualms about “mysteries”—thus, they can affirm one claim (“Jesus
is entirely human”) and turn around and immediately affirm the opposite
(“Jesus is entirely God”) without blinking. Many Christians affirm both our
freedom of will (so that we, and not God, are responsible for sin) and that
God absolutely controls every event (so whatever happens is ordained by
God) without being bothered by the blatant contradiction. Indeed, many
theists believe things of God precisely because they are impossible—if the
claims made sense, they would not need faith. They may accept that
“human reason” cannot resolve the mysteries and simply accept the
cognitive dissonance. To quote Tertullian’s famous dicta: “It is to be
believed because it is absurd (ineptum),” “It is certain because it is
impossible,” and “I believe because it is impossible.” These paradoxes
result from conflicting religious doctrines—rather than paradoxes resulting
from trying to express the experience of a transcendent reality in worldly
terms—and may not be resolvable.
At least in mysticism, the paradoxes result from alleged encounters
with reality and thus are more directly experientially based than general
theological thought is. But the question here is whether mystical
experiences necessarily require paradox. A genuine paradox results when a
statement refers to one subject in a contradictory manner. It would not be
resolvable into a consistent set of statements. But the apparent mystical
paradoxes I know of can be paraphrased without a contradiction and
without the loss of any of their assertive content because their affirmation
and denial do not end up making conflicting claims. (This is not to say that
mystics, any more than the rest of us, are always consistent—they may say
one thing in one part of their writings that contradicts something elsewhere.
The intentional contradictions of paradox are something else.) Each
paradox must be examined in its context to determine if its apparent internal
conflict can be defused. But that there are apparent paradoxes is not too
surprising if a mystic does not see how the paradoxicality arises from an
implicit theory of language. So too, mystics may often intentionally use
paradoxes as soteriological tools for their shock value to emphasize both the
otherness of transcendent realities or phenomenal reality free of conceptual
boxes, and our inability to understand with the analytical mind what is
experienced. (However, employing paradox is not an effective tool when
people think the mystics are simply speaking gibberish.) Paraphrasing may
also eliminate the soteriological value of paradox by removing its shock
value.
The soteriological effect of paradox may explain the Prajnaparamita
writers’ seeming delight in employing paradoxes. Zen koans can also be
seen as soteriological in intent. These are mental puzzles, utilized in a form
of analytical meditation, designed to force a disciple to see that concepts
control our mental life and to attain a sudden breakthrough into our true
selfless nature, free of the grip of thinking and experiencing through
concepts. Koans are deliberately absurd and some involve paradoxes. They
sound like meaningful sentences—“What is the sound of one hand
clapping?”—but by contemplating them the disciple eventually sees that
they are like the grammatically correct but absurd claim “She is a married
bachelor” and eventually sees that there are no “real” (permanent,
independent) objects for language to refer to.

Understanding the Paradoxical

Resolving paradoxes into consistent claims would be open to the charge of
imposing logic onto what is illogical only if the paradoxes are in fact
genuine. Some mystical paradoxes may be recalcitrant to explanations and
paraphrasing because the context of the paradox does not make clear what
the writers had in mind.23 Or some paradoxes may remain genuine and not
merely prima facie. Rudolf Otto thought mysticism had its own “peculiar
logic” that discounted the laws of noncontradiction and the excluded middle
(1932: 64). Walter Stace thought mystical experiences were inherently
paradoxical: the paradoxes are “incapable of rational resolution,” “the laws
of logic … have no application to mystical experiences,” and mysticism is
“simply nonlogical” (1960a: 251–76, 304–5). Or it may be that we are not
able to express some things about reality consistently in any language. Why
should evolved beings with our particular brains always be able to
conceptualize all aspects of reality consistently, or why must all of reality
conform to reasoning devised for events in the everyday world? Perhaps
biologist John B. S. Haldane was correct in his suspicion that the universe is
not only stranger than we suppose but stranger than we can suppose. For
example, consider again the case of the electron: the best we can say is that
it is something that manifests itself as a wave in some experimental setups
and as a particle in others—what it is in itself we do not know. (An electron
is not paradoxically both a wave and a particle, as is often claimed, but a
reality that exhibits wavelike or particlelike behavior through the
interactions in different experimental settings [Barbour 2000: 77].) If
transcendent realities exist, perhaps they are like that: they only manifest
themselves to us as either personal or nonpersonal, active or inactive—in
themselves, they are something we do not know, as perennial philosophers
suggest.24 Perhaps transcendent realities are “beyond logic”—perhaps
logical relations are applicable only to matters of phenomena, and not to
transcendent realities or to reality in itself. More generally, such realities, if
they exist, may have to be characterized as John Locke characterized
substance: “something I know not what.”
Even if some paradoxes are genuine, the experiences of that about
which nothing nonparadoxical can be said would remain central. Coming
up with consistent claims to believe may then not be a major concern to the
experiencers. But even if so, to speak of “believing what is self-
contradictory” is misleading: any concepts may make a transcendent reality
seem paradoxical, but the sense of paradox only comes from trying to
conceptualize what is experienced outside the awareness in dualistic
consciousness. Indeed, it is important to note that no experience is
paradoxical in itself, just as no experience is true or false—only statements
trying to depict it or explain it can be true, false, or paradoxical.25
Experiences do not conform to the canons of reason or conflict with them—
they just are. Nor do they conflict with each other—only our understanding
of them can conflict. Mystical experiences may conflict with our
expectations set up by our understanding of the world based on other
experiences. But logic applies only to our claims, not to experiences. Thus,
paradox is not a product of any experience in itself but of our use of
concepts in our search for understanding a given experience and for
creating a coherent and consistent picture for understanding all of our
experiences. Thus, we deem some experiences delusions because they do
not cohere with what the experiences we consider cognitive tell us about the
world.
So too, no experience in itself is rational or irrational—only our
attempts to depict or understand what is experienced can be either rational
or irrational. Mystical experiences do not differ from other experiences in
this regard. The situation is comparable to the Egyptians seeing the
Euphrates: they would know what they experienced even if they could not
state it without contradictions because of the nature of their particular
language. Or recall the analogy of the drawn cube: it shows that we can
apprehend a reality even if the result of trying to “translate” the experience
into a drawing leads to the paradox of having both to affirm and to deny
some features of the drawing. We would have to say “The angles are all 90
degrees and the edges do not cross, even though in the drawing they do not
look that way.” But the drawing does not affect our experience of what is
drawn. So too, when “drawn,” what is experienced in a mystical experience
does not appear as experienced, and there is no longer a question of
believing the verbal construction. If so, mystical insights may still be
coherent even though they cannot be stated in any language without a
contradiction. Mystics would be forced into a Tertullianesque situation of
affirming what seems logically impossible while their interest remains
focused on what was experienced.
Thus, the cube analogy shows that we can coherently apprehend a
reality even if the result of trying to translate it into language is paradoxical.
However, language is one tool that can “draw” the fact that it is a drawing
(contra early Wittgenstein and other adherents of the mirror theory). And
once this is done, we can see that reality need not mirror language. Even if
using language leads to contradictions when applied to transcendent
realities, mystics believe that what they have experienced is real. They
know that the inconsistencies are not inherent in what is experienced, but
only in our dualistic conceptualization of it. That is, mystics can see the
drawingness of their “drawings” and see that the “paradoxes” are not
genuine. But mystics also realize that the unenlightened will not see this,
and so they may still deny that language can apply. The cube analogy also
shows how mystics can still function rationally while using paradox: they
can believe in and think about transcendent realities, understand their own
claims, and make claims that reflect their experience (and reject claims that
do not) even while using language that to those without the requisite
experience seems hopelessly contradictory. They have good reasons based
in experience to speak the way they do. Thus, one can agree that the
paradoxes are intended by their speakers to be true, but nevertheless why
paradoxes are accepted can be explained in a rational manner. (This would
also be some evidence for the dialetheists’ position on contradictions, but
only if some genuine paradoxes do in fact remain in mysticism.)
 Even though reasoning alienates us from mystical receptivity by
introducing another mode of consciousness, reason is not abolished in
mystical ways of life as whole: reasoning is a part of mysticism, since after
their mystical experiences even mystics themselves need to understand the
nature of what they have experienced to align their lives with reality.
Mystical paradoxes point to the need for an experience to understand why
apparently contradictory statements are being advanced. Transcendent
mysteries resist explication in “worldly” terms and thus at least apparent
contradictions do arise in the mystics’ accounts. That the “two-
dimensional” linguistic projections of our rational mind cannot capture a
“three-dimensional” transcendent reality is only to be expected. This is true
even if the cognitive content of the paradox can be stated in
noncontradictory terms (and then denied because the language suggests to
the unenlightened that what is experienced is just another item in the
universe). But paradox is a way to point away from all of our accustomed
ways of thinking toward transcendent realities and may be a useful
soteriological device if listeners can resist thinking in terms of phenomenal
objects.
In sum, the use of paradoxes does not mean that mystics are inherently
irrational.

Nagarjuna’s Reasoning
Scholars are across the board on the relation of Nagarjuna’s arguments to
logic—he is seen as doing everything from not understanding logic to
denying logic altogether to advancing a new three-valued logic. Was he
“obviously and profoundly distrustful of logic” (Huntington 2007: 111)?
Did he reject the law of the excluded middle (Staal 1975: 39)? Did not his
denial of one position logically commit Nagarjuna to holding the opposite
position (which he also denies)? Did he “use logic to destroy logic”? Was
he simply inconsistent or irrational—e.g., both affirming and denying the
existence of entities, or claiming that what is dependently arisen cannot
arise, or contradicting himself by resorting to a view to destroy all views?
But the antirationalist position does not survive an examination of
Nagarjuna’s works and the total context of each of his remarks. Nor is there
anything in any of his works that suggests that he relegated rationality to the
conventional level of truths or introduced a new multivalued logic. In fact,
it appears from the structure of his arguments that he did not violate any of
the basic laws of logic, nor was he in any other way irrational. In effect, in a
reversal of what Parmenides used logic to do, Nagarjuna used reason to
show that permanence is impossible and that all is changing, and he did so
in an eminently rational way, including implicitly relying on both the law of
the excluded middle and the law of noncontradiction.
Like most traditional people but unlike modern Western philosophers,
Nagarjuna spoke of a conflict of properties, not statements—i.e., he said
that something cannot be or have properties x and not-x or that x and not-x
cannot be in the same place at the same time, not anything about the
relation of statements. His focus was on the world, not the logic of
statements. Many of Nagarjuna’s arguments proceed on the basis that x and
not-x are mutually exclusive and that there is no third possibility. For
example, he used the law of the noncontradiction in Mula-madhyamaka-
karikas (“MK”) 8.7: “ ‘Real’ and ‘unreal’ are opposed to each other—how
could they exist together simultaneously?” (see also MK 7.30, 21.3, 25.17,
25.25–27). An entity (bhava) and its absence (abhava) cannot exist together
(MK 25.14). So too, he utilizes the law of the excluded middle: “A mover is
not stationary, just as a nonmover is not stationary. And other than a mover
or a nonmover, what third possibility is stationary?” (MK 2.15; see also MK
1.4, 2.8, 3.6, 4.6, 6.10, 8.1, 21.14).26 Indeed, Nagarjuna’s basic method of
arguing fails if the contrast between x and not-x is not exclusive and
exhaustive since his conclusion of emptiness (shunyata) as the only
alternative to a world of self-existence (svabhava) would then not follow.
So too, if Nagarjuna accepted that contradictions could state a truth, as Jay
Garfield and Graham Priest (2003) contend, then again his argument would
fail since the contradictions again would not be grounds to accept
emptiness. That is, the only way Nagarjuna gets to emptiness is to eliminate
self-existence, since he rejects advancing any independent positive
arguments for emptiness, and so he has to remove all logical possibilities
for self-existence—if a contradiction concerning self-existence affirms a
truth, his arguments collapse.
Nagarjuna also employed the simplest form of an inference,
recognized in the West as modus ponens (e.g., MK 19.6):

(1) If A, then B;
 (2) A;
(3) Therefore, B.

He also used the more complex modus tollens (e.g., MK 24.24, 27.7):

(1) If A, then B;
(2) Not B;
(3) Therefore, not A.

For example, if (A) there were self-existence, then (B) there would be no
change (since change of any kind is impossible for what is self-existent and
thus permanent); but (not B) we see change; and so, (not A) there is no self-
existence. Such reasoning is a staple of Western philosophy and logic.
But Richard Robinson thought that Nagarjuna violated one law of
logic (1957: 297). Verse 13.7 of the Karikas reads: “If there were anything
at all that is not empty, then there would be found something we can call
‘empty.’ However, there is found nothing that is nonempty—how then can
there be the ‘empty’?” This and other verses of the same form (MK 10.7,
7.17) can be interpreted as violating the law of contraposition or the fallacy
of the antecedent. It has this logical form:

(1) If A, then B;
(2) Not A;
(3) Therefore, not B.

It has the same logical form as “If it is sunny today, it is not raining; it is not
sunny today; therefore, it must be raining.” Obviously this is wrong—it can
be cloudy but not raining. However, Nagarjuna’s verse can also be given a
reading that does not violate logic: only something real (i.e., self-existent)
exists and thus could in principle be empty; and since there is in fact
nothing self-existent, there is no reality that could be empty. That is, the
first line states a necessary requirement: for something to be empty, it must
first be real—otherwise, there is nothing existent to be empty. Hence,
premise (1) would read: “Only if A, then B.” (Sanskrit does not have a form
to distinguish “if” from “only if.”) The conclusion then does logically
follow: “If A is necessary for B, and there is no A, then there can be no B.”
If so, the verse does not have the fallacious type of inference and does not
violate any law of reasoning. In fact, it is a very rational approach.
 Nagarjuna also used another form of inference to make a point (MK
4.4, 13.4, 15.9, 20.1–2, 20.21, 21.9, 25.1–2, 27.21, 27.23–24).27 The form
is:

(1) If A, then not B.

(2) If not-A, then not-B.

His point is that whether there is A or not-A, there is no B. For example,

whether (A) there is self-existence or (not-A) not, (B) change is not
possible: if something is self-existent, it is permanent and so there can be
not change; if there is no self-existence, then nothing real exists, and so
there is nothing that could change. Either way, there is nothing “real” that
could change, and so there is no “real” change.
Nagarjuna also employed the “four options” form noted above
concerning the Buddha’s teachings (MK 1.1, 12.1, 18.8, 22.11–12, 25.15–
18, 25.22–23, 27.13, 27.20). Here he denies x exists, x does not exist, x both
exists and does not exist, and x neither exists nor does not exist.
Philosophers have spilled a lot of ink applying symbolic logic to
Nagarjuna’s four denials to try to keep them from being paradoxical. Does
not the denial of the first option logically commit the holder to the second?
How can someone deny that something neither exists nor does not exist?
The denial of the fourth option makes Nagarjuna look as if he is denying
the basic law of noncontradiction. But the efforts to reconstruct the four
options through modern symbolic logic to save Nagarjuna make him too
sophisticated. (This is not to deny that symbolic logic can show that his
conclusions are logically valid [see Jones 1993a: 260–61 n. 6]. But showing
that is not the same as claiming that that is how Nagarjuna actually
reasoned.) More importantly, such arguments miss the point: Nagarjuna is
trying to state that we cannot think of anything in terms of self-existence.
He uses the form of the four options simply to try to cover all positive and
negative possibilities—i.e., he is saying there are no other possible options,
and so we cannot think of any phenomenon in terms of “self-existence” in
any way. He wants to cover all possibilities so that all claims involving self-
existence in different contexts are eliminated, and thus emptiness—i.e., the
absence of anything self-existent—is established by default as the only
logical alternative.
 And it can be shown easily and without resorting to technical rules that
the four options approach is not logically contradictory. Consider again the
fact mentioned in the last chapter that numbers do not have color. If
someone asks what color the number 4 is, we might say “It is not blue, not a
color other than blue, not both blue and another color, nor neither blue nor
another color.” All four denials are true and consistent since numbers do not
have color. The denial of any option does not logically commit someone to
any other position on the color of four. We might think that the last option
applies—“neither blue nor another color” (and thus is transparent)—but in
Nagarjuna’s framework, as long as we are thinking in terms of color we are
on the wrong track regarding the nature of numbers, i.e., as objects to which
color terms could apply. So too, with the four options regarding whether
something “exists”: to Nagarjuna, only something that is self-existent can
exist or not exist, but as long as we are thinking of phenomena in terms of
self-existence, we do not understand the true nature of reality but are
thinking along conventional lines and thus in terms that cannot apply. To
expand Bertrand Russell’s example of “The present King of France is bald”:
it is wrong to answer “yes” or “no” or that “he is both bald and not bald” or
that “he is neither bald nor not bald,” since he does not exist. To use the
Buddhist analogy, it is like asking what direction a flame goes when a fire
goes out—any answer shows that we are thinking along the wrong lines
(i.e., that the flame still exists). So too, for Nagarjuna, only an entity
existing by self-existence could be the subject of the four options, and the
denial of all four options is consistent if there are no self-existent realities.
In sum, all Nagarjuna is saying is that the subject to each option does
not exist. In addition, he treats the fourth alternative as a type of thing—if
nirvana is neither an entity nor a nonentity, then it cannot be a “neither-an-
entity-or-a-nonentity” (MK 25.16). Such an entity is the kind of entity that
contrasts with the third option: if we can establish something that is “x-and-
not-x,” then we can establish what contrasts with it—something that is
“neither-x-nor-not-x” (e.g., MK 27.18, 27.28). Nagarjuna is arguing that the
denial of x depends on there being x in the first place, and so if we cannot
establish x as real (i.e., self-existent), we cannot establish its absence (i.e., a
not-x) or a conjunction of the two (x-and-“not-x”) or the conjunction of
their absences (neither-x-nor-“not-x”). The third option can be established
only if the first two options can be (MK 5.6, 12.9), and the fourth could be
established only if we could establish the third alternative (MK 25.15,
27.18, 27.28). Thus, since x is not real to begin with, none of the other
options are possible. In addition, Nagarjuna would also add that we must
reject the third option because x-and-not-x would be a composite of
opposites, but opposites cannot exist together in the same place (e.g., light
and dark [MK 25.14]). Thus, nothing more is needed to explain the four
options than Nagarjuna’s general method of interconnecting terms. Indeed,
by focusing instead on possible logical reconstructions of the four options,
philosophers are missing how the arguments actually proceed—in short,
they miss Nagarjuna’s actual reasoning entirely.
A related point is that in MK 18.8 the four options are not denied.
Nagarjuna says: “Everything is real, and everything is unreal; everything is
both real and unreal; everything is neither real nor unreal.” The third option
appears to violate the law of the noncontradiction and the fourth the law of
the excluded middle. But (following the later Madhyamika Chandrakirti)
this can be made consistent by means of the Buddhist doctrine of two types
of truths, conventional and ultimate: “Every entity is real from the
conventional point of view [MK 7.24], and every entity is unreal from the
ultimate point of view [MK 15.4]; every entity is both conventionally real
and ultimately unreal; every entity is neither ultimately real nor
conventionally unreal.” Entities are not real from the point of view of their
true ontic status (i.e., they are not self-existent and thus not real), but the
configurations of the factors of the experienced world (dharmas) are in fact
part of the conventional world, and so Nagarjuna is not irrational in
affirming both claims. Conversely, for Nagarjuna the that-ness (tattva) of
the phenomenal realm is real from the ontologically correct point of view,
but it is not an entity and thus is nonexistent from a conventional point of
view. In the classic Indian example, a rope seen as a snake is indeed both
real (the rope) and totally unreal (the snake) at the same time. All this
removes any suggestion of paradox or irrationality.
Thus, the apparent paradoxicality can be explained away. Certainly we
should not immediately jump to the conclusion that a thinker from another
culture and era is irrational simply from the form of his writings. Nor
should we ascribe to Nagarjuna the state of the art in philosophical logic
from our own culture and era. The question is not whether a given verse is
contradictory in form, but whether the thought behind his expressions has a
consistent content in terms of his beliefs. And if we can paraphrase
consistently what Nagarjuna writes, then his thought may in fact be rational.
If so, then the fact that the idea can also be stated illogically is irrelevant.28
For example, if I am standing in a doorway between two rooms with one
foot in each room, I can state this paradoxically: “I am in this room and not
in this room” or “I am in two rooms at once” (see Priest 2004: 28). But I
can also state the situation more completely without paradox: “I am
partially in one room and partially in another.” Genuine paradox occurs
only if I claim “I am entirely in two different rooms at the same time.” But
this statement is not only paradoxical but false and no one believes it. That
the situation can be stated incompletely and inaccurately as a paradox is
irrelevant—the true situation can be stated clearly and consistently. And the
same applies to the situation with Nagarjuna’s seemingly paradoxical
passages: we do not have to torture what he says to see that what he writes
is logical within his framework of beliefs.
In sum, Nagarjuna’s arguments are rational and logical. And we can
understand his points without trying to make him into a twenty-first-century
Oxford logician. This is not to say that his arguments are convincing (see
Jones 2104b: 171–76), but only that they are not irrational: an argument
may be logically sound in the sense that a conclusion logically follows from
the premises without the premises being acceptable to us. So too, not all
mistakes in reasoning are logical fallacies. But there is no need to import
modern theories of alternative logics or to accept that some irresolvably
contradictory statements actually make intelligible claims to make
Nagarjuna’s works understandable. Nor was Nagarjuna “using reason to
destroy reason”—he was trying to show by rather rigorous conceptual
analysis and the use of rigorous logical reasoning that any metaphysical
system that affirms self-existing, permanent entities involves
inconsistencies with what we see actually happening in the world and thus
cannot be held. Indeed, logic and the avoidance of contradictions are
absolutely central to how his arguments proceed.
Also note that he did this without appeal to mystical experiences: he
appealed to the conflict of his opponents’ alleged claims with ordinary
experience, but he never appealed to other types of experiences. However,
this does not mean that he was not a mystic: his arguments are addressed to
other Buddhist and Hindu theorists, but his works overall show that his aim
was to clear the mind of the unenlightened of the process of projecting
concepts onto phenomenal reality (prapancha) in order that they may
experience the real that-ness (tattva) of the phenomenal world as it truly is
(yathabhutam), thereby freeing the listeners from the suffering that ensues
when we try to force reality to conform to our preconceived ideas of
discrete “real” entities and from the desires driving rebirth.

Mysticism and the Question of Universal Reason

Nothing examined here suggests that cultivating or undergoing mystical
experiences causes a person to be irrational or that mystics have a unique
logic of their own. For the issue of rationality, there is nothing unique about
mystics’ reasoning. Rather, mystical texts appear to be logical by ordinary
Western standards.29 Mystical systems of belief are sometimes quite
complex; their premises may be unacceptable to the scientifically minded
and may also mix factual and evaluative elements; the systems are
grounded in experiences that we may not take to be cognitively supreme;
what is taken to be evidence and the standards of evidence may differ;
mystics’ concerns may not be ours; and mystics may in general weigh
different cognitive considerations differently than modern Westerners do.
But none of this makes mystics’ thoughts irrational. From what was shown
here, how mystics handle the different elements within their frameworks is
not necessarily irrational or illogical. Thus, mystics cannot be condemned
as necessarily irrational or obscurantists in this regard. Nor can they be
condemned as irrational or anti-intellectual for arguing that ideas cannot
replace the need for experience. This is true for everyday life and science—
that nonordinary states of consciousness and alleged realities are involved
only highlights the matter for mystics.30
Nevertheless, philosophers typically argue that mystics must in the end
reject logic and reasoning. True, the act of reasoning (which necessarily
involves differentiated ideas) is incompatible with having at least
introvertive mystical experiences at the same time, and mystical
experiences and enlightenment are not the result of reasoning or a
reasoning-produced intuition. But after the experiences, distinctions are
present in the mind, and thus the opportunity arises in that state to be either
logical or illogical in the arguments one makes. And mystics can
consistently claim that reasoning must be part of enlightened ways of life to
establish the correct understanding of what was experienced. Mysticism is
broader than only having mystical experiences—it is about how one lives
one’s life—and thus reasoning can be a part of mysticism. Advancing
arguments to establish the superiority of one particular mystical
interpretation would then not be inconsistent with being a mystic. Meister
Eckhart, standing in the medieval scholastic tradition, can agree that reason
can find proofs of the truths revealed in Christian scriptures while still
maintaining that God dwells beyond the limits of the mind (1981: 27–28,
31). In Buddhism, reasoning (tarka) is rejected as a means to
enlightenment, but Buddhists do produce arguments. In general, mystics do
make arguments that are logical in structure. Their problems of
understanding in worldly terms what was experienced and a soteriological
concern for the unenlightened may lead mystics to speak paradoxically, but
the contradictions occurring in paradoxes can be explained away.
Since mystics are considered exemplars of irrationality, if mystical
works can be shown to be implicitly conforming to the laws of logic, this
has implications for the broader question of whether the basic Aristotelian
logic is universal or only specifically Western. There may not be any cross-
cultural “universal reason” because of the differences in fundamental
premises, in how different considerations are weighted, and different styles
of reasoning, but if mystical works that appear to be a confusing muddle
actually exemplify being genuinely logical, then this is at least some prima
facie evidence that some logical principles are universal for any belief-
system that can be communicable to others—i.e., the core structure within
each such system regardless of culture may still implicitly conform to these
logical laws, and thus these laws are not the product of the structure of
Indo-European languages.
The examples utilized here are too limited to show that all cultures of
the world accept the rules of logic, and the possibility that I am imposing
rationality onto mystical writings can never be ruled out. But this chapter
does show at least that there is a very real possibility that mystical works
are rational. Not everyone may be rational, nor may anyone be totally
rational in all of his or her thoughts, but the obvious instances of mystical
strategies that on the surface appear irrational can be seen on closer
examination possibly to be rational. (Indeed, intentionally employing
paradoxes for soteriological purposes would be the exception that proves
the rule: this practice would show that mystics are aware that consistency is
the norm and only utilize paradoxes to startle listeners about what is
experienced in mystical experiences.) At a minimum, these examples
present difficulties for any characterizations about the “inscrutable Oriental
mind” or other characterizations about mystics in general that present them
as necessarily operating irrationally or with their own unique standards.
 8

Mysticism and Science

If we accept science, must we reject mystical claims to knowledge?

Naturalists answer “yes”—mystical knowledge-claims are rejected out of
hand because they are not objectively checkable in a third-person manner.
On the other extreme, New Age thinkers believe mystical and scientific
claims are converging (for criticism, see Jones 2010, forthcoming). Some
scientists do show interest in mystical claims. However, probably more
scientists today would agree with Stephen Hawking who, in responding to
his colleague Brian Josephson’s interest in Asian mysticism, said that the
idea of mystical influence on science is “pure rubbish,” adding: “The
universe of Eastern mysticism is an illusion. A physicist who attempts to
link it with his own work has abandoned physics” (quoted in Boslough
1985: 127).
Obviously merely having a mystical experience does not conflict with
science: one can have any experience regardless of what theories scientists
may hold. Rather, it is the alleged cognitive significance of mystical
experiences that brings mysticism into contact with science. (Whether
science can explain mystical experiences was discussed in chapter 4.)
Mysticism can come into contact with science in two ways: mystical claims
about the nature of the world compared to current scientific theories, and
mystical experiences as a particular way of knowing reality compared to
science as a way of knowing reality.1 Mystical claims do not necessarily
conflict with science. Extrovertive mystical experiences involve the
beingness of nature and not scientific findings. Introvertive mystical
experiences can be given a natural explanation (e.g., Angel 2002). Even if
the introvertive experiences are given transcendent explanations, they can
be compatible with scientific accounts of events in the world: such
experiences can be seen as realizing a reality that was already present in the
experiencer (God or another transcendent reality as the ground of the soul
or of all of nature), and so no intervention by a separate transcendent reality
occurs; experiencers do not change ontologically but only realize what has
always been the case. In addition, as long as alleged transcendent realities
are not seen as causes in the natural order, science will not have a say on
whether they are real or not. Any transcendent reality would obviously
conflict with the metaphysics of naturalism, but as long as the mystic’s
mind is doing the experiencing (as opposed to a god intervening in nature to
affect the mystics’ brain), mystical experiences are as natural as sense-
experiences, and their transcendent explanations remain a matter of
metaphysics.2 Naturalism too is a metaphysical position—one in which
science is seen as entailing the rejection of transcendent realities. But, as
noted in chapter 3, one can reject the metaphysics of naturalism and still
accept science as providing the best knowledge of the day, and by doing so
one can also accept transcendent claims that are consistent with scientific
findings.
Mysticism and science each intend to provide knowledge of reality, but
there are major differences in the two endeavors even if we accept that they
both are cognitive. Mystics and scientists both have problems with language
when encountering phenomena outside of the everyday realm of
experience, but we cannot make any substantive convergence of mysticism
and science out of these problems: merely because both scientists and
mystics have problems expressing what they encounter does not mean they
must be encountering the same thing. So too, both mystics and scientists
must use metaphors when they encounter the unexpected outside the
everyday realm or the realm of ordinary experience. But this only means
that mystical and scientific thought is human thought encountering
something new—it tells us nothing whatsoever about whether scientists and
mystics are talking about the same aspects of reality.
Paradoxes also appear in both mysticism and science when the
practitioners are confronted with contradictions between their expectations
shaped by their everyday experiences and what they now experience. But
paradoxes do not function in the same way: in mysticism, the aim is to
abandon all conceptualizations altogether in order to experience beingness
or its source free of the analytical mind, while in science the objective is to
push through a paradox and to replace an inconsistent conceptualization
with one that consistently reflects what has been observed. Paradox thus
may provoke more research or new theories in science; in mysticism, it may
evoke an experience but not necessarily a concern for new conceptual
systems. This points to a fundamental difference between science and
mysticism, even though both endeavors are experience-based: the centrality
of formulations in science versus the need to transcend all formulations for
mystical experiences to occur; the former reflects science’s concern with
differentiated phenomena, and the latter reflects mysticism’s goal of getting
beyond differentiations to experience beingness unmediated by any
conceptual or emotional framework.

Scientific and Mystical Approaches to Reality

Thus, mysticism and science may share some problems in the abstract, but
the problems in their actual contexts in each endeavor show divergences. In
fact, one must fundamentally distort the nature of mysticism and science to
see them as similar endeavors. Rather, mysticism and science deal with two
different dimensions of reality: mysticism deals with the beingness of things
in nature (the impermanence and interconnectedness of phenomena) in
extrovertive experiences and the source of the being of the self or all of the
natural world in introvertive experiences, whereas science deals with how
nature works (the natural causal structures underlying events). There may
be broad convergences between mysticism and science that any
experientially based knowledge-giving enterprises would have, and the
differences in epistemic nature may not be as great as is usually supposed
(as noted below), but the two endeavors remain distinct: there are
fundamental differences in subject-matter, purpose, method, and
knowledge-claims, even when these seem superficially similar in their
rhetoric.
One point about science is central here: fundamental scientific research
is about how things work—i.e., scientists try to find the efficient and
material causes in nature involved in events and make claims about such
causes that ultimately depend on observations checkable by others.3 Science
is a way of questioning nature that cannot be reduced to only the theories
held at a particular moment. Scientists attempt to establish lawful patterns
in the phenomenal world through observation or experimentation; they then
use reasoning to try to identify the features in nature that may not be open
to direct experience but are responsible for the lawful changes on the
everyday level of the world.4 Under realist interpretations, scientists
identify, however approximately, real parts of the world that explain the
observed events; under antirealist interpretations, scientific claims are only
about the observed events, and we have no claim to know what we cannot
experience. The antirealist empiricists do not deny that there are real
structures at work in the world; they only claim that we cannot obtain any
knowledge of them if we cannot experience them; in short, the structures
remain a mystery. Under empiricism, all theoretical realities are rejected.
The “sparticles” of supersymmetry theory and the unexperiencable hidden
dimensions of space-time of string theory are the paradigm of this problem
today. To antirealists, scientific theories and models are at most merely
shorthand devices for connecting observations. But under theoretical
realism, science is not merely a matter of predicting new observations: it is
a matter of understanding the structures in nature—an “invisible order” of
postulated explanatory realities—and advancing theories as tentative
explanations of their mechanisms.5
Extrovertive mystics, on the other hand, focus in altered states of mind
on the beingness of the natural world and not on the features in nature
structuring beingness, or indeed on the individual nature of anything within
the world. Beingness may be called an “ontic cause,” but it is not the type
of cause of interest to scientists: it is the cause of all things’ existence, not
an efficient cause operating within the natural order that brings about
changes. Beingness is not even an Aristotelian material cause, since the
latter are different components within the natural order. That is, the
beingness of things is a “vertical” depth-cause underlying all phenomena
equally and is neutral to all matters of the “horizontal” interactions caused
by nature’s structures. Such a uniform ontic cause does not explain why one
state of affairs occurs and not another and thus does not make a scientific
difference. Mystics, that is, focus on the clayness of the clay pot of the
Upanishadic example, while scientists focus on the interactions causing
different configurations of the clay pieces. Thus, mystical experiences do
not provide any information on the causal questions of science but only
bring into awareness an ontic depth: since that depth is constant,
unchanging, and common to all things, it is neutral to all “horizontal”
interactions. Mystical states are distinct from the analytical functions of the
mind that scientists utilize in their observations and reasoning. In
extrovertive mystical experiences, there is a Gestalt-like switch from
focusing on the differentiated things within the natural realm to their
common beingness. Even extrovertive experiences of diffuse beingness
only point to the lack of distinct entities, not anything about structures. This
means that mystical experiences cannot supply new information confirming
or refuting any scientific claims about causal structures. The only new data
mystical experiences can supply on any scientific issue are new mental
states or functions for neuroscientists to study (as discussed in chapter 4).
Thus, mysticism and science are not matters of different interpretations
of the same aspect of reality; they involve different aspects. Extrovertive
mystics make claims about the impermanence and interconnectedness of the
macro-objects we directly experience in the everyday world, not about
features of the submicroscopic world that they have not experienced, even
if these may be the causes of what is experienced. Introvertive mystics look
at an entirely different dimension to reality: a transcendent reality that in the
depth-mystical experience is traditionally interpreted as either the ground of
the self, the source of the universe’s being, or God. Beingness is not a
different level of structures that scientists simply cannot reach externally—
it is an aspect of reality that is free of differentiations. Scientists focus
precisely on the differentiations within nature that mystics bypass. Thus, it
is hard to argue that mystics and scientists approach the same aspect of
reality, or to see mystics as making claims about the underlying features of
nature that scientists are revealing regarding the causes of things.
Scientists learn by observing and thinking about how things interact,
while mystics still the analytical mind and reveal the unchanging beingness
common to all things. Scientific experiences remain ordinary, everyday-
type perceptions, even when scientists are measuring extraordinary parts of
nature through technology-enhanced means; mystics’ experiences are
extraordinary even when they are perceiving the ordinary. To determine
how things work, scientists need to distinguish objects and see how they
interact with each other; they do not focus on the common beingness of
things or bits of matter in isolation, and for this, differentiations among
phenomena are necessary. This includes fields and the smaller and smaller
bits of matter being theorized—particle physicists are not interested in the
beingness of fields or bits of matter, but only in what is measurable by the
interaction of objects. Even the mass of an object is measured only by the
interaction of objects.
Scientists cannot make claims about any undifferentiated aspect of
reality. Since beingness is uniform for all particulars, it cannot be
experimented on to see how it would interact with something else or be
otherwise measured. There is no way to conduct tests on what is free of
distinctions and common to everything; hence, no hypotheses about the
nature of beingness can be scientifically tested in any way. Conversely,
there can be no experimental support for any of the mystics’ assertions
concerning being, since there can be no experiments or any other types of
scientific observations or analyses that reveal the nature of anything
uniform in nature. Thus, scientists cannot reveal anything about the nature
of the beingness, and so scientific findings simply cannot contribute to the
mystical understandings of reality. They cannot supply any evidence
confirming or refuting any mystical claim about the thus-ness of things or a
purported source. In short, nothing scientists can do can provide a reason
for accepting or rejecting a mystical claim about being. Nor is there any
empirical way to test mystics’ specific doctrinal metaphysical claims, such
as Advaita’s claim that all is Brahman about the nature of any transcendent
reality.
Thus, the uniformity of beingness and its lack of interacting parts
preclude mystical claims being checkable by scientific methods or tested by
any other empirical methods.6 Nor is new information about beingness
revealed in new mystical experiences, since there are no new parts or causes
to reveal about beingness. There is no way to devise new depth-mystical
experiences to test something about beingness—all depth-mystical
experiences are simply the same experiences empty of differentiable
content repeated over and over again. This distinguishes mysticism from
science as a way of knowing. But because beingness is free of
differentiations and for that reason not open to scientific study, mystic are
not making scientific claims about the world. Thus, the naturalists’ regular
criticism of mysticism—that mystics have not discovered anything new
about the world in a thousand years—does not apply: mystics are not trying
to do what scientists do and failing; rather, they are looking at another
aspect of reality that has no new experiential features to be discovered
through research. It is not surprising then that they are not gaining new
knowledge about the world that can be checked against empirical
predictions when the knowledge gained in mystical experiences is about an
aspect of reality that is not open to scientific measurement. Mystics simply
do not engage beingness or transcendent realities the way scientists engage
the world.7
So do scientists and mystics experience and discuss the same reality?
Yes and no. Scientists and extrovertive mystics do experience the same
phenomenal world, but they experience different aspects of it, and in that
sense they do not experience the same realities. But scientists and mystics
approach the world in distinctly different ways and with different subject-
matters, and thus science and mysticism are different ways of knowing
reality. Scientists are interested in the “what-ness” of objects (what
categories we put things into) and the “how-ness” of what makes things tick
(how things work or came to be), but not in the sheer “thus-ness” of things
(being) that is the domain of mystics.
This distinction in subject-matter between reality’s beingness and the
causes organizing it—a distinction going back to Aristotle—must be
maintained in studying the relation of mysticism to science. Scientific and
mystical insights are not of the same type because structure and beingness,
while both real, are different and cannot be reduced to only one type of
reality. Thus, scientists and mystics are not arriving at the same destination
through different routes but are working on different subjects that remain
analytically distinguishable. In short, mystical experiences do not give us
any scientific knowledge of reality, and no science gives us any mystical
knowledge. So too, mystical knowledge-claims, being uncheckable
empirically, are different in character from science. Thus, the endeavors are
both interested in knowing reality, but they approach different aspects of it
and so do not infringe on each other in their central concerns. The two
endeavors cannot be treated as if they are saying the same thing in
“different languages” (contra, e.g., Mansfield 2008: 88, 141, 162). It is
simply wrong to claim that scientists and mystics “are really expressing the
same insight—one in the technical language of science, the other in the
poetic, metaphorical language of spirituality” (Capra 2000: 8) when they
are dealing with fundamentally different aspects of reality and doing
different things.

An Analogy
As an analogy, consider this book. The letters, numbers, punctuation, and
spaces are the smallest elements of the work, and the rules of grammar for
forming the words and sentences are a component distinct from such
elements. Scientists are like grammarians identifying the universe’s laws
(its rules of grammar) and the fundamental building blocks (its words and
elements). However, as grammarians, scientists are not interested in the
nature of the substance embodying the parts—the “ink” that embodies the
“letters.” What gives substance to the universe does not matter to scientists
any more than the material that this book is produced in (ink and paper,
electronic versions) matters to its informational content. That is, only the
informational content of the text counts in science, and this is independent
of the medium in which it is embodied. Physicists and chemists are not
interested in the “narrative of the story”—the history of the universe—but
only in the grammar, words, and elements utilized in the narrative.
Geologists, biologists, astronomers, and cosmologists do deal with this
historical dimension, but they are no more interested in the “beingness” of
the medium in which the story is embodied than are physicists and
chemists. In short, what scientists study in a “text” is not found by
analyzing the ink and paper.
To bring mysticism into the analogy: extrovertive mystical experiences
are a matter of experiencing the ink and paper apart from the formed letters,
the rules of grammar, and the message of the text. That is, the experiences
involve the beingness of the letters and the background paper, which is
irrelevant to the information that the scientists study. (The analogy breaks
down, since obviously science in the real world can also study the ink and
paper or any other medium—any material remains differentiated within the
world. This shows how difficult it is to make any analogies from our
dualistic world about something as basic as the beingness common to
everything.)
In sum, mystical experiences involve a different type of knowledge
than does science: we cannot get information about the medium of
embodiment from the information contained in the words of the text or vice
versa. Thus, no empirical findings or theories in science could rule out the
possibility that mystical experiences may be knowledge-giving of an aspect
of reality that scientists qua scientists ignore. Conversely, mystical
experiences of beingness are equally irrelevant to scientific theories of the
components and structures of nature.
 Beingness and Science
So what is “beingness”? It is “existence in general,” to use a not-too-helpful
characterization. Even if there is something within the natural universe that
gives particles their mass (e.g., a Higgs field), we still have to ask what
gives that thing its being. Any further characterization of the “is-ness” of
reality—being-as-such—is difficult. The question “what is reality?” has
been a part of Western metaphysics since Parmenides, but it remains just as
big a mystery today. The philosopher Milton Munitz asks whether we can
even speak of beingness since it is not an object or set of objects (1965,
1986, 1990). Beingness, Munitz notes, “shines through” the known universe
but is not identical with it, and hence we are aware of it—as with “the
mystical” of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s mirror-theory-inspired Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus (6.522), beingness manifests itself. But beingness
never presents itself to us as a phenomenon (i.e., as an object set off from
the observing subject), and so it is unutterable and incapable of being
conveyed in language since it is not conceptualizable as an object. Thus, the
proper response to our awareness of beingness is silence (Munitz 1986:
278). That is, the very beingness of the world cannot be “captured” by any
language, and thus we are left with only mystery. Nor is beingness an entity
of any type: it is not a thing or combination of things or the totality of
things. Unlike an object, it is not “conceptually bound.” It has no properties,
qualities, or structures to discover—it has nothing to describe. It is utterly
unique in that it is not an instance of any category whatsoever. Thus,
“beingness in itself” is unintelligible, since intelligibility requires the
applicability of descriptive or explanatory concepts (ibid.: 274). That is,
intelligibility relates to what something is or how it is, not to the underlying
that-ness of reality. We live in a world of differentiated objects and see and
speak only of those objects. Beingness itself remains beneath any
conceptual map we could apply to the world to create order. Once we start
speaking of beingness—or even just naming it—we make it one object
among objects, which “it” is not. That is, we see trees and buildings, not
beingness, and we cannot formulate propositions about it. (Note that
Munitz’s points are based on philosophical analysis alone, not on mystical
experiences, and presuppose the mirror theory of language.)
If Munitz’s position is correct, any explanations or understanding of
the beingness of our world would be foreclosed. But the important point
here is only that beingness cannot be studied scientifically since it is
common to everything: because it is structureless, we cannot put it to any
tests to see how it works. Treating the metaphysical beingness that keeps us
from lapsing into nonexistence as a form of natural energy (as Adolph
Grünbaum does [1996]) only leads to a problem: energy needs the
metaphysical power of beingness as much as anything else. So too, classical
mystical metaphysics may emphasize, as in Neoplatonism, the emanation of
the phenomenal realm to explain the relation of “being” to the realm of
“becoming,” or it may emphasize the ontic interconnection of things, but it
never emphasized the efficient causal connections of things within the
natural world.8 Any transcendent source of the universe is not shooting
natural energy into the world from another realm. The metaphysical power
of beingness may be constant or vary whether a law of conservation applies
to natural matter/energy or not. Scientists’ findings will always be about
features within the natural realm and cannot in principle affect the issue of
the ontic status of this realm as a whole.9 (But this does not mean that one
who is scientifically minded can deny beingness—the laws of nature must
be embodied in something.)

Mystical Experience Versus Scientific Measurement and

Theorizing
Most people studying the relation of mysticism and science only see that
both mystics and scientists are approaching reality and are out to gain
knowledge based on experiences; thus, they assume that mystics and
scientists are engaged in gaining the same type of knowledge through
different techniques. This leads to the New Age claim that science and
mysticism are the same basic endeavor. That there may be fundamentally
different aspects of reality that would foreclose any substantive
convergence of knowledge-claims is not usually considered. This includes
even physicists making comparisons of physics to Asian thought (e.g.,
Mansfield 1976, 1989, 2008). But what was discussed above should be
sufficient to conclude that mystics and scientists are not focusing on the
same aspects of reality.
Also consider the types of experiences central to each endeavor:
mystical experiences require the suspension of the very activity of the mind
necessary for scientific measurements and theorizing—i.e., analytical
functions of the mind. Extrovertive mystical experiences involve a
lessening or discarding of conceptual differentiations. Introvertive mystical
experiences suspend sense-experiences. The depth-mystical experience
requires a complete stilling of the analytical mind: a “forgetting” of all
images—all sense-experiences and mental differentiations are suspended.
Indeed, mystics around the world see conceptual constructs—the very stuff
of scientific theories—as positive impediments to achieving mystical
experiences. Were mystics interested in the same aspect of reality as
scientists, what scientists find through language-guided observation and
theorizing would be seen as aids to mysticism, not obstacles. And how
could mystics approach the same aspect of reality that scientists are
interested in with a mind free of attention to differentiations? All
measurements are concept-guided: preconceived questions and categories
direct scientists’ attention to particular aspects of phenomena. Scientists
look for something in particular: they select, label, categorize, and measure.
When theorizing, they make predictions about what they will observe, they
don’t attempt to “unknow” all that is conceptualized. Scientific observation,
in short, is a reaction to concepts. Both extrovertive and introvertive
mystical experiences involve an “unknowing” of all the knowledge that we
normally accumulate in our everyday life through our senses and the
analytical function of the mind, including all scientific knowledge. This
means again that the tentatively held constructs of science established
through conjecture and measurement would have to be discarded. Again,
the different approaches of mysticism and science to reality are appropriate
for different aspects of reality: emptying the mind of distinctions to
experience what is common to everything versus focusing on distinctions
among objects to measure how things interact to determine how they work.
If scientific knowledge is necessarily concept-driven while mystics try
to experience reality in a way that transcends the conceptual, logically, how
can the two types of knowing end up with the same type of knowledge?
Granted, knowledge in both mysticism and science has a conceptual
element, but scientific measurements always involve a mixture of the
conceptual and the experiential, while at least depth-mystical experiences
are direct experiences of reality unmediated by conceptualization. How can
the knowledge resulting from conceptualized and unconceptualizable
experiences be the same? Indeed, if scientific and mystical claims were
about the same subject, then mystics are wrong when they say that what
they experience cannot be conceptualized.
Mystical states of mind utilize different functions of the mind than do
scientists in their measurements and reasoning. To Plotinus, the mystical
intellect (nous), a mental faculty distinct from both sense-experience and
reason (ratio), shares in and knows only beingness. Even if there is no
separate faculty, a different brain configuration is involved. Meditation too
is clearly experiential, but this does not make it the concept-driven
observation of the empirical method of scientific knowing. Simply being
experiential does not make yoga a “science of the mind.” The empirical
method requires observations of a different kind—those particularized by
conceptions for measurements and testing hypotheses. Mystics do make
predictions about the results of their actions: if one attains selflessness,
desires will end, and according to Indians this leads to an end of rebirth. But
such claims are not being tested, nor are new things being discovered—only
established knowledge is being recovered.10
The basic ontic claim for extrovertive mysticisms is that phenomenal
reality is impermanent, interconnected, and constantly changing; some
mystics also see it as grounded in a transcendent reality. Thus, the natural
world has no discrete, permanent objects. Does this mean that there are no
permanent structures in nature for scientists to find? No. Mystics deny only
that there are permanent objects in nature, not that permanent structures
may not be shaping them. As far as mysticism is concerned, there may be
natural joints to nature to be described and explained in science. For
example, as noted in chapter 5, the law of karma, involving our actions and
their repercussions, is taken as lasting as long as the universe does.11 But
the flux of the mental and physical parts of the universe is still
impermanent. Thus, even if scientists determine that the laws of nature are
permanent or in some sense transcend time and space, this does not change
the impermanence of phenomena in the everyday world that is the subject
of extrovertive mystical interest. That is, what mystics focus on is the
impermanence of the experienced, everyday level of the world, not
anything about the nature of the laws governing it. So too, it would be
irrelevant if scientists find permanent bits of matter/energy below the
everyday level. In fact, in an anti-empiricist move the early Abhidharma
Buddhists posited extremely minute uncuttable and undestroyable particles
of matter (paramanus) not open to sense-experience. Scientists, on the other
hand, are not making any claim about the permanence of everyday things
structured by the forces they discover. Mystics may think that scientists are
missing the point of reality or are even deluded by focusing on
differentiations, and scientists may think that mystics are misguided by
fixating on the unchanging beingness of nature. But as long as scientists can
see nature as in flux, science and extrovertive mysticism need not conflict
in principle. That is, science is not counterevidence to mysticism as long as
scientists can agree that the objects on the everyday level are not permanent
—i.e., that interactions are between what are ultimately different temporary
configurations. This neutralizes what many see as a conflict between
extrovertive mysticism and science.
Mysticism’s central objective is not acquiring disinterested knowledge
about how something works—it is transforming the person. This is not to
say that scientists are uninterested in the consequences and practical
applications of their research, but that in mystical traditions there is no
fundamental interest in learning the how-ness of things only for the sake of
learning how things work, as with basic scientific research. The focus in
mysticism is working on the mind, but again mystics are not exploring the
workings of the mind to discover new scientific facts even about how the
mind works. Buddhism does not involve a systemic study of mental states
to learn how the mind works—it is focused on overcoming our fundamental
suffering. Today Neo-Buddhists, including the Dalai Lama, find the
discoveries in physics, cosmology, and biology fascinating, and they accept
that scientific theories may affect doctrines in their way of life, but they
must admit that such discoveries in the final analysis are irrelevant to their
central quest. And, if science touches core doctrines of a tradition (e.g.,
rebirth or consciousness), there are limits as to how much accommodation
to science they may accept, as the Dalai Lama admits (see Jones 2011a:
108–10).
A scientific interest in efficient causal structures is not a way to any
type of mystical enlightenment: focusing on identifying and explaining the
structures of reality only increases attention to the differentiations in the
world (and theorizing increases the amount of differentiations). It will never
lead to the calming of the mind necessary for mystical experiences. The
Buddha left questions about the age and size of the universe unanswered as
irrelevant to the soteriological problem of suffering (Digha Nikaya 1.13,
3.137; Majjhima Nikaya 1.427; Anguttara Nikaya 2.80), and no doubt he
would leave all scientific questions about even the workings of the brain
unanswered for the same reason.

Indirect Avenues of Aid

Since mysticism and science deal with different dimensions of reality,
neither can offer direct aid to the other; as noted earlier, neither can offer
verification or any empirical support or disconfirmation for theories or
beliefs in the other field. Nor could what mystics experience about reality
be used as a “god of the gaps” to fill in holes in scientific theories, since the
uniformity of beingness experienced in any type of mystical experience is
not an explanation for why one state of affairs is the case and not another.
Theories in the two fields will always be about different aspects of reality.
As discussed in chapter 4, some people advocate expanding
neuroscience to incorporate the direct, first-hand approach to knowledge of
meditation. Such an expansion would cause major changes in neuroscience.
But even if these changes in neuroscience do not occur, mysticism can offer
some indirect aid to science. Scientists need to come up with new ideas
when exploring and trying to understand and explain the workings of the
natural world, and doctrines in mystical traditions are one possible source
of new ideas.12 Theories in mystical traditions on consciousness and
perception may provide ideas that scientists can work into scientific
hypotheses. Mystical traditions such as Buddhism that emphasize
mindfulness may be more fertile grounds for ideas for possible scientific
hypotheses than traditions such as Advaita that emphasize the depth-
mystical experience; the former’s systems of metaphysics emphasize
analyzing the phenomenal world, while the latter can ignore such “details”
in discussing the ontic status of the entire natural realm. Mystical ideas may
be too general to give rise to any specifics for a scientific theory, although
stories and images in mysticism may touch off a scientist’s imagination. But
this does not make mysticism part of science: ideas for hypotheses can
come from any cultural sources—the chemist Friedrich August Kekelé got
the idea for the benzene ring from a hallucination he had while gazing into
a fire after a long day of work, of two whirling snakes each grabbing the
other’s tail and thus forming a circle. Scientists still must rework any ideas
they derive from any source into actual scientific hypotheses and then must
determine on scientific grounds alone if any of these new hypotheses are
valuable: the ideas themselves do not entail any scientific hypotheses and
are not themselves scientific evidence, any more than Kekelé’s dream is.
However, religious ideas have a tendency of going from being helpful
candidates for scientific hypotheses to being “control beliefs” that their
advocates assert for nonscientific reasons and that would restrain the
development of science (see Jones 2011a, 2012a). Neo-Buddhists may also
veer off in that direction (see Jones 2011a: 107–10).
So too meditation may help scientists clear their minds and focus their
attention. However, scientific research cannot be conducted during
meditation: introvertive concentrative meditation ignores the outer world,
and mindfulness meditation interferes with the type of attention to
distinctions guided by conceptions that is needed to execute experiments,
make scientific measurements, and develop new theories. In “forgetting
oneself,” mindfulness does involve the objectivity of disinterest, and this is
how scientists are supposed to approach their research and their findings.
But meditation may also quell emotions or the attachment to a particular
scientific theory, and emotions and attachment to a particular theory may
drive scientific research. So too, mindfulness quells the wandering mind
that has been connected to creativity. The selflessness of a mindful state
also goes beyond the mere lack of self-interest: it lacks the attention to
distinctions that scientists need and thus interferes with science.
Enlightened mystics do still see differentiations among phenomena (even
though they do not see these in terms of permanent, distinct entities), but to
conduct scientific observations and theorizing they would have to change
the focus of their attention back to the differentiations from beingness.
Science may also offer indirect aid to mysticism. The lack of new
theories in classical mystical belief-systems since the Middle Ages points to
the fact that beingness and the source of beingness are not open to fresh
mystical experiences or new analyses. In particular, depth-mystical
experiences simply remain the same. Since there is no new experiential
input, in the future any new mystical conceptualizations of what is allegedly
experienced in the different types of mystical experiences will reflect input
from other cultural sources. And here science may help indirectly: scientific
theories may be one such source of new ideas for new analogies for
understanding what was experienced. Indeed, there were new mystical
doctrines or systems put forth in the twentieth century based on science:
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Shri Aurobindo each combined mysticism
with biological evolution, even though it is the evolution of consciousness
that they were concerned with (see King 1980). But this does not make the
science that is utilized mystical, any more than any ideas modified into
mystical theories from other sources thereby make those sources mystical.
Second, scientific theories may aid the understanding of the
metaphysical theories that mystics put forth. For example, the Dalai Lama
finds Einstein’s theory of relativity as giving “an empirically tested texture”
to Nagarjuna’s theory of time (Gyatso 2005: 205–6). But again, such
indirect aid does not make science a mystical endeavor—it only offers one
possible nonmystical source of assistance for comprehending mystics’
metaphysics. Moreover, there is also the very real danger that this practice
can actually inhibit our understanding of mysticism if we continue to think
about scientific structures and not beingness or if we force mystical ideas to
conform to our scientific understanding. That is, seeing mystical
metaphysics through the prism of science may distort one’s understanding
of mystical ideas and practices (and vice versa) (see Jones 2010: chap. 7).
Third, for those who want to modernize a premodern mystical
tradition, science can weed out factual claims from the tradition’s
worldview that are now known to be inaccurate. Arguably, this is a
requirement of rationality. As long as such claims are irrelevant to the
mystical objectives of the tradition, this is no problem. But there is a danger
that advocates of, for example, a “scientific Buddhism” may change the
nature of Buddhism to make it seem “scientific.”
Fourth, science may help mystics find more efficient meditative
techniques. But science cannot be a “spiritual path.” For example, for a
scientist who thinks of nature as God’s creation, research can be “for the
glory of God,” but this does not make science mystical any more than
spinning cotton became mystical after Gandhi utilized it as a practical type
of mindfulness training.

Science, Mysticism, and the Natural World

Science and extrovertive mysticism share an attention to the natural realm,
albeit different aspects of it. But it is important to realize that even the
depth-mystical Advaitins do not consider the realm of “illusion” (maya) to
be unreal in the way of a delusion involving something that is not there is
(asat)—to use the Indian analogy, imagining a rabbit’s horns. Rather, the
illusion involves misreading what is really there: we are misled by
appearances to focus on the temporary configurations of things, and thus we
end up being confused about what is real—we mistakenly think of the
phenomenal world as existing separate from brahman/atman and as
consisting of ontologically distinct parts. In the Upanishadic analogy of the
clay pot, the preexisting clay is real and the pot (i.e., the temporary form the
clay is in) is not. This conveys the sense of what is real and what is
“illusory” in both introvertive and extrovertive mysticism generally: the
temporary, dependent, and impermanent configurations are dismissed as
ultimately unreal and only “illusions,” but the reality of the underlying
beingness is affirmed. No classical mystical tradition dismisses the world as
“unreal” in any stronger sense: the beingness manifested in the everyday
world remains real.
Moreover, mystics need not deny that the world has stable structures
that are open to scientific study. Even in Advaita, the realm of illusion is
stable and lawful (e.g., the law of karma governing unenlightened actions),
and it remains so even for the enlightened. Shankara granted sense-
experience and reasoning complete freedom within their proper sphere: the
“dream” realm of the natural world (Brihadaranyaka-upanishad-bhashya
2.1.20; Bhagavad-gita-bhashya 18.66). And there is no reason that any
other mystics should not do the same, unless metaphysical and theological
considerations dictate otherwise. Mystics need not repudiate anything
scientists say about the nature of structures (with the possible exception of
theories of the nature of consciousness). Enlightened mystics experience the
world by focusing on its beingness rather than the what-ness and how-ness
of things, but this does not mean that structures do not exist, any more than
focusing on the color of things means that things do not have mass. What is
experienced seems timeless during the experience, but how long the
experience occurred can nevertheless still be measured, and the same
applies more generally to the other features of nature absent in either
introvertive or extrovertive mystical experiences.13 In sum, nothing of
reality’s underlying structures is necessarily negated by these experiences
alone.
Unless metaphysical judgments such as Advaita’s prevail, mystics can
treat being and structures as two separate but equally real aspects of the
world. The distinctions that scientists draw in the differentiated realm of
reality need not be deemed groundless, although they are not a matter of
being. This affirmation of the reality of the structures that scientists study is
not to deny that classical mystics oppose the discursive type of knowledge
of which science is the paradigm. Classical Daoism is a good example of
the rejection of such knowledge: the Daoists’ interest in nature remained
mystical and did not lead to a scientific interest in how things in nature
work (see Jones 1993: 127–46). We cannot simply equate any interest in
nature with a scientific interest in understanding the order behind things that
explains actions. Daoists go beyond conceptualizations in such a way that
they are able to flow more effortlessly with patterns inherent in nature, but
this does not mean that they have any scientific interests in finding and
explaining the efficient causes of those patterns. In the Daoist “forgetting”
state of mind (xu), our mind is no longer guided by our own mentally
conceived divisions. Rather, mystics respond spontaneously to what is
presented without the analytical mind. Even if mystics have internalized a
purpose for their actions, they are free of seeing the dualities and categories
that the analytical mind creates as projected onto reality. But again,
anything free of conceptions cannot guide scientific measurements or
theorizing: scientific theorizing is a matter of changing conceptions;
conceptualizations in scientific observations and experiments lead to
predictions, control, and manipulation rather than a simple mindfulness of
whatever occurs.
In general, science cultivates the analytical mind and increases
attention to the differentiated and thus diverts attention from what mystics
consider essential for aligning our lives with reality. To Advaita, science is
concerned with only the content of a “dream.” Buddhism in general shows,
in Winston King’s phrase, a “disenchantment with the world,” including
any scientific interest in it. For mystical experiences to occur, we need to
empty the mind of what is central to science. The focus in mysticism is
working on the mind, but the aim is to achieve a knowledge inaccessible to
the analytical mind driving science. As a Sufi saying puts it, the mind is
“the slayer of the Real” because the analytical mind separates us from an
awareness of God. Thus, science and mysticism pull in opposite directions,
and most serious practitioners of either endeavor may very well dismiss the
other as a waste of valuable time and energy.
 The Difference in Content
Both scientists and mystics make a distinction between appearance and
reality. However, they draw the distinction differently. For scientists, the
reality producing appearances is the underlying structures responsible for
what we experience in the everyday world, not beingness. (Nothing in
science per se requires finding the phenomena of the everyday world to be
unreal, only a type of reductive metaphysics does that. Scientific analysis is
not inherently reductionist: scientists can provide analyses of the makeup
and causes of phenomena without making the additional metaphysical claim
that the phenomena are not real. [See Jones 2013: chap. 3.]) Mystics, on the
other hand, are concerned with the real beingness underlying the “illusory”
conceptual creations we fabricate. In particle physics, atoms and their
components are impermanent eddies in a sea of energy; for mystics, there
are also impermanent eddies, but they are the macro level, everyday entities
arising from the connections of phenomena to what surrounds them. The
mystics’ claim remains about the beingness of the phenomena of the
everyday level: mystics did not have to wait for the physicists’ findings of a
lack of distinct entities on lower levels for confirmation—their claim about
everyday things would not be disconfirmed if physicists found permanent
realities on lower levels, or be confirmed if they found interconnectedness.
Thus, scientists and mystics are interested in the “fundamental nature of
reality,” but in different aspects of the reality behind appearances. Scientists
and mystics do converge on the abstract claim “There is reality behind
appearances,” but focusing on the abstract claim misses the substantively
different aspects of reality that are involved and the different approaches to
the world. Thus, the senses in which they deal with “appearances” remain
distinct. The same terms may be employed in mysticism and in discussions
of science, but this does not mean that mystics and scientists are discussing
the same thing.
Similarly, the unity of being in depth-mysticism must be distinguished
from the unity of structures in a scientific “search for unity.” Any scientific
unity unifies apparently different structures, while in mysticism the oneness
of being has no parts to unify. These two concepts cannot be conflated:
mysticism is neutral on the question of whether scientists can reduce the
levels of structure to only one level, since the mystics’ concern is the
oneness of being, not the possible oneness or plurality of such structures as
electromagnetism and gravity. Mystics do not aim at a more comprehensive
unification than scientists or pursue a Grand Unified Theory (contra Weber
1986: 10) but deal with the oneness of a different aspect of reality. The
physicist David Bohm says, “The mystic sees in matter an immanent
principle of unity,” but he is referring to structures, not beingness, and he
admits that “some mystics” go beyond matter to the transcendent (ibid.:
144). In some mystical metaphysics, there is one source of all reality
(hence, of both being and structures), and thus a deeper unity than in
science, but this is still only a matter of the number of structures at work in
the natural world. In short, any “Theory of Everything” in physics would be
irrelevant to the mystics’ concern. Physicists are simply not doing what
mystics are doing. Perhaps if scholars used “identity of being” when
discussing such mystical systems as Advaita and not “unity” (which
suggests a unification of diverse parts), fewer people would be misled
concerning “oneness.”
Consciousness figures prominently in both mindfulness and depth-
mysticism, but what mystics say about the nature of consciousness has
nothing in common with its alleged role in one interpretation of particle
physics. Nothing mystics say suggests that consciousness is one causal
force among other forces operating within the universe on the quantum
level or any other level. For mindfulness mystics, we create illusory
“entities” in the everyday world by erroneously separating off parts of the
flux of reality with our analytical minds; it is a matter of our everyday
perceptions and beliefs and has nothing to do with the idea that
consciousness is a possible causal factor in physical events. Depth-
mysticism also has no parallel. For Advaitins, consciousness is an inactive
search light, not an agent acting within the world in any sense.
Consciousness is not one element in the universe but is the only reality: it is
not a causal energy in the material realm that could interact with other
things in the “dream” realm—consciousness cannot interact with what is
“unreal” (matter), nor does it have structure or parts that could interact with
each other. Even claiming “all is consciousness” may be misleading: it
would naturalize Brahman into a field of conscious energy in the “dream”
world in which we all participate, and this goes against the Advaita tenet
that Brahman cannot be any type of object among objects or anything
experiencable as an objectified reality. It is not that mystics go further than
physicists on observation—what depth-mystics are claiming is
fundamentally different from any alleged interaction of the observer and
observed in particle physics or on another level. Perhaps if scientists
referred more to “quantum measurement” rather than “quantum
observation,” fewer New Age advocates would see consciousness as
playing a role in quantum physics.
Nothing in mysticism suggests that mystics experience what physicists
postulate. Mysticism remains exclusively a matter of directly experiencing
the beingness of phenomena: the that-ness of everyday phenomena in
extrovertive mysticism and the source of the beingness of the self or all
everyday phenomena in introvertive mysticism. Mystical experiences may
affect our brain wiring and thus how we experience the environment that we
have evolved in, but absolutely nothing in the writings of the classical
masters remotely suggests that such experiences realize quantum-level
events or that through meditation mystics realize that energy comes in
discrete packets (“quanta”)—contra the undivided unity of depth-mysticism
or the borderlessness of phenomena in extrovertive mysticism, or any other
scientific item.14 At best, one could claim that depth-mystics experience a
Russellian “neutral monism” that is the source of both matter and mind;
they do not access particles on the quantum level or anything else about the
quantum level of organization. (And Advaitins would object that this would
make Brahman’s “dream” an objective reality.) Nor did any Buddhist
connect space with time in their analyses. Indeed, nothing in the Buddhist
teachings would predict that time is connected to space. Theravada
Buddhists in fact exempt space (akasha), but not time, from being
“constructed” (samskrita) (Anguttara Nikaya 1.286)—i.e., it is unaffected
by anything else. This makes space as independent and absolute as is
possible within their metaphysics and precludes any encompassing holism.
In classical Indian culture, space is a substance pervading the world, but it
is not the source of anything else—it is not any type of “field” connecting
everything with everything else, or out of which entities appear; rather, it is
a separate element. Nor do introvertive mystics connect space with time. It
is possible to see Brahman as an experiencable noumenon, although it
would be a featureless and structureless noumenon, but nothing suggests
that introvertive mystics experience the differentiated and extended “four-
dimensional space-time continuum” of relativity theory or the “ground
manifold state” out of which quantum phenomena emerge and are
reabsorbed—the “space-time manifold” is no more “pure beingness” than is
an object in the everyday world, since according to physicists it too is
differentiated and structured.
It is not only that different states of consciousness are involved.
Mystics do not directly experience the same “truth” that scientists arrive at
tentatively or approximately through the route of theory and measurement.
Mystics do not reach a fundamental structure of reality while scientists fail
to do so. Each endeavor, if each is in fact cognitive, reaches something
fundamentally real but different: mystics experience unmediated beingness
or its source; scientists will discover the one fundamental physical level of
structure, or, under antireductionism, physicists and nonphysicists discover
multiple equally fundamental levels of structuring. Each pursues the depth
of a dimension of reality but not the same dimension. Neither is reducible to
the other. And whether there is a common source to both structure and
being or whether one in fact is more fundamental than the other in some
respect cannot be answered by scientific analysis or mystical experiences.
The contents of science and mysticism will always remain distinct
since they diverge in the substance of their claims, and thus their theories
and ideas can never converge into one new set of theories replacing theories
in either science or mysticism. Thus, neither endeavor can replace or
incorporate the other. Nor do extrovertive mystical claims about the
impermanence and interconnectedness of the experienced everyday realm
in any way validate or verify or falsify scientific theories about underlying
structures. Conversely, scientific analysis is fundamentally nonmystical in
nature, with its focus on how the differentiated parts of nature affect each
other. For this reason, there can be no integration of science and mysticism
into one new, more comprehensive science—a new “integrated science of
nature” (contra Weber 1986: 1–19). No “collaborative effort” (contra
Zajonc 2004: 7) is possible because of their disparate subjects, let alone a
“synthesis,” “fusion,” or “conceptual unification” of the two endeavors.

Science and Mystical Metaphysics

Since science and mysticism involve different ways of knowing and
different aspects of reality, there should in principle be no conflicts between
them.15 But the situation is complicated by the fact that mysticism involves
more than just cultivating mystical experiences: mystical ways of life
attempt to understand the significance of these experiences by laying out
the general nature of a person, the world, and transcendent realities in order
that mystics may align their lives with reality “as it really is.” The factual
claims within such metaphysics about the person and the world may interact
with scientific theories. This is not an interaction of mystical experiences or
insights with modern science but a matter of the encompassing
metaphysical beliefs of particular mystical traditions. Thus, mysticism and
science as ways of knowing may be totally independent, but the claims
from total mystical ways of life and science about the world are not.16
In general, mystics may show interest in the structures of experiences,
but they show little interest in the physical structures of the experienced
world. For example, Buddhist theorists discuss mental phenomena
extensively, but only in the context of how to end suffering, not out of a
disinterested desire to know the nature of the mind in general. In the
detailed Abhidharmist dharma analysis noted in chapter 5, the focus is on a
phenomenology of consciousness to help clear the mind of obstacles in
order to achieve the desireless state, not on a scientific analysis of the
world. That there is little interest in the material world is revealed by the
fact that in the Sarvastivada tradition, the closest concept to
“matter”—“form” (rupa)—is only one of seventy-five factors of experience
(dharmas). And even then, “form” relates only to our experience of things
and not to matter in itself or energy; it is about the forms that we directly
experience, not any possible substance behind them. By naming things, we
give what is actually real a form—hence, the common phrase for the
physical world: “name and form (nama-rupa).” Classical mystics in general
simply do not express any intellectual curiosity about understanding matter
or identifying the structures at work in the world or devising explanations
of such structures, which makes perfect sense in light the mystics’ interest
in an aspect of reality not amenable to scientific analysis.
Most often, mystical traditions also adopt ideas from the encompassing
religious traditions and the culture of their society and era. For example,
Hindu and Buddhist mystics adopted the traditional Hindu cosmology, the
“physics” of earth, water, fire, and air, and also the idea of karma and
rebirth. Daoists similarly adopted the standard Chinese cosmology, with the
Way ordering the constant flux of things. With the presence of such
metaphysics in mystical ways of life about the general nature of the natural
world, ideas from different mystical systems do enter the same arena as
science, and this creates the possibility that a particular scientific theory and
the doctrines of a particular mystical tradition will agree or conflict.
Different mystical traditions advance beliefs about the structures related to
the mind and human beings (in particular, on the nature of consciousness
and on something in us that survives death), and these may agree or conflict
with specific scientific theories in neuroscience. The historical sciences—
cosmology, geology, evolution—may present specific problems for the
creation myths of different religions, and mystical belief-systems will share
any of these problems when these myths are adopted from their
encompassing religions.
However, attempts to create one general worldview for “mysticism and
science” that encompasses both scientific findings and a “mystical view of
things” usually end up twisting both science and mysticism. Advocates of a
thorough holism want particular theories—in particular, a role for
consciousness in physical events—and thus they stand apart from the
current mainstream in physics and neuroscience. So too, they would have to
edit mystical systems. All mystical traditions in their hands become one
unified generic “mystical system.” The diversity of mystical beliefs
throughout history is ignored—either one tradition is deemed the “essence”
or “epitome” of all mysticism, or a “perennial philosophy” becomes a
control belief for how mystical traditions are construed. For all depth-
mystical traditions, all phenomena become manifestations or emanations of
an underlying conscious source. This fits the Upanishads’ emanationism but
not Advaita’s “identity” metaphysics or Samkhya’s dualism of matter and
multiples selves. Extrovertive mystical experiences of beingness also do not
by themselves justify the idea that all things in the universe mutually
influence all other things or bring about each other’s existence or are
mutually interconnected the way the jewels of Indra’s net are. In sum, such
a vision certainly does not express the “true essence” of all mystical
traditions of the world.

Complementarity
Many who see a similarity between mysticism and science in content but a
difference in method or vice versa speak of a “complementarity.” For many,
mysticism is a function of the right hemisphere of the brain and science the
left, so only by utilizing what comes through each separate hemisphere do
we have a “full-brain approach” (rather than the hemispheres working in
tandem). However, difficulties arise here. Mysticism and science do not
separate neatly into different compartments. It is not as if mysticism is
about the “inner world” of consciousness and science is about the “outer
world” of material objects: mystics work on consciousness, but they are
interested in the beingness of all of reality, including the beingness of the
“outer world,” and science is interested in the brain/mind. José Cabezón
elaborates the complementarity position: science deals with the exterior
world, matter, and the hardware of the brain, while Buddhism deals with the
interior world and the mind; science is rationalist, quantitative, and
conventional, while Buddhism is experiential, qualitative, and
contemplative (2003: 50). But he realizes there are limitations: Buddhism is
concerned with the external world, and science can study aspects of the
mind (ibid.: 58). It is also hard to see natural science as “rationalist” rather
than “experiential,” although there is the contrast between the necessary
conceptual element in scientific observations and theorizing versus its
lessening or total absence in mystical experiences. There are also
limitations on any compartmentalization of all elements of mystical ways of
life from science due to mystical ways of life embracing more than mystical
experiences, as just discussed.
The idea of complementarity at least affirms that mysticism and
science involve irreducible differences.17 Each supplies a type of
knowledge the other is missing. Each endeavor has theories that give an
account of reality that is complete in the sense that it covers one aspect of
all of reality, but the accounts are of different dimensions of reality. Since
they involve different dimensions in their core claims, they are logically
independent in their core claims; thus, changes in the claims from one do
not necessitate any changes in the beliefs of the other. Neither mystics nor
scientists need to dismiss the other endeavor. If, however, mystics do reject
science or scientists do reject mysticism, practitioners of either endeavor
would not see their own endeavor as missing something important that the
other supplies. Nothing in either endeavor calls for the other type of
knowledge. Most importantly, classical mystics reject knowledge of the
“differentiations” as truly reflecting anything ultimate about the nature of
reality; thus, attempts at a reconciliation of science and mysticism that
values science as cognitive will be at odds with classical mystical ways of
life.
The most popular way to reconcile mysticism and science as
complements is to claim that mystics are dealing with the “depth” of reality
and scientists with the “surface” of the same aspect of reality. That is,
mystics and scientists are utilizing different approaches to reality, but they
apprehend the same aspect rather than fundamentally different aspects of
the reality of structures versus beingness: mystics simply turn observation
inward and arrive at a deeper level of the same truth that scientists reach
observing external phenomena (e.g., Capra 2000). Since science and
mysticism both lead to the same basic knowledge, people only have to
choose the route that is more suitable to our own disposition and become
either a scientist or mystic—either way, they end up in the same place.
However, advocates of this position do not see its consequence: either
mystics are producing more thorough knowledge of what scientists are
studying—i.e., they get to the root of the same subject that scientists study
and thus are doing a more thorough job than are scientists—or scientists are
examining the same subject as mystics but with more precision. Either way,
one endeavor is superseded: either mysticism’s thoroughness renders
science unnecessary or science’s precision replaces mysticism’s looser
approach. Thus, this position becomes the basis for rejecting either
mysticism or science altogether in the end. So too, since science and
mysticism are achieving the same knowledge through different routes, there
is in fact no reason to bother with the strenuous way of life that serious
mysticism requires: all we have to do is read a few popular accounts of
contemporary physics, cosmology, and biology on complexity or “the unity
of things” and we will know what enlightened mystics know and hence be
enlightened. All that matters is learning a post-Newtonian way of looking at
the world, not experiencing the beingness of reality free of all points of
view. Conversely, by the same reasoning, scientists need not go through the
expense and trouble of conducting elaborate experiments to learn about
structures—mystics have already achieved the same knowledge with even
more thoroughness through their experiences. Mystics already know what
scientists will find on the quantum level of organization in the future, so
there is no need to conduct any more experiments—physicists should shut
down the CERN supercollider and just meditate.
 In sum, if scientists and mystics are studying the same thing and one is
doing a better job, both endeavors are not needed. On the other hand, if
scientists and mystics are studying different aspects of reality that result in
completely different types of knowledge-claims, and if both do in fact
produce knowledge, then both endeavors in the end would be needed for
our fullest knowledge of reality. Together they form a more complete
picture of reality by supplying noncompeting knowledge of different
aspects of reality. It is not as if all we have to do is push further in science
and we will end up mystically enlightened, or push further in mysticism and
we will end up with a “Theory of Everything” for physics and all other
sciences. Scientists, including particle physicists and cosmologists, are not
even investigating areas that “border on the mystical,” but focus on another
aspect of reality altogether. Science and mysticism of course can be said to
have a “common pursuit of truth” and to be “united in the one endeavor of
discovering knowledge about reality,” or both “seek the reality behind
appearances.” But this only places both endeavors into a common, more-
abstract category of being knowledge-seeking activities—it does not mean
that they are pursing the same truths. Both mystics and scientists encounter
aspects of reality that we are not normally aware of, but this is not grounds
for positing any more substantive commonality—the difference in subject-
matter forecloses any greater convergence. Mystics and scientists are
engaging different aspects of reality differently, and for different purposes.
In short, scientists and mystics are doing fundamentally divergent things.
So too, mysticism and science may share a general ideal methodology
—i.e., careful observation, rational analysis, open-mindedness, and having
background beliefs (e.g., Wallace 2003: 1–29).18 But in actual practice, the
divergence in objectives and subject-matter between cultivating mystical
experiences versus scientific measurement and explanation cause very
different implementation of any common abstract general principles. In the
end, the only commonality may be features that any enterprise would have
whose purpose is to discover knowledge of reality and that encounters
things we would not expect from our ordinary experience in the everyday
world—knowledge based on experience, use of metaphors, and so on. The
two endeavors value types of experiences and conceptualizations very
differently, and this alone precludes any deeper convergence in “method.”
 Reconciling Mysticism and Science
If one accepts that science gives knowledge of the structures of reality and
mysticism gives a knowledge of beingness, then reconciling science and
mystical spirituality is a worthy goal: each gives knowledge of a different
but equally real dimension of reality. But a way should be sought that does
not distort them, and thus does not join them in the usual “complementary”
manner (see Jones 2010: chap. 16 for one possible reconciliation). A role
both for our discursive mind and for stilling that mind would be needed:
reason is needed in science (and as discussed in the last chapter, in
mysticism), and the discursive mind involves objectifications in
understanding the structures of reality, but the human mind may also be
capable of experiencing reality free of the activity of the discursive mind in
mystical experiences.
At a minimum, scientific and mystical claims will always be
“harmonious,” “compatible,” and “consistent” on core claims since they are
dealing with different aspects of reality and hence they cannot intersect at
all in their basic claims. In Upanishadic terms, mysticism is a matter of
higher knowledge (para-vidya) and science would be consigned to lower
knowledge (apara-vidya) (Mundaka Up. 1.1.4–6). Basic claims in one
endeavor are simply irrelevant to basic claims in the other—logically, they
cannot converge or conflict even in principle. This makes reconciling
mystical claims and science very simple as long as mystics refrain from
making claims about how the phenomenal world works—e.g., they confine
introvertive claims to a transcendent self or ground of reality that is not an
agent causing particular events in the world. The metaphysics of naturalism
would be ruled out, but nothing from science itself could in principle
present a problem. However, as noted, mystical traditions have metaphysics
in their total ways of life that always reflect more concerns than cultivating
mystical experiences alone. Thus, problems may arise when a religious
tradition’s metaphysics specifies something that conflicts with science—in
particular, with consciousness and with a theistic god who acts in nature.
But such metaphysics do not relate specifically to the mystical experience
of beingness that is central to mysticism.
Thus, because of their differences in concerns, mysticism and science
remain distinct endeavors and basically irrelevant to each other. At best,
there is some overlap on their edges—e.g., science may help reform
mystics’ metaphysical beliefs or show more efficient ways to meditate, and
mystical ideas may suggest new theories to devise and test in science. All
that the theories in different extrovertive mysticisms and the sciences have
in common is a general metaphysics of impermanence and
interconnectedness of the components of reality, not the specifics of any
theories in science or mysticism. Thus, their “common ground” is strictly
on a metaphysical level. Neither endeavor can verify or falsify the other’s
claims. Similarly with introvertive mysticism: introvertive mystics’ claims
involve experiencing something that is neutral to scientific claims.
Nevertheless, this does mean that science does not, as is often claimed
in philosophy, eviscerate mysticism. One can accept theories in each
endeavor—indeed, one can practice both—without any cognitive
dissonance. But this is only because mysticism and science remain distinct
ways of knowing reality.
 9

Mysticism and Morality

Morality doesn’t concern all of our actions and values, but how we deal
with other people. And it not merely a matter of conforming to a tradition’s
code of conduct, but of why we act as we do: to be moral, our actions must
be other-regarding, i.e., we must consider the welfare of the people on
whom our actions impinge and not merely our own interests. (See Jones
2004: 21–47 for this and other requirements of morality.) We need not be
exclusively other-regarding to be moral: we need not be a saint, a hero, or
even overly altruistic—we can advance our own interests and still be moral
as long as other-regardingness is a genuine part of our motives for acting.
But if we act only out of self-interest, our actions are not deemed moral, no
matter how beneficial their effects might be to others. Thus, motivation and
intentions, and not just actions themselves, matter in a moral assessment.1
Some scholars argue that mysticism is the source of our sense of
morality, or that mystics are necessarily moral, or even that only mystics are
truly moral or compassionate since only they have escaped all self-
centeredness (e.g., Radhakrishnan 1948ab, 1951; Stace 1960a: 323–33). But
how could those who devote their lives to their own enlightenment not be
considered anything but selfish? Can the selflessness of mystical
enlightenment even be filled with an other-regarding concern? Indeed, some
have argued that mysticism and morality are not compatible (e.g.,
Schweitzer 1936; Danto 1987). Or may all mystical experiences be morally
neutral? Do the beliefs and values of mystical ways of life come from
mystical experiences or from the mystics’ particular religious tradition? The
emphasis on individuals’ cultivation and experiences also presents an issue:
is mysticism necessarily asocial and apolitical? Must mystics be antinomian
regarding the ethical code of their tradition—i.e., do they lack any interest
in maintaining social norms, or do some mystics even intentionally go
against them? Even when their acts have positive social effects, does their
inner focus change their moral status? What are we to make of Mahatma
Gandhi’s answer when asked why he was helping some poor villagers: “I
am here to serve no one else but myself, to find my own self-realisation
through the service of these village-folks,” adding “My national service is
part of my training for freeing my soul from the bondage of flesh. Thus
considered, my service may be regarded as purely selfish” (Chander 1947:
375).
The philosophical issues surrounding mystical interpersonal actions
have typically been neglected or entirely screened out of scholars’ field of
vision. The usual level of analysis is that if mystics follow a code of
conduct, it is assumed that they must be moral, or that anything connected
to a religious summum bonum is by definition moral—most scholars do not
even see an issue here to discuss. All mystical traditions of course have
codes of conduct, normative ideals, and exemplars of conduct that cover
both actions toward other people and personal inner self-development.
Creating such codes may be a universal feature of human cultures. Scholars
routinely present the codes and ideals of religious ways of life, but
surprisingly few discuss the issue of why these are followed—in particular,
whether the codes are followed for selfish motives or out of a genuine
concern for the welfare of the people with whom mystics interact. Are we
simply to assume that because we value morality, codes and ideals are
always being followed out of a genuine concern for other people? Or may
people instead be being treated simply as means for a practitioner’s own
spiritual advancement, even if the people being affected are not actually
harmed? For example, do the religious donate to help others, or only to earn
merit for themselves? Consider the curious case of Burmese Buddhists
donating huts for a monk because he was so austere that he refused to live
in any hut (see Jones 2004: 3, 161–62): only the donors themselves
benefitted from their gifts by gaining merit for themselves since no one uses
the huts—indeed, the huts were built precisely because the monk would not
live in them. And are we also to assume that the factual beliefs entailed by
adherence to any code cannot conflict with the factual presuppositions
necessary for moral conduct? It is obviously easier to deal only with the
codes recorded in a tradition’s texts than to look at the “inside” of mystical
actions (a mystic’s intentions and motives for following a code), but it is
only by actually examining the latter that we can determine whether a
person is moral or not. Since motive and intention matter, we need a “thick”
description of explicit and implicit mystical beliefs and values, not merely
“thin” descriptions of cultural ethical codes and lists of virtues. The
presence or absence of such moral emotions as sympathy and compassion
also becomes relevant.

The Basic Question of Compatibility

Mysticism involves attaining certain experiences related to the beingness of
reality; so are all mystical ways of life totally unrelated to any social
concerns, including morality? Morality involves “horizontal” worldly
relationships between people, while mysticism involves an ontic “vertical”
orientation to being—so how can the two intersect? The transcendent
realities allegedly experienced in introvertive mystical experiences present
basic problems. If these realities are in fact beyond all attributes from the
phenomenal world, including moral values, how are action-guides such as
“love your neighbor as yourself” grounded in that reality? So too, desiring
good and abhorring evil are attachments, but enlightened mystics are free of
all attachments—so are they not “beyond good and evil” and indifferent to
all worldly values? The only this-worldly change that matters is the inner
remaking of oneself—does that not mean that the rest of the world must be
ignored? Thus, do mystics remain “other-worldly” and “world-denying,”
ignoring all this-worldly concerns and values as irrelevant? How can
mystics possibly value anything in the realm of multiplicity at all? Are
other persons worthy of respect? Do not mystics now see others as merely
manifestations of God or Brahman and thus not as fully human or capable
of truly suffering or really being helped? Do not mystical experiences
reveal everything in the world to be “perfect” simply as it is?
Mystical cultivation raises certain issues. The virtues to be cultivated
are those that help a practitioner reach enlightenment, not necessarily those
that are morally good. Enlightenment is the determining value. Thus,
mystics cannot be deemed moral simply because they are on the path to
enlightenment—only their other-regardingness would establish that, not
their being mystical. What is mystically “good” is what leads to
selflessness, not necessarily a concern for others. This reduces “good” and
“bad” to nonmoral senses: what is “good” is what is advantageous to us in a
quest for enlightenment, and what is “bad” is what hinders us. Selfishness is
mystically wrong because it puts us out of step with reality, not because of
any moral concern for others. Thus, we should not be selfish only because
selfishness hinders us—other people have no claim, as morality requires.
The resulting enlightened states present another set of issues. Even if
practitioners are moral on the path, need they be moral in the enlightened
state? Is the ethos of morality internalized and thus informing their actions?
Or is morality part of the unenlightened point of view, to be jettisoned once
one has attained enlightenment? Conversely, if mystics are nonmoral on the
path, how can they be moral in the enlightened state? There are four
possibilities: (1) mystics on the path are immoral or nonmoral, cultivating
their own self-development, but the resulting selflessness in the enlightened
state produces a spontaneous burst of concern for others and thus a life of
moral activity; (2) mystics are immoral or nonmoral on the path, and the
enlightened cannot act selfishly (since they have no sense of self), but are
nonmoral and have merely fully internalized whatever nonenlightened
value-system they happen to have been following on the path; (3) mystics
are moral on the path, but morality is only a part of the illusory dualistic
world that is to be transcended, and thus its value and its factual
presuppositions are bypassed in enlightenment, and so the mystics are again
nonmoral; or (4) morality is cultivated on the path and is fully internalized
in the enlightened life, and so the enlightened are now completely moral.
Since morality is valued so highly in the West today, scholars who have
been raised here may see only the fourth or perhaps the first possibility and
simply assume without any examination that the enlightened too must be
moral. Alternatively, they may dismiss all mysticism out of hand as morally
scandalous.
Both factual and axiological issues arise: do the enlightened have the
factual presuppositions that make morality possible, and are they other-
regarding? It is not obvious that either condition is fulfilled. For example, if
all of this world is in any sense unreal, why do any actions matter? Or, if
everything is God or Brahman, again why do any actions matter, or why
does anyone matter? We could not hurt or help an unreal individual
“person” even if we wanted to since they are not real, nor could we hurt or
help a transcendent reality since it cannot be affected. Or, if the enlightened
believe they have no self, how can they be concerned with other, equally
nonexistent “selves”? Or even if such a concern were possible, why be
concerned for others? If the enlightened simply let things be, being neither
attracted nor repelled by anything, how can they show moral concern for
the state of others? If the enlightened are not driven by any purpose but act
spontaneously without attachments, how could they be moral?
However, perhaps one can be both mystical and moral at the same
time. Mystics on the path need not treat others merely as means for their
own mystical advancement—a genuine concern for others would work to
weaken one’s self-centeredness and thus could be incorporated into a
mystical way of life as a mystical virtue. And, as discussed below, in the
enlightened state a sense of selflessness is also compatible with a concern
for equally empty other beings. Whether particular mystical belief-systems
and value-systems in enlightened states conflict with the presuppositions of
morality is an issue for investigation. We cannot settle these issues as
matters of definition. Nor can we magically make mystical traditions moral
simply by translating terms like “dharma” and “shila” as “morality.”
Instead, we need to examine specific mystical ways of life, both on the path
and in the enlightened state. The central questions are whether the
enlightened’s factual beliefs conflict with the presuppositions for the
practice of morality, and whether the value-systems of a mystical tradition
are in fact adopted for other-regarding reasons.
And when various mystical traditions are examined (see Jones 2004:
79–298), we can see that there is no one simple relation of all mysticism to
morality. The terrain of mysticism and morality is more complex than is
indicated by the stereotype of the peace-loving, celibate, mystic sitting
serenely in self-absorbed meditation. Morality can be part of the self-
cultivation that is central to a path to enlightenment, but it need not be.
Mystics can be moral (clear examples being the Buddha, Mahayana
bodhisattvas, and orthodox Christians) or immoral (as with “left-handed”
Tantrikas still on the path2). So too, mystics can be “selfish” even without
the belief in a permanent entity called “a self”: one can still be immoral by
trying to enhance the well-being of one’s impermanent node in the web of
the universe at the expense of other nodes. Thus, pursuing selfishness is not
rendered irrational by the lack of a metaphysical belief in a self. Or one can
be nonmoral: immorality requires knowingly harming others, while
nonmorality involves adopting values other than immoral ones but being
indifferent to the welfare of others. That is, mystics are necessarily less self-
oriented, but they need not be other-oriented. One can be nonmoral in
valuing one’s own quest for enlightenment above all else and ignoring
others, but still not intentionally or knowingly harming others with one’s
other-impinging actions (as with Theravada Buddhists).
Mystics’ beliefs can lead to inaction (as with the enlightened ideal in
Jainism and the chief option under Advaita), but not all mystics embrace the
passivity and moral quietism of “holy indifference” toward others. Quieting
the mind and will and becoming “resigned” to whatever God does does not
necessarily lead to moral indifference: a mystic can see his or her activity as
reflecting the “will of God,” and if the mystic sees God as moral this will be
reflected in actions. Indeed, many mystics (including Meister Eckhart) were
very active in society or in administering their religious institutions:
Plotinus was an arbitrator, a guardian of orphans, and planned a city;
Catherine of Siena administered a hospital; John of the Cross helped build
an aqueduct. Even the “quietist” Francois Fenelon was an effective bishop.
Teresa of Avila reformed her Carmelite order and founded new houses.3
Mystics’ actions need not be nonviolent but may in fact appear to the
unenlightened to be very harmful, as with Arjuna’s actions in the
Bhagavad-gita’s war. Mystics can be indifferent to the entire natural realm
(as with Advaita), or concerned with society (as with the Bhagavad-gita
and political Daoism). Moral mystics’ aid to others may be in terms of this-
worldly, material well-being (as epitomized by the Christian Eckhart
valuing giving a cup of soup to the sick over remaining in a mystical
experience [1981: 258]), or in terms of “other-worldly” aid in helping
others escape this realm entirely (as with the enlightened bodhisattvas). The
same basic worldview can ground both a nonmoral ethos and a moral one
(as with Buddhism). A conflict with morality may be a matter of values (as
with Theravada Buddhism and Advaita) or of the factual presuppositions of
morality (as with Advaita).4
In sum, Steven Katz may well represent most Western scholars today
when he says: “it is difficult to find any major mystical figures, or mystical
traditions, that can be said to preach moral indifference, and certainly none
preach immorality” (1992b: 254). But those who have studied mysticism in
detail will agree that no all mystics “preach” morality. Rather, they will
agree with Jeffrey Kripal that the historical record of immoral mystics
cannot be written off as a matter of “perversions,” “abuses,” or
“exceptions” in order to preserve mysticism as a matter of “pure mystical
experience,” and that that also trivializes the pain and suffering of human
beings who suffered at the hand of immoral mystics (2002a: 53–55). This
variety of relationships of mysticism to morality raises the issue of whether
mystical cultivation or mystical experiences in fact have any particular
impact on morality at all. First, consider mystical experiences. Does any
extrovertive or introvertive theistic or nontheistic mystical experience
contribute anything to morality? Or are they morally neutral? During sitting
exercises or other passive forms of meditation or during an introvertive
mystical experience, one is obviously incapable of interpersonal action of
any sort and thus cannot act in a moral way, but do the experiences have a
value-component (moral or otherwise) informing a mystic’s encompassing
way of life outside those experiences? If not, what is the role of mystical
experiences when a mystic adopts the ethics of a way of life?

Are Mystics Necessarily Moral?

Walter Stace presented the classic mystical theory of morality. Mystical
experiences are the empirical, if not logical, justification of our moral
values since they are the human experiences out of which moral feelings
flow (1960a: 323; 1960b: 27). That is, the sense of separate individual
selves produces the egoism that is the source of conflict, grasping,
aggressiveness, selfishness, hatred, cruelty, malice, and other forms of evil;
this sense is abolished in the mystical consciousness in which all
distinctions are annulled (1960a: 324). Moral values arise out of mystical
experiences that have their source in the One or the Universal Self that is
the foundation of the world (ibid.: 326). Love and sympathy result from the
incipient and partial breaking down of the barriers that the sense of separate
selves has erected; when this breakdown is complete, it leads to the sense of
the identity of “I” and “you”—thus, love is a dim groping toward the
disappearance of individuality in the Universal Self that is part of the
essence of mysticism (ibid.: 329). Feelings of love and compassion are
components, or necessary and immediate accompaniments, of mystical
experiences. This is in fact the only source from which love flows into the
world (ibid.: 327). Obviously not all people are moral, but some faint
mystical sense is latent in all people (and perhaps animals) that influences
their feelings without their knowing or understanding it; without this sense,
there could be no such thing as love or even kindly feeling in human life,
and life would be a wholly unmitigated Hobbesian war of all against all, for
there is no rival nonmystical source of morality (ibid.: 324–25). So too, not
all mystics revel in their own experiences, but some are great workers in the
world (ibid.: 334–35).
The idea that breaking down a sense of self-centeredness in a mystical
experience leads to a sense of sympathy for others is certainly plausible.
But whether this is the origin of our sense of morality is another issue.
Evolutionary psychologists offer a theory of an evolutionary origin of
morality based on group survival. Another theory is that the moral sense is
innate in human beings. Evidence of this is that babies begin to cry when
they hear other babies crying. This empathy occurs even within a few days
of birth, and thus well before they learn to speak and before they reach the
“mine, mine, mine!” stage in which they develop a sense of an independent
self. The same holds later for wanting to share. This suggests that sympathy
and a sense of connectedness are innate, being both prelinguistic and pre-
enculturation in origin. (Of course, selfish behaviour shows that any innate
moral sense can be overcome.) And if a moral sense arises later in life—
e.g., in the parent/child relation, or simply out of the social need for people
living together to find some way for everyone to survive and prosper. Such
approaches would lead us to doubt that mystical consciousness is the source
of morality.
Equally important, not all enlightened mystics become moral, and thus
Stace’s theory of the historical origin of morality is hard to defend: there
would be nothing in an enlightened mystic’s mind emptied by a mystical
experience to impede a reversion to an innate moral state if it were the
source of morality and if morality is a necessary part of mystical states. Nor
does other-regardingness require that we abolish all self-centeredness with a
mystical experience. So too, one can be concerned with the welfare of
others without any feeling of love arising from the experienced sense of
selflessness. The nonmystical and the nonreligious can adopt a moral stance
based on no more than our common humanity or the fact that all sentient
animals suffer. Upon witnessing an execution, Leo Tolstoy said he needed
no more to conclude that nothing could ever convince him that killing a
human was right—he said that he understood that it was wrong, not with his
mind, but with his whole being. The development of moral maturity from
childhood to adulthood is often said to involve becoming less and less self-
centered and adopting more and more inclusive points of view—no
mystical experience is needed for that process to occur. This can be
extended to humanity as a whole through thought alone. One can adopt on
purely intellectual grounds a form of utilitarianism in which one values the
majority. In China, Mozi’s “universal love” is not based on any experience,
but on the belief that the radical impartiality of treating all people equally
reflects the actions of heaven/nature (tian). Indeed, animal rights advocates
would extend morality to animals for nonmystical reasons (e.g., simply
because animals feel pain).
And even if mystical experiences were the origin of our sense of
concern for others, the problem that not everyone who has had a mystical
experience is moral persists. As Agehananda Bharati asserts, isolated
mystical experiences will not change an immoral and self-indulgent or
antisocial person into a moral one—in particular, the depth “zero-
experience” is a mode of consciousness that has no moral value or
implication (1976: 74–75)—if one was a stinker before the depth mystical
experience, one may remain so after it (ibid.: 53). The zero-experience does
not entail any beliefs or actions, although mystics typically believe the
experience legitimates and validates their tradition’s teachings (ibid.: 69).
Selfishness does not automatically fall away. An isolated experience of
selflessness may not change a person’s negative psychological
characteristics, but may in fact increase his or her sense of self-importance
and pride. Indeed, any narcissistic view of oneself may be reinforced or
even enhanced. The sense that one has been graced by God may increase a
sense of self-importance. R. C. Zaehner also points out that a connection
between mystical consciousness and loving action is not inevitable (1972,
1974a, 1974b, 1974c).5 A momentary experience of “cosmic
consciousness” will not necessarily make one either a religious or a moral
saint. Nor does mastering breathing techniques or other meditative
exercises have any bearing on one’s values.
Being a mystical genius may require a change in character in a way
that greatness in other fields does not, but an active moral life need not be
part of it. Breaking down the sense of self may lead to release from
inhibitions and thus to the libertine indulgence of desires under the guise of
God’s will, as with antinomians, or to giving oneself over totally to an
immoral political cause such as Nazism. After cracking the sense of self,
Charles Manson followed a murderous path based on the belief “If God is
one, what is bad?” Or consider the morally questionable “perfect masters”
common in the West today. Followers of the Buddhist Chogyam Trungpa
Rinpoche had no problem with his open drunkenness and sexual
exploitation of followers. They considered him “deeply realized” and saw
no incompatibility of the two sides of his life: his apparent selfish
exploitation of his followers was merely his way of breaking down their
sense of self. So too, the sexual promiscuity and violence of Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh’s followers is well documented.6
In sum, a mystical experience of selflessness need not alter one’s
character or make one who is not already moral moral. This strongly
suggests that the source of a moral sense does not lie in these experiences.
Rather, one becomes moral for reasons other than mystical experiences. The
moral mystics Stace cited are all instances of mystics who cultivated a
moral way of life on the path to the enlightened state or otherwise
developed in moral religious traditions. But mystical training also need not
be moral: the self-restraints of Theravada Buddhist cultivation result in no
harm to others, but the motive for following them is not other-regardingness
but only one’s own spiritual self-development (Jones 2004: 149–79). One
may not advance on any mystical path by acting selfishly at the expense of
others, but one may simply be indifferent to the suffering of others, as with
the Theravada monks who ignored the suffering of their fellow monks,
literally stepping over the sick to get to the Buddha until the Buddha made a
special rule against doing that. There may also be no desire to engage
others, positively or negatively.
Stace conceded that not all mystics are moral but insisted that the
“ideal” and “complete” mystical experience—breaking down the barrier of
“I” and “you” into one whole—is necessarily moral (1960a: 340–41).
Perhaps we can dismiss mystical teachers who exploit or mistreat their
followers or otherwise act selfishly as being unenlightened (i.e., as not
having successfully overcome all sense of self), no matter what their
followers believe. Nevertheless, the fact remains that some major mystics,
such as Shankara, have adopted clearly nonmoral values and factual beliefs
that conflict with morality and that justify only indifference (Jones 2004:
94–114). If love is given in the depth-mystical experience, why did
Shankara not emphasize it? His nonmorality is especially telling since he
was at least indirectly influenced by the moral Mahayana Buddhism
through his line of teachers. Thus, while mystical experiences are
compatible with morality and may well be seen by some mystics as the
source of their moral concern, one still cannot argue that the experiences are
necessarily moral when the belief-claims and value-claims of some major
mystics do not justify a life of service to others. Obviously, Stace risks
arguing in a circle here—i.e., making morality a criterion for what counts as
the “highest” or “best” mystical experience, and then concluding that in its
essence, mysticism contains the love that is the ultimate motivation for all
good deeds (1960a: 340).
G. William Barnard also argues that becoming loving and
compassionate is the normal result of a mystical experience, and that those
who are not moral have distorted the basic insight of love (Barnard &
Kripal 2002: 78–90). He argues that the enlightened typically do not feel
that they have license to murder babies, and thus that morality is the normal
product of mystical experiences. However, he does not differentiate the
“nonmoral” from the “immoral,” grouping them together under the heading
of “amoral.” This permits him to cite the general lack of antinomian
“anything goes” indulgence as evidence that the “true” mystical experience
is moral (since being moral then would be the only alternative to being
immoral). But even if mystics are only rarely immoral, the possibility of the
enlightened being simply indifferent to the suffering of others cannot be
ruled out. We cannot argue that just because one extreme is wrong
(“Immorality is the norm in mysticism”) that the other extreme must be
right (“Morality is the norm”), when there is a third possibility: aligning
one’s life with reality and being indifferent to the welfare of others.
Believing one is beyond the obligations of social regulations need not mean
that one must then be committing harmful, immoral, or antisocial acts. The
enlightened may not harm others for personal gain (since all sense of ego is
ended), but they may still be nonmoral and unconcerned with the suffering
of others. Mystics may also be as indifferent as the skeptic Pyrrho who,
when he saw his teacher fall into a swamp, simply walked by. The beliefs
and values advocated in Shankara’s writings are a prime instance of this
third possibility. It is difficult to argue that mystical experiences are
pregnant with moral action in light of that, and certainly Barnard cannot cite
the general lack of immoral excesses to rule out the third option.
Indifference is perfectly consistent with a sense of selflessness, and it is
hard to argue based on comparative mysticism (rather than from theological
convictions) that indifference must be an aberration or distortion, or that
any of the three options is the norm. Only if an overwhelming percentage of
mystics trained in a tradition that did not emphasize morality were in fact
moral could we argue that moral mysticism is the norm and nonmorality
and immorality are aberrations. (And today such research would be
compromised by an emphasis on morality in cultures generally.)
In short, we cannot simply assume, as those raised in a Christian
culture might, that if all selfishness is removed, love will automatically
burst forth, as if that is the true human condition. If the depth-mystical
experience is free of all content, as at least some major mystics of all
traditions (including Christians such as Eckhart) assert, this mystical
experience must itself be neutral on the issue of morality since no value is
given. Such mystical experiences are not imbued with the moral sense and
thus cannot make an indifferent experiencer moral. Someone with no
inclination to be compassionate before the experience will not magically be
made compassionate.7 Thus, there is no reason to think that compassion is
the real base state of enlightenment based on these experiences, and no
reason to think that other reactions are distortions. The explanation of why
some mystics are moral, some nonmoral, and some immoral must lie
outside these experiences. If a Christian sets out on a long strenuous life of
training to become more loving, a depth-mystical experience will no doubt
be seen in those terms and make him or her more loving, but any change of
character will come from previous training, not the depth-mystical
experiences. So too, the fact that “love-mysticism” entered the Abrahamic
traditions after “knowledge-mysticism” is more likely the result of new
considerations and factors in the religious traditions, not the appearance of a
new type of mystical experience.
Theistic mystical experiences may seem more promising since they
involve a felt sense of being loved. But whether theists can claim that these
experiences are inherently moral is open to doubt. (It would be odd to argue
that some theistic mystical experiences are distinctively “moral mystical
experiences” but others are not, since this would mean that God granted
specifically moral experiences to only some people and not to others.)
There are antinomian and libertine traditions in all the Abrahamic religions
that deny the authority of both civil laws and even the commands of God
and that espouse that the religion’s virtues are no longer needed. Among
Sufis, the love of God became so absolute that nothing else could be loved,
and divine commands had to be disobeyed as a distraction (Aminrazavi
1995: 20). And if the transcendent ground has one value, it has not always
been manifested in the world by Christians in ways we would deem moral.
Some great medieval Christian mystics, such as Bernard of Clairvaux,
supported activities of dubious morality, including the Inquisition and the
Crusades. Jan van Ruusbroec could advocate burning heretics at the stake
(1985: 143 n.18).
Thus, the felt sense of being loved does not always translate into a
moral concern for others. Even feeling an overwhelming presence of an all-
encompassing love does not necessarily lead to an active life of loving
others—one could just as easily rest basking in the love, concluding that
this realm is not real, that there is nothing to fear in whatever happens, and
that since one’s own suffering is no longer important to oneself, then neither
is anyone else’s suffering important. This leads to a second general
problem: even if mystics did discover sympathy or any other sense of
concern for others through an experience of selflessness, the issue of
morality remains. Morality requires action, not merely other-regarding
emotions. Theravada Buddhist monks stop with a feeling of sympathy in
their meditative exercises—their experiences do not compel them to
perform actual compassionate actions helping others. Thus, one can have
sympathy resulting from experiences of selflessness without any resulting
action, and morality requires the latter. Compassion (karuna) in Mahayana
Buddhism and Christian love (agape), on the other hand, involve matters of
action, not merely emotions of sympathy or empathy.
In sum, it is hard to argue, in light of the evidence from mystics around
the world, that love is necessarily given in mystical experiences or that
moral action is compelled and thus that these experiences justify morality.
Certainly it is only on theological grounds that orthodox Christianity can
claim to set the “true values” of all mysticism. And even in theistic
traditions there is no necessary connection of mystical experiences to a
moral concern for others. An implosion of the ground of reality does not
necessarily lead to an explosion of moral action. Religious values from
sources other than mystical experiences play a determining role in one’s
ethical commitments.

Mystical Selflessness and the Presuppositions of Morality

Arthur Danto presented a version of the opposite claim from Stace’s—that
mystical experiences are in fact logically incompatible with being moral
(1987). He focused on the way traditional Asian mystical factual beliefs
might conflict with the factual presuppositions of morality.8 Two such
presuppositions in particular are a problem: the need for a moral agent and
the need for a reality toward which one can act morally. (For more on the
factual presuppositions of morality, see Jones 2004: 25–27.) Danto was not
arguing that the Asian factual beliefs are false—his is only the logical point
that if they are true, then morality is rendered inoperative; if we see reality
according to these Asian traditions, morality is no longer a possible concern
because there are no real moral agents or real persons to be morally
concerned with. Thus, we cannot adopt the classical Asian factual beliefs
and be moral.
Advaita Vedanta does exemplify Danto’s position. Its factual belief
that Brahman is the only reality closes the space necessary for the moral
concern of one real person for another real person to operate. How can one
be moral if there is no real person to be moral toward? Morality requires a
distinction between oneself and another to help—otherwise one is only
helping oneself, which is not a moral motive. But the liberated see no such
distinctions. All that is real is a transcendent, unaffectable, and one
brahman/atman. There are no real individuals whose suffering could
concern us. Thus, there is nothing real that could make a moral demand on
us. Even though actions are apparently possible, the realm of
differentiations is reduced to a realm of illusion, and along with it so is a
possible moral concern for other parts of the illusion: we would have no
more concern for parts of an illusion than we would for the fate of the
characters in our dream. The lengths that some will go to try to reconcile
Advaita with morality is shown by Rajendra Prasad (2009): he admits the
conflict of Advaita’s metaphysics with the practice of morality but argues
that the unenlightened should be intellectually dishonest and simply ignore
what they accept as true (the metaphysics of oneness) and pretend the
phenomenal world is real. But the other major Asian mystical traditions do
not adopt a nondualistic metaphysics cum illusionism with regard to the
phenomenal world, and none support Danto’s claim. These traditions grant
sufficient reality to the parts of the realm of differentiations to provide for
the possibility of morality. Outside an introvertive mystical experience and
some forms of meditation, the factual beliefs permitting moral choice and
action can be adopted.
Mystical selflessness also presents an issue: if there is no independent
center of reflection and agency—no “self” or “soul”—then how is morality
possible? That is, morality requires a sense of identity and agency, but
mystics achieve selflessness. Our ego (the jiva of Indian mysticism) is seen
as a phenomenal creation that does not correspond to anything real, and the
real transcendent self (the atman in Advaita or purusha in Samkhya) is
changeless and does not act. The true reality of our mental life is seen for
what it is: activity without a controlling center. The issue thus is whether
moral reflection and agency need a center of agency. Buddhists accept the
thinking, perceptions, motives, and feelings associated with agency, even
though they reject an “I” in addition to the “bundle of different
perceptions,” to use David Hume’s phrase. There is a “selfless person”—no
thinker but still the thought. However, it is not clear why an additional
distinct, self-existent entity in this mix is needed to be the controlling agent
for moral responsibility. What would it do that the other elements do not
already do? Certainly reductive materialists in the West today, such as
Daniel Dennett, can accept agency without an agent (a “self”) that controls
the mix. All that morality requires for agency is a mental capacity to think,
to choose, to will, and to act accordingly—it does not entail a commitment
to any metaphysical entities. And of the major Asian mystical traditions
only Advaita is committed to a belief-claim that conflicts with that by
making the content of the phenomenal realm no more than a dream.9
This also bears on the second problem: whether there is a reality
toward which moral concern is possible. Buddhists believe there are
changing collections of phenomena that suffer and can be directed toward
the end of a chain of rebirths, even though they deny any substance or
center to a “person”—there is no “I” who suffers. As William Wainwright
rightly asks, how can we be compassionate toward impersonal objects
(1981: 211–12)? But a permanent core is not needed to be compassionate
toward in the configuration of elements of a “person” (see Jones 2012b:
192–98). To Buddhists, a “person” is “unreal” only in the sense that there is
nothing permanent to us and no ontologically distinct entity—no enduring,
independent center to our mental and physical configuration. The
configuration of impersonal elements constituting a “person” is constantly
changing and void of permanent parts, but it continues through time like a
rope made only of overlapping threads with no single strand running the
full length. The “person” (again, there is no permanent entity corresponding
to our conventional term) does suffer and is trapped in a chain of rebirths,
and the chain can come to an end. In no way do Buddhist mystics reduce
people to impersonal “things” in any morally negative sense—the reality
actually there “has” all the interests and capacity actually to suffer that we
can take into moral consideration. Why we must adopt a metaphysics of
some additional substantive element called a “soul” or “self” to be moral is
again not clear. Mystics may see our concepts as not corresponding to
separate, permanent objects in reality, but the flux of reality still contains
distinguishable eddies, and our conventional terms are still useful in
identifying the differentiations. In sum, there is an appropriate reality for
our moral concern—a configuration “personal” in nature that can suffer,
even if there are no independently existing “persons.”

Emotions, Values, and Beliefs

Danto also raised an issue related, not to the presuppositions of morality,
but to the emotions associated with morality: how can mystical even-
mindedness be compatible with compassion or any other concern with
others? But this objection also has problems. First, even-mindedness relates
only to the mystic’s reaction to the possible effect of an action on him- or
herself, not to the impact on others. Mystics are being even-minded to their
own pain and pleasure—not necessarily to the effect of their actions on
others. Being disinterested in the consequences of one’s actions for oneself
does not require being uninterested in the consequences for others. There
would be an inward emotional passivity and quiet of dispassion, but this
need not mean “quietism” in the sense of the absence of action. Thus, one
can be detached (concerning an action’s effect on oneself) and
compassionate (toward others) at the same time—indeed, it can be argued
that the former is valuable for cultivating other-regardingness. Second,
even-mindedness may lead to a radically impartial other-regardingness
toward all, even if partiality toward one’s own family or friends seems
morally necessary to us. Third, being personally detached in circumstances
where others are emotional may in fact be morally more desirable, even if
one’s actions then come across as cold and almost machinelike.
 Danto also raised the prospect that mystical values are incompatible
with moral ones (1976: 42–45). That is, the evaluative priorities for mystics
always relate to a particular mystical goal, not to moral concerns for others.
In short, the mystics’ transcendent values always take priority over
morality. The goal of life for mystics thus must conflict with morality. The
mystical experience revalues everything: the mystic’s world is so different
from ours that our principles do not apply. All the distinctions we make in
the “dream” are no longer of concern. The enlightened no longer see the
rope as a snake, but see it as it really is, and the unenlightened’s concerns
with the “snake” evaporate. So too with the unenlightened’s morality: once
enlightened, one sees that there are no real “persons” to help, and moral
concerns end. One cannot even speak of a moral dimension to mysticism,
because the possibility of ordering mystical values with unenlightened
moral ones is destroyed.
However, moral values may be part of a mystic’s mystical values.
Remember again that the aim of mysticism is not mystical experiences but a
life aligned with the way reality truly is. If the fundamental reality that a
mystic accepts is deemed a compassionate self-emptying reality, then that
mystic’s enlightened life aligned with that reality will reflect morality. For
the Christian mystics, morality is built into the ground of reality: emulating
the way of God (imitatio dei) means an “active” life of moral action
integrated into a “contemplative” one. So too with Jewish mystics walking
in the ways of God. For Mahayana bodhisattvas, morality is not a matter of
reflecting a transcendent reality; rather, morality is built into the path and
the life of supreme enlightenment (bodhi). Doing good for others may also
help oneself, but that does not make the act selfish. Here, Buddhist
bodhisattvas gain a greater goal than mere enlightenment (nirvana) by
being other-regarding, but they are no less moral because of that. In
Daoism, impartiality and compassion or great humaneness are part of the
Way. None of these mystics’ values are antithetical to morality, and
morality becomes part of both the path and the enlightened life of such
mystics. Thus, merely because mystics try to align their lives with reality
does not mean that morality may not be of supreme value. This may also
lead to altruism, i.e., going beyond the basic requirement of morality to help
others even if one incurs a loss to oneself. Thus, far from mysticism being
necessarily antithetical to morality, morality can become a central value in a
mystical ways of life.
 Thus, none of the points Danto raised show that mystical experiences
necessarily conflict with morality. William Wainwright correctly argues
that, while there are no “logical or epistemic connections” between mystical
consciousness and morality, mysticism is compatible with morality and
there may be significant psychological or social connections between them
(1981: 224–26). One need not be a mystic to be moral or vice versa.
Instead, mystical experiences are compatible with a variety of beliefs and
values. Thus, mystical experiences cannot be said either logically to ground
our sense of morality in the structure of reality or to require beliefs that
preclude morality. They are morally neutral. But mystical selflessness is
compatible with morality and can even increase a mystic’s prior moral
concern for others by extending the range and depth of such a concern.
Thus, mystics’ beliefs, ethical values, and valued emotions are not
necessarily in conflict with morality. Christians routinely claim that the
mystical experiences Christians have are superior to those of others because
Christian mystics are moral, and that the test of a genuine mystical
experience is whether it bears fruit in good works (e.g., Matthew 7: 15–20).
Stace and many other scholars also argue that a mystical experience or a
mystical way of life that is not expressed in moral action is not “authentic,”
“real,” “final,” “complete,” “true,” or “genuine.” For instance, the Hindu S.
N. Dasgupta stated, “There can be no true mysticism without real moral
greatness” (1971: viii). However, any ethical criterion of a “true” mystical
experience or enlightened state must be rejected, since the possibility of
moral indifference is a very real option for mystics. (Other problems with
such a pragmatic test were raised in chapter 3.) That morality and social
concerns are valued cross-culturally in the modern world may account for
these assessments today—we would hold mystics accountable for their
morally significant actions. But not all mystics from all eras and all cultures
reflect our current concerns and values.10
In sum, mystical values are oriented around enlightenment, not
necessarily around moral concern, and while the two sets of values are not
incompatible, they do remain logically independent. Morality can inform a
way of life, but the moral concern for others must come from a source
outside of any mystical experience, as would the specifics on how to help
others. Mystical experiences only get mystics to a state of selflessness—for
that space to be positively filled with other-regardingness, another step is
required. This raises the important question of where the beliefs and values
in a mystical way of life come from (as discussed below).

“You Are That”

As discussed, a metaphysics of absolute oneness would negate the space
necessary to make a moral concern for another possible. And the Advaita
interpretation of the Upanishads’ metaphysics of tat tvam asi—i.e., “You
are that [Brahman]”—conflicts with the presuppositions of moral practice
that there are real individual persons to be concerned and to be concerned
about, and thus the enlightened in Advaita cannot be moral.11 However,
some scholars have defended this metaphysics as moral. Franklin Edgerton
believed noninjury (ahimsa) is logically deducible from the nondualistic
doctrine of the brahman/atman identity: “we injure ourselves when we
injure others since the Self in each of us is identical” (1942: 155; see also
Radhakrishnan 1948a: 208–209; 1951: 101). Paul Deussen saw this identity
as grounding the Golden Rule: you should love your neighbor as yourself
because you are your neighbor (1966: 49).12 (It should be pointed out that
using “tat tvam asi” to ground ethics is foreign to the classical Indian
tradition and that Hinduism does not have a central ideal of “love your
neighbor” [see Hacker 1995].)
This position, however, misconstrues the brahman/atman identity in
two ways. First, that “brahman is atman” does not mean that persons (jivas)
in the phenomenal world are identical to each other. There is no identity of
the surface phenomena within the realm of multiplicity like the morning
star being the evening star. The differences within the “dream” remain
intact—if you have a headache, it does not mean I have one in any way.
Different people and objects are not one in that sense: I am not you, but we
emerge from, or in our beingness are identical to, one unchanging
underlying beingness. The separate ego within the “dream” realm that we
normally identify with is not the reality behind all phenomena. That is, the
underlying beingness is singular, but the “dream” phenomena remain
distinct from each other. Thus, harming you (one jiva in the “dream”) does
not mean that I (another jiva) am necessarily harming myself. Second,
under this interpretation, individuals are not real in any sense. What is in
fact real (Brahman) is unharmable no matter what we do (Katha Up. II.18–
19). In no way do you harm the real “you” (brahman/atman) by harming
another phenomenal person (jiva). Conversely, noninjury or compassion is
equally groundless: helping another person (one jiva) does not necessarily
help you (another jiva), and what is real about each of us (brahman/atman)
cannot be helped or affected. In short, there is no reality to help or, by the
same reasoning, any reality that could help. If we accept the source of being
as the only reality, there are no real persons to help. The metaphysics
simply does not permit the existence of another real person to love. So too,
nothing a “dream” self does could even in principle affect what is actually
real: if all that is real is the source, then nothing phenomenal can affect the
root.
Thus, the moral consequence of the factual claim that the world has the
status of a dream is dire: how we treat other characters in a “dream” is
irrelevant. No actions are morally any better or worse than any others since
nothing real is affected. This can only lead to moral indifference. So too, if
we are all only Brahman, there is no reality separate from ourselves whose
interests we can take into account. Thus, even if I could aid or hurt
Brahman, there would still be no other-regardingness in my actions, but
only the self-interest of helping my true reality. That is, that I should not
harm you because I would thereby be harming myself is not a moral motive
but only prudent “enlightened self-interest.” So too, helping you would only
be helping myself—there is no “other” to help. Thus, as Deussen was
forced to conclude, when the knowledge of Brahman has been gained,
“every action and therefore every moral action has been deprived of
meaning” (1966: 362).
Indeed, under this metaphysics it is impossible to kill people in this
realm since there are no real people to kill, nor can we even affect what is
truly real. Bhagavad-gita 2.19–21 adopts this view: Krishna tells Arjuna
that no one really slays and no one is really slain—the true self is
unaffectable. He then uses this as one reason why Arjuna should participate
in the war. Shankara also takes the view that Brahman alone is real: all else
is unreal, and there are not obligations for those having enlightened
knowledge (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 3.1.25; Bhagavad-gita-bhashya 4.10,
18.48). This doctrine did not lead to immoral behavior or antinomianism in
Advaita (contra R. C. Zaehner) but to a nonmoral indifference to everything
in this realm.13 One may engage society or walk off into the forest. At best,
the enlightened quietly go on upholding their orthodox religious duties
(dharma) for the benefit of the world (loka-samgraha-artha) (Brahma-
sutra-bhashya 3.4.50; Bhagavad-gita-bhashya 4.19–20; see Jones 2004:
105–107 for different Advaita options for the enlightened). Only in the
theistic traditions that treat God alone as real has such a doctrine led to the
antinomian conclusion. (Tantrism combines theistic and nontheistic
elements.) Stace dismissed illusionism as an unnecessary component of
mysticism, contrasting it with Christian realism (1960a: 325). But
illusionism is just as natural a correlate of a metaphysics of oneness of our
realm, and it is a more natural correlate of the absoluteness of a
transcendent reality than is realism for this realm. Nevertheless, Stace is
correct insofar as the depth-mystical experience in itself does not require
devaluing the world: the experience can be reconciled with a metaphysics
treating the world as real, such as with Samkhya.
Using this metaphysics to justify the Golden Rule also has problems.
Loving your neighbor as yourself because you are thereby loving Brahman
in another body presents two problems. First, as already noted, you are not
being other-regarding but simply loving the same reality that is in you.
Second, you are not treating the other person as a real individual but only
loving the underlying beingness and denying the reality of any
phenomenon. In fact, the Golden Rule is harder to reconcile with a sense of
selflessness and a metaphysics of oneness than Stace and others realize:
treating others as I want myself to be treated involves the unenlightened
self-centered point of view of a character in the “dream” realm, i.e.,
projecting what I see as my nonexistent jiva’s interests rather than adopting
the point of view of the transcendent ground. On the other hand, treating
everyone in a way that reflects the transcendent reality (brahman/atman) is
not treating another person (a jiva) as yourself. It would also be fruitless,
since no actions affect what is actually real. So too, if one is trying to
advance the interests of an unchanging transcendent reality, then there
would be nothing about helping the individual needs of another person in
the “dream.” Indeed, seeing everything as a part of myself or in fact as
myself makes the self-interest that is condemned in general in mysticism
central to how we would decide how to act. Instead, we should see reality
free of selves. If selves were involved, the issue of morality versus only
prudent enlightened self-interest would appear here too, but any sense of
self-interest necessary to make the Golden Rule work conflicts with a
mystical sense of selflessness.
 A Metaphysics of Wholeness and Morality
A metaphysics of an interconnected wholeness fares better. One may be
moral with such a view: the parts are real and are not isolated monads that
cannot be affected by our actions, and the reality of the parts permits
concern for the other parts. But just because we are connected does not
require moral concern. It is not inconsistent to try to manipulate other parts
of a connected whole for the advantage of our part: even if the parts are
impermanent and without substance, we can try to manipulate the
configuration of parts that still produces effects to help only our node in the
web at the expanse of other nodes. There may be severe limits to how far
we can twist reality for our particular little fragment’s advantage, but
nothing about the factual claim of a whole rules out all such efforts. We can
even accept that every act within our social or global whole can have
eventual repercussions within the entire universe and thus affects all other
parts without concluding that we must be moral. A value-choice still must
be made. In sum, just because a whole is involved does not answer the
question of morality—Nazis, in giving themselves over to their cause, may
have felt like nodes in an interwoven web that was helping humanity as a
whole, but whether they were moral is another issue.
In addition, the claim “I should treat you as myself because you are
myself” does not necessarily follow from a metaphysics of wholeness: one
part of the whole may be able to aid or damage another part without aiding
or damaging itself, even if the parts are interconnected. Killing another
being need not mean that we must also be harming ourselves even
minimally at the same time. Indeed, one part may have to be harmed to
maintain the whole, just as we would amputate a cancerous limb to save the
body. Conversely, if the belief in not harming any other part of the whole
did follow from the metaphysical belief, then we could not eat anything,
except perhaps the diet of noncultivated food that the Jainas recommend.
But if we are free to use crops to maintain ourselves, it is not clear that
drawing the line of what one can kill at any point is demanded simply by a
metaphysics of wholeness. How advocates of that view could value sentient
life or life in general over inanimate objects is also not clear, since all are
equal parts of the same whole.
Mystics who adopt holism may believe that the ground of being
breathes a love of everything and thus that the better value is to work
helping the other parts of reality than to be selfish. Nevertheless, this value-
judgment is not deducible from the belief in the interaction of the parts of
the world and is in fact far from obvious from the violence among animals
exhibited in nature. Holists would have to explain the millions upon
millions of years of evolution that produced animals eating other animals
and such effects as disease-causing viruses that are harmful to us. Our
ecological environment is one whole that reveals not just cooperation and
beneficial symbiotic interrelations but also violence and competition. In
short, life does not appear to be as precious as advocates of holism typically
assert. But how can a sense of a loving source of this world—an all-
encompassing love that makes all life precious—or a sense that everything
in the world is ultimately all right be reconciled with the suffering of
animals and people for millions of years of evolution? Even if the phrase
“life is cheap in this world” is too extreme, we still cannot read love from
nature very easily despite everything forming one whole.
Daoists think everything is in constant change, and if we remove our
assertive actions from the picture, peace will result; Heraclitus thought all is
in constant change, but strife is the common constant. Either way, a
metaphysics of wholeness can lead to total moral indifference. Just because
there is no substance differentiating us into independent realities does not
mean that we must be concerned with the rest of reality. We can just as
easily conclude that we should let everything proceed without our
interference, paying no special attention to ourselves, our group, human
beings, or sentient beings—any self-assertion or any attempt to help one
part over another would be going against the flow of reality. From the point
of view of the whole, any changes are zero-sum, and so there is no reason to
act or to help one part over another—we are all just different piles of the
same elements of matter in one interconnected whole. This can lead to a
nihilism usually ascribed to naturalists. But the same nihilism can follow
from the factual claim that all of reality is sacred, as Christian antinomians
demonstrated. The whole is what it is, and nothing we can do affects its
well-being. Our acts are irrelevant. Being indifferent in such circumstances
is more in step with reality than being concerned with other parts.
Similarly, the lack of independent selves does not help. If we believe
that the lack of an independent self to maintain means that we could not
rationally act selfishly (i.e., act to enhance what we know is a nonexistent
ego), then it would be equally true that there are no other selves to help
either, and so we cannot be moral. It is the other side of the same coin.
Consider Buddhist bodhisattvas: if there is no self or any other reality in
themselves to be concerned with, then it is equally true that there is no
comparable reality in others to be concerned with either. So too, preferring
another’s welfare over one’s own is as much attached to a sense of “selves”
as egoism and thus is as unenlightened. (Being concerned exclusively with
others rather than oneself also does not reflect reality, since others are no
more “real” than oneself; to devalue oneself is a value choice.) Conversely,
if there is indeed something real in others to help, then there also is the
same type of reality in ourselves to be selfish about—again, moral concern
does not necessarily follow from the metaphysics. If hate and greed are
impossible because these presuppose an ego and there is none, then it is just
as true that love and compassion are impossible because these presuppose
the same type of realities in others and there are none. That is, if there are
no realities in us to be selfish about, then there also are no realities in others
to help either. In sum, if there is nothing in me whose interests I have to
look out for, then there is nothing in you whose interests I can look out for;
or if there is something in you I have to look out for, then there also is
something in me of the same nature that I could be selfish about. So too,
bodhisattvas could focus on their own suffering alone since the suffering of
every person is equal—indeed, it would be more rational to concentrate on
one’s own suffering since that work can be done more efficiently. But
morality is still compatible with this metaphysics: the conventional “self”
and its components (dharmas) are impermanent and dependent on other
things, but there is still a configuration of components that suffers and can
be led to the end of suffering—there is no need for a metaphysics of an
additional “self-existent self” to enable a moral concern for what is really
there (see Jones 2004: 189–92; 2012b: 192–98). But this metaphysics does
not require morality: Theravada Buddhists have a “selfish” nonmoral ethos
even without espousing a metaphysical “self” (Jones 2004: 149–79). In
short, metaphysics does not dictate an ethics. Bodhisattvas must choose
(ibid.: 192–93), and they do in fact choose the moral option over selfishness
or moral indifference.

Factual Beliefs, Values, and Mystical Experiences

If the world were a web of unaffectable monads, then concern for others
would be irrational, since we could not help them even if we wanted to.
Thus, the other extreme of metaphysics from Advaita’s oneness is also
incompatible with morality. But with any metaphysics short of these
extremes, we can help one another because we are not identical to the other
components of the web, or we can remain selfish, clinging to our part of
reality. Being moral or immoral is not tied to factual beliefs in that fashion.
Immorality is tied to selfishness, but selfishness, as just discussed, is a value
that can still be grounded in a holistic worldview. That Buddhists argue
murder is impossible because there is no self and the Bhagavad-gita argues
the same precisely because there is an eternal self should reveal that the
basic values are not based on metaphysics. That the latter justifies a war and
other apparent killing in our world also reveals more of the problem.
Thus, there is no simple one-to-one correlation of beliefs and values.
Mystics may have essentially the same factual beliefs and yet differ with
regard to morality (e.g., Theravada versus Mahayana Buddhism). Or they
may have different metaphysical systems but have essentially the same
ethical codes (as with the classical philosophical schools of Hinduism). This
means that an ethos cannot be deduced from a worldview or vice versa. The
basic moral choice does not necessarily follow from the metaphysics, and
hence a value-choice remains. Thus, it is as much a mistake to assume that
all mystical traditions must be moral or have one set of values as it is to
assume that they all share one metaphysical system, or that differences in
metaphysics require differences in values. Mystical enlightenment may rule
out any selfish actions, but mystical factual beliefs do not dictate one set of
values or course of action: what one does about the rope once one sees it is
not a snake is not determined by seeing the rope correctly. Moreover, even
if a mystic adopts morality, moral mystics may still differ on the best way to
help others because of differences in factual beliefs and valuations of the
world. In short, we cannot deduce an enlightened “ought” from the
enlightened “is” or vice versa.14
Thus, beyond its presuppositions, morality does not depend upon a
specific ontology. Values and ethics remain autonomous from factual
claims. However, one’s factual beliefs do set the horizon of one’s actions.
Not all metaphysical beliefs directly affect our actions, but belief-claims on
the nature of a person, the general nature of reality, expectations at death,
and the goals of life can affect our actions now. One only lives in the world
as one sees it—one acts according to the way the world “really is,” as
defined by one’s beliefs. Belief-claims also rule out some actions as
possible options. For enlightened mystics, selfish action is ruled out
because they do not believe an ego is an element of reality: they cannot
attach any importance to one pile of matter—their own body—just because
they are aware of subjectivity through it, when they know all consciousness
is one, or that nature is interconnected, or whatever is really the case as
defined by their tradition.
In this way, mystics’ behavior depends on the factual beliefs of their
particular tradition. Such ideas set the context of a mystic’s actions. They
set up what seems “reasonable,” “obvious,” or “appropriate.” They
determine what needs correcting and what is the best type of help, since
being other-regarding does not require seeing from the impinged-on
person’s unenlightened point of view. For example, teaching related to
getting out of this world may well be deemed more important than
providing material aid in this life (e.g., Enneads 6.9.7). This can lead to an
other-worldly air among mystics who are focused on transcendent realities,
and to acts of “ruthless compassion” that appear cold. Mystics’ factual
beliefs can lead to actions that we might not deem moral but that do reflect
an other-regarding concern. Thus, as part of their “skillful means,”
bodhisattvas may even kill to help the “victim.” For example, a king
persecuting Buddhists was killed for his own karmic good, since it was seen
as necessary to prevent him from committing acts that would damage his
future rebirths (and the bodhisattva who did the “killing” was karmically
rewarded for his selfless act, since no real “person” was killed) (see Jones
2004: 195–98). Similarly, the range of the application of a moral precept
such as not to kill depends on factual beliefs. In India, noninjury is extended
to all sentient beings. Jainas carry this to extremes—e.g., wiping away a
spider’s web is considered an act of violence against the spider. The ideal
for enlightened Jainas is not to harm any being, thereby avoiding more
karma residue; thus, the ideal is to completely stop moving to avoid
harming any being in any way (and consequently starving to death).
But mystical experiences are not tied to specific worldviews or value-
systems, nor do they determine particular factual beliefs or values in any
simple manner. That is, we cannot simply remove a sense of self and
automatically the “will of God” will appear: the content of what we should
do does not come from a mystical experience. This leads to the issue of
what role these experiences play in devising mystics’ beliefs and values.
Even mystical experiences with differentiated content supply no new
concrete factual beliefs, but only a sense of reality, oneness, immutability,
bliss, perhaps being loved, and egolessness. So too, the experiences are
empty of values beyond valuing the reality experienced, and perhaps a
sense of impartiality or love. Nor are specific norms deducible from
adopting a basic ethos of morality since that can be implemented
differently. Nor do mystical experiences have anything to offer on the
specifics of any ethical code, e.g., how to love others. Mysticism is about
the inner dimension of action, i.e., how the precepts are carried out. Mystics
other than monastics, hermits, and antinomians typically live by the same
rules as nonmystics. Only the difference in inner motivation separates
mystics from other members of a tradition—there is no separate “mystical
ethics” for the enlightened (unlike the rigorous codes of the path). That is,
mystical enlightenment changes the mystics’ dispositions but not the code
followed (unless mystics intentionally violate it for selfless reasons) and
perhaps not their actions. Thus, the experience of the vertical dimension of
beingness interacts with the horizontal dimension of ethics through the
inner dimension of how the mystic follows the code. Moreover, there may
be a major shift with mystical enlightenment in one’s factual point of view,
and yet one may still adhere to one’s pre-enlightened values and action-
guides. Thus, one’s actions may not show one’s new beliefs, although there
is also the possibility that actions themselves may change radically. Or their
actions may change by an expansion of the application of a tradition’s
values to more people or even to other species.
Theists sense that love and caring is given in theistic mystical
experiences, but nontheists counter that this is only a misreading of the bliss
of a mystical experience. And because not even all theistic mystics claim
experiences of love in their introvertive mystical experiences, and
nontheists do not report experiences of love, it appears that these values,
along with morality, come from sources outside these experiences. This
means that Christian mystics who believe that “God is love” are bringing
that belief to their enlightened state—the belief is not the product of
mystical selflessness alone. So where does the value of love come from?
The answer is not as straightforward as constructivists believe. Mystics are
no doubt shaped by the value-system of the tradition in which they practice,
but mystical selflessness is also part of the experiential background shaping
the tradition’s value-system. As discussed in chapter 2, to say that mystical
experiences merely deepen previously held beliefs is wrong. The mystical
sense of selflessness and the reality experienced as impartial enter the
picture. Mystical experiences thus can shape values—in particular, if the
mystics adopt a concern for others, mystical selflessness leads toward
valuing greater compassion and greater impartiality, which are usually seen
as reflecting the fundamental reality. In sum, mystical experiences can
neither be given exclusive weight on values nor discounted totally as one
possible influence.
In this way, mystics both reflect their culture and affect it. The
experience of selflessness and an impartial reality expands the mystics’
field of experiences and provides a new perspective on both the world and
ethical norms. It leads to greater impartiality in implementing whatever
norms are in place. Thus, moral mystics may be ethical innovators in their
traditions in expanding the range of other-regardingness. What Gershom
Scholem said of mystics applies to their values: mystics are rooted in their
tradition, but they transcend it, widen it, and even outgrow it; there is a
dialectic relation between the mystic and his or her tradition (1967: 9, 13).
Such mystics as the Mahayana bodhisattvas are paradigms of a moral life,
but the moral values that they exhibit did not come from new mystical
experiences or earlier Buddhism. Any moral critiques of earlier traditions
do not come simply from having more mystical experiences. The
innovation must come from other sources. When a new tradition such as the
Buddha’s arises, one must still look for the source of moral concern in other
influences—the initial enlightenment experience is not it, as the story of the
Buddha having to be convinced after his enlightenment to help others
indicates (see Jones 2004: 171). But, again, mystical experiences influence
those traditions through mystical selflessness, and thus the picture is
complicated.
Since a moral concern cannot be said to be a necessary component of a
mystical experience or a mystical way of life, the study of where that
concern comes from shifts, from trying to examine mystical experiences
alone or treating mysticism in the abstract as having certain universal values
or having one stance on morality), to examining the beliefs, values,
intentions, and motives of specific mystics as evident in their actions and
teachings. Mystics typically see their values as objective features of reality,
but the comparative study of mysticism leads to a different result: not only
do mystical experiences not ground the moral sense in the structure of
reality, they are not the source of any specifics for an ethical code, and thus
do not contribute any solution to the question of relativism arising from the
diversity of social codes of conduct (see Jones 1993: 73–77).15 Rather,
mystical experiences are compatible with a great variety of moral and
nonmoral value-systems.

“Beyond Good and Evil”

The enlightened state is the state of awareness achieved through mystical
practices where one is free of the sense of self and all conceptual
dichotomies of “real” entities. The enlightened have the inner
transformation that mystics deem central, not merely isolated experiences.
The enlightened now, in Eckhart’s phrase, live “without a why” (sunder
Warumbe), i.e., without a personal purpose or benefit or even a command
from God—“I live because I live” (2009: 129, 239, 332). Works are now
performed from their transcendent “ground,” and nothing contingent or
outward prompts their actions; the enlightened have no motive for
themselves and seek nothing in their works; they are dead to all
phenomenal things and are themselves reduced to nothing (ibid.: 305–6).
The emotional reaction in the enlightened state to an action’s effect on
oneself is even-mindedness or “detachment”—i.e., freedom from personal
desires or motives or anger and stress, an indifference to what happens next
to oneself or to what direction one’s life goes in, and no personal
attachment to any outcome. (Thus, it is better to call this “personal
nonattachment” rather than “detachment,” since the latter suggests being
detached from the consequences of their actions toward others or from the
world in general.) For theists, one is steadfastly attached to God, remaining
the same through the good and the bad. To Eckhart, detached love has no
reason to act, not goodness or even God—one desires nothing and is not
inclined toward oneself or the person one is helping (ibid.: 99–100, 110).
One does not prefer oneself or one’s parents over others (ibid.: 135). The
coldness of detachment is demonstrated in Eckhart’s remark that if the “son
of God” is born in him, then “the sight of my father and all my friends slain
before my eyes would leave my heart untouched” (ibid.: 75). One is
dispassionate to success or failure, pleasure or pain. One has no fear of
death, nor any desire for it. There is nothing to do or fear. The enlightened
live focused totally on the present moment—calm, free of expectations and
hope for the future and remorse for past decisions and actions, and free of
doubts and anxieties.
However, mystical enlightenment in itself gives no new values.
Mystical selflessness does not determine whether one is moral or not and
what actions should be carried out, but it affects how one acts: being
detached from the results, expecting nothing, unconcerned with the
opinions of others, and focused only on the present, one’s behavior becomes
more spontaneous, effortless, and efficient (see Jones 2004: 310–14). Only
that may make mystics recognizable by their behavior and distinguish them
from the unenlightened in their tradition. Eckhart’s detachment
(abegeschiedenheit) from both images and emotional attachments and
letting God be God in oneself (gelazenheit), the Bhagavad-gita’s karma-
yoga, and the Daoist’s action free from personal striving (wuwei) all involve
acting in accord with reality (as defined by a mystic’s tradition) and without
a personal will interfering with the will of God or the course of natural
events. It is more a way of being than a matter of doing since one is no
longer following any rules.
That the enlightened are free of concepts distinguishing “good” from
“evil” leads to the claim that they are “beyond good and evil” and thus
cannot be moral but must be nihilists.16 As Sengcan, the Third Patriarch of
Zen Buddhism, extolled his listeners, “Be not concerned with right and
wrong—the conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind.”
The dichotomies of “right and wrong” and “good and evil” are only set up
by the conceptualizing mind and must be gotten past. Like the enlightened
prisoner returning to Plato’s cave, enlightened mystics do not deem the
values of our shadow world to be of ultimate significance. The enlightened
pass no judgments because there are no judgments to be made—all other-
related values are rendered utterly groundless. “Good” and “evil” are
merely products of the unenlightened mind, reflecting unenlightened
interests (especially those of the personal will). At best, morality is
consigned to the path to enlightenment—since thinking about the welfare of
others helps lessen a sense of one’s own self-centeredness—but it is
jettisoned along with all other unenlightened baggage upon enlightenment.
The enlightened are free of all such restrictions and are free to do whatever
they want. They are beyond all sanctions and all authorities, and no course
of action is binding. They are truly autonomous. Antinomian behavior, as
also occurs sometimes in messianic and millennial movements, is only to be
expected.17 Mystics self-indulgently focus simply on the task they are doing
without any goal and with a callous disregard of the consequences to others.
Thus, mystical ways of life can only be described as nonmoral, since they
can have no moral dimension. Even if the enlightened happen to choose to
follow a tradition’s precepts, their mystical experiences render morality a
concern only for the unenlightened—the enlightened have transcended it.
However, this position does not follow from the enlightened’s freedom
from conceptual categories—such freedom need not lead to a denial of
morality. In their enlightened state, mystics are no longer consciously
applying values, but mystics may have internalized moral values if they had
practiced them on the path. They simply are no longer reacting to a label
that they themselves had previously utilized for a situation. There is no
longer a question of “ought” or “duty,” but moral mystics are now incapable
of committing a selfish act, and their selflessness is filled with a moral
concern, and so they can only act with other-regardingness. They no longer
ponder alternatives of what is “good” or “bad,” or review rules and then
decide how to act. (This will be qualified below.) They see what will help
(according to their beliefs and values). But even if they are not thinking
“This is good,” thereby allowing their responses to be spontaneous and
effortless, the enlightened are still operating implicitly with values. The
mystics’ dispositions have been transformed, and so rule-following to
adjust their behavior or to keep negative actions in check is no longer
needed. Moral mystics now are in a state of awareness from which they
spontaneously express their compassion.
This means that enlightened moral mystics are “beyond good and evil”
only in the morally innocuous sense that they are beyond all rule-following,
as any expert in virtues would be. Consciously following a rule would mean
that one is not yet enlightened—it would indicate that one is basing
decisions on dichotomizing the situation by the analytical mind into unreal
entities, and so one is not acting perfectly. But in the enlightened state, one
has fully internalized values—typically the ethical values of their tradition.
The values now become literally a second nature. So too, the enlightened’s
actions need not be aimless: they can have an implicit intentionality based
on their beliefs. What has changed is what moral mystics are: they now are
moral to their core; they do not simply decide to do some moral acts. It is a
way of being, and in that state moral mystics are exempt from observing
ethical precepts, but their actions will be informed by other-regardingness.
In Augustine’s phrase, moral enlightened mystics can “love God, and do
what you will”—all resulting acts will always be moral. They have reached
the spirit behind the letter of the rules and no longer need the letter. The
enlightened will be moral but not “moralistic” in the sense of clumsily
trying to follow the letter but not the spirit of a precept, nor “legalistic” in
the sense of putting rule-following or duties above other-regardingness. An
image applied to both the Christian Francis of Assisi and the Japanese
Buddhist Basho contrasts the ease and steadiness with which they walked in
the exact footsteps of the founders of their respective religions—precisely
because of their lack of effort to do so—with the faulty and clumsy efforts
of the learned who try to put their feet in the footsteps but with thought and
hesitation.
Thus, mystics are “unprincipled” in the sense of not needing to review
principles, but not in the morally objectionable sense. To put the point
paradoxically: they have “a morality beyond morality”—Zhuangzi’s “great
humaneness” beyond “humaneness.” That is, they are not choosing “good”
and rejecting “evil”; they abandon the categories altogether when goodness
has completely taken over. As with all concepts, the enlightened have
overcome the duality of distinct “real” entities that our value-concepts
create, and they now see what is really there. The conventional dichotomy
of “good” and “evil” has been surpassed, but from the ultimate point of
view “good” still applies (Matilal 1977: 26–27). Other-regardingness is still
the master value in the lives of moral mystics. Thus, they are in a state that
transcends the rules but does not transcend morality: enlightened moral
mystics are beyond ethics (in the sense of needing to consult a set of norms
before acting), but they are not beyond morality (in the sense of being
other-regarding).

Will Any Actions Do?

Critics of the possibility of mystics being moral, however, point to another
sense of the phrase “beyond good and evil.” They may concede that the
enlightened have no personal will, and thus the thought of acting for
personal gain could not enter their minds, but they point out that the
enlightened need not adopt moral values. They can point to Arjuna’s
enlightened action in the Bhagavad-gita—the killing in a war that looks
exactly like unenlightened killing, except that it may be more effortless and
efficient since the enlightened are now free of doubt, hesitancy, or
indecisiveness. Thus, mysticism can be consistent with participating in a
war: the inner attitude is all that matters to the mystics, not the actions
themselves, and so any acts will do. No act is per se bad. The natural
response is the immoral action of the libertines and antinomians who claim
that ultimate reality, in either a theistic or nontheistic form, is beyond the
attributes of our realm and thus is beyond good and evil; therefore, they too
are beyond good and evil and so can adopt any action in this realm, no
matter what its consequences are to others. No ethical injunctions can apply
to the liberated life, and the enlightened may casually violate moral
standards or be indifferent to the suffering of others. What a character does
in a “dream” is inconsequential, and so no actions matter in this “dream”
realm. All values from this point of view are merely conventions with no
grounding in reality. Thus, mystics are “beyond good and evil” in a value-
sense—even if they happen to choose to follow rules—since they can do
anything.
However, one can ask how a truly selfless person could lead a life of
genuine license—a life driven by hedonistic impulses—especially after
years of austere mystical training. The medieval Christian Free Spirits were
considered libertine and antinomian; they considered themselves free from
virtues and from church or secular authorities, letting their bodies do
whatever nature dictated and attributing everything that happened to God.
But being beyond the rules was considered acceptable only for the
enlightened, and how selfish could even the enlightened’s natural impulses
be after years of discipline? And now much truly immoral conduct the Free
Spirits actually engaged in is debated by historians.
This objection, however, does highlight the fact discussed above that
mystical experiences carry no moral values and thus that mystics must
adopt other-regardingness from other sources if they are to be moral. This
also points to another issue: is the ground of reality in some sense moral, or
are moral values simply a matter of our realm? As discussed in chapter 6,
transcendent realities are ontologically “wholly other,” but they can share
properties with worldly phenomena. In short, there is a complete
incommensurability only between ontic natures or modes of existence, not
necessarily on the matter of attributes. If a transcendent source were in fact
ineffable, it could not be of any significance to our lives—it could not be
the source of values or beliefs and could not offer any guidance because it
would have no known properties. But as discussed, such absolute
ineffability can be rejected: mystics do claim to retain something from their
experiences. To the moral theistic mystic, a caring, nurturing love or
absolute goodness appears as an attribute of the reality enveloping our
world. For the Muslim Jalal al-Din Rumi, love is the astrolabe of the
transcendent. In the extrovertive “cosmic consciousness” of Richard M.
Bucke, this world is not composed of dead matter governed by unconscious
laws but is a living presence whose foundation is love (1969: 17–18).
But those extrovertive mystics who take the whole of this realm to be
the sum total of reality can claim that reality just is and is not morally
“good” or “evil”—all value-judgments represent the points of view of
fragments of the whole (what is good or bad for them), and such judgments
cannot apply to the whole. From the point of view of reality, the only thing
actually “evil” is the human evil of acting selfishly and thus going against
the grain of reality. If we saw reality as it truly is, we would have no sense
of self and thus would not act selfishly. All of reality is in fact one
interlocking whole; all the parts are real and hence “good.” Within the
whole, no parts can be separated and labeled “good” or “bad.” What
appears as “evil” to us only represents our limited, self-centered point of
view. “Natural disasters” are simply the same forces at work in nature that
made us in the first place. The bubonic plague from our point of view is
something horrendous that we should eradicate, but from the point of view
of the bacteria it was just a matter of natural thriving. From the point of
view of the whole, neither perspective has any priority. Hence, labeling any
phenomenon but self-will “evil” is ultimately a matter of our own
ignorance. (And if one accepts that the “selfish gene” alone is propelling
evolution, then even self-will is not evil but in keeping with nature.) There
are no fixed values to reality—all values reflect self-centered points of
view. As Tantrikas would say, the energy that is nature is indifferent—we
make up the values. Pleasure and pain just are; they are not “good” or
“bad.” Our sense of moral “good and evil” is just another duality we have to
overcome to see reality as it truly is. No one is to be judged or condemned
because all are equal manifestations of a transcendent reality. If we must
make a value judgment, we should accept whatever happens as “good” (if
we value this realm) or as illusion or suffering (if we do not value this
realm). But either way is arbitrary since reality is value-neutral.
Daoism is one extrovertive mystical tradition that many scholars argue
cannot be moral since the values of the Daoist Way are nonmoral. That is,
the Way’s impartiality means total indifference, and thus Daoists must reject
other-regardingness altogether. Any interactions with nature or people will
suffice. Any occupation will do. The Way operates as well in a robber as in
anyone (Zhuangzi 29). The enlightened are, as Robert Eno says, just as
likely to carve up people as oxen—as the samurai so well illustrated (1996:
142).18 (The role of Zen monks in training soldiers and supporting Japanese
war efforts in World War II also could be cited here [see Victoria 1997,
2003].19) Thus, moral quietism and indifference are the only attitudes
compatible with their way of life (see Graham 1981). In the words of
Herrlee Creel: “Morally, Taoist philosophy is completely indifferent. All
things are relative. ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are just words which we may apply
to the same thing, depending upon which partial viewpoint we see it
from. … From the transcendent standpoint of the tao all such things are
irrelevant” (1970: 3–4).20 Thus, an enlightened Daoist on a whim “might
destroy a city and massacre its inhabitants with the concentrated fury of a
typhoon, and feel no more qualms of conscience than the majestic sun that
shines on the scene of desolation after the storm. After all, both life and
death, begetting and destruction, are parts of the harmonious order of the
universe, which is good because it exists and because it is itself” (1953:
112).
However, this position fails because it omits the fact that other-
regarding values are ascribed to the Way: compassion (ci) (Daodejing 8, 31,
67) or great humaneness (ren) (Zhuangzi 2, 12). The Way naturally gives
itself, sustaining everything like a mother (Daodejing 3, 25, 34). It is like
water, nourishing all and not competing (ibid.: 8). The Way of
heaven/nature is to benefit others, not to injure them (ibid.: 81). Its
impartiality is not indifference but an evenness that is beneficial to all.
Assertive actions are not in conformity with the Way, but the Way does not
judge. It benefits good and bad people alike (ibid.: 62). Thus, the Way is
impartially beneficial to all, and so the sage, who reflects the actions of the
Way, is also impartially beneficial to all. As the enlightened wander free
and at ease through the world, they will be naturally compassionate or
humane, free of the confines of concepts or of the need to follow rules.
They will assist in the spontaneous self-becoming (ziran) of all beings
through non-self-assertive action (wuwei). In addition, they follow the Way
out of an other-regarding concern (see Jones 2004: 251–53). Thus, there is
no reason to believe that the harmful acts that Eno and Creel think could
follow from Daoist values would not in fact be seen by Laozi and Zhuangzi
as out of keeping with the Way. Nothing in the texts suggests a license to be
immoral. The nonassertive yin-actions of “holding to the root” are,
according to them, always the correct course of action, balancing the
normal yang-actions of others. Once the enlightened are performing
nonassertive and noncoercive actions, how could they even form the notion
of butchering people or of destroying a city (unless it somehow would
benefit others more)? The compassion or great humaneness of the Way
would prevail.
More generally, extrovertive mystics can be moral if reality is deemed
moral. Any transcendent source can be called “good” in a nonmoral sense
in that it supplies our reality—i.e., it is good for us that it exists or else we
would not. Thus, it is intrinsically valuable to us. But moral goodness does
not necessarily follow: if a god created us just to watch us suffer, it is
certainly not morally good. No mystical tradition considers a transcendent
source evil. Indeed, both introvertive and extrovertive mystics often have a
sense that there is a fundamental rightness to things at the deepest level. But
seeing God in everything can lead mystics to moral indifference or
antinomian actions: everything shares the same being of God and so is
innately good and free of evil as is; or everything is the creation of a
perfect, compassionate god, and so everything is perfect the way things are,
and there is no need to change anything, or indeed any right to change
anything. Thus, free of a sense of self-will, we can do whatever our body
desires, since our body too is just part of perfect nature. So too, nontheistic
mystics may experience an “intrinsic rightness” or “ultimate perfection” to
everything as is, leaving nothing more to do and nothing to fear (Austin
1998: 537–38). This may also lead theistic mystics who have an
overwhelming sense of a loving source to deny that evil is real: everything
is benign or even perfect as is. Enlightenment may not make one more
sensitive to suffering—Ram Dass tells of walking in Bangladesh with his
teacher among scenes of horrific suffering, and his guru kept saying “Can
you see how perfect it is?” (in Smith 2001: 254).21 So why would any
particular action matter? Either no particular action matters or all actions
matter equally, whether moral or not. No actions are prohibited. Meister
Eckhart stressed the matter of self-will in action, not the act itself: he said
that if the pope were slain by his hand but not by his will, he would go to
the alter and say mass as usual (2009: 94). This can also lead to fatalism:
whatever happens is God’s will, and so whatever we do is by definition
God’s will (ibid.: 240)—there is no point in praying “thy will be done on
earth as in heaven” because no matter what occurs it is God’s will.22 So too,
some Hasidic Jews believed that we cannot not do God’s will—even the
wicked obey him. Suffering and death do not matter, if they are deemed real
at all, since they do not affect what is eternal and transcendent.
And as noted above, natural suffering is hard to reconcile with the idea
that the ground of reality is loving and compassionate. Nature is not all
sunshine and flowers—it is also tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and
floods. Sentient beings have been suffering for countless eons during
evolution simply by existing—e.g., dying of starvation or from attacks by
other animals. This is nature as it is, independent of our concepts and our
unenlightened self-centered point of view. To mystics, such suffering may
be irrelevant or even unreal, since events in time are irrelevant to the
timeless reality. But how can theistic mystics argue that self-giving love is
the ground underlying the world and that this energy is released in them by
giving up a sense of self? Does this mean that any sense of unbounded love
that is part of some theistic mystical experiences is in fact no more than
simply feeling connected to all that exists rather than an indication of the
nature of the source of the world? Do moral mystics love others despite the
indifference of the ground of being simply because the sense of joy from
the experiences is combined with moral values internalized from their
religious tradition? Meister Eckhart claimed that God suffers along with us,
but this suffering is so joyful for God that for God it is not suffering at all
but joyful (2009: 547). This may make God’s joy immutable, but does this
also mean that any sense of love in mysticism is no more than simply a
subjective feeling projected from the experiencer? Can this lead to an
insensitivity to the suffering of others or treating evil as meaningless? In
any case, the mystery of natural suffering only becomes more impenetrable
with the mystical sense of joy.
But this returns moral mystics to a basic problem: how to ground their
moral ways of life in a transcendent reality when it is not clear that that
reality is moral. Even if they argue that the transcendent is only
ontologically “wholly other” and can share some properties with natural
phenomena such as values, they still have a dilemma: a loving god is not
reflected in nature—based on nature, God appears to be morally indifferent.
Thus, theistic moral mystics still have to get to other-regardingness on
grounds that do not include mystical experiences themselves.

Mystical Decision-Making
Daoist non-self-assertion action (wuwei) has been described as a type of
practical engaged knowledge—a skill-knowledge (Slingerland 2004)—and
the same can be said of all enlightened action. It is a kind of learned skill
involving know-how. The spontaneity of enlightened actions and being
“beyond good and evil” presents a further issue: does not morality require
reflecting on alternative courses of action and making decisions on how to
act? How can mystics be moral if they do not apply principles but simply
respond in the present without motive or without reflecting on norms? Even
with internalized values, how can freedom from concepts, rules, calculation,
and all decisions be compatible with a moral life? In particular, the issue
arises for those who cannot but act morally. Following Laozi, the
dichotomy of “good and evil” comes into play only after goodness has
declined; when all was good, we had no concept for “good”—only when a
contrast appeared did this concept arise; thus, when all is good, there is (as
Kant also noted) no concept of “good” (Daodejing 2). The enlightened’s
“inner clarity” (ming) or the “light of heaven/nature” (tian) now guides their
actions (Zhuangzi 2). They no longer look for the “good” thing to do.
Dwelling beyond all categories including “morality,” freed from the mental
constraints of evaluation and rule-following, the enlightened engage in an
outpouring of beneficial action (Daodejing 19). The natural expression of
their character is the caring and supportiveness of the Way.
But since all the actions of enlightened moral mystics are
automatically moral, can the concept of “moral” even apply? Freedom to do
otherwise is usually taken to be a presupposition of morality, and the
enlightened apparently have given that up. So too, the enlightened no longer
have a conscious motive to help others. That is, if moral enlightened
mystics cannot choose but to act morally, do they really earn the epithet
“moral” since they have no temptation to perform otherwise? The actions
may be beneficial to others, but the enlightened would lack the necessary
motivation to be moral, and we could not morally commend persons who
have no choice in their actions, even if those actions are always beneficial.
Nevertheless, it appears that the enlightened may still face choices at
least on some occasions. The enlightened mystic’s decision-making appears
to reflect that of any expert. For most of our activities, we do not consult
lists of what we should do. Acting without thinking is the norm. We do not
normally think about the process of walking when walking—we just walk.
We speak without reviewing vocabulary lists or rules of grammar, and
usually only notice them when we make a mistake. Experts at chess do not
calculate their next move—they see what to do. The same holds in the
moral life. People seldom make moral judgments—if asked, we can reflect
on why we did something, but normally we simply act. Hubert and Stuart
Dreyfus (1992), in reviewing the “phenomenology of skillful coping,”
noted that principles figure only in the early stage of ethical development.
Higher stages involve spontaneous intuitions, and the highest form of
ethical comportment consists of being able to stay involved, to gain more
information, and to refine one’s intuitions without reflection. Experts do not
reason or solve problems. Their expertise is also not easily communicated
—masters respond to philosophical questions with banalities. They do not
act with deliberation but see intuitively and act spontaneously and naturally
(also see Deutsch 1992 on “creative morality”).
It seems reasonable to conclude that enlightened mystics, having
internalized beliefs and values, also have a predisposition on how to
respond in most situations and thus can do so without thinking and with
immediacy and effortlessness. What precisely a moral mystic may do may
not be predictable in advance, even if we know his or her tradition’s beliefs
and values, but, with self-interest destroyed, love or compassion will
automatically lead only to acts that help. “What should I do?” is no longer
asked, but the enlightened will see what to do. As the Dreyfuses said of
moral experts, caring does not entail any one particular way of acting—one
does spontaneously whatever the situation requires (1992: 128).
It is important to note that the enlightened live in a state structured by
their beliefs and values. Mystical freedom is not anarchy. The enlightened
live completely in the present but are not stuck in a free-floating chaos—
their beliefs and values still guide them. Their actions are not blind but are
intentional—Ding the Daoist cook did not flail away aimlessly with a
carving knife, but had an objective to accomplish, and he accomplished it,
effortlessly cutting the ox at its joints (Zhuangzi 3). Mystics now act with a
cultivated intuitive response to whatever situation is at hand as their beliefs
and values dictate, even if they do not think in terms of “good” and “evil.”
They are emotionally even-minded but not blind to their actions’ outcome.
They do not treat all human beings alike but treat each person individually,
as with the Buddha adjusting his teaching to the capacity of his listeners. In
sum, even if the mystics do not deliberate, they still act deliberately.
However, even though mystics can see intuitively how to act in most
situations, they may well encounter novel situations where their intuitions
will not guide them, and they then will have to deliberate. When faced with
a novel situation, moral experts have to resort to abstract principles
(Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1992: 122). For moral mystics, the underlying other-
regarding ethos will not be in question, but they too must have recourse to
their tradition’s ethics in determining what to do. But a tradition’s ethics
may not be enough as new problems arise. Rules do not necessarily dictate
a precise move in every situation. Knowing the rules of chess does not
explain a master’s move. The enlightened will do something to help that is
selfless, but what precisely they will do in hard cases may not be
predictable.
Conversely, dilemmas for the enlightened may not be dilemmas to the
unenlightened. Consider the situation of a wild animal about to attack a
baby. Would mystics always intervene and kill the animal, or may some let
the animal continue its hunt for food? Either intervening or letting nature
takes its course leads to a death. It is easy for the unenlightened, with our
beliefs and values—we of course favor human beings, and we would
consider it to be morally callous not to try to save the baby. Arjuna too,
following the warrior’s dharma, would intervene to save a human life. Most
mystics may think human beings are more advanced on the path to
enlightenment and thus more worthy of help. However, not all mystics may
show such anthropocentric partiality and instead may simply watch as
events take their natural course, or they may assume that the baby earned
this fate by his or her actions in a previous life and let the karma of both
beings take its course. But whatever a mystic does, the point is that simply
removing him- or herself from the picture by being selfless is not enough:
some implicit value (here, favoring nature or human beings) becomes
operative, and the mystic must decide what to do. Thus, merely saying
“Give up self-will, and the right answer will automatically emerge” is
wrong—some implicit beliefs and values are always involved.
Moreover, because they must choose, mystics are liable to make
mistakes. Unless they become literally omniscient and can foresee all
consequences of an act, they will be restricted by human limitations on their
ability to predict. Their perspectives on foreseeable consequences may be
very shortsighted. Unlike prophets, classical moral and nonmoral mystics
tend to emphasize person-to-person actions rather than social action (see
Jones 2004: 347–77),23 and those would be the only consequences that
matter to them.24 To Krishnamurti, social reform only scratches the surface;
what is needed is an inner change of the person (Lutens 1983: 42). And
from their limited perspective, mystics may well not hit on the best course
of action. Whatever actions moral mystics take will be “good” in that the
acts will not be selfish—in that sense, it does not matter what they do
because at least some other-regarding action will follow. But their actions
will not necessarily be the most helpful actions possible, and may have
negative consequences since their internalized framework of beliefs and
values may not in fact reflect reality. But for the nonomniscient moral
mystics, there may still be moral crises, even when they have given up their
will to God or the Way, and this means that decisions still may need to be
made, and so the mystic’s mind is involved. An act of will is in some sense
still necessary, and a choice remains.
Thus, enlightened mystical decision-making may not be all that
different from that of nonmystics—the absence of a sense of self (and hence
the absence of the selfish option) is what makes it seem strange. If mystical
enlightenment is a type of skill, the enlightened, like other ethical experts,
normally will not reflect on how to act but instead will act spontaneously.
Only in situations that are ethically novel compared to those they have
previously encountered will they have to reflect. But in dualistic states, they
have the ability to deliberate; thus, if morality must be a matter of choices
and reflection, enlightened mystics too can be moral. Those who are moral
are “beyond good and evil,” but they are not antinomian but rather
“hypernomian”—i.e., they are not violating laws but are beyond needing to
consult them—as Eliot Wolfson depicts Kabbalistic mysticism (2006).

Mystical Selflessness and Morality

From what has been discussed, it appears that mysticism has less logical
relevance for morality, either positively or negatively, then is usually
supposed. Moral values and mystical values are not identical, and one set
does not entail the other: mystical values are reality-centered, not
necessarily other-regarding. We cannot argue that because someone is
indifferent or antinomian, he or she never had a mystical experience or is
not mystically enlightened. Thus, it is hard to argue that mystical
experiences have a necessary moral component. So too, mysticism is not
necessarily incompatible with moral values or their factual presuppositions.
In sum, the generalizations that “Mystics are necessarily moral” and
“Mysticism and morality are incompatible” are both wrong. Instead, we
have to investigate specific mystics and specific mystical ways of life to see
if the mystic or the tradition is moral or not.
That mystical experiences do not have a necessary moral value also
limits any contribution mysticism may make to solving ethical dilemmas
today. There is no one set of virtues or precepts dictated by mystical
experiences to contribute to the discussion. Mysticism’s only contribution
to values is the experience of selflessness and impartiality—other values
remain independent of mystical experiences and come from other sources.
But mystical experiences do not merely reinforce one’s existing beliefs,
values, and ethical precepts: mystical experiences can push one toward
more impartiality, expand the applications of one’s values via one’s factual
beliefs to include all people or even to embrace all sentient animals, and
make other-regarding conduct more central in one’s life. Thus, if a mystic
chooses to be moral, the experiences can make him or her more morally
active toward others. He or she may also be an exemplar of the tradition’s
ideals for others to aspire to.
The principal impact of mysticism on morality thus is that it enables
one to go beyond an ordinary moral concern to an expanded even-minded,
selfless concern. This can lead to universalizing moral concern. For the
enlightened, there is a radical shift in point of view away from all self-
centeredness. Self-will or its cognitive base (a sense of separateness and
self-sufficiency) comes to be seen as the cause of all dissonance with
reality. Realizing that there is no ego to enhance becomes the cognitive
ground out of which one operates. Emotional states connected to self-will
and self-love—pride, hatred, envy, anger, jealousy, and so on—become
targets. Each thought, word, and deed is seen as having an effect on the
inner life. Virtues that lessen a sense of self are valued—e.g., kindness,
honesty, patience, generosity, gentleness, forgiveness, tolerance, and
humility in the sense of seeing one’s true place in the scheme of selfless
things. Value-concepts and rules do not stand between the mystic and
reality. Rules that restrict actions that might harm others are valuable in
lessening a sense of one’s individual importance, but rule-following is only
the first step on the path for a practitioner and is transcended later.
All personal desires must be ended, including any desire for a reward
for one’s actions toward others, or remorse over the results. Ironically, one’s
own spiritual well-being is promoted by forgetting oneself and (for those
mystics who adopt morality) giving oneself over fully to the welfare of
others. A new view is grounded in mystical realities, not in reasoning about
the logical conclusions of our beliefs and values. By becoming selfless,
moral mystics go beyond even complete impartiality (i.e., attaching no
more importance to oneself than to any others) to denying any value to
themselves. With no self-image to maintain, no personal desires, and no
fears, the result is a complete self-denying love of others. No self-centered
desires are imposed through one’s actions: compassionate action becomes
the expression of what one is.
Thus, selflessness in the enlightened state paradoxically becomes what
one is. One is now free of striving to assert any self-will in one’s actions.
One’s virtues are now grounded in one’s knowledge of what one takes to be
the fundamental nature of reality. One’s actions are grounded in the
wellspring of all reality—the actions are now “noumenal” rather than the
selfish acts resulting from our ego when our perspective is cut off from the
ground of reality. Inwardly, mystics remain emotionally calm, unconcerned
with the effects of actions on themselves. Thus, one is rooted in the source
of the world or self, but also outwardly active in the world. All actions, no
matter how mundane, become meaningful, although they may remain
unspectacular to an observer. Mystical experiences contribute a sense of
reality, certainty, and selflessness to a new perspective shaped by the beliefs
and values from the tradition to which the mystic belongs. One becomes a
selfless person only through cultivating a complete mystical way of life, not
in isolated experiences. Nor will meditation alone inculcate the virtues and
beliefs necessary for morality. Meditation may help break down a sense of
self, but values and beliefs are not given there—meditation is not tied to
any particular way of life or set of belief-claims and values. It can begin to
give a sense of selflessness and to energize oneself in whatever actions one
chooses. It can also help calm the mind and focus attention. This helps
one’s efficiency and spontaneity outside of meditation. However, all aspects
of one’s life become important in a mystical way of life.
Mystical detachment must be seen in light of this selflessness: it is not
lack of concern but lack of personal attachments and desires. It need not
lead to a passive withdrawal from the world. So too, selflessness leads to
being more receptive, but this does not mean that only inactivity can result.
Indeed, to renounce and hate the world can be seen as a form of reverse
attachment. All objects of desires are neutralized—one is no longer attached
to this or that—but their reality cannot be denied. The change is simply that
all personal desire has disappeared, not anything affecting what is really
there. Mystics now see everything from a third-person point of view: reality
is once again the center of everything, not oneself. One no longer sees one’s
life and actions as one’s own—there is simply selfless reality at work in the
world. With the sense of self abrogated, the source of reality now fills the
vacuum previously filled by the false sense of an ego. Mystics now act from
the point of view of reality (as defined by one’s tradition), not from a false
sense of their own independent reality. All acts become like volunteer work,
selflessly done for no reward and only to help others. Mystics’ actions are
now spontaneous, since they are free of deliberation and selfish motivation.
With the false sense of a separate, independently existing ego no longer
causing friction, one’s action conforms easily to the ethical law of the
universe (as defined by one’s tradition). A mystic can “live without asking
why” within his or her way of life.
When combined with a moral commitment, the resulting selflessness
is, in the words of Evelyn Underhill, not a selfish, other-worldly calm but
renewed vitality: the flowers of the contemplative life are practical energies
that help mystics to enter social life more completely (1961b: ix). Theistic
mystics will see love as the power of the universe. One’s life then becomes
an expression of the power tapped into by mystical experiences. To such
mystics, human beings realize our fullest state by being constantly engaged
in self-emptying acts that are grounded in an awareness of our source, not
in seeking our own happiness alone. Engaging both the “vertical”
dimension of being and the “horizontal” dimension of becoming, one
remains inwardly calm, grounded in the source of the world, while still
remaining outwardly active—through detachment, one acts while
“reposing” unmoved and still in the source. Thus, the impact is not only on
one’s inner life in general but on the inner dimension of one’s actions.
One’s consciousness is no longer cut off from the source, yet one remains
active in the world of diversity. All actions, however mundane, become
meaningful. Now rooted in the transcendent, one “lives constantly in the
presence of the divine” while acting. Mystics become the human action of
the transcendent in the realm of change, treating all that they encounter with
other-regarding concern. The resulting actions may seem unspectacular to
an observer—they may seem to entail no more than simply no longer being
selfish and instead acting according to the values of one’s tradition. But the
actions reflect the self-giving source of being and conform to the ethical
laws of the universe (as defined by a tradition). In Jalal al-Din Rumi’s
words, adapted from an Islamic political title, one will be “the shadow of
God on earth.”
Thus, the moral mystic is no longer imposing self-centered desires
through actions. All actions become works for other (equally selfless)
beings, rather than attempts to twist reality to meet the needs of an illusory,
independently existing individual ego. The need to act compassionately no
longer requires explaining, but is a natural product of one’s state in the
world. All of one’s actions will be moral in that none will have the intent of
harming another for one’s own benefit, and one will be actively helping
others even if one’s factual beliefs about what is real turn out to be wrong.
Compassion becomes a self-denying love for all. Indeed, by denying
oneself, the resulting actions will go beyond even complete impartiality to
discounting oneself totally. One helps others by treating all people equally
according to their needs as defined by one’s tradition. One has no loved
ones or enemies.
For all enlightened mystics, actions mirror those of the overflowing
transcendent source. To use a common image (e.g., Brahma-sutra-bhashya
2.3.42; Matthew 5:45–46; see Daodejing 5, 23), the source of this world is
like sunlight or rain in that it uniformly gives to all, the just and the unjust,
without discrimination, and thus the mystic’s actions mirror this, giving to
each person what that person needs without judgment. The source can be
seen as either a benign or a loving power continuously giving itself over to
produce and sustain the natural realm despite the problems of natural
suffering. Nothing in the comparative study of mysticism suggests that the
underlying source would be more concerned with one part of reality than
another—the simple joy of existence is more central to the experiences.
And the enlightened mystics’ actions mirror the source.
 Epilogue
The Demise of Mysticism Today

The positions defended here are these:

•There appear to be genuine mystical experiences, i.e.,

experiences associated with neurological events that are distinct
from those associated with other experiences.
•There appear to be mystical experiences that are empty of all
differentiated content.
•If there are transcendent realities and introvertive mystics
experience them, the postexperience understanding of the nature
of such realities depends in large part on the doctrines of a
mystic’s tradition, with input from the experiences themselves;
thus, all mystical knowledge-claims involve more than what is
experienced.
•We are not in a position to determine if mystical experiences are
cognitive or, if they are, to determine which extrovertive and
introvertive mystical doctrines are best.
•Mystics can rationally treat their experiences as evidence of
some transcendent realities, but they cannot transfer any
experienced sense of certainty to their tradition’s doctrines on the
nature of such realities, since equally qualified mystics produce
genuinely conflicting doctrines, and thus the degree of rationality
is lower for holding any tradition’s doctrines.
 •Mystical experiences, like all experiences, are grounded in the
brain, but this alone is not reason to discredit mystics’ cognitive
claims, and so the science of the brain events is not grounds by
itself for a natural reduction of these experiences.
•Mystics do not produce one generic “mystical metaphysics,” and
mystics are not in a unique position to determine which
metaphysical doctrines, if any, are correct.
•Mystical discourse can be coherent, and nonmystics can
understand it to a degree.
•Mystics can be rational in their arguments.
•Mysticism and science are different endeavors approaching
different aspects of reality, and scientific methods cannot test or
support mystical claims or vice versa.
•Mystics’ values and ethics come from outside mystical
experiences, but mystical experiences can affect how beliefs and
values are seen and applied.

With this lack of certainty on any mystical matter, it may seem that
mysticism has little to offer our understanding of the world or our values
today. However, the possibility that mystics experience aspects of reality
that nonmystics do not cannot be ignored. In addition, depth-mystical
experiences may be a pure consciousness—i.e., in that state, the light of
consciousness is on but not illuminating anything. If so, this will affect our
view of the nature of consciousness even if no transcendent reality is
involved, and that could affect the study of the mind. If the mystics’ claim
that there is no phenomenal ego is correct, this too would have important
implications for what we take to be real. The possibility of an experiential
grounding of the religious notions of transcendent realities similarly is
important for philosophers and theologians alike to consider, even if we
cannot determine the nature of such purported realities. The extreme of
mystical selflessness and its implementation in different mystical traditions
can expose our underlying values and beliefs. Thus, the study of the
mystical beliefs and values of different cultures can expose hidden
assumptions of our own beliefs and widen our perspective on possible
options. All of this makes studying mysticism interesting and important to
understanding our situation in the world today.

The Antimystical Climate Today

But today there are factors in our culture working against taking mysticism
seriously. Within academia, those who bother to take a metaphysical
position very often adopt naturalism—i.e., the view that all that exists is
only what is open in principle to scientific examination. Naturalists can
readily accept that genuine mystical experiences occur and can also accept
any verified physiological or psychological benefits of meditative
practices.1 Indeed, naturalists themselves may have mystical experiences,
which they would give a natural explanation.
But naturalists deny classical mysticism’s cognitive claims. They reject
all transcendent realities or explanations, since by definition these would be
untestable by scientists in any fashion, and hence go beyond science. Thus,
they keep introvertive mystical experiences, along with extrovertive
experiences, within the phenomenal universe. They may deny that depth-
mystical experiences occur that involve truly emptying the mind of all
sensory and conceptual content, arguing that all experiences are intentional.
And if they do accept such an experience, they would insist that it is either
the result of the brain malfunctioning, or at most an awareness of a purely
natural self or only a monitoring activity of the mind that continues even in
the absence of any processing. That is, consciousness has arisen through the
natural forces of evolution, but a depth-mystical experience may be the
experience of it in a bare state. Such an event may be of interest to
neuroscientists studying how the brain works, but there is no transcendent
consciousness or self separate from the body that survives death. Moreover,
the experienced sense of joy proves to naturalists that the experience is not
cognitive of a transcendent source, since the appalling natural suffering of
eons of evolution of animal life proves that this universe is not the creation
of a loving being—the bliss results from the purposeless spinning of mental
gears when there is no mental content to work on—and that mystics take
the bliss as indicating an experience of something transcendent only shows
that the experience is misleading them. Naturalists can accept extrovertive
mystical experiences as experiences that focus on the sheer beingness of the
natural realm, although they may contend that nothing of value is revealed
by such experiences since it is not scientifically relevant. All that happens is
that the area of the brain responsible for a sense of a boundary between the
self and the rest of the universe receives less input and the area attaching
importance to events is more active, and so mystics naturally feel more
connected to the universe, which in naturalistic metaphysics we in fact are.
Nothing about the unreality of the self is exposed, but the self-
transcendence valued in spirituality can thereby be achieved, even though
this transcendence does not exceed the natural realm. And there are
“religious naturalists” today who find aspects of nature as satisfying their
religious needs.
The academic study of mysticism would not even go that far toward
accepting mystical experiences today. Many postmodernists in academia
deny that there are any genuine mystical experiences and ignore
neuroscientific studies suggesting that unique mystical experiences do
occur. In philosophy, the topic of mysticism has generally faded into the
background. The dominance of constructivism and attribution theory in
religious studies also plays down the significance of mystical experiences.
Under the latter, “mystical experiences” become nothing but a mystical
overlay given to mundane experiences and emotional states. Under the
former, mystical experiences are accepted as possibly genuine, but they
have no independent cognitive content and play no role in the development
of any tradition’s doctrines. There is nothing to study of mysticism outside
of a tradition’s texts. Any mention today of mysticism in the study of, for
example, Buddhism is rare. Indeed, in the humanities, mysticism has
become “unfashionable” and a “bad name” (Cupitt 1998: 56, 45). Even
scholars who accept that there are depth-mystical experiences dismiss out
of hand any claim that they are cognitive (Bharati 1976: 48; Forman 2010).
In sum, mystical experiences, if they are accepted at all, have been pushed
aside as at most a curiosity for neuroscience.
Within Christian theology, the situation is similar. A generation ago,
the Jesuit William Johnston lamented that “from the time of Thomas à
Kempis better men than I have been attempting to convert the theologians
[to the need for theologians who are also mystics]—and they have been
conspicuously unsuccessful. The theologians remain unregenerate” (1978:
58). Today the situation is no different. To postmodern theologians, the
experience of God is impossible on logical grounds (since God is by
definition transcendent), and to view God through the lens of “experience”
is hopelessly naive (see Hart & Wall 2005). The past focus on interiority in
any spirituality is now seen as having been a mistake (Thomas 2000). The
questions that Christian mystics raise for theology visibly embarrass many
academic theologians (McIntosh 1998: 14). Indeed, in theology today any
“experientialist” approach to mysticism that would affirm any genuine
mystical experiences is “thoroughly dated” (Nicholson 2011: 194).
Outside of academia, serious mysticism is in a general decline in the
West. In mainline Christian churches, the split between spirituality and
theology since at least the early modern period has led to a decrease in
interest in anything mystical. According to Michael Buckley, the divorce of
spirituality from fundamental theology in Catholicism has led to bracketing
the actual witness of spiritual experiences as having no cogency (quoted in
McIntosh 1998: 14). Hans Blumenberg puts the very definition of
modernity in terms of “self-assertion” (1982: 138). He is not contrasting it
with mystical selflessness, but nevertheless classical mystics would readily
agree. Under the modern view, the mystical denial of self-assertion certainly
makes mystics appear irrational and their passivity immoral. More
generally, our era can be defined by “a loss of faith in transcendence, in a
reality that encompasses but surpasses our quotidian affairs” (quoted in
Smith 2000: 655).2 Unlike premodern people, we no longer live in a “sacred
universe” in which all aspects of life are permeated with transcendent
significance. Even if transcendent realities are intellectually accepted, they
are cut off from this world and everything in life and thus do not affect our
living. Many who are scientifically minded have lost any comprehensive
myth that makes this world understandable and the travails of life bearable.
Any sort of focus on an inner spiritual development of any mystical
experiences or the radical self-transcendence and transformation of
character of an enlightened mystical way of life has been discouraged by
liberal churches as unnecessary, if possible at all. Liberal theists may be
happy with the theistic mystics’ message that the universe is animated by
love, but the claim that someone had actually experienced God would
probably only make them uncomfortable, since God is seen as having
withdrawn from his creation. In conservative churches, other types of
experiences related to personal salvation have become emphasized, and the
idea of any mystical awareness of God is seen as blasphemous. Fears of
antinomianism have limited mystical influences in most traditions of
Judaism today. So too, Islam today has seen a steep decline in Sufism. In
monasteries Eastern and Western there is little emphasis on serious
meditation. For example, Thomas Merton complained that there were few
or no real contemplatives even in many Catholic contemplative
monasteries, because rigid conformity to rules prevented it (2003: 78, 123–
30). And if reports are correct, in most Buddhist monasteries today few
monks under age fifty meditate at all; nirvana is seen as only a long-term
goal.3 (But in the past more monastics may also have been like that than we
might suppose.) The authoritarian nature of monastic training also runs
counter to the spirit of our age.
Psychology today only strengthens the ego and self-esteem. Few
people would want to give up the sense of individual existence when the
assertion of self-will dominates our culture—purposefully inducing any
type of selflessness is precisely what most people do not want to do today.
Buddhist teachings on selflessness have become transformed in
psychotherapy into a way to actually enhance the sense of self. (One
Buddhist practitioner dismissed psychotherapists as “pimps for samsara
[the cycle of rebirths].”) Ironically, serious mysticism is dying even as New
Age spirituality is increasing; many young people describe themselves as
“seekers”; people claiming to be mystics are flourishing on the Internet.
And mystical experiences apparently remain common (Hardy 1983; Hood
2005). The superficial spirituality of the New Age is more about validating
how one currently leads one’s life than about any serious change in a
mystical direction—a watered-down spirituality of a “Buddhism Lite,” as it
were. Jiddu Krishnamurti’s complaint seventy years ago that people flocked
to his lectures but no one transformed their lives (Lutyens 1983: 171) is
applicable more generally to mysticism today. Today there may be a spike
in interest in mysticism as people search for a sense of certainty and
reassurance of the rightness of things in a time of uncertainty and search for
a way to feel experientially grounded in the world and connected to other
people, but there is little commitment to any rigorous traditional spirituality
with its developed depth. Most New Age theorizing is disconnected from
cultivating any mystical experiences. Few people stick to meditation long-
term. And more meditation is practiced for its purported psychological and
physiological benefits than as part of a mystical way of life. It is a sign of
our culture’s spiritual decline that this is considered an advance.
 All of this leads to a trend today toward the secularization of mystical
experiences. Cultivating mystical experiences—in particular, mindfulness
meditation—has been absorbed into parts of modern culture while engaging
in full mystical ways of life has atrophied. That is, even among those who
endorse mystical experiences for our well-being (e.g., Kornfield 2001;
Forman 2010, 2014; Harris 2014), mystical experiences are being separated
from mystical ways of life with their religious goals, i.e., from mysticism.
Traditional religious metaphysics and transcendent goals are ignored;
traditional mystical ethical codes are at best watered down. For example,
one can adopt aspects of a Buddhist way of life while being agnostic about
its factual claims about rebirth and karma (Batchelor 1997). A total inner
transformation is not always the goal. Teachers of complicated
metaphysical doctrines are no longer needed, nor is adherence to difficult
monastic ethical codes. Traditional meditative techniques may be adopted
to calm the mind or to focus attention fully on the present, thereby
increasing our happiness, but any claim that mystical experiences may
provide cognitive insights into an aspect of the phenomenal world or into a
transcendent reality is not so much denied as simply ignored as irrelevant—
all that matters is the physiological or psychological well-being that
mystical experiences or meditation may foster. The significance of the
experiences is exhaustively studied by scientists, and so all mystical
metaphysics is beside the point. For many today the only ontic claim that
mystical experiences can support is that only the natural mind and body is
involved, not a transcendent mind or other reality. Scientific studies are
taken as reinforcing the view that the only value in mystical experiences is
in their effect on the body; the issue of whether the brain states that
scientists observe may permit insights into the nature of reality does not
arise. Any understanding of the significance of mystical experiences that
involves alleged transcendent realities can be set aside. Traditional
mysticism is replaced by a naturalistic spirituality where self-transcendence
involves no claim of cognition. Only the phenomenal world is deemed real,
and so mystical experiences can still be seen as aligning experiencers with
how things really are if they enable experiencers to have greater personal
well-being and to function better in society. Thus, far from inspiring a
hatred of the natural world, mystical experiences are taken as making us
more at home here: with no transcendent realities to worry about, such
experiences can make us feel more connected to reality as it truly is and
thus help us overcome any emotional or cognitive alienation from the
natural world that society has generated.
Overall, our culture has become too affluent and comfortable for
people to want to escape it, and too materialistic to think that the vertical
dimension of beingness is of any importance. From a mystical point of
view, we have lost sight of the ontic source of this realm—we are not even
aware of the possibility that we are in Plato’s cave. So too, our awareness of
alternatives makes it harder for us to commit fully to anything and thus
makes us more superficial. In addition, our technology has produced so
many distractions that it is difficult to focus our attention fully on anything:
it is hard to commit fully to the moment in the barrage of so many options
confronting us and so much information at our fingertips—indeed, ours can
be called the “Age of Distraction” (Loy 2008). It is not that science or
philosophy has refuted mystical knowledge-claims, but rather that we have
lost interest in mystical matters and we see mysticism as counterproductive.

Accepting Mysticism Today

Many have noted the lack of spirituality in mainstream religion in the West
today, the erosion of liberal religiosity, and the spiritual malaise of many
today. Without some injection of personal spiritual experience—for theists,
some encounter with a living god—religion becomes no more than a social
club with a bloodless metaphysics (and probably suffocatingly dogmatic, if
doctrines are taken seriously). Can religion survive if it does not generate
any spiritual experiences of alleged transcendent realities? Some argue that
a reinvigorated mysticism may be the cure. Robert Ellwood suggests that it
is hard to conceive of religion persisting without continual mystical
experiences on the part of some, because mysticism is the only guarantor of
any future for religion since it points to the one undeniable empirical fact in
religion: that now as much as ever people report having experiences of
ultimacy (1999: 190). The Catholic theologian Karl Rahner predicted that
the “Christian of the future will be a mystic or he or she will not exist at all”
(1981: 149–50).4 In Asia, many, including Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan in the
middle of the twentieth century, have argued that the future of religion in
general or even of civilization itself depends on a strong continuing
presence of at least some mystics.
 But can mysticism in fact help? The first point toward answering that
question is that today the natural universe is too ingrained in the mind of
anyone influenced by modern science to doubt seriously that it is fully and
fundamentally real. Scientists have revealed a complex and intricate
universe of extraordinary size, with billions of galaxies, billions of years
old, and an earth with a fascinating history and diversity of life. The
majesty and splendor of it all cannot be ignored. The fact that the universe
existed for billions of years without any conscious life is enough to dispute
any mystical claim that the universe is just a staging ground for human
beings to return to our true state in another realm, unless one wants to
accept a wasteful creator of truly cosmic proportions, or that the universe is
the result of sentient beings’ mysterious “root-ignorance.” The phenomenal
world is irreducibly real in the sense that it is now a fact that we cannot get
around. In light of evolution, it is also hard to maintain that each of us is a
special creation of God, or that human beings as a species are the goal of
the universe. And the amount of natural suffering only becomes more
mysterious in light of any mystical experiences of bliss associated with a
theistic source. In sum, once we have passed through the education
provided by science, it is very hard to treat the unfolding world of time as
no more than the “dream” realm of some other reality. Indeed, many
scholars argue that we are so secularized that we are no longer capable of
experiencing the world in the way that premoderns did as the creation of
another reality.
In addition, there is a metaphysical issue: if there is a transcendent
source, we still have to explain why the natural world exists. The spectrum
of colors is as real as its source of white light and must be accounted for. If
introvertive mystical experiences give the sense that the transcendent realm
is all that is important, why does the natural realm exist at all? Why is there
now more than merely the transcendent state? Why did the source emanate
out a diverse realm (or whatever is the relation of the source to this world)
and not remain alone real? And why are we here and not there? We like to
think that there must be some reason and that the world did not occur
simply by dumb luck or without a purpose.5 It is hard to accept that this
world is a meaningless “play” of a transcendent reality. Any system such as
Advaita Vedanta that does not explain all the incredible variety of the
diverse phenomena of our old and extensive universe but dismisses it all as
a dream is thus difficult to accept today. It would dissolve all the
phenomena that form the basis of any meaning or content to our lives as an
illusion. Indeed, Advaita has trouble explaining how there could even be the
illusion of a phenomenal realm. The unchanging luminous consciousness
also somehow presents the discursive mind, and thus the discursive mind is
part of what is real and not in any way an illusion. The waves on the ocean
are as real as the still ocean depths. We may not be simply our changing
thoughts and feelings, and thus it may be an error to identify ourselves with
those or to reduce consciousness to those, but such mental content is also
real, and thus it is just as much an error to claim that we are not our
thoughts and feelings, but only an unchanging observing consciousness. It
may be simpler, easier to bear suffering, and more freeing to identify only
with the silent observer, but that does not reflect all that we are.
So too, if there is a reason for all this, it would have to be more than
putting us through trials and eventually simply returning us to our prior
“true state.” That is, something must be wrong with this picture if the only
goal of this world is to get out of it and return to the same condition we
were in before. Why create something if the end result is merely the same
as the beginning? In light of science’s findings, we cannot accept that we
are aliens in this world—“strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews
11:13). There may be more that is real about us, but this universe must be
taken to be our natural home, and thus we must take it seriously. Moreover,
there is no reason to think that the objective of life here is to sit blissed out
all the time, as the caricature of mystics goes, even if that were possible. It
is difficult to see even having introvertive mystical experiences—i.e.,
glimpses of transcendent realities—in the world as the ultimate goal of life.
Thus, if mysticism is to be taken seriously today, mystics must provide an
interpretation that gives full significance to this realm and advances a
meaningful way of life in accord with it. Any revamped mysticism must
accept as a basic premise that this realm is profoundly significant, and it
must proffer a reason for why it is here. To that extent, any mysticism must
be “this-worldly” and not exclusively “other-worldly.”
All of this means that no matter how powerful introvertive mystical
experiences are, they must be interpreted to give full reality to the world—
this world is now irrevocably embedded in our view of what is fully real.
Today our starting point for understanding what we are is that we are all the
refuse of an ancient supernova—we may be more than that, but we cannot
start by thinking we are really a disembodied mind or the special creation of
a god.6 Mystics today must accept that we are a natural part of this world,
and any mysticism must explain why this is so and also why we have an
analytical mind that seems to alienate us from the rest of reality. Suffering
cannot be dismissed as an illusion but must be accepted as fully real and in
need of an explanation. And if they are to be anything like classical mystics,
mystics today must also defend the existence of a transcendent ground to
this real world. That is, the problem for anything resembling a classical
mystical way of life today is how to reinject the world into a nonnaturalistic
framework with transcendent realities without denying the world’s full
reality—one that incorporates both an eternal ontic vertical dimension and a
historical horizontal dimension as both real and important. But if
successful, mysticism can replace the image of a totally transcendent deity
with one that is also immanent in space and time, since the god of theistic
mysticism is experienceable and the ground of the natural world.
However, living a life that incorporates awareness of the still ontic
depth while functioning in the constantly changing surface-world is not
simple (see Jones 2004: 379–405, 2010: 261–76): how can one rest
inwardly in the source of being with a still mind and emotional calm while
yet remaining outwardly active in the realm of diversity? How do we quiet
the inner noise in our mind to let the ground shine through and still have a
fully functioning, concept-guided mind? How can one integrate what
Meister Eckhart calls the soul’s two eyes—the inward one that focuses on
being and the outward one that focuses on creatures (2009: 570–71; also see
Mundaka Up. 3.1.1)? That is, how can one integrate a background
awareness of beingness into the foreground of active involvement with the
world? How can we not end up with a divided consciousness—one that is
either aware of the ontic depth or the diversified phenomenal surface, but
not both at the same time? How do we overcome a dualism of one self who
acts and another transcendental self who only witnesses events and does not
participate? Even if a mystical liberation in this life (jivan-mukti) is possible
despite our ties to the body and with a mind having multiple functions,
disdain for the world would not reflect life in this world. An ascetic
renunciation of the world is clearly misguided if we accept that this world
as fully real. If we focus exclusively on the present moment without a
thought to the future or on the depth of being without regard to the surface
waves, we will not last long. Through meditation we may be able to
eliminate many negative states of mind and replace them with states
permitting calmness and compassion, leading to more focus and a more
productive life. (Some initial studies of meditation programs for elementary
school and high school students indicate that meditation helps with
behavioral problems and even math scores.) We may also integrate more
awareness of the vertical dimension into our lives and become less self-
centered. We cannot, however, have a life of true selflessness, because one’s
life in the world is still real and requires some self-assertiveness—the
Daodejing emphasizes nonassertiveness, but assertive yang-actions must be
part of the balance along with such yin-actions. So too, complete self-
denying love for others does not reflect reality as it truly is, since we are
also equally part of the world—we are as real and important as the other
beings we want to help. Indeed, from a mystical point of view, the total
renunciation or denial of oneself and the world involves making distinctions
and is an attachment since we and the world are real. In addition, quashing
all personal emotions such as hate and greed may help us see something of
reality that we missed, but we can still ask if such even-mindedness reflects
all that is real. Being emotionally detached from all people, including one’s
family and friends, also may not reflect life as it has actually evolved.
Thus, even if the idea of a distinct, self-contained “ego” is a socially
constructed fiction, we must have a place for our particular node among the
different nodes in the web of phenomenal reality: a “person” may not be a
permanent, separate entity, but the impermanent stream of conditions
constructing a node is a real part of what in the final analysis is real. What
happens to our body and mind in the world matters, even if our
transcendent beingness remains unaffected by the vicissitudes of the world.
Much of our suffering may arise from identifying with surface thoughts and
emotions and forgetting our ontic depth, but those surface phenomena are
still part of what we are. (Indeed, if the depth-experience is the experience
of one’s true self and not merely of pure beingness, then an issue arises:
what is experienced is changeless, and if one’s self is changeless, then it
does not have any of the features that make a person a person—emotions,
sense-experience, and indeed even consciousness change.) So too, the other
conscious nodes that are worthy of moral concern cannot be dismissed as
illusions in a dream. Thus, treating this world as an illusion or “play” of the
gods not only gives us no reason to treat the world itself seriously, but
removes other people as realities to treat morally.
 And it is important to note again that mysticism is not necessarily in
conflict with science. To classical mystics, the metaphysics of naturalism
would have to be abandoned, and some transcendent dimension to both the
natural world and a human being that is open to experience would have to
be accepted. But science is not the philosophy of naturalism, and thus
giving up naturalism is not giving up science (see Jones 2010: 191–202). As
discussed in chapter 8, mystical experiences involve calming the mind of its
normal differentiated jumble and discerning one dimension of reality—the
beingness of the natural world or its source—while scientists discover the
causal realities within the natural world and how they work. Thus, it is not a
matter of mysticism replacing science, but supplementing it with a different
type of knowledge. We can interpret mystical experiences as a cognitive
insight into the depth beingness of reality and still affirm the full reality of
the phenomena of the natural world and the value of instrumental states of
consciousness. Thus, there would be a role for different states of
consciousness enabling different ways of knowing. Mystical matters would
be limited to the issue of beingness, and even depth-mystical experiences
would not be taken as overwhelming all other types of cognitive
experiences. If we accept this approach, we need not deny science as
cognitive to accept mysticism as cognitive, or vice versa. So too, a scientific
explanation of the biological bases of mystical experiences could still be
affirmed. Mystical doctrines of transcendent realities would not need to be
revised in light of any scientific findings or theories—again, consciousness
may present a problem—but other doctrines of mystical ways of life may
have to be revised to incorporate scientific insights.
Thus, it is possible to forge a conciliation of mysticism and science
that accepts both endeavors as knowledge-giving (see also Jones 2010:
261–76). This means that it is not necessary to naturalize introvertive
mystical experiences for a reconciliation: one can accept the classical
mystical position that these experiences involve transcendent realities while
still fully affirming science. However, this position does reflect a
nonmystical point of view, since it gives equal weight to a nonmystical
approach to the world, and it would lead to what from a classical mystical
point of view is a truncated mysticism. But such a conciliation removes one
objection to the cognitive validity of introvertive mystical experiences by
showing that their claims to be an awareness of a transcendent reality are
consistent with science’s cognitive claims. Thus, we are not forced to
choose between “the path of spirituality” and “the path of reason,” as the
biologist Edward O. Wilson and many other naturalists believe, at least
when it comes to the core of mystical knowledge-claims. Whether theism
can reconcile a transcendent god that is active in the phenomenal world
with a “path of reason” is another question.
But whether any accommodation of science and mysticism is
successful or not will ultimately depend on basic philosophical judgments
that transcend both endeavors. One must also ask whether a mystically
informed life must be bifurcated: we can focus on beingness or the
differentiations of the phenomenal world but not both at the same time. We
may be calmer and more focused with mystical training, but the
conceptualizing analytical mind and concept-driven perceptions are needed
to conduct science and to live in the world. We cannot live focused only on
the present moment even if doing so lets us see the beingness of things.

A Mystical Revolution?
If adopting a worldview shaped by science does not require denying that
mystical experiences are cognitive of a transcendent dimension to reality,
mysticism today may in principle make a contribution to the world’s current
religious situation even for the scientifically minded. And there have been
religious reawakenings in the past when civilizations were in crisis.
However, factors militate against the widespread influence of mysticism on
religion, at least in the near future. First, as noted above, the spirit of the age
is antimystical, and the demands of mystical training may seem too
strenuous for most people.
Second, if mystical and other spiritual experiences are in fact a normal
product of a healthy brain and common among the population at large, as
surveys suggest, then mystical experiences were probably also common in
the past without producing any social revolutions. And there is little reason
to suppose that mystical experiences today could have a wider cultural
influence than they have had in the recent past. Many New Age advocates
think that we are on the verge of a new stage in human evolution, but if
mystical experiences have been common throughout history, why should
we think that they would change society today, in our culture that values
self-assertion, if they did not produce a mystical society in the past,
especially when many experiencers today do not accept their experiences as
cognitive?7 In addition, mysticism remains focused on the inner changes of
individuals—changing society or advocating the social rights of individuals
is a relatively recent development in mysticism (see Johnston 1995: 254–
68, Jones 2004: 347–77). Throughout history, mystics also have tended to
be socially conservative except when coupled with a radical movement
arising for nonmystical reasons; thus, mysticism can easily become
counterproductive to social change (Ellwood 1999: 190). So too, a great
interest in mysticism in a society inevitably focuses energies on inward
experience that otherwise might have been used to effect outward change
(ibid.). In the 1960s, drug-induced experiences did not have a political
effect—the hippies had no institutional support system, and the only lasting
cultural effect was an increase in the general hedonism of the “Me
Generation,” which was followed by decades of greed. There is no reason
to think that the conditions are any different today. It may also be overly
optimistic to believe that we are seeing not only the twilight of older
religions but the birth of some new general spiritual revolution. The “New
Age” may remain nothing more than a fringe movement among the affluent.
Third, it should not be forgotten that mysticism has a dark side.
Mysticism is not all peace and love—mystics have also supported
inquisitions, crusades, wars, and religious fanaticism, often in the name of
love. Spiritual rogues with feet of clay have also been narcissistic monsters
exploiting their followers. So too, drugs and meditation can aggravate
negative psychological conditions. It must be remembered that the basic
beliefs and values of a mystic come from outside mystical experiences. A
supportive social context, socially positive doctrines, and ethical values
must be integrated into a mystical way of life to give a positive meaning to
the experiences.8 Otherwise, rootless mystical experiences may only open
people to dangerous psychological events by releasing the subconscious
into the conscious mind or reinforcing one’s current unenlightened beliefs
and sense of self. A society dominated by such untutored mystics running
amok may be very unpleasant and dangerous, if it is viable at all. Certainly
looking on mysticism as a simple remedy for any of our social ills is a
mistake.

A Thirst for Transcendence

Late in his life the theologian Paul Tillich said that the question for his time
was this: “Is it possible to regain the lost dimension, the encounter with the
Holy, the dimension that cuts through the world of subjectivity and
objectivity and goes down to that which is not world but is the mystery of
the Ground of Being?” (quoted in Smith 2000: 32.) From what was
discussed above, the prospects look bleak for the near future of more fully
incorporating parts of mystical traditions as one component of a
reinvigorated general religious life.9 But perhaps our species is Homo
religiosus, as many in religious studies and some in anthropology have
asserted, and perhaps a thirst for transcending the natural realm is natural to
us (although the rise of the number of the religiously unaffiliated in
America—the “nones”—leads to doubt that human beings are inherently
religious). Certainly, contact with more of reality (if that is what in fact
occurs in mystical experiences) would lead to being more fully human and
to a more meaningful life with potentially a more positive, optimistic
outlook. Mystical selflessness would also widen the application of whatever
values one adopts, including compassion and a moral concern for others.
Even if mystical experiences are not cognitive, they may open us to the
possibility that there is more to reality than the natural world. They may
help us overcome a sense of alienation from the natural world and give us a
sense of being connected to the world and to each other that will affect how
we see ourselves and treat others and how we act in the world. And today
we are in a situation where we all can see ourselves as the spiritual heirs of
all the major religious traditions of the world, and individuals who believe
that mystical experiences are cognitive of a generally hidden dimension of a
reality or are otherwise important to attain for our knowledge of the world
are in a position to utilize those contemplative traditions to that end and to
develop new mystical systems in association with science and modern
cultural interests.
The role of philosophy in such a quest will be to help clarify issues
related to beliefs and values for anyone adopting mysticism into his or her
life. Philosophy may expose that we know less than we like to think we
know about mystical matters. Nevertheless, it is best that we know our true
situation: if mystical experiences are genuine, mystics are aware of aspects
of reality that nonmystics miss, but the experiences still give less
knowledge and fewer values than mystics typically believe. Mysticism
gives an experiential sense that there is more to reality than we previously
supposed, but philosophy reveals that we know less than we supposed.
However, a sense of mystery at the heart of both reality and our knowledge
may not greatly offend those who have allegedly experienced realities they
deem ineffable.
Notes
 Chapter 1
1. For histories of the term, see Bouyer 1980, de Certeau 1992, and Schmidt 2003.
2. The Indo-European root of these words—“mu”—is also the root for the English words
“mystery” and “mute” and the Sanskrit word “muni” meaning a “silent one,” one title of the Buddha.
Does this silence and hiddenness mean that mysticism should be classified as esoteric? That depends
on what is meant by “esoteric.” Not every person has had mystical experiences, and advanced
meditation requires the guidance and instruction of a meditative master. There also are groups both
East and West, such as the Tantrics and Gnostics, who give advanced teachings only to initiates. (The
name “upanishad” may come from Sanskrit words meaning “to sit near,” suggesting that the
teachings were only for select students, although this etymology is suspect.) But mystical experiences
may be common, and meditation does not require any special skills (although not all people may
have a disposition toward meditating). And the basic teachings of all mystical traditions are open to
all today.
3. According to Andrew Greeley, theology and spirituality split by the year 1300. By that time,
theology had become exclusively a university discipline and spirituality had branched off as a
separate concern of monks and mystics (1974: vii).
4. It should be noted that “contemplation” in medieval Europe also covered philosophical
reflection—there was no hard-and-fast line between mystics and philosophers when philosophy,
following the Greeks, was considered a way of life leading to an inner transformation. Both
philosophizing and meditating were “contemplative” activities.
5. Brian Lancaster also characterizes Kabbala in Judaism as “a way, a holistic path,” rather
than a doctrine or a spiritual teaching (2009: 13).
6. It is often claimed that mystical experiences or drug-altered states of consciousness are the
origin of religion (e.g., Stace 1960a). Mystical experiences may be a source of a sense of
transcendent realities such as gods, souls independent of the body, and heaven and hell. But even if
that is so, it is doubtful that such experiences and the role of shamans in tribal societies would alone
have produced all the complex phenomena of religion. Today anthropologists studying early and
preliterate societies tend to see the origin of religion as a natural evolutionary byproduct of social
interactions, with a belief in anthropomorphized supernatural agents who are like us only more
powerful, and without appeal to mystical experiences.
7. Spontaneous mystical experiences raise a definitional problem. Does having one such
experience make the experiencer a “mystic”? Does having more? Must a spontaneous mystical
experience transform the experiencer for the label to apply? Or must one undertake mystical practices
or even a full mystical way of life with a path leading to enlightenment? On the other hand, what if
one is on a path but has not had any mystical experiences yet?
8. Today the distinction between numinous and mystical experiences is falling out of fashion
in religious studies (see Kohav 2014). It is being replaced by one category—“religious
experiences”—as if all religious experiences are the same in nature and whatever is said about any of
them applied equally to all. Lumping together significantly different experiences is a step backward
in analysis that reflects a growing lack of interest in religious experiences in religious studies. (See
Roth 2008 for a proposal to reinject studying “subjective” religious experiences in religious studies,
rather than its current reliance on only observable historical and sociological data. However, he
remains “very pessimistic” about the prospects for change [ibid.: 19].) In addition, it should be
pointed out again that mystical experiences are not always taken to be religious in nature.
9. Buddhists may not characterize this as “emptying the mind,” but as switching from a
conceptualizing mind to a nonconceptualizing mind that mirrors what is presented to it. Mindfulness
is a direct perception (pratyaksha) of whatever is presented free of conceptualizations (kalpanas) of
independent objects. The enlightened mind still has concepts in some sense (since the enlightened
can speak), but no sense of distinct self-existent realities.
10. “Depth” is intended to denote a transcendent reality. It is not meant to disparage naturalism
as a “flat” view of reality. Naturalists who are not reductive materialists can advocate a view of
reality with physical, biological, psychological, and social dimensions to a person and to the world,
even if there is only one ontic dimension.
11. Psychologists studying those who have had various experiences point out that the
experiences often do not fulfill all of the definitional criteria laid out by the psychologists for “a
complete mystical experience” (e.g., Hood 2002).
12. Meister Eckhart did say that if a person truly humbles himself, God cannot withhold his
goodness but must flow into him (2009: 281–82), but no techniques can force this detachment. In the
Jewish Kabbala, there is a tradition of trying to modify the inner life of the Godhead to bring about a
mystical experience (Idel 1988; Lancaster 2005: chap. 5). This manipulation is sometimes called
“theurgic mysticism.”
13. For example, Dao de jing 19, 48, 64, and 81; also see Jones 1993: 47–55; 2014a: 204–10
on “unknowing” in the Isha Upanishad. The term “unknowing” is also used in another sense among
mystics: not as a process of emptying the mind, but as a positive knowledge of God that so contrasts
with ordinary knowledge that we cannot even call it “knowing” at all.
14. That there also are subconscious processes operating in the everyday state of mind—called
“samskaras” in Buddhism and in the Yoga Sutras—should not be overlooked. By letting
subconscious emotions enter consciousness, one can release them. According to Indian mystical
schools, all subconscious processes are ended in enlightenment.
15. Mystics in general do not claim that the transcendent reality that is experienced is
terrifying or to be feared, as occurs often with numinous experiences. For example, Eckhart said not
to fear God, because that would cause one to flee from him; rather fear losing God (2009: 282).
Transcendent realities are usually seen as benevolent or neutral. But fear does occur in mystical states
in the process of emptying the mind during meditation. It is not experiencing a “trembling in the
presence of God” involved in revelations, but persons may feel fear, terror, or paranoia if they cannot
handle the experiences. Mystics may also feel the distress of abandonment if they are not making
spiritual progress. However, negative states during meditation are usually attributed to a demonic
force or to the meditator’s own mind and are not projected onto a transcendent reality. But these
possible negative effects of meditation should not be overlooked. Drugs and meditation may
exacerbate the conditions of some people with mental disorders—indeed, mystical experiences may
be opening the same territory trod by schizophrenics and psychotics. Introvertive experiences can
lead to confusion, fear, panic attacks, and paranoia. In one drug study, 44 percent of the volunteers
reported delusions or paranoid thinking, although the authors of the report said that this could be
controlled by better screening and by qualified guidance during the experiences (Griffiths et al.
2011). Some training in a psychological framework and a set of beliefs that would prepare meditators
or drug subjects to handle what is experienced may be essential before any serious mystical training
is undertaken. Otherwise, detachment from normal emotions can lead to depression or much worse.
16. Asceticism to purify oneself is one approach to potentially cultivate mystical experiences,
but mysticism and asceticism cannot be equated. The ascetic Heinrich Suso may have followed
Eckhart’s teachings, but Eckhart was not an ascetic, nor were any of his other major known
followers. Asceticism can lead to mystical receptivity, but ascetics see their renunciation of all
material things or their physical mortification as an end in itself. And the Buddha is not alone in
ultimately rejecting asceticism as a way to enlightenment. Some traditions (e.g., Sufism) at first
embraced asceticism but became less ascetic later.
17. Mystical mindfulness should be distinguished from conventional mindfulness. Both
involve attention, but mystical mindfulness involves an “unknowing”—emptying one’s mind of all
conceptual, dispositional, and emotional content. Everyday mindfulness involves keeping some idea
in mind—e.g., being mindful of our rights or of our status in society. It is a matter of actively
drawing distinctions, not passive perceptual receptivity. For a study of the latter type of mindfulness,
see Langer 1989.
18. The nonmystical Albert Camus also spoke of the conceptualizing mind alienating us from
the world in “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “If I were a cat among animals, this life would have a
meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to the world. I would be this
world to which I am now opposed by my whole consciousness.”
19. The Chandogya’s clay/pot example is actually part of an introvertive mystical tradition:
what is real (Brahman) is hidden from sense-experience but is uncovered by yogic experiences. Like
the “self within the heart,” it is not a phenomenal reality open to the senses; rather, it is a
transcendent reality that can be experienced only by stilling the mind.
20. The Flemish mystic Jan van Ruusbroec is often cited for the claim that there is a distinctive
theistic introvertive experience. But it is not clear whether he claimed that the distinction between the
experiencer and God is present in the experience itself or is only seen after the experience is over. For
example, he wrote: “At the very moment when we try to examine and observe what is it that we are
experiencing, we slip back into the activity of reasoning, at which we become aware of distinction
and difference between ourselves and God. We then find God to be outside us in all his
incomprehensibility” (1985: 176).
21. The term “enlightenment” entered mystical parlance in the late nineteenth century as a
translation of the Sanskrit term “bodhi” by the Pali scholar T. W. Rhys Davids, who was intentionally
linking it to the knowledge of the European Enlightenment. “Bodhi” comes from the same Sanskrit
root as the word “buddha”—“budh.” It can be better translated as “awakening”—i.e., the Buddha is
one who has awaken from the sleep of root-ignorance (avidya). But the term “enlightenment” will be
used here as a general category for mystics who have attained a state of selflessness even if that is not
their final goal.
22. In his Critique of Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant said that “Happiness is the state of a
rational being in the world for whom in the whole of his existence everything proceeds according to
his wish and will.” That would be the opposite of the selfless joy of a mystic for whom there is no
longer an individual’s “wish and will.”
23. Mystical bliss does give mysticism an other-worldly air. Meister Eckhart said that the joy
made all of one’s worldly suffering bearable (2009: 80).
24. Some traditions deny that any true “liberation in this life” (jivan-mukti) is possible, i.e.,
that being tied to the body with its subconscious functions keeps us from ever becoming truly
selfless. But most Advaitins affirm such liberation since enlightenment is only a matter of one’s
knowledge by participation regardless of one’s bodily state, and so being “embodied” does present a
problem.
25. As noted before, the border between mystical experiences and other religious and
nonreligious experiences is not bright. Wesley Wildman (2011) attempts a typology for all religious
experiences based on their phenomenological features.
26. The word “illusion” is better than “delusion” for depicting extrovertive mysticism, since
the error is a matter of ordinarily seeing reality incorrectly and not alleged to be the product of a
brain disorder. It is more like mistaking a mirage for water than seeing something that is not there in
any sense. The common Indian analogy for the root-ignorance is mistaking a rope for a snake: once
our knowledge is corrected, we see the rope correctly.
 Chapter 2
1. The Buddhist parable of the raft—that the Buddha’s teachings are a raft to get us across the
sea of suffering, but then are not to be clung to once we are on the other shore (Majjhima Nikaya 22)
—is often taken today to mean that the Buddha’s teachings could be rejected as not actually
conveying knowledge but were only of pragmatic value to attain an experience. But if one actually
reads the entire passage, one sees that it does not suggest that the teachings were not true, but only
that the enlightened no longer need to study them.
2. If we did away with the doctrines of karma and rebirth, traditional Buddhism would
collapse: its central problem as articulated in the four Noble Truths is suffering (duhkha), and without
rebirth that problem would end with our death. Stephen Batchelor argues that today one can be a
Buddhist and even take a bodhisattva vow to help all creatures while being agnostic on the issues of
rebirth and karma—to him, such beliefs are part of the old traditional Indian folk cosmology that can
be jettisoned because they do not affect behavior (1997). Buddhists could of course still follow their
ethics and practice meditation without those beliefs, but jettisoning these beliefs does remove the
purpose and framework of the traditional Buddhist way of life as groundless (see Thurman &
Batchelor 1997).
3. Buddhists do not include insight (prajna) and enlightenment (bodhi) in the same category as
experiences. Advaitins also distinguish experiences subject to the means of correct knowledge
(pramanas) from direct knowledge of Brahman (brahma-anubhava, brahma-vidya, brahma-jnana).
4. Even in Nyaya, an Indian tradition that accepts yogic perception as a means to correct
knowledge, practitioners do not invoke their own experiences to justify claims.
5. William Forgie argues that the phenomenological content of theistic mystical experiences
does not even identify God as the object of experience any more than sense-data identify sense-
objects (1984, 1994).
6. The distinction here is between different levels in accounts of what reality is allegedly
experienced, but this also relates to the difference between “thin” phenomenological descriptions of
the felt content of the experiences themselves versus “thick” doctrinal descriptions of what is
experienced.
7. A postmodern point that goes back to Nelson Goodman (1960) is conceptual relativism:
there is no objective answer to what is “really there” because different sets of concepts cut up
amorphous reality differently but with equal validity; thus, no set of concepts can claim to reflect
what is really there. If this is the case, no set of concepts can claim to mirror transcendent realities
better than another—all concepts will reflect what is there plus some human perspective. All our
claims mix both elements. But even if there is no one correct way to depict a transcendent reality, this
does not conflict with mystical realism: we do not “make the stars”—what is there exists regardless
of whether human beings exist, but obviously it would not be classified as “a star” without our
conceptualizations; with a different set of concepts, “the star disappears” only in the limited sense
that that concept is no longer used. So too, declassifying Pluto as a planet in no meaningful sense
“destroyed a planet.”
8. Again, mysticism is not necessarily religious. Even if depth-mystical experiences involve
transcendent realities, an experiencer may give it a naturalistic interpretation, and so it may not have
a transformative effect on the experiencer or be seen as giving meaning. Thus, it is hard to see the
experience as inherently religious. Extrovertive mystical experiences of “nature mysticism” or the
sheer that-ness of things are usually interpreted as having religious significance, but they need not be;
however, if they occur outside some religious framework that gives them meaning, they can be
disorienting and have a negative effect on one’s satisfaction with life (Byrd, Lear, & Schwenka 2000:
267–68). Also, meditation with a spiritual component may produce different effects than a secular
approach and may produce experiences with more mystical characteristics (Wachholtz & Pargament
2005).
9. Ninian Smart rightly points out the danger that interpretations by others of mystics’
experiences can be in theologically loaded, highly ramified terms (1965: 81), but mystics’ own
accounts may themselves result in highly ramified terms.
10. Today many people speak of being “spiritual” rather than “religious.” Spirituality typically
focuses on an individual’s personal development, rather than religious institutions or the traditional
doctrines of a particular religious tradition (see Ferrer & Sherman 2008). But whether the spiritual
are members of a formal religion or not, they still must have some beliefs for understanding their
own mystical experiences, even if their beliefs and values are an eclectic blend of what the person
likes from different religious and nonreligious traditions and are not the highly ramified beliefs of a
specific tradition’s theology. They may have less theological clutter, but they need some beliefs and
values.
11. This finding, if confirmed, suggests that the presence or absence of differentiations in
introvertive mystical experiences does not affect the neurology of the event and thus that neurology
could not distinguish differentiated introvertive mystical experiences from empty ones. If so,
nonconstructivists could not cite neurology in support of their position that depth-mystical
experiences are devoid of conceptual structuring. But other studies cited above suggest that some
states are free of structuring.
12. The moderate constructivist John Hick thought that this difference in the conscious states
reported by the Tibetan monks and Christian nuns is hard to reconcile with a direct brain-to-
consciousness causation (2006: 75). But if the differences in the reports reflect postexperience
interpretations and not differences within the experiences themselves, then the monks and nuns had
the same experience and only interpreted it differently (the nonconstructivist view), and the fact that
the physiological effects are the same is only to be expected. On the other hand, if the subjective
structuring affects the experience itself (the constructivist view), then the physiological effects again
might be exactly the same regardless of whatever structuring is present: the physiological effects only
reflect the fact that some structuring was present in the experience—what the specific structuring is is
irrelevant to the physiological and neurological mechanisms.
13. The distinction between experience and conceptualization in mystical experiences can be
traced to William James’s distinction between the experience and theological “over-beliefs” (1958:
387).
14. Constructivists may argue that mystical experiences do not precede doctrines, because
doctrines arose in every society simply to construct a picture of the world that would make the
existing religious practices seem plausible. Thus, any special experiences, including mystical ones,
would have no role in forming doctrines.
15. Katz rightly claims that “[t]here is no intelligible way that anyone can legitimately argue
that a ‘no-self’ experience of ‘empty’ calm is the same experience as the experience of intense,
loving, intimate relationship between two substantial selves, one of whom is conceived as the
personal God of western religion and all that this entails” (1978: 39–40). But this only points to there
being more than one type of introvertive mystical experience: theistic and depth. It does not
invalidate mystical claims or validate constructivism.
16. If meditation is guided toward a specific end, this may affect the activity of the areas of the
brain associated with it. For example, there is evidence that if participants are engaged in meditation
specially geared toward compassion, they become more compassionate and the areas of the brain
connected to empathy are affected (Leung et al. 2013; Mascaro et al. 2013). Constructivists would
see this as support for their position.
17. Epistemologists in classical Indian traditions also accepted that concepts play a role in
everyday experiences—i.e., that everyday experiences and knowledge are permeated by our
conceptualizations—but they were divided on the matter of mystical experiences.
18. Whether there is an “essence” of mysticism that converges with, or supports, one religious
tradition’s doctrines is an issue for theologians and religious theorists in different religions. The
philosophical analysis of different experiences and doctrines cannot support such a claim.
19. Stace reached an ontic conclusion from this: there is nothing to differentiate different
minds, and so there is only one mind—one “pure ego in the universe” (1960a: 150–52). However,
one may remain content with the simpler claim that similarly constructed brains or minds would have
the same experience when all content is removed.
20. But there are constructivists in sociology and science studies who apply strong
constructivism to scientific theories, facts, and observations (see Jones 2009: chap. 3). Their claim is
that we have no direct, unmediated access to reality—all experiences are permeated with some
conceptualization.
21. Empirical studies that rely on the experiencers’ responses to survey items and
classifications tend to support nonconstructivism (e.g., Hood 1997). However, there is a problem:
because questionnaires are typically theologically loaded (e.g., asking about God but not about a
nonpersonal transcendent reality such as Brahman), constructivists may question whether surveys
indicate any phenomenologically felt unity of actual experiences among experiencers. So too, if
questionnaires use different terms for a transcendent reality, constructivists again may question
whether there is any convergence in the experiences—experiencers may be having significantly
different experiences.
22. David Preston (1988) argues that Zen teachings (including teachings on meditation)
actually provide little guidance to Zen students: the body itself becomes more attentive through
practice, and one finally attains a new state without thinking or emotion. If so, this does not help the
constructivists’ case, since concepts apparently do not play a role in this process.
23. Near the end of his life, Thomas Aquinas had an experience that led him to say that “all
that I have written seems like straw to me.” If that experience was mystical, this is hard to reconcile
with the claim that mystical experiences are only intense feelings of one’s doctrines.
24. Religions are traditionally conservative: what is important is already known and so should
be preserved and not changed. They have not been progressive like science. Thus, religions
traditionally resist changes in knowledge. But religious doctrines, values, and practices nevertheless
do change over time.
25. Constructivists may argue that transformations within mystical traditions (e.g., the rise of
the Mahayana tradition within Buddhism) must have occurred for nonmystical reasons if mystical
experiences remain a constant. They can also handle the problem of similar experiences occurring in
different cultures in terms of a uniformity of human physiology. But the problems pointed out in the
preceding paragraph in the text remain.
26. In addition, mystical teachers conclude from the actions and statements of their students
that some experiences of their students are of the same nature as their own. But the experiences do
remain private, and so this issue persists.
 Chapter 3
1. One may argue (following Sidney Hook) that a “state of consciousness” cannot be cognitive
and that only discrete experiences within one can be. But in the case of introvertive mystical
experiences, the state of consciousness and the experience are not distinct: the state of consciousness
does not underlie separate experiences, as in the case of the everyday state of consciousness or
mindfulness. It is the state of consciousness itself that is or is not cognitive.
2. It should go without saying, but experiences themselves cannot conflict with other
experiences or with science—only our understanding and interpretation of them can.
3. Philosophers who rely on a principle of credulity (discussed below) often downplay the
importance of any third-person checking by noting that such checking is ultimately circular (e.g.,
Gellman 2001)—i.e., the reliability of any given third-person checking of, say, perceptions depends
on further third-person checking.
4. Intersubjective testing in science also requires training to see the significance of an
observation—to determine, for example, whether a dot of light is a star or a planet—but anyone who
has had the training can make the observation (although scientists may still disagree about theories).
5. An a priori rejection of all transcendent claims risks simply being circular. At a minimum, it
would make the naturalists’ claim a matter of metaphysics. The argument that all transcendent
explanations must be rejected because they cannot meet “modern epistemic standards” (Bagger 1999)
ends up being an unconvincing postmodernist argument that merely points out that transcendent
explanations conflict today with the current naturalist climate in academia (see Jones 2010: 195–97).
6. Faith in the authority of the Buddha is a theme of the widely accepted Lotus Sutra. One’s
meditative experiences are then ultimately judged against such testimony. So too, the Japanese Zen
master Dogen said that you must believe what a Zen master tells you.
7. Perhaps psychological disorders are one way that genuine mystical experiences are
stimulated through disruption of the normal hold of the mind, but it is understandable that
experiencers with such disorders would not attach cognitive significance to them under such
circumstances.
8. Shankara, too, made an analogy to sense-perception for mystical experiences. However, his
nondualistic metaphysics limits the analogy: sensory knowledge depends on causal relations, unlike
awareness of the underlying Brahman (see Phillips 2001).
9. Naturalists take third-person checkability to be an essential feature of any successful
epistemic practice (e.g., Fales 2001), and thus the lack of such checkability becomes grounds to
reject all mystical claims. But while sense-experiences and their objects provide the paradigm for
empirical claims, this requirement is only question-begging if transcendent realities in fact are not
phenomenal objects. There may be other ways to establish mystical experiences as veridical.
10. For example, Keith Yandell dismisses the possibility of experiencing Brahman “without
qualities” (nirguna) basically because something without qualities is nothing (1991: 299–300). If he
had read a little more Advaita and did not treat Brahman as an intentional object within the
phenomenal world, he would realize that Shankara is contrasting a transcendent reality with all things
phenomenal: there is still something to be experienced—all illusions are seen to be illusions only
against something real (sat), and the world of discrete objects is seen to be an illusion only by
realizing the transcendent consciousness. (For other criticisms of Yandell, see Quinn1999;
Wainwright 2012.)
11. One difficult problem is: where does God come from? Theists accept that God is “self-
existent” or “self-caused” and that how self-existence is possible is a mystery. Nontheists are not so
generous: they see these notions as incoherent and thus reject belief in God as irrational. (Also see
Jones 2012b: 199–204 on Buddhist objections.)
12. It is truly amazing that today Christian theologians and others writing on comparative
religion still try to make Buddhists out to be experiencing “Emptiness” (shunyata) as if it is a
transcendent reality comparable to God, in order to make the theological claim that Buddhists are
really experiencing God. Buddhists in the Prajnaparamita and Madhyamaka traditions do not
“experience Emptiness”—there is no such reality. Rather, they experience the phenomena of the
world as empty of anything giving them self-existence (svabhava)—they are not experiencing
anything transcending this realm. (See Jones 2014b: 136–43.)
13. Here are two examples of the extremes that Christian theologians will go to to support
their beliefs. Richard Swinburne argues that in fact there is no real conflict between religious
traditions on the experience of God. He suggests that nontheists should describe their experiences in
a “less committed way” as, for example, “experiences of the divine,” since experiences in non-
Christian traditions are experiences of beings and things compatible with theism (1991: 316). Of
course, nontheists could just as easily turn the situation around and call for theists to revise their
overly ramified concepts of a loving person, since they believe that what is ultimately real is
nonpersonal in nature. And if all mystics describe their experiences in “less committed ways,” no
specific transcendent reality would be supported, and all religious theorists would then have free rein
in devising any understanding of transcendent realities. Swinburne must also argue that all mystical
experiences are really personal, theistic ones. That there are genuinely different mystical experiences
—i.e., depth-mystical ones void of all differentiated content—that are free of any personal elements
simply must be denied. Nelson Pike makes the bizarre claim that the “monastic” introvertive mystical
experience is “phenomenologically theistic” despite being “empty” because its phenomenological
history is somehow unconsciously present during the experience itself (1992: 160–65; also see
Wainwright 1981: 117–19). He does not explain how the history can affect an “empty” experience: if
the depth-mystical experience is truly empty of differentiated content, then any theistic residue in the
experiencer from the past cannot somehow be present (although it may reemerge during the transition
back to everyday consciousness).
14. The omnipresence of a either a pantheistic or panentheistic god is also hard to justify from
any experience, although, like the other “omnis,” this may seem to be a reasonable inference.
15. So too with auditions: how could someone hearing a voice know it is an omnipotent God
and not merely a powerful alien?
16. The first part of this sentence is adapted from Plotinus’s Enneads 5.5.6. Plotinus argued
that we cannot know the nature of the One because we know only of the One through its emanations
(the Eastern Orthodox Church agrees), and thus we do not know its nature in itself. All we can know
of the One is that it is the cause of all things (ibid. 6.8.11–3, 3.8.10.32–35), although he said that even
the term “cause” ultimately does not apply.
17. Not all mystical options have survived. Buddhist and Advaita texts discuss doctrines from
traditions that no longer exist.
18. Strong constructivists do not consider mystical experiences as having any cognitive value,
but even if the depth-mystical experience is structured as constructivists argue, it could still in
principle be cognitive—after all, scientific observations and sense-experience in general are
structured, and yet they still lead to knowledge of the world. However, Steven Katz believes that
because mystical claims cannot be verified on grounds independent of the mystical experiences
themselves, they cannot be the grounds of any final assertions about the truth of any religious
position: “no veridical proposition can be generated on the basis of mystical experience” (1978: 22).
19. Buddhists who disagree with fellow Buddhists (or Hindus with fellow Hindus) do not
typically believe their opponents are not good Buddhists (or Hindus) or are heading toward hell, but
only that their understanding is wrong and that their path is not as efficient, although in India there is
more condemnation of other schools than many Westerners think.
 20. There have been precursors of this. For example, Kabir in India attempted a type of
universalism. However, it fostered hostilities and not tolerance, since he had to ignore many of the
details of the practices and doctrines of specific traditions, and the more orthodox in Hinduism and
Islam reacted negatively. So too, the Baha’i espouse one god that is seen differently in different
cultures and have been subject to violent persecution.
21. Thus, even if there is a transcendent reality and all introvertive mystics experience that
reality and merely interpret its nature differently, there is still no “esoteric unity” to all religions
(contra Schuon 1975). Religions are genuinely different: they are encompassing ways of life with
different goals and values—these cannot be dismissed as extraneous “exoteric” phenomena. And
again, mystics from different traditions continue to dispute claims about the nature of the
transcendent reality and human destiny.
22. “Inclusivism,” which selects one tradition as definitive and as providing the grounds for
other religions to be soteriologically effective, is another approach. Inclusivists do not deny that
doctrines conflict but assert that their tradition’s doctrines are best. This leads to a conflict of
different inclusivisms. Those who believe in rebirth also usually do not try to convert others but let
them follow their own tradition; this does not deny that there is a conflict of doctrines; it only means
that they think others will eventually be reborn in their tradition.
23. Shankara said that the appeal to revealed authority (shruti) is necessary since philosophers
constantly contradict each other (Brahma-sutra-bhashya 2.10–11). He also noted the objection that
this itself is an instance of reasoning, but he still asserted that the Vedas, being eternal, provide the
necessary true knowledge. He relied on the testimony of the Vedic seers, but as discussed in the last
chapter he also insisted that even the Vedas needed interpretation when they did not conform to his
nondualism.
24. Little to date has been done on mystical claims in the growing field of “virtue
epistemology.”
25. Postmodernists’ relativism of rationality will be discussed in chapter 7.
26. Different beliefs may have different degrees of warrant. The question here is about the
most basic doctrines in a mystical tradition on the nature of things.
27. This does not mean that one must be a naturalist today: naturalism is a metaphysical
position based on sense-experience and science being the only means to knowledge of the world, but
such a position is not deducible from scientific research or theorizing itself. One can rationally reject
naturalistic metaphysics: one can accept transcendent knowledge-claims as long as those claims are
consistent with science, and transcendent knowledge-claims are inherently consistent with science as
long as the transcendent realities are not active in nature. Only an active theistic god would present
an issue. Accepting an inactive ground of the universe or of the self could not be inconsistent with
holding any scientific theories. (See also chap. 8.)
28. Walter Stace points out that consensus does not prove objectivity: we all may have a
consensus on some illusions, such as mirages, but this does not make them part of the objective order
of things (1967: 147–50). Stace’s conclusion is that mystical experiences are neither part of the
“objective” order of the phenomenal world nor merely “subjective” (a mere product of the brain), but
that mystics really have a direct experience of something beyond the world of space and time (ibid.:
147–52).
29. Advaitins claim that knowledge of Brahman trumps all our experience of diversity, thereby
relegating all differentiated phenomena to the status of experiences in a dream. That is not irrational:
this may in fact be the ultimate metaphysical status of things in this world—a transcendent reality
may hold this world in existence, making the phenomenal world less than independently real. To say
that it is “colossally false,” as Keith Yandell does (1993: 301), is no better than Samuel Johnson
kicking a stone to refute Berkeley’s idealism. But critics also claim that Advaita has no explanation
for why the root-ignorance (avidya) causing the apparent diversity should exist, or for who has that
ignorance (since neither Brahman, which cannot have what is not real, nor persons who are
ultimately not real can be its base). (See Jones 2014c: 141–54.) That Advaitins must classify all
worldly phenomena as ontologically indeterminate (anirvachaniya) between real (sat) and totally
nonexistent (asat) only confirms the opponents’ belief that Advaita metaphysics does not make
sense. Theists have a related problem: if God already is in us, if God is nearer to me than I am to
myself, as Eckhart said (2009: 334, 352), then why do we not know it?
30. To be rational, nonmystics must also be able to follow the mystics’ use of language to
understand the claims—as Steven Phillips says, no one is warranted in believing a proposition that he
or she does not understand (1986: 22). But such understanding seems possible (as discussed in
chapter 6).
31. Does rationality apply to persons or to beliefs? Some beliefs may be inherently irrational to
hold—e.g., traditionally it is claimed that a contradiction expresses nothing to believe consistently,
and thus it would be irrational to hold a contradictory belief. (As discussed in chapter 7, dialetheists
disagree concerning some beliefs.) But whether any belief is inherently rational is open to question. It
seems that rationality is more a matter of whether a person is warranted to believe a proposition at a
given time.
32. One cannot help but think that if Plantinga had been raised in another religion, he would be
as adamant about that religion being the best religion. In fact, by simply changing the words
“Christian” to “Muslim,” “Christianity” to “Islam,” and “Jesus” to “the Quran” in his essay on
religious pluralism (2000: 437–57), it becomes a defense of Islamic exclusivism rather than Christian
exclusivism. This shows the relativism of his argument.
33. For a contemporary version of the James/Clifford debate over belief and evidence, see
Feldman and Warfield 2010.
34. Intuitions play a greater role in philosophy than is normally thought, and there is a
surprising lack of rigorous argument even in contemporary philosophy (Gutting 2009).
35. On the problems of assessing worldviews, see Wainwright 1993, 1998.
 Chapter 4
1. The yogic state of samadhi in which the mind is empty became emphasized in later Vedanta
and especially in the modern Neo-Vedanta, but in Shankara’s Advaita it is at best an aid to attaining
enlightenment. For him, no yogic practice is necessary: enlightenment is a matter of correct
knowledge during the awakened state, i.e., realizing what has always been the case about Brahman
being our only reality. Thus, he tended to downplay yoga and any special experiences. But
enlightenment for him, as in the Upanishads (see Jones 2014a: 173–84), is a matter of mystical
knowledge by participation, not mere factual “knowledge that” something is the case.
2. Possible persisting effects of these experiences or long-term changes in experiencers outside
of meditation, as would occur with mindfulness or as a possible after-effect of other mystical
experiences, have also been the subject of a few follow-up studies (e.g., Doblin 1991).
3. There are areas of the brain that are affected by a “compassion pill” that is being developed.
Meditation geared toward compassion may affect the same areas.
4. “Altered states of consciousness” involve, in the words of Charles Tart, a qualitative shift in
the pattern of mental functioning (1969: 1). It may be that all altered states of consciousness result
from activity in the same area of the brain (e.g., perhaps a decrease in prefrontal cortex activity)
(Dietrich 2003) or have some mystical or visionary attributes (e.g., a sense of oneness with the
phenomena around the experiencer, or ego-dissolution) (Dittrich 1998). Even if this is so, it will not
help decide the epistemic issues connected to mystical experiences.
5. The principal difficulty for any “state-specific science” is whether one can keep the theory-
directed attention necessary for scientific testing while remaining in the altered state of consciousness
—e.g., concept-guided testing would destroy any mindfulness toward all phenomena.
6. For the prospects of an actual “science of consciousness,” see Hameroff, Kaszniak, & Scott
1996; Chalmers 2004.
7. A “reduction” is different from merely specifying the bodily mechanisms involved in an
experience. We can understand the way the eye receives and the brain processes information without
taking away from the experience and the importance of seeing (Goodman 2002: 270–71). And the
same holds for specifying the mechanisms in the brain that function during a mystical experience. A
reduction goes further and undercuts the cognitive significance of the experience: it specifies that all
that is involved are those brain mechanisms. The experience is not denied but explained away. An
explanatory reduction can affect how phenomena are described and what needs explaining. Thus, a
reductionist may not feel compelled to explain all of the phenomenology of a mystical experience.
(See Jones 2013: 152–92.)
8. See Horgan 2003 for a popular account; see Newberg & Lee 2005 for methodological issues
in the neuroscientific study of religious experiences.
9. Some dismiss the prospect of finding anything unique about religion in our neurology, since
religion is simply another cultural phenomenon (see Brown 2006). But the issue here is whether there
is something unique in the neurology of mystical experiences, not religion or mysticism as ways of
life.
10. Such drugs will be called “psychotropic” here, but the term is not perfect since not all
psychotropic drugs are relevant. The term “psychotomimetic” has not entered general use. The term
“psychedelic”—literally, “mind-opening” or “soul-revealing”—might seem better, but it has fallen
into disrepute. “Hallucinogenic” and “entheogenic” are both question-begging concerning the issue
of cognitivity, the first con (i.e., generating hallucinations) and the second pro (i.e., generating
experiences of God).
 11. Newberg, D’Aquili, & Rause also suggest that religion arose from mystical insights (2002:
133–40). But as noted in chapter 1, anthropologists today point to social and evolutionary factors as
the sources of religion. There is evidence that children are predisposed to believe that all objects in
the world are created by an agent for a purpose, and thus we may be predisposed to believe in gods.
In addition, setting and beliefs matter for drug-induced mystical experiences, and so such beliefs may
have preceded the experiences in early religion. Advocates of the entheogenic theory may revise their
historical claim to drug experiences being either the source or a major reinforcement of the ideas of a
soul independent of the body, life after death, heaven and hell, and forces behind nature.
12. One problem with drug testing is that scientists cannot administer a psychotropic drug to
people without their consent because of the danger of very negative effects. Scientists cannot put
LSD in people’s drinks without their knowledge and say “Well, it’s for science—we just wanted to
see what would happen, and to get a disinterested result we couldn’t tell them about it in advance”
without getting a lot of trouble. But this means that most participants in these studies are people
seeking spiritual experiences; people with little interest in the subject are less likely to volunteer. This
in turn means that scientists are not getting a true cross-section of the population, but mostly people
already inclined to have mystical experiences, and even those uninterested in spiritual experiences
are aware of the nature of the study, which may predispose them toward having such experiences.
Thus, these studies are weighted toward producing spiritual experiences. Enthusiastic doctors or
skeptical doctors can also affect the results of drug studies (Benson 1984: 78).
13. Apparently drugs do not induce introvertive mystical experiences as readily as extrovertive
ones, and the mystical experiences they induce do not transform subjects as often as cultivated ones
do, suggesting that the religious content of the experiences is not from the drugs’ effects alone. But
some introvertive theistic experiences of a sense of being one with a reality, rather than a vision of a
distinct entity, do occur.
14. Patrick McNamara (2009) argues that religious practices are grounded in the frontal lobes.
If mystical experiences are grounded in other areas of the brain, any postexperience interpretations
may involve areas other than those involved in the experiences.
15. For criticism of Freud’s theory of mysticism as regression and pathology, see Parsons
1999. On Freud and Jung’s reductionism, see Jones 2000: 232–34.
16. Apparently lesions to various areas of the brain may disrupt our sense of the flow of time,
but they do not produce a sense of timelessness.
17. One theory attempts to explain all religious experiences as the result of religious existential
crises that we attempt to solve with the cognitive structures located in the left hemisphere: when we
cannot solve a crisis, the brain switches to the nonlinguistic right hemisphere, which then restructures
the left hemisphere’s activity and leads to a resolution, but the resolution seems to have an ineffable
element (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis 1993). But the question here is whether there are
neurologically special mystical experiences.
18. Naturalists thus will argue that biological explanations of mystical experiences counter the
claim to insight in a way that biological explanations of sense-experiences do not: in the latter case,
we can corroborate claims about an external source (sense-objects), and so the physiology of
perception is irrelevant; but in the former case, there is no object to present to others and so how the
experiences arise becomes important. But to argue this, naturalists must then concede that factors
other than scientific explanations alone matter (here, third-party corroboration)—scientific
explanations cannot be used simply by themselves as evidence against mystical claims.
19. Different types of scientific and sociocultural natural explanations compete with each
other. For example, if Karl Marx offers the correct explanation of the mechanisms that are really at
work in religious phenomena, then Sigmund Freud’s psychological account is incorrect and
neuroscientific accounts are at best irrelevant. One may make the accounts compatible by limiting the
scope of each theory. For example, Marx explains why some groups are more likely to produce
mystics, Freud explains which members of those groups are more likely to have mystical
experiences, and some neuroscientific accounts explain the bodily mechanisms for the those
experiences.
20. Theists may insist that the phenomenology of mystical experiences will in fact differ if
God infuses the experiencer with something, rather than if an experiencer simply has natural
phenomena in his or her mind during the experience. But it is hard to see how theists could establish
this: wherever the differentiations in differentiated experiences come from, there is no reason to
suspect that they would not cause the same effect, and the empty depth-mystical experience would
remain empty.
21. The same is also true with other types of experiences. For example, does the fact that a
society where a belief in rebirth is generally accepted is more likely to produce children who tell of
being reborn prove that the stories are untrue? We could just as easily turn the situation around:
parents in societies that do not have a prevailing belief in rebirth would tend to dismiss their
children’s stories of their former lives as daydreams, and if the children persisted in talking about
them the parents would tend to tell the children to grow up. That is, societies with the belief tend to
encourage such accounts, and societies without it would tend to suppress them—how then do the
prevailing social beliefs bear one way or the other on whether the stories are true or not?
22. Memories of what occurs during epileptic seizures have been documented to be unreliable
(Greyson et al. 2014: 12). Mystical experiences during seizures also appear to be less likely to have
lasting effects.
23. It should be pointed out that there is an obvious flaw in Mario Beauregard’s own scientific
work: he ran neuroscans on nuns who were asked to relive their prior mystical experiences, not while
they were actually having mystical experiences. This may tell us something about the areas of the
brain connected to memory or emotions, but it is not even indirectly studying mystical experiences
themselves.
24. Sloan is under the impression that in describing mystical experiences as “real,” Newberg
and d’Aquili mean that these experiences are genuine encounters with a transcendent reality and not
delusions (2006: 249–50). However, all they mean by “real” is that mystical experiences are genuine
neurological events and not merely wishful thinking (e.g., Newberg, d’Aquili, & Rause 2002: 7).
They remain neutral on whether these experiences are authentic encounters with a transcendent
reality or are delusions (e.g., ibid.: 143, 178–79). They do postulate a transcendent “Absolute Unity
Being” as real, based on it seeming “vividly and convincingly real,” and even more real than the
ordinary world after the experience is over when the experiencer has returned to dualistic
consciousness. They also believe they saw “evidence of a neurological process that has evolved to
allow us humans to transcend material existence and acknowledge and connect with a deeper, more
spiritual part of ourselves perceived of as an absolute, universal reality that connects us to all that is”
(ibid.: 9). But they realize that none of their patients claimed this, that this is only their theory, and
that this is a separate claim from the experiences being genuine neurological events. Sloan’s general
position that scientific studies of religion reduce religion to something other than what it is or
“trivialize the transcendent” is hard to support: merely looking at the measurable physiological
effects of religion (if possible) does not make the effects a substitute for religion or otherwise reduce
religion to something it is not. Letting themselves be studied does not reduce meditators to objects or
otherwise dehumanize them. Meditators can also acknowledge the biological effects while still
maintaining that their objective is quite different from anything scientists measure, just as they can
agree that the depth-mystical experience lasts a certain amount of time, while it seemed timeless to
them. Nor would scientific study trivialize the transcendent aspects of religion, although the
religious, as Sloan says, may object to “putting God to the test.”
25. An early critic of EEG studies of meditators, Peter Fenwick, pointed out that there be other
sources for the changes attributed to meditation. For example, changes from a mystical training
program may be responsible (1987: 116).
 26. John Hick, in criticizing neuroscientific studies of mystics in general, wanted to define
“mystical experience” more broadly, in terms of the transformed state of an experiencer—a more
diffuse “sense of being in the presence of God” during a continuing enlightened state—and not in
terms of unusual momentary neurological episodes that scientists study (2006: 80). He dismissed
epileptic seizures or stimulated experiences as anything like true mystical experiences, except in the
formal sense that these experiencers see their experiences in terms of religious concepts (ibid.: 71).
Nevertheless, the study of the momentary episodes is certainly legitimate—even Hick conceded that
there may be momentary “glimpses” of a spiritual dimension to nature (ibid.: 77). Such episodes can
be studied by scientists, and this may tell us something about how the brain works.
27. The effects of mystical and near-death experiences are often similar—e.g., causing a sense
of cosmic connectedness and a loss of fear of death (see Greyson 1993, 2014).
28. There may also be physiological similarities between meditative states and sleep states (see
Cahn & Polich 1999), but meditators remain aware. So too, concentrative meditation and
mindfulness meditation apparently differ from ordinary states of relaxation (Dunn, Hartigan, &
Mikulas 1999).
29. One conceptual problem is that the phrase “naturalist explanation” can have two meanings:
the scientific account (a natural explanation) or one possible philosophical conclusion (a naturalist
reduction). Naturalists do not always distinguish the two clearly. Nevertheless, only by confusing the
two can one conclude that scientific accounts by themselves logically entail the philosophical
conclusion. The naturalists’ conclusion is a philosophical position and must be defended as such. A
naturalist reduction is not a scientific argument—naturalists cannot only cite science itself for their
contention that only what is in principle open to scientific scrutiny is real. The defense of the truth of
their position will have to rest on other considerations.
30. In the field of the neuroscientific study of mystical experiences are many advocates for or
against mystical experiences. These proponents tend to give at most only a brief account of their
opponents’ position and to ignore any data or theories that conflict with their position. For example,
Beauregard & O’Leary (2007) do not discuss the significance of drug-induced mystical experiences
to the issue of whether mystical experiences can be duplicated. They find it more important to
discuss out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences, but here too they ignore studies that
conflict with their position.
31. Herbert Benson believes that we are “wired for God,” but he realizes that his study of the
concentrative meditative technique he labels the “relaxation response” is neutral on the issue of
whether a god exists. He believes faith in God is good for our health, whether it is a god or evolution
that produced the wiring that resulted in this faith. He also believes that if his Relaxation Response is
combined with deep personal beliefs, it can help an individual achieve an internal environment that
can help the individual reach enhanced states of well-being and health, regardless of what those
cultural beliefs are (1984: 5, 8, 81, 101).
32. Neuroscientists sometimes miss philosophical issues. For example, Eugene d’Aquili and
Andrew Newberg cannot simply substitute their theory of an abstract “Absolute Unitary Being” for
their patients’ claims (2002: 120). Nor can they automatically equate “the state of pure mind of an
awareness beyond object and subject” with that reality, or equate that reality with God, nirvana, and
other religiously specific concepts (contra Newberg 2010: 258). More argument is needed; it is not
enough to note that an “Absolute Unitary Being” transcends the natural realm and that traditionally in
the West, this can only mean God. “Absolute Unitary Being” is only their explanatory posit—none of
their subjects report achieving a state of being one with it while being observed. Based on their
empirical findings, their posit is not a personal being with thoughts and concerns, nor does it have the
traditional attributes of a personal theistic god. Nor is a “vivid” subjective sense that what is
experienced is real (1999: 191–93) the only criterion for what is objectively real, especially when
there are other types of experiences with possible third-person testing. Even Newberg concedes this
in another context (2010: 252). D’Aquili and Newberg attempt to distinguish mystical experiences
from hallucinations by arguing that people experiencing the former retain their vivid sense of reality
after the experience, while those experiencing the latter do not. But the experiences of people
suffering from schizophrenia may seem real to them even after their episodes—we reject their claims
because they do not conform to the consensus sense of ordinary reality (also see Stace 1960a: 140–
41). So too, visual delusions can be ruled out by third-person checking. Introvertive mystical
experiences have no such checking procedure, since the alleged realities experienced transcend the
natural realm.
33. The brain apparently has more plasticity than was once believed—it can structurally
rearrange itself in response to events—and meditation is one way that we can rewire the brain (see
Newberg & Waldman 2009). The brain can be retrained to manage destructive emotions and to
activate neurological centers associated with happiness, well-being, and compassion (McMahan
2008: 205).
34. Matthew Bagger voices the view of most naturalists when he says: “The logic of
naturalism appears insurmountable: how can one ever hope to demonstrate that some event or
anomaly in principle resists naturalistic explanation?” (1999: 227). But the issue is not whether the
mechanics of any experience is open to a scientific explanation, but whether that explanation is
exhaustive of all of the experience. How can naturalists prove that the scientific explanation is the
complete explanation of all aspects of the experience?
35. Whether this conclusion can be expanded to other types of experiences, such as “out-of-
body” and “near-death” experiences—i.e., whether being able to trigger these experiences in a
laboratory means they are nothing but brain activity—will not be examined here.
36. Some have questioned Alister Hardy’s methodology and his conclusion that mystical
experiences occur in a significant portion of the population. And many such surveys are worded in
way that makes it hard to see if genuinely mystical experiences are involved—the details needed to
see if a mystical experience is in fact involved are missing (e.g., being “lifted out of yourself” may be
construed by a participant to mean any spiritually uplifting experience). But even if, say, only 1
percent of the population has had mystical experiences, that would mean that a few million people in
the United States have had mystical experiences of one type or another and one degree or another.
 Chapter 5
1. Anthropologists claim that the notion of a “supernatural” reality is a modern invention.
Instead, members of premodern societies experience the world differently than people the modern
world. The gods were part of the natural world—Thor did not cast thunderbolts from another realm;
rather, he was simply the power of thunder and lightning personified. But mystical experiences may
be one source of the idea that there are transcendent realities.
2. Naturalists believe that the burden of proof on whether transcendent realities exist is clearly
on those who advocate such realities since we all agree that the natural world exists. But naturalists
do not assert merely that the natural world exists—they assert that only the natural world exists.
Thus, they are competing on the same level of metaphysics with advocates of transcendent realities.
3. But as mystical traditions develop, unexperiencable entities may be posited for explanatory
purposes. It is an unmystical activity, but mystics need to create a picture of reality to ground their
way of life, and this includes topics outside of mystical experiences. For example, Abhidharma
Buddhists posited discrete particles of matter (paramanus) that are unopen to sense-experience. Such
particles simply did not affect the impermanence that Buddhists are interested in—the impermanence
of the experienced realm related to suffering (dukkha)—but the posits hold a role in the total world-
picture.
4. The speculative and often elaborate metaphysics of visionaries—including mystically
minded ones such as Jakob Boehme—are another matter. So too with systems based on other
experiences, such as the Indian Kundalini physiology devised to explain various types of
experiences.
5. Mystical timelessness should not be confused with eternity: in mystical experiences, the
phenomenal continuum of all time is not condensed into one moment; rather, temporal categories of
“past” and “future” do not structure what is experienced in introvertive or extrovertive mystical
experiences. So too with space: space is transcended in that spatial relations are not related to the
beingness of things; all of extended space is not condensed into one spatial point. But all of the one
depth-beingness common to all is present entirely in each “now” and “here.” Thus, Eckhart speaks of
there being only one “now”—all “nows” are the same.
6. Thus, no mystical experience is needed to see a unity to nature. Such naturalist wholeness
may seem like the oneness of some depth-mystical systems, but to Advaitins all that naturalists
consider real is an illusory “dream” realm, not what is truly real—a nonobjective, objectless
consciousness. So too, Plotinus distinguishes the One from the realm of Being.
7. Naturalists also ignore the whole issue of what is “beingness” or its nature—e.g., in W. V.
Quine’s criterion, “to be is to be the value of a variable.”
8. Yogachara Buddhism is often portrayed as an idealism that denies the phenomenal world as
“mind only.” However, in this school it is only our mental creations that are mind only, like
visualizations. Under their analysis, perception does not occur from an interaction with external
objects. However, at least early Yogacharins were giving a phenomenological account of changes in
consciousness during experiences and bracketing the ontic issue of external causes. They remained
agnostic about the question of external reality.
9. That all things are connected does not necessarily mean that all things are constituted by
other things, internally interconnected, or mutually dependent. The analogy of “Indra’s web” from
Hwa Yen Buddhism in which each gem is constituted by each other gem is theorizing by one school
that goes beyond any extrovertive experience of connectedness.
10. The “oneness” of beingness may be ambiguous. In introvertive mysticism, it would make
sense to speak of all beingness being identical (i.e., the same dimensionless beingness is in each
phenomenon), while in extrovertive mysticism it would make sense to speak of all beingness being
the same nature (i.e., different parts of an extended beingness). Everything may be of the same nature
to naturalists (i.e., everything now in the great expansion of space is the product of the Big Bang), but
a transcendent source of the universe is partless and so the beingness of everything is identical.
11. In introvertive mysticism, the situation is inverted. From Eckhart: “The more someone
knows the root and kernel and the ground of the Godhead as one, the more he knows all things”
(McGinn 2001: 49).
12. As noted in chapter 8, in the nearest word for “matter” in Buddhism—“form” (rupa)—the
emphasis is on how we experience things, not things as they exist independently of us. Abhidharma
analysis may have started as only a phenomenological analysis of experiences without any ontic
claims—i.e., analyzing how the world appears to us and not how it is in itself—but this evolved in
different traditions into ontic claims about what exists.
13. It should be pointed out that Madhyamaka Buddhists speak of the “emptiness [shunyata]
of things,” not “Emptiness” with a capital “E” as if it is a distinct reality or the transcendent source of
phenomena. They do not speak of “experiencing emptiness [shunyata]” or “becoming Emptiness.”
Rather, the enlightened see that phenomena and the self are empty of any sort of self-existence
(svabhava). If one treats emptiness as any type of entity, one is incurable (Mula-madhyamaka-
karikas 13.8). In sum, emptiness is not a reality of any kind, let alone something like Brahman or
God (see Jones 2014b: 136–43).
14. Theravada Buddhists exempt space (akasha) and nirvana from being compounded and
conditioned by other elements (Anguttara Nikaya 1.286).
15. Only the transcendent God or Brahman is fully real to orthodox Hindus. The divine is
untouched by the pollution of the world, and the natural universe is ultimately unimportant (Nelson
1998: 81). Thus, every day Indians can dump millions of gallons of raw sewage, hundreds of
incompletely cremated corpses, and huge amounts of chemical waste into the sacred Ganges River,
and yet say, in the words of a Benares taxi driver, “The Ganges is God and [God] can’t be polluted”
(ibid.: 80).
16. In classical Hinduism, the god Brahma is the first being that is emanated when each new
world-cycle “rolls out,” and he mistakenly thinks he is the creator of all that emanates after him.
17. The earlier Advaitin Gaudapada was a realist concerning the phenomenal world: it is the
“radiance” of Brahman and as such is Brahman and is real. See Jones 2014c: 127–30. To Shankara,
the phenomenal realm is not an emanation of anything in any sense.
18. The criterion for reality for Advaita is being permanent and thus eternally existing. Thus,
for consciousness to constitute the only reality, it must exist at all times, even when we are in
dreamless sleep. Thus, dreamless sleep must be considered a conscious state. On whether dreamless
sleep is a state of consciousness, see Smith 2000a: 70–71.
19. Even if the sense of meaning arises from areas of brain connected to emotion rather than
cognition—e.g., the limbic structures (Ramachandran & Blakeslee 1998: 179)—this does not mean
that no cognition of beingness is part of the total experience.
20. Whether “being” is a property is an issue for the Ontological Argument, but it is irrelevant
here: depth-mystics here allegedly experience the sheer “that-ness” of God.
21. Brihadaranyaka Up. 3.7.23; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus 5.633.
To Shankara, consciousness is not an object; thus, it is not a phenomenon, which by definition is an
object of consciousness; the mind is only one of the senses, and so any idealism that would reduce all
“objective” phenomena to the mind alone is ruled out.
22. To characterize Samkhya-Yoga as a “solipsistic mysticism” (Stoeber 1994: 95) is also an
error: the world in this metaphysics in no way depends on any individual’s consciousness or
existence—in short, the world does not cease to exist when I do. The eternal material world (prakriti)
continues with the enlightenment of individuals (purushas).
 23. No mystical tradition claims that human beings are closer to a transcendent reality than
inanimate objects for being conscious (since all things share the same being). To Advaita, the mind is
just another phenomenon in the illusion.
24. Nor can Brahman be characterized as a “panpsychism” since it is partless. Nor can what
had a beginning—a creation—be the body of an eternal god. Contemporary theological ideas of
“panentheism” would also encounter the problem of making the world part of God.
25. Any notion of the evolution of consciousness is foreign to classical mystical traditions. For
them, consciousness is eternal and unchanging.
26. This presents a problem: if our true “self” is changeless, then what does such a self do?
Everything that constitutes a person—our body, emotions, sense-experience, and in fact the entire
content of consciousness—all changes. How does this self differ from beingness?
27. Edward Conze claimed that the Buddha, for all his talk of “no self,” did not mean to deny
the existence of a transcendent self—he was merely denying that there is any self in our field of
dualistic experience. That is, the Buddha’s negative teachings were only meant to deny that anything
worldly is the self. Thus, when the Buddha said “There is no self,” what he meant was that “Others
teach you what the self is; I teach you what the self is not (an-atman) to clear the mind of images.”
That Conze leaned toward perennial philosophy may be the reason that he, like perennial
philosophers, accepted a transcendent self.
28. Combining pantheism with a dimensionless transcendent source only leads to absurdities:
for example, this desk is ontologically only the source, which is ontologically the source of each
other phenomenal item, and so this desk is ontologically identical to this chair—which it is obviously
is not.
29. How a mystic could re-emerge with his or her individuality intact after being one with the
One is an issue for Plotinus and other emanationists. How does any individuality occur in the initial
emanation? And how does it remain after a mystical merging with the One? Each person could retain
his or her previous individuality after a mystical experience only if the individuality of each
phenomenon is in some way real.
30. In the thirteenth century in the West, the Christian Richard Fishacre made a similar claim
to explain how God could be omnipresent without being spatial: God is a reality transcending the
universe and so he transcends any sense of spatiality, just as he is timeless; being spaceless, God can
exist entirely in every part of space. But this “transcendent God entirely in every part” doctrine never
became mainstream within Christianity. Today holograms might be used as a model, but there are
problems when they are applied to mystical transcendent realities: holograms involve more than one
element (the hologram, a target plate, and a coherent light source to produce the images); holograms
may be “partless” in one sense, but they are spatial and have detailed structure, while mystical
transcendent realities are nonspatial and free of structure; the holographic image mirrors the structure
of the hologram, while mystical realities have no structure to mirror; thinking about the details of a
complex analogy such as this entrenches the image in one’s mind and directs the mind away from the
transcendent reality. (Also see Jones 1986: 191–92.) A nonduality such as Advaita’s cannot utilize
this model since the being of the hologram, the projection plate, and the light source are all Brahman;
and the emphasis in holography is on structure, not structureless being. The analogy would also
encode the illusion of maya in the reality of Brahman, which Advaitins reject.
 Chapter 6
1. Some mystical texts are deliberately esoteric (e.g., many Tantric texts are written in code) to
protect certain alleged knowledge from the general public. So too, there are views of language as a
creative force—e.g., language as the means of God’s creation of the world in Jewish mysticism, or as
the “act of truth” in Indian thought. But the problem here is the more general one of the cognitive
statements directed to the unenlightened.
2. No language is “more mystical” than another since all will have the same basic problem.
Indian mystical traditions may have developed more distinctions for different states of consciousness
than Western ones, but this does not make Sanskrit more mystical—it only shows that it could be
utilized to express the distinctions important to meditative progress. Any language could add terms
for what its users find important, as with the Eskimos having many terms for different states of snow.
3. A commonly proffered neurological explanation of ineffability (e.g., Persinger 1987) is that
mystical experiences are the product of the right hemisphere of our brain, while our linguistic and
analytical abilities are a product of our left hemisphere; the total disconnect between the two in
mystical experiences means that the left hemisphere has nothing to express and mystics are simply
left with a vague sense of experiencing something profound that transcends what can be
conceptualized. Thus, all conceptualizations are unconnected to the actual experiences and come only
from the mystics’ religious traditions (as constructivists believe). However, mystics do not allege
vagueness.
4. There is also evidence that even sense-experiences occur slightly before cognition and the
translation of the awareness into language (Newberg & Waldman 2009: 75).
5. It is adherence to the mirror theory of language that makes philosophers say things like
“Declaring ‘reality is inexpressible’ means it is something that is expressible—i.e., it is an object
with the property of ‘being inexpressible,’ ” or “To declare that x is ineffable, we must have identified
x as an object.” Thus, we cannot even deny something has phenomenal properties or deny the
existence of anything without giving it some phenomenal property and conventional existence. That
is, if we say something has no phenomenal properties or does not exist, it becomes an “it” that can be
talked about like any object. Reading the structure of a statement into reality just by speaking of “it”
is the essence of the mirror theory of language. In Bertrand Russell’s example, the statement “It is
raining” leads to the idea that there is an “it” independent of the rain that does the raining.
6. Wittgenstein also said that there are things that cannot be put into words but that make
themselves manifest (Tractatus, Prop. 6.522). He said that is “the mystical,” but this has nothing to
do with mystical experiences or altered states of consciousness—it is a philosophical point following
from his mirror theory about what in the phenomenal world has no linguistic structure. Perhaps he
meant the beingness of the world.
7. By definition, we cannot have any model or conception of reality that does not involve
human conceptions—we cannot have a conception that is independent of our perspectives and
capacities. But that does not mean that we cannot state things about the ultimate nature of things.
Whether Madhyamaka Buddhists believe the highest truths can be stated is a point of contention. The
Buddhism Pali canon makes a distinction between scriptures of final meaning (nitartha) and those of
provisional meaning (neyartha). The former give plain and definitive statements of Buddhist truths
(e.g., that all things are without a self), while the latter give statements that would mislead if taken
literally and must be understood in light of the former (e.g., the Buddha using “I”). This led to the
Mahayana distinction between statements from the point of view of highest matters (paramarthatas)
explicating the true nature of things and conventional truths (samvriti-satyas) in which conventional
entities (including a self) are provisionally accepted. Nagarjuna’s position seems to be that we need
the enlightening wisdom/insight (prajna) to know that ultimate truths are true, but the truths are
statable (see Jones 2014b: 151–57)—i.e., “All of reality is empty of self-existence” is an absolute
truth, even though conventional terms must be utilized to state it.
8. Meister Eckhart said that to be empty of all images is still to have them but to have them
without attachment (2009: 77). Perhaps this is what he meant by that.
9. Also note that we can experience the three-dimensional cube as it is and are not limited by
our two-dimensional representations. That is, our awareness of the real cube is not constrained by the
drawing—indeed, it is not affected by the conceptualization at all. Similarly, there is no reason to
believe that the mystics’ conceptualizations restrict what they experience, contrary to what
constructivists believe. (Steven Katz believes ineffability is only a protective strategy advanced by
mystics—a deliberate mystification to conceal the preexisting conceptual content of the experiences
and to try to prevent it from being rationally analyzed [1978: 54]. But it is difficult to explain why
such a protective strategy would be adopted spontaneously in every culture of the world and every
era or why it would be needed in any culture before modernity since such cultures valued
transcendent realities.)
10. The importance seen in what is experienced and its otherness leads to likening the
experiences to emotions (e.g., James 1958: 292–93), but the problem with language is actually related
to cognitivity and expressing what is allegedly known.
11. Ludwig Wittgenstein famously ended his Tractatus with the same point: “What we cannot
speak about we must consign to silence.” But this is a logical point following from his mirror view of
language and is not in any way about any mystical experience.
12. Wittgenstein argued that there can be no private language: any language by its very nature
must be something that others can understand. Thus, even if someone does not communicate his or
her new language to others, it is still “public” by its nature: to be meaningful, it must in principle be
communicable to others. But even if there could be a private language, the basic problem for
mysticism of how any language works would apply. Nor is the problem here about translating a
private language into a public one. Nor is there a “state-specific” language in the depth-mystical
experience that cannot be translated into the language of ordinary consciousness: language is
necessarily differentiated, and there is an absence of anything differentiated in that experience.
13. The problem mentioned in chapter 4 that mystics may simply use the idioms of their
culture that do not truly reflect their experiences (e.g., “union with God” when no personal elements
are given in the experience) points to another way that the unenlightened may be misled by mystical
utterances. And the use of the familiar may more firmly implant objects in the minds of the
unenlightened.
14. Religious symbols are often said to “participate” in what is symbolized. For example,
rituals participate in the creative acts of a god, or the bread and wine of communion for Protestants
become the body and blood of Christ in a symbolic sense, or religious art reflects the structure of
what is imagined in a way words do not. But this idea is not applicable to mystical discourse, with
the possible exception of “Om” being Brahman.
15. Personal imagery is also probably necessary for a theistic life in place of any conception of
an impersonal and inactive ground of reality, e.g., Eckhart’s simple Godhead that does not act or Paul
Tillich’s being-itself. Thus, any thorough negation of attributes of God probably would not lead to a
satisfying religious life for theists.
16. Antirealists in the philosophy of science raise the same problem with any scientific
theories, which also of necessity must make use of ordinary, everyday conceptions.
17. Nonmystical theologians (e.g., Aquinas) can also emphasize that all discourse about
transcendent realities must be metaphoric. Immanuel Kant also said in his Critique of Judgment that
“All our knowledge of God is symbolic”—to treat symbols literally leads to anthropomorphism, but
to deny them leads to a deism “by which nothing at all is cognized.”
 18. Theologians have trouble reconciling mystical simplicity with the human attributes that
theists value. For example, how can God be timeless and immutable but also compassionate? Anselm
and Aquinas argued that God “acts as if he felt compassion although he does not actually do so” or
“has something akin to joy and delight in creation” but does not “feel” the way creatures do (since an
immutable reality has no emotions) or “is touched by our suffering” but not in the “usual sense” or
“experiences a torturer’s joy at torturing but not in the way the torturer experiences it.” But all of this
begins to sound forced and very strange. To suggest that a god can have “compassion” or “suffer”
and not feel these states renders the use of these terms meaningless. Theistic intuitions are simply
conflicting: theists want a god who is unchanging but also touched by love and suffering. Theists
cannot have it both ways, but they do not want to give up either point.
19. Any symbol would require specification in literal terms to show why it is appropriate. The
theologian Paul Tillich said that all religious statements are symbolic except “God is being-itself,”
which is literally true and so can anchor symbolic claims (1957: 238). The mystical objection to this
is that God may still be construed as an object among objects.
20. William Alston thinks that talk of God is not “strictly true,” but it is “close enough to the
strict truth” to be useable in a religious life; Christians can also appeal to revelations to vouchsafe
their use (2011: 108–9). What is being argued here is that some terms are intended in their literal
sense, but a god is not a phenomenal object (and hence has no body and so on) and is seen as more
perfect, and so a metaphoric extension will always be needed.
21. In introducing the notion of apophatic discourse into Christianity, Dionysius actually used
the term “apophatic” very little and instead used the term “denial” (aphairesis) to remove the notion
that God has anything phenomenal about him and to affirm something greater about him than
anything phenomenal.
22. Eckhart also said the opposite: God (but not the nameless Godhead) is omni-nameable (see
Harmless 2008: 118–19). In Islam, there are traditionally ninety-nine names of Allah, plus one
unspeakable name.
23. The Ontological Argument and mathematics are often considered “mystical,” even though
they are clearly products of the analytical mind’s thought and perhaps thought-inspired intuitions but
without any mystical states of consciousness. Anselm may have come up with the intuition for the
argument in an altered state of consciousness, but the argument is still a paradigm of the work of the
analytical mind: Anselm’s being may be “greater than we can conceive,” but the argument proceeds
by comparing our conceptions. The argument also makes our conceptions central in what God must
be—e.g., God cannot do evil or be morally neutral because we think being moral is better. To put it
crudely, the creator cannot be evil or even morally neutral because we do not like that, and so a
creator must be moral. (Also see Jones 1993: 149–66.) Theology may well overwhelm a mystical
experience in our understanding of a transcendent reality once we begin thinking this way.
24. It is understandable that satya is considered unstatable in Indian thought since the concept
conflates both truth and reality. Thus, the statability of a truth is denied because reality is other than
any words. That is, the reality of actually drinking water is clearly not a verbal act, but the truth
“Water quenches thirst” is clearly statable; since the concept “satya” covers both, satya may be
claimed to be unstatable.
 Chapter 7
1. Fritz Staal concludes that the claim of Buddhist irrationality does not withstand examination
(1975: 49, 54). He also argues that the law of noncontradiction is explicitly stated and adhered to in
Advaita (1962: 68). Overall, he concludes that Asian “mystical doctrines in general are rational”
(1975: 40). He also notes that philosophy in India is tied more to the dichotomy of “expressible”
versus “inexpressible” than to “rational” versus “irrational” (1988: 213).
2. Logic was not a major topic among nonmystics in classical non-Western cultures either,
although there was some work in India and China on the nature of arguments and deductions that
would qualify as the study of logic. Such studies were tied more closely to theories of language than
mathematics. In China the early Moists discussed proper arguments, but they had little influence on
the rest of Chinese philosophy (see Hansen 1983). Not all philosophy in India has soteriological
goals, but discussions of the nature of reasoning also occur in mystical traditions. In Madhyamaka
Buddhism, Bhavaviveka made valid reasoning (yukti) a major topic (see Jones 2011b: 195–207).
There is also a tradition of “Buddhist logicians”—the label is somewhat misleading, but they did
discuss reasoning, inference (anumana), and other means to correct knowledge (pramanas). The
Buddhist logicians’ theory of meaning based on excluding everything that is not intended by a word
(apoha) also implicitly relies on the laws of the excluded middle and noncontradiction even if there
are no “real” (isolated and self-existent) referents. The study of reasoning developed in India from its
tradition of debates (vadas). Indeed, the history of philosophy in India might be better seen in terms
of continuing debates about certain topics rather than looking at different schools (darshanas) as
stagnant entities. Learning debate practices and the means of correct knowledge was a standard part
of training in all the philosophical schools. Nagarjuna exemplifies a type of debate in which one can
deny a thesis without admitting a counterthesis (see Matilal 1998). In particular, see his Overturning
the Objections (Jones 2014b: 38–53), which is a work only of philosophical arguments.
3. The fundamental premises of any belief-system may be held open to examination, but
ultimately there does not appear to be any noncircular way to justify them—there is no neutral,
agreed-on criteria to decide between worldviews (see Wainwright 1993). All reasoning thus comes to
an end at some point, and what is accepted as an ultimate explanation remains a nonrational choice.
Thus, no choice between competing ways of life is ever fully rational. So too, there are limits to
rational argument about matters of ultimate metaphysical commitments for mystics and nonmystics
alike. If holding all of one’s beliefs open to critical examination is a requirement of rationality, then
most people are not completely rational, since it is difficult for anyone truly to criticize their own
most fundamental and deeply held beliefs in their encompassing way of life. But the question here is
whether mystics can argue and behave rationally within their own framework.
4. Many philosophers push back against postmodernism and argue for the general universality
of reason (e.g., Nagel 1997). The postmodern position against applying “Western” standards of
rationality universally began with Peter Winch’s application of Wittgenstein’s thought to the issue.
Rationality for postmodernists is simply the ability to follow the internal rules embedded in a given
culture. More general issues of epistemic relativism will not be discussed. Even if mystics’ premises
differ, there still may be some cultural epistemic universals—mysticism does not resolve that issue
(see Jones 1993: 73–77). Jainas and the Daoist Zhuangzi made a pluralism of equal but conflicting
perspectives part of their epistemic framework for at least phenomenal knowledge. But Jainas and
Zhuangzi do advocate some claims as true regardless of a limited point of view and also some points
about how to live while rejecting others. For Zhuangzi, the “axis of the Way” (daoshu) provides a
perspective from which all claims made from more limited points of view can be accepted as partial
but not absolute truths.
 5. Different cultures catalog the content of the worlds differently. Benjamin Whorf (1956)
advanced the thesis that there are “implicit metaphysics” in the grammatical structure of different
languages and that these background linguistic systems shape ideas, not merely voice them.
Particular languages therefore shape how we reason. Thus, in “Standard Average European,” things
(objects) and being (emphasized in verbs) predominate, while in Hopi events do, and so mutual
translations are impossible. However, there are two problems with this. First, very different
metaphysics are still statable in the same language (Plato and Aristotle, Parmenides and Heraclitus).
Nor did the grammar inhibit the change from Newtonian physics to relativity and quantum physics.
The Hopi language may have a cyclical sense of time implicit in it, but classical Hindus also had a
cyclical, not linear, sense of time, even though their language (Sanskrit) was Indo-European. Second,
even if, for example, Chinese were not translatable into English, we still may be able to explain
Chinese ideas in English—it may take longer explanations if no one-to-one substitution of terms is
possible, but English grammar does not keep us from understanding Chinese thought. Whorf himself
was able to express in English how the Hopi see the world (also see Jones 1993: 254–55 nn. 2–4).
Thus, the influence that a particular type of language may have on our thought is greatly limited, if
existent at all, and not a barrier to different types of metaphysics.
6. While Nisbett says that Daoism and later Buddhism shaped the Chinese orientation to life
(2003: 12–17), he did not refer to mystical experiences as the cause of the general East Asian
approach to the world. If mysticism influenced Asian religious traditions more than Western ones, it
may only be because how Asians already thought permitted greater influence from mystical
experiences of beingness and connectedness.
7. Whorf claimed that the “laws of correct thinking” are not universal but only reflect the
background character of Indo-European languages (1956: 211). But at least Chinese can handle the
Aristotelian logical propositions (Nakamura 1956; Hansen 1983: 10–23).
8. Developing nonstandard logics or artificial languages with an alternative logic has only a
limited relevance to the question of whether the basic rules of logic are embedded in all actual
cultures. But just as alternative geometries have proven useful in science, perhaps a viable alternative
logic might be possible and valuable for other selected purposes. However, if mystical paradoxes can
be explained as is done here, no new logic would need to be developed for mysticism.
9. Saying claims of faith transcend reason may mean that they cannot be supported by reasons
based on events in the everyday world, but John of the Cross does say that these claims do not
conflict with reason.
10. Marguerite Porete may seem more extreme: for her, reason must be “destroyed” or “must
die” to attain true love. But the point for both women is that the ordinary life of virtue is not enough
and must be transcended, and thus reason has no role left to play at that stage. And Porete’s The
Mirror of Simple Souls is itself free of logical contradictions.
11. Setting aside a question as unanswered is one of four ways of addressing questions in early
Buddhism. The other three are a direct reply, analysis of the question, and a counterquestion (Digha
Nikaya 3.229; Anguttara Nikaya 1.197, 2.46).
12. J. Robert Oppenheimer did something similar with the questions of whether an electron’s
position changes over time or not, or moves, or remains at rest, by answering “no” to each option
(Smith 1976: 107).
13. So too, the Buddha giving provisional answers to listeners who are unprepared to
understand the ultimately correct answer or distinguishing between a provisional level of truth and an
ontologically correct one is not to assert contradictory claims or to be irrational. Teaching one
doctrine to some listeners and the correct doctrine to others, or apparently affirming the existence of
objects in the “skillful means” (upaya-kaushala) used to lead the unenlightened, resolves in the same
fashion. The issue for rationality is whether the ultimate claims can be stated in a noncontradictory
manner. And for this issue, these Buddhist strategies are not illogical as long as one doctrine is
advanced as the ultimate truth and can be stated consistently.
 14. Inconsistencies do occur. For example, Mundaka Upanishad states that the self can be
grasped by austerity (3.1.5), and then a few verses later says it cannot be grasped by austerity (3.1.8).
That is a contradiction unless different speakers are speaking in each verse.
15. Paradoxes can also come up in other contexts in mysticism, e.g., as part of training. For
example, in a string of paradoxes, John of the Cross said, “In order to arrive at being everything,
desire to be nothing” (Ascent of Mount Caramel 1.13.11). But paradoxes in making assertions about
what is experienced in mystical experiences will be the focus here.
16. In his essay “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, “A foolish consistency
is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” But the
essay makes clear that he only meant that we should not believe that we cannot change our mind on a
topic over time—e.g., if we believed something at age twenty, we are not required to believe it at age
sixty—not that we can be inconsistent at one moment.
17. The method used here to try to understand paradoxes or other alleged absurdities is to
begin with a mystic’s central doctrines and then use them to make sense of the paradoxes. Thomas
Kuhn suggests the reverse: first try to make sense of the absurdities, and then use your understanding
to understand the central passages (1977: xii). Although the danger of imposing our understanding on
others is not eliminated by the method used here, the danger appears greater with his method: under
his approach, we would begin the very process of understanding by imposing our own contemporary
understanding on the parts of a thinker’s work that are most difficult to understand—our
understanding then may well taint our understanding of all of a mystic’s work.
18. The alleged paradox that the state of the enlightened (nirvana) is the same as the realm of
rebirths (samsara) is based on a misunderstanding. (On the Heart Sutra’s equation form and
emptiness, see Jones 2012c: 224–26.) Neither Prajnaparamita texts nor Nagarjuna ever said that
nirvana and samsara are the same. Nagarjuna did say that there is not the slightest difference
between the two (MK 25.19–20). This is commonly taken to mean that samsara and nirvana are
simply two ways of looking at reality—one way with a sense of self and one without. But for
Nagarjuna only self-existent realities could be either the same or different, and since nirvana and
samsara, like everything else, are empty of self-existence they cannot be the same or different (see
Jones 2014b: 143–44). It is one thing to say that a tree and a car are not different in their ontic nature
because each is empty of self-existence; it is another altogether to say a tree is a car. To equate
samsara and nirvana is to miss the Buddhist analysis entirely.
19. One of the philosophical puzzles connected to translation is whether translators impose
logic on texts. That is, would translators ever accept a translation that was not intelligible to
themselves? Translations of the Prajnaparamita texts do show that translators can accept
contradictions in texts. But as discussed below, these paradoxes can be rendered into
noncontradictory forms without torturing the texts.
20. The use of metaphors can introduce paradoxical-sounding remarks. When Eckhart says
“the eye with which I see God is the same eye by which God sees me” (Eckhart 2009: 298), he is not
referring to the physical eye but to the function of the mind that knows God—the nous—which is one
with God (McGinn 2001: 151). That is, in knowledge by participation, Eckhart is claiming that God
also knows us.
21. The apparent paradox that begins the Daodejing—“The Dao that can be communicated is
not the eternal Dao” (chang dao)—can be resolved: the real Dao transcends language, and so any
spoken Dao is a conceptualized object and thus not the eternal Dao. The text also suggests there are
two daos: the eternal Dao and different daos that can be followed. Most of the world operates in
keeping with its various daos, but we human beings have our own dao and most of us are not in step
with it. This dao participates in the eternal Dao.
22. There is one objection that cannot be answered since all we have is what mystics have
written: simply because we can restate a paradox consistently does not mean that the mystics
themselves were thinking that way—perhaps they were in fact thinking inconsistently. But if the
claims can be stated consistently, we should be careful in concluding that mystics must be irrational.
Nevertheless, the danger remains that I am imposing logical consistency onto the mystical utterances
when they meant otherwise.
23. The context of some earlier ideas may be lost today. Some reasoning in the nonmystical
Hindu Brahmanas and Aranyaka texts from the first and early second millennia BCE seems truly
bizarre—e.g., certain hymns have four verses and cattle are four-footed, and so recitation of the
verses has the magical power to win cattle. Perhaps if we knew more of the culture it would not seem
out-and-out irrational. But not necessarily: some claims may simply be irrational.
24. If transcendent realities were merely infinitely large phenomenal objects, the mathematics
of infinities might be relevant, but mystics do not treat transcendent realities as merely large
phenomenal ones. Rather, they are ontologically “wholly other” than anything phenomenal. Thus,
thinking that “the introduction of the Absolute plays havoc with the rules of logic,” as Edward Conze
said (1953: 127), or trying to use the “logic of infinity” to explain why there are paradoxes (e.g., how
a transcendent reality can be both omnipresent and nowhere in the world), will not be appropriate
from a mystical point of view: we would still be thinking in terms of large phenomenal realities.
Nicholas of Cusa’s doctrine of the “coincidence of opposites” for overcoming contradictions in the
attributes of God appears to be the product of his thinking about the “maximum” in almost
mathematical terms.
25. One can say logic is state-specific in that it can only operate in states of consciousness with
differentiated content. It could not operate in a state of consciousness in which there is no
differentiated content, and the problem of paradoxes would arise only in dualistic states where one
tries to conceptualize events. While accepting that logic applies only to statements, Walter Stace
believed that only statements about two or more items can be logical or illogical, not statements
about undifferentiated unity or what is ontologically one, as in mysticism (1960a: 270–74). But he
could maintain his position only if he believed that logic really applied to the subject of statements
rather than to the statements about that subject, or if he adopted the mirror theory of language (which
amounts to the same thing). Statements occur in dualistic consciousness, but statements about unity
are subject to logic.
26. However, not all cases of x and not-x in Nagarjuna’s works are exhaustive. In some
instances, x and not-x are interconnected and not exhaustive—in particular, bhava and abhava. The
absence of a bhava (an abhava) results from a bhava, and something can neither be a bhava or an
abhava—e.g., nirvana (Ratnavali 42). Thus, denying the existence of a bhava in no way logically
requires affirming an abhava—something can be neither. So too, the contrast between “existence”
(sat) and “nonexistence” (asat) as he defines the terms is not exhaustive but only shows extremes:
existence is eternal existence (and hence unceasing), and nonexistence is total nonexistence (and
hence unarisen)—thus, something that comes into existence or did exist but comes to an end does not
fall into either category. In fact, he argues that everything falls in between these extremes: because
we see things arise, “nonexistence” is eliminated, and because we see things cease, “existence” is
eliminated. Thus, he wants to establish a third category between eternal existence and total
nonexistence—what is “empty” (shunya) of self-existence—by default since there is no other
alternative. We may not agree that “exists” means “existing permanently by self-existence,” but it is
not absurd, and so this way of reasoning is rational.
27. Nagarjuna’s opponent may be speaking the first line and Nagarjuna replying with the
second. The text can be interpreted either way, but the point is the same either way.
28. The paradoxes of the ancient Greek Zeno also show that we can conceptualize perfectly
ordinary everyday events in ways that would make them seem impossible or paradoxical—e.g., that
the rabbit could never catch the tortoise in their race or an arrow could not move. The question here
is whether Nagarjuna saw the world in a paradoxical manner.
29. Let me repeat that: mystics do not have a “logic of their own,” but appear to be logical by
ordinary Western standards. I repeat this because every citation or quotation of my article on
mysticism and rationality (1993: 59–78) that I have seen suggests that I was advocating that “mystics
have their own logic”—something I was expressly denying.
30. Altered states of consciousness are not necessarily confused and disorienting. A study of
near-death experiences showed that the thinking of a significant number of experiencers during those
experiences seemed clearer, quicker, more logical, and more under control than usual (Kelly,
Greyson, & Kelly 2007: 386).
 Chapter 8
1. Some may argue (following Sidney Hook) that science is a way of knowing the world since
it gains new information, but that mysticism is merely a way of experiencing the world since it
results in no new testable “knowledge-that” claims as science does. But the awareness of another
aspect of reality (the beingness of things) than the one studied in science is a type of cognition—a
“knowledge by participation”—even if mystical knowledge-claims are not scientifically testable.
2. As mentioned in chapter 4, advocates of mystical knowledge can claim that experiencing
the transcendent is not a minimiracle initiated by a transcendent reality, but instead the mystic alone
is active and is participating in a reality that is already always present in the mystic as the ground of
the self or of the universe. The mind alone is active as in sense-experience and self-awareness; the
transcendent source is not any more active in these experiences than in any other worldly event. No
new energy or information is being injected into the world by a transcendent reality, and only natural
processes of the brain are involved. This would affirm the existence of a transcendent reality and that
it is open to experience, but it would not violate the causal closure of nature any more than does self-
knowledge. Thus, there would be a purely natural basis for the transcendent knowledge.
3. Checking is a matter of the scientific community, and testing today is a team effort. This
“social reasoning” weeds out biases and errors through criticism and argument. But mystical
experiences have no empirical testing procedure, and the social community interpreting alleged
mystical insights involves both mystics and nonmystics.
4. Scientists’ problems with studying consciousness were noted in chapter 4.
5. The sense of certainty that a mystic typically has contrasts mystical knowledge with
scientific knowledge. In science, there is no certainty, but only the tentative acceptance of the best
available theory among currently competing options. Any theory may be disproved. Of course, some
scientists may be absolutely certain that the theory they back is correct (and this may be a motive to
conduct further research), but the scientific community as a whole is more tentative about all but
extremely well-supported theories.
6. The word “empirical” can lead to misunderstandings. Mystical is “empirical” in the sense of
being experiential, but this does not mean that mystical claims are open to empirical checking by
scientific methods or that mystical and scientific claims are of the same aspect of reality. Naturalists,
like logical positivists, dismiss Advaita’s claim that “all is consciousness” precisely because there is
no scientific way to test such a metaphysical claim. But even if we accept the claim as meaningful,
there is still no way to test it empirically.
7. According to Thupten Jinpa, modern Tibetan scholars are divided on the issue of science
(2003). One group views modern science as a rival to Buddhist philosophy. A second group views
science as an ally and is eager to see science validate Buddhist principles. A third group regards
science and Buddhism as equal partners and advocates a model of complementarity in which there is
no attempt to reduce one to the other; rather, both science and Buddhism will expand the horizon of
human knowledge and thus will give rise to a more comprehensive understanding both of human
nature and of the world we inhabit. He places the Dalai Lama in the third group. But not everything
that the Dalai Lama says in discussions with scientists supports the idea of a totally independent
science (see Jones 2010: 169–73).
8. The karmic connection of action and consequence is a case of causation. In Buddhism,
“dependent-arising” is a dependence relation rather than efficient causation: without condition x, y
does not arise, and so we can end arising by removing the condition.
9. Where then does beingness come from? Some scientists argue in effect that scientific
structures are the cause of being—not merely that a Higgs-like particle or field is responsible for
some particles having matter, but that some structures explain why anything exists at all. Stephen
Hawking believes he has shown how the universe spontaneously arises out of nothing, because the
universe “can and will create itself from nothing” as a result of laws such as the law of gravity
(Hawking & Mlodinow 2010: 180). However, he does not explain where those laws come from or
why they have the power to create anything material and why they must create. At most, he has
shown only that something cannot remain stable in an unmanifested neutral state—it must become
manifest as positive and negative factors because of certain physical forces. But this does not explain
why that something is already there rather than nothing that could become the universe: if the
universe is the result of a quantum fluctuation, this still does not explain the presence of the medium
that fluctuated. That is, there may be a zero sum between the positive energy of matter and the
negative energy of gravity (and no energy is needed to create the manifest diversity we see), but
where did that initial “stuff” come from whose symmetry cracked? This ultimate cosmological
question remains, even if Hawking believes that philosophy is dead (ibid.: 5): beingness may be
“nothing” from a scientific point of view since it is undifferentiated and structure-free and thus serves
no scientific purpose, but it is not literally nothing—it is ontologically something. He still does not
answer the ultimate cosmological question of why anything exists.
10. It should also be pointed out that the sciences in many traditional cultures such as India
were seen as timeless and not as progressing as open-ended enterprises or in terms of knowledge of
the world; rather, the sciences were presented in early texts as already established.
11. Karma is as much a structure of the world as the physical structures of electromagnetism or
gravity, even though it involves our actions and their consequences rather than the interactions of
inanimate objects. (However, in Buddhism the enlightened are said to be able to control the
consequences of some karma, and also to have paranormal powers that could suspend other natural
forces.)
12. On the possible historical role of mysticism in the development of science, see Jones 2010:
chap. 4.
13. Note a contrast concerning time: in mysticism, only the present—the “eternal now” of
present experience—matters, but in current science, “now” has all but dropped out of the picture.
What matters in science is the causal order of “before” and “after”—the moment of now is absent
from scientific equations and thus is irrelevant.
14. New Age advocates argue that Yogins perceive atoms. Rick Strassman also floats the
theory that persons on the drug DMT experience beings in other dimensions of the natural universe,
other worlds in the multiverse, and subatomic particles of dark matter (2001: 316–23). But mystics
need not experience the underlying causes of everyday phenomena any more than we do when we
experience solidity in the everyday world. There is no reason to postulate a new paranormal power to
mystics when their experiences and claims can be explained otherwise.
15. Postmodernists rule out the possibility of any comparisons or commonality or
collaboration between science and mysticism because they are different endeavors. But to the extent
that mystics make claims about the nature of the same natural universe in their metaphysics that is
also the subject of scientific study, conflict and agreement cannot be ruled out prior to an actual
investigation. (For criticism of this “dogma of postmodernism,” see Wallace 2003: 20–25.)
16. In discussing my point about science and mysticism being “distinct and separate,” Ian
Barbour criticized me for perhaps drawing “too sharp a line between science and religion” (2000:
86). To clarify: I am arguing that it is science and mysticism as ways of knowing that are distinct and
separate—i.e., that the difference lies in what aspects of reality scientists and mystics focus on and
how they approach them. But mystical traditions are total ways of life having metaphysics and
religious ideas, and these may indeed not be completely separate from scientific theorizing.
17. One might try to see mysticism and science as complements in the scientific sense of the
Copenhagen interpretation, but Ian Barbour shows the limitation of using complementarity from
particle physics as a model for the relation of religion and science in general (2000: 76–78, 162–64).
 18. Both scientists and mystics rely more on faith than is generally recognized. In mysticism,
faith typically is in a tradition’s basic texts, doctrines, or other religious authorities. In Buddhism, it is
faith (shradda) in the Buddha’s word. The Dalai Lama realizes that this separates Buddhism from
science (2005: 28–29). In science, scientists do not start from scratch but rely on earlier findings and
earlier theories. But in both endeavors those trained in the disciple can, in principle, check the earlier
findings for themselves, although in the case of mysticism the confirmation would be limited to
“verifying” the existence of the experiences and only the mystic tradition’s particular doctrinal
interpretations.
 Chapter 9
1. That the early Buddhists defined action (karma) in terms of personal intention (chetana)
points to the centrality of the inner life in mystical cultivation (Anguttara Nikaya 3.207, 3.415). This
also occurs elsewhere, as with the Muslim Abu Hamid Mohammed al-Ghazali stressing the proper
intention (niyya) as necessary to follow religious duties truly.
2. “Left-handed” Tantrikas reverse orthodox codes of conduct and utilize the personal desires
that attach us to the cycle of rebirths. Indulging the desires is seen as a “quick path” to enlightenment,
even though this may mean an immoral use of others for the Tantrika’s own end.
3. Even Shankara is said to have founded monasteries. But since the earliest references to
these sites are only from hundreds of years after his time, he probably did not.
4. If the presuppositional problem concerning persons cannot be overcome, the Bhagavad-gita
is an instance of a nonmoral other-worldly value-system. If compassion and humaneness do not
figure as prominently in Daoism as suggested here, then Daoism is a case of a nonmoral this-worldly
value-system.
5. Not everyone who takes drugs and is antinomian is a mystic. So too, merely being in an
altered state of consciousness does not mean that a person can perform only good actions. The
English word “assassin” comes from the Persian word for hashish: Muslim assassins ingested hashish
before practicing their form of political action on Christian crusaders. The English word “berserk”
comes from the Norse word for “berserkers,” who ingested psychoactive drugs before going on
rampages. This suggests once again that certain values do not come from inner altered mental states
but must be adopted into a way of life.
6. See Feuerstein (1991); Storr (1996); and Wilson (2000) for examples of narcissistic gurus
who declared themselves to be “perfect masters” beyond good and evil. Arthur Deikman offers a
simple “spiritual leader test”: how do they treat their spouse? Many would fail that test. So too, there
does not appear to be a necessary correlation of moral character and yogic feats—paranormal
meditative feats (such as lowering one’s heartbeat) in no way depend on the overall character of the
practitioner.
7. An experiment that may have predisposed participants to be compassionate by including
compassion-oriented meditation and by being led by a Tibetan monk, a member of a tradition
emphasizing compassion, did show that mindfulness meditation increases compassionate responses
to suffering and activity in the brain areas associated with empathy (Cordon et al. 2013; Mascaro et
al. 2013). But no experiment yet suggests that meditation makes a noncompassionate person
compassionate.
8. Elsewhere Danto (1976) spoke more broadly of “mysticism,” as if mysticism anywhere, not
only in the Asian traditions he examines, must conflict with morality.
9. As Danto noted (1987: 17), the will and freedom of the will are not major issues in
traditional Asian philosophy. The doctrine of karma is not deterministic but gives those within its
sanction the free will to choose actions—otherwise, once one is under the power of karma, liberation
from it would be impossible. If predestination in Western theism means our choices are
predetermined, it is a far greater problem to free will than anything in the Asian traditions discussed
here. So too, God’s omnipotence denies that any creature could have free will or control, since any
such power would be contrary to God’s absolute power.
10. See Kripal (2002) for the interesting case of the Neo-Vedantin Vivekananda, who was
influenced by modernity, secularism, and individualism, and who attempted to forge a modern,
socially minded mysticism. Jeffrey Kripal contrasts Vivekananda here with his teacher, Ramakrishna,
who adhered to a more traditional world-denying form of mystical Hinduism and attached little
importance to reforming this world. And, as Kripal points out, Vivekananda returned to the more
traditional mystical stance late in life.
11. Actually, the Sanskrit phrase “tat tvam asi” cannot be mean “you are that Brahman.” As
Joel Brereton (1986) points out, the pronoun “sa,” not “tat” would be needed for that (although the
Upanishads do occasionally use the neuter pronoun “tat” for masculine subjects). In the passage in
question, a father is teaching his son that he exists in the same way as all life does. Thus, the phrase
means something like “you exist in that way” or “you have the same essence [atman] as all living
things.” Brahman is not mentioned in the passage. But for the sake of the discussion here, I will treat
the phrase the way the thinkers I am discussing treat it: the self (atman) is identical to Brahman and
is the only reality.
12. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Arthur Schopenhauer made similar claims. (Deussen’s reading
of Indian mysticism influenced his friend Friedrich Nietzsche.) Meister Eckhart stated that one
should love all persons equally, including oneself, since all are in God; it is imperfect to love any one
person more; thus, “if you love yourself, you love all men as yourself” (2009: 296).
13. Thus, under the nonmoral option, a mystic can be “selfish” (as with Theravada Buddhism)
or can selflessly work to maintain the world (as with this Advaita option). So too, a mystic may
remain engaged with society or simply walk away.
14. The “is/ought” question is complicated by premises mixing both factual and evaluative
claims. (See Jones 2004: 31–33.)
15. There may or may not be a universal core to all ethical codes (e.g., injunctions against
incest and against some types of homicides), and people everywhere may or may not in the main
share the same moral intuitions. But the issue here is why mystics follow any code—is it for other-
regarding motives or purely for self-regarding cultivation? That some mystics intentionally defy their
tradition’s code also raises a problem, although this does indirectly affirm the code as the norm for
society as a whole.
16. Some philosophers (e.g., John Mackie and Richard Garner) argue for totally nonmystical
reasons that morality is a delusion—i.e., there is no objective reality called “morality” or “right and
wrong” or universal injunctions external to our desires.
17. The Hasidic movement of the eighteenth century appears to have arisen out of the
antinomian Sabbatian movement, but it became orthodox over the course of time.
18. Also see King (1993) on the samurai and Zen. Japan also has a history of warring Zen
monks. There is a frightening connection between religious fanaticism and violence (see
Juergensmeyer 2000). One is reminded of the 9/11 terrorists chanting “God is great!” as they crashed
the airplanes into the World Trade Center, and Christian Crusaders’ battle cry “God wills it!” (deus
vult). As Alfred North Whitehead said, “religion is the last refuge of human savagery” (1926: 37). A
Serbian bishop could actually use the principle of nonviolence and Christian love of one’s enemies to
justify the extermination of Muslims as a sacred act. And the religious convictions resulting from
mystical experiences may intensify such fanaticism.
19. Zen may have been an exception to the general moral concern of Mahayana Buddhism.
Zen practices are not geared toward cultivating compassion or generosity. East Asian Confucian
social ethics provided the framework that Zen Buddhists operated in and responded to. The famous
ox-herding paintings, with the last showing the enlightened monk returning to the marketplace, need
not mean that the monk now engages others in a moral way (although that is how it became
traditionally interpreted), but only that he has returned to the social world.
20. As noted in chapter 6, the Daodejing emphasizes the interconnection of concepts such as
“right” and “wrong.” But this does not necessarily mean that we must have “war” if we are to have
“peace.” If we eliminated war, then the interconnected concepts of “war” and “peace” would no
longer be applicable. The same is true for any negative phenomenon.
21. Less coldly, Plotinus said “The sage would like all men to prosper and no one to suffer
evil, but if this does not happen, he is still happy” (Enneads 1.4.11).
 22. The nonmystical Christian Ranters in seventeenth-century England gave a libertine spin to
the logic of the doctrine of predestination: whether I am among the “elect” or the damned was
determined before I was born, and nothing I can do in this life can alter my destiny; thus, none of my
actions here matter, and so I might as well enjoy myself.
23. There is little in classical mysticism on reforming society or protesting social conditions
even in societies that value community over individualism; rather, the only way truly to relieve
human suffering is to change individuals inwardly. But morality is not tied to individualism, and
some modern mystics (such as Gandhi) have become more socially minded as the possibility of
changing social structures to improve worldly conditions for all within a society has become more
plausible.
24. This is not to deny that prophets who are sensitive to suffering and social injustice may
have mystical experiences and that mystical selflessness may enhance their prophetic mission. But
prophets undertake a way of life that is not centered around mystical cultivation, and thus their way
of life is not mystical. One can be prophetic without a mystical experience, and one can be a mystic
without being prophetic.
 Epilogue
1. Such experiences may have long-term beneficial psychological and physiological effects
(but see Ospina 2007; Chen 2012; Sedlmeier et al. 2012), such as enhancing our sense of “well-
being,” i.e., a sense of satisfaction with life or a purpose or meaning to life. But it is interesting to
note that without a religious interpretative framework, some mystical experiences may not have
positive effects but lead instead to less well-being (see Byrd, Lear, & Schwenka 2000). Thus, it may
be that naturalists would have to work out a framework in which mystical experiences are treated
positively as cognitive of natural realities if mystical experiences are not to have a negative effect on
their sense of well-being.
2. Science is usually blamed for the loss of interest in all transcendent realties, but the picture
is complicated. In fact, religion itself must take much of the blame (see Jones 2012a: 237–43). So
too, surveys that suggest that mystical and other spiritual experiences remain common in the United
States and the United Kingdom today provide at least some evidence that the dominance of modern
science has not wiped out such experiences.
3. A generation ago, Agehananda Bharati noted that few monks in Thailand under fifty
meditated (1976: 233). Thailand, often considered the world’s most Buddhist country, exhibits the
problem of modernity as its prosperity grows: there is less religious activity today and over a 50
percent drop in the number of monks. There are also sex and money scandals among the monks. And
now there is violence by the Buddhist majority against Muslims. But regardless, followers still make
offerings to the monks to earn their own karmic merit.
4. Rahner also believed that mystics are the paradigms of being truly human. The rest of us are
falling short by blocking the mystical potential latent in each of us.
5. The pull of this question has recently converted the atheist philosophers Anthony Flew and
Paul Feyerabend to believe that there must be some reason for the natural world—not that they have
become theists or believe in life after death. Flew adopted a type of deism, while Feyerabend
remained more agnostic.
6. One common generalization is that the “modern mind” informed by science forms
worldviews in a different way than does the “traditional mind” informed by mysticism and
mythology. The former starts with the natural world as given and looks for what knowledge we can
attain through experience and reason. The latter starts with the primacy of transcendent realities as
given; it sees the natural world as a product of supreme transcendent realities, and sees human beings
as participating directly in transcendent realities. Through the latter approach, societies come up with
competing comprehensive metaphysical views. Through the modern approach, we need not end up
with a metaphysical system that denies all transcendent realities (i.e., naturalism), but our starting
point remains different.
7. Advocates of mysticism as a force for changing religion or society today may reply that
these surveys typically do not differentiate mystical experiences from other types of spiritual
experiences, and so we do not know how many of the experiences accounted for are truly mystical.
So too, there is the problem that participants may not be applying the same terminology uniformly.
But even with New Age spirituality, it is hard to maintain that there must be dramatically more
mystical experiences in toto today than in the past.
8. As discussed earlier, some doctrines will always be necessary in mysticism for the mystics
themselves to understand the realities they have experienced. But if the focus becomes the doctrines
themselves, attention will be directed away from what is experienced, and the result may be that the
doctrines will become about something other than what was experienced. For example, in theism
God becomes an object of reasoning—the paradigm being the Ontological Argument—rather than a
reality encountered. Even if theologians argue that they are actually only trying to establish by reason
the existence and properties of what is experienced, nevertheless the god they argue about is made
into something objective. Thus, theology divorced from spirituality is likely to begin talking about a
god that is radically different in nature from a reality encountered in an introvertive mystical
experience. In this way, theology can suck the life out of mysticism and impede mystical experiences.
So too, mysticism may have influenced religious doctrines in the past, but whether it can inject a new
influence in theology today is open to question since the input from mystical experiences themselves
would remain the same as in the past.
9. Any “universal mysticism,” such as perennial philosophy, is not likely to become “the
tangible religion of the future for more than a few pure spirits” (Ellwood 1999: 159). That religions
in general are not coming together to form one unified tradition should also be pointed out. Nor is a
common theology or religious theory developing among religions. Instead, the number of
subtraditions is multiplying. As Robert Ellwood notes, the actual dynamics of religious history
strongly militate against a syncretism made up of any sort of combination of the present world
religions taking over (ibid.: 159).
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 Index

Advaita Vedanta, 16, 23, 30, 35, 47, 51, 75, 80, 93, 101, 109, 124, 178, 179, 180, 182–83, 190, 191,
193, 197, 227, 275–76, 279, 293, 301–2, 302, 305–6, 339, 350, 351, 358–59, 366, 368, 369–70.
See also Shankara
Alston, William, 85–88, 107–9, 200, 373
altered state of consciousness, 4, 10, 12, 45, 74, 129, 134, 264, 360, 379
Angel, Leonard, 142
Anselm, 229, 372, 373
antinomians, 105, 297, 298, 300, 310, 313, 316–17, 319, 327, 383, 384
Aquinas, Thomas, 196, 229, 354, 372
Aristotle, 234–35, 236, 254, 266, 375
Arjuna, 294, 307, 326
Aryadeva, 100
asceticism, 3, 50, 153, 341, 349
attribution theory, 43–45
Augustine, 208, 317–18
Aurobindo Ghose, 10, 80, 180, 191, 274
Austin, James, 155–56
Ayer, A. J., 143

Bagger, Matthew, 365

Baha’i, 357
Bahva, 218
Barbour, Ian, 382
Barnard, G. William, 298–99
Basho, 318
basic beliefs. See properly basic beliefs
Batchelor, Stephen, 351
Beauregard, Mario, 128, 149, 363, 364
beingness, 17, 19, 28, 34, 176–80, 184, 185, 196–98, 242, 263–69, 279–80, 284, 337, 340, 341–43,
363, 367, 380–81
Benson, Herbert, 149, 364
Bergson, Henri, 189
Bernard of Clairvaux, 2, 195, 300
“beyond good and evil,” 315–18
Bhagavad-gita, 65, 294, 307, 311, 316, 318, 382
Bharati, Agehananda, 26, 198, 296, 386
Bhartrihari, 208, 211
Bhavaviveka, 374
Blake, William, 13
Blumenberg, Hans, 335
Boehme, Jacob, 366
Bohm, David, 278
Bonaventure, 2, 181
Bowker, John, 44
Brahma-sutras, 65
Brentano, Franz, 54
Brereton, Joel, 383
Broad, C. D., 153, 189
Buber, Martin, 63, 76, 97
Bucke, Richard, 13, 179–80, 319
Buckley, Michael, 335
Buddhaghosa, 41
Buddhism, 9, 10, 13, 15, 18, 19, 28–29, 34–35, 38, 41, 47, 49, 50, 52, 75, 80–81, 92, 100, 102, 123–
24, 172, 178–79, 189, 190, 192, 193, 197, 199, 205, 211, 213–14, 218, 219, 226, 234, 236, 237,
240–41, 243–47, 259, 272–73, 275, 280, 281–82, 293, 297–98, 300, 302–3, 304, 310–11, 312,
314, 335, 348, 349, 351, 356, 357, 366–67, 371, 374, 376, 382, 386. See also Zen
Burrell, David, 200

Cabezón, José, 125, 283

Calvin, John, 112
Camus, Albert, 350
Catherine of Siena, 137, 294
certainty, mystical, 75, 77, 95–96, 117, 199, 332, 380
Chandrakirti, 246, 256
Chesterton, G. K., 50
Chomsky, Noam, xi
Christianity, xv, 1–2, 4, 8–10, 20, 27–28, 35, 43, 48–49, 50, 75, 90, 104, 173, 180, 181, 192, 195–96,
199, 229, 230, 248, 293, 299–300, 304, 305, 335, 369, 384, 385
Cloud of Unknowing, 221–22
comparison of mystical experiences, 34–36, 88–92, 92, 97, 98–99, 99–103, 103–6, 117–19
conceptualizations, 8, 13, 14, 18–19, 46–49, 53, 54, 60, 61, 62, 98, 145–46, 168, 172, 204, 224, 228,
231, 251, 262, 277, 348, 353, 371; degrees of ramification, 46, 94
consciousness, 13, 21, 22, 24, 40–41, 54, 67–68, 74, 125–27, 131–33, 139, 140, 183, 185, 188–91,
274, 279, 330, 333, 368, 369
constructivism, 52–58, 60–61, 65–69, 354
Conze, Edward, 243, 369, 378
Copernicus, Nicolas, 67, 95, 99
credulity, principle of, 82–85, 107, 355
Creel, Herrlee, 321
Cusa, Nicholas of, 378

Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), 18, 57, 121, 124, 190, 191, 272, 275, 380, 383
Danto, Arthur, 210, 301, 303–4
Daodejing, 198, 203, 341, 349, 382, 385
Daoism, 13, 23, 29, 180, 192, 197, 237, 276–77, 282, 294, 309, 316, 320–21, 325, 377. See also
Laozi and Zhuangzi
d’Aquili, Eugene, 147, 150, 361, 364–65
Dasgupta, S. N., 305
Dass, Ram, 322
Davidson, Donald, xi
Decision-making, mystical, 323–27
Deikman, Arthur, 155, 383
Dennett, Daniel, 189, 192, 302
Derrida, Jacques, 42
Descartes, René, 191
Deussen, Paul, 306, 384
Dharmakirti, 246
Diamond-Cutter Sutra, 240–41, 243, 246
Dignaga, 211, 246
Dionysius the Areopagite. See Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Dogen, 56, 100, 355
Dominicans, 9
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 136
Dreyfus, Hubert and Stuart, 324–25
drugs, 44, 77, 134–36, 147, 149, 152–53, 157–58, 168, 344, 347, 360–61, 381, 383
Durkheim, Émile, 138

Eckhart, Meister, 8–9, 21–22, 23, 35, 43, 47, 50, 64–65, 94, 172, 174, 180, 181, 195, 196, 203, 207,
218, 221, 224, 226, 228, 242–43, 259, 294, 315–16, 322, 323, 340, 348, 366, 367, 371, 372, 373,
377, 384
Edgerton, Franklin, 306
Einstein, Albert, 176, 275
Ellwood, Robert, 338, 387
emanation, 180, 183, 185, 193, 196, 269, 282, 357, 368, 369
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 376–77, 384
emotions and mystical experiences, ix, xv, xvi, 4, 5, 6, 10, 22, 28, 29, 39, 44, 45, 54, 64, 73, 84, 88,
105, 110, 118, 137, 139, 150, 197, 205, 274, 291, 300, 303–5, 315, 316, 323, 325, 328, 341, 349,
365, 368, 371; sense of joy, 6, 28, 29, 94, 105, 136, 167, 184, 203, 323, 330, 333, 350
empiricism, 80–82
enlightenment, mystical, 6, 7, 9, 11–12, 25–31, 42, 56, 105, 124, 125, 182–83, 192, 197, 206, 211,
213–14, 276, 291–93, 296, 298–99, 304, 305, 306–7, 312–14, 315–18, 320, 322, 323–27, 330,
350, 351, 359–60
Eno, Robert, 320
Escher, M. C., 216
ethics, 313. See morality
experience and knowledge, 39–41

Fenwick, Peter, 363

Fishacre, Richard, 369
Forgie, William, 351
Forman, Robert, 25–26, 60, 194
Francis of Assisi, 137, 318
Franciscans, 9, 52
Franks Davis, Caroline, 89
Free Spirits, 319

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 209

Gandhi, Mohandas, 275, 291, 385
Garfield, Jay, 245, 253
Garner, Richard, 384
Gaudapada, 368
Geertz, Clifford, xvi
al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid Mohammed, 382
Gimello, Robert, 56
Gnosticism, 50
Golden Rule, 306, 307–8
Goodman, Nelson, 352
Greeley, Andrew, 347
Grof, Stanislav, 149
Grosso, Michael, 150
Grünbaum, Adolph, 269

Haldane, John, 249

al-Hallaj, Husayn, 186, 196
Hardy, Alister, 365–66
Hawking, Stephen, 261, 380–81
Heart Sutra, 243, 377
Hepburn, Ronald, 240
Heraclitus, 309, 375
Hick, John, 55, 87, 101, 105, 353, 363–64
Hinduism, ix, 21, 32, 35, 49, 50, 75, 180, 234, 235–36, 282, 306, 311, 257, 357, 367–68, 375, 378,
383
hologram, 369–70
Hood, Ralph, 93, 128, 152
Hook, Sidney, 355, 379
Houston, Jean, 134
Hume, David, 83, 176, 189, 207, 210, 224, 302
Huxley, Aldous, 134, 189

Ibn Arabi, Muhyiuddin, 186

illusion, 16, 19, 34, 139, 171–72, 175, 176, 178, 179–80, 182–83, 208, 224, 275–76, 278, 279, 302,
325, 339, 342, 351, 356, 358
ineffability, 93, 203, 204–8, 319, 370
insight, 10, 13, 26, 27, 28–29, 34–36, 37, 39, 42, 60, 63, 70, 72–73, 74, 82, 88, 93–94, 121, 122,
124–25, 131, 142, 150, 153–54, 156–57, 159, 162, 166–67, 169–70, 206, 239, 351, 371
interpretations, 46–47, 62–63, 75, 76, 89–90, 93–95, 97, 340, 363, 364–65
intuitions, 39, 119, 170, 324, 325, 359
Islam, 58, 75, 186, 192, 196, 229, 230, 236, 335, 357, 373, 382. See also Sufism

Jaimimi, 211
Jainism, 105, 193, 293, 309, 313, 375
James, William, xiv, 2, 6, 10, 75, 78, 104, 106, 110, 134, 136, 150, 153, 169, 173, 189, 353
Jinpa, Thupten, 380
John of the Cross, 4, 9, 20, 23, 42 48, 195, 237–38, 240, 294, 376
Johnson, Samuel, 359
Johnston, William, 334
Josephson, Brian, 261
Judaism, 50, 63, 64, 65, 75, 100, 104, 186, 192, 196, 230, 304, 322, 335, 370, 384. See also Kabbala
judgments by nonmystics, 72–74, 110–11
Jung, Carl, 138
Kabbala, 65, 186, 187, 192, 347, 348
Kantian philosophy, 54, 59, 86, 101, 102, 175, 187, 189, 350, 372
Katz, Steven, 53, 55, 65, 69, 294, 353, 371
Kekelé, Friedrich August, 273–74
Kelly, Edward, 150
King, Sallie, 66
King, Winston, 277, 384
koan, 249
Kripal, Jeffrey, 294, 383
Krishnamurti, Jiddu, 18, 62, 172, 326, 336

Lancaster, Brian, 50, 347

language, 203–31, 250–52, 370, 372; mirror theory, 208–17
Laozi, 187, 203, 212, 218, 240, 321, 323–24
Letter of Private Counsel, 9, 78
Leuba, James, 45, 135
Lewis, I. M., 138
Lilly, John, 136
Locke, John, 250
logic, 234–36, 374, 376
Lonegran, Bernard, 57
Lotus Sutra, 350
love mysticism, 20, 21, 238, 299
Luther, Martin, 50

Mackie, John, 384

Madhva, 65, 181
Manson, Charles, 297
Marshall, Paul, 14
Maslow, Abraham, 144
Masters, Robert, 134
McGinn, Bernard, 57
McIntosh, Mark, 43
McKenna, Terrence, 134
McNamara, Patrick, 361
McTaggart, John, 175
meaningfulness of the world, 184
meditation, 4, 5, 10–11, 18, 19, 32, 38, 56, 121, 123–25, 126, 133, 137–38, 142, 148, 151–52, 271,
274, 347, 349, 353, 360, 363, 364, 383; scientific study of, 137
Merton, Thomas, 64, 93, 100, 335
metaphoric utterances, 219–23
metaphysics, mystical, 33–34, 173–201, 281–83
methodological issues, xii–xvi
mindfulness, 14–19, 155–56, 349
Mohammed, 186
Moists, 374
morality, nature of, 289–91; compatibility of mysticism and morality, 291–94; factual beliefs, 311–
12; and mystical actions, 318–23; and mystical selflessness, 327–30; and mysticism, 289–330;
presuppositions, 301–3; values, 313–15; and wholeness, 308–11
Moses, 186
Mozi, 296
Munitz, Milton, 176, 268–69
mystery, 198–201
mystical enlightenment. See enlightenment
mystical experiences, definition, 4–5; depth, 21–25, 46–49, 59, 60–65; extrovertive, 5–6, 10–11, 12–
19, 33; genuine, 41–43, 122, 152, 157; introvertive, 5–6, 10–11, 19–25, 33; nature of, 5–7;
neutrality of scientific explanations, 169–70; not necessarily religious, 352; origin of religion,
347–48; physiological explanations of, 134–38, 146–59; scientific study of, 131–34, 161–65;
sociocultural explanations of, 138, 143–46, 361, 362; types, 5–6, 31–34
mystical knowledge, 37–38, 39–41, 70, 71–120, 206, 223–25, 262
mystical paths, 7–12
mystical ways of life, 11, 37, 49–52
mysticism, definition of, 4–5; history, 1–3, 347; nature of, 37–38
mysticism, philosophy of, ix–x, xvi–xviii

Nagarjuna, 17, 100, 172, 211, 218, 245, 252–58, 275, 367, 374, 377, 378–79
Nagasena, 237
naturalists, 25, 45, 78, 83, 131, 162, 165–68, 173–74, 358, 266, 366; naturalists’ view of mystical
experiences, 139–43, 333–34, 362
near-death experiences, 143, 153, 365
negation, 225–29. See also via negativa.
Neoplatonism, 35, 192, 193, 196, 269, 312. See also Plotinus
Newberg, Andrew, 147, 150, 168, 361, 364–65
Nhat Hanh, Thich, 243
Nichren, 100
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 384
Nisbett, Richard, 236–37, 375
nonconstructivism, 58–60, 61–64, 65–69, 354
Nozick, Robert, 80
Nyaya, 234, 351

Occam’s razor, 159–61

Ontological Argument, 373, 386
Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 376
Origen of Alexandria, 9
Otto, Rudolf, 4, 249
Owen, Richard, x

Pahnke, Walter, 134, 135

pantheism, 50, 181, 193, 197, 242, 357, 369
paradox, 219, 238–52, 257, 260, 262–63, 376–77, 378, 379
Parfit, Derek, 176
Parmenides, 175, 375
perennial philosophy, 32–33, 49, 58, 69, 101–3, 189, 250, 369, 387
Persinger, Michael, 136, 137, 149
Phillips, Stephen, 359
Pike, Nelson, 356
Plantinga, Alvin, 112–16, 359
Plato, ix, 77, 175, 182, 218, 316, 334, 337
Plotinus, 174, 180, 191–92, 203, 213, 217–18, 220, 221, 225, 226, 228, 271, 357, 369, 385
Porete, Marguerite, 50, 376
postmoderism, x–xii, 56, 98–99, 229, 235, 334, 352, 375, 381–82
Prasad, Rajendra, 301
Preston, David, 354
properly basic beliefs, 111–16
Priest, Graham, 239, 245, 253
Proudfoot, Wayne, 44–45
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, 2, 41, 42, 94, 222, 227, 228, 373
Ptolemy, 67, 95, 99
Pyrrho, 299
Pythagoras, 175

Quine, Willard, 15, 367

Rahner, Karl, 338, 386

Ramachandran, V. S., 136, 147
Ramakrishna, 57, 101
Ramanuja, 35, 65, 75, 180
rationality, 233–35, 235–38, 359; and mystical belief, 106–11, 118–20, 233–60; universal reason,
258–60
realism, 171–72
reconciling mysticism and science, 286–87
Reid, Thomas, 83
religious diversity, 89–92, 113–14
religious experience, argument from, 88–89
religious experiences, 3–4, 35, 44, 348
Rig Veda, 134
Robinson, Richard, 254
Rolle, Richard, 35
Rumi, Jalal al-din, 21, 101, 219, 319, 329
Russell, Bertrand, 45, 139, 210, 240, 256, 280, 370
Ruusbroec, Jan van, 21, 195, 300, 350
Ryle, Gilbert, x

Samkhya, 32, 34, 47, 75, 93, 180, 181, 185, 190, 191, 193, 197, 282, 307, 362, 368
Sangharakshita, Bhiksu, 246
Santayana, George, 49
Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 1
Scholem, Gershom, 65, 186, 314
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 384
science, 263–64, 277–78, 385–86; compatibility of scientific explanations and mystical claims, 155–
59, 342; complementarity, 283–85; conciliation, 342–43; indirect aid to mysticism, 274–75; and
mystical approaches to reality, 263–68, 269–73, 277–81; and mysticism, 261–87; mysticism’s
indirect aid to science, 273–74; today, 333–45
scientific explanations of mystical experiences. See mystical experiences
scientific studies of mystics, 121–70
secularization of mystical experience, 336–37, 352
self, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 176, 191–93, 302–3, 341–42, 369
Sellars, Wilfrid, 54
Sells, Michael, 42
Sengcan, 316
sense-perception analogy, 85–88, 107
Shankara, 23, 30, 42, 43, 47, 64–65, 76, 89, 100, 124, 172, 180, 182, 197, 203, 212, 218, 221, 225,
234, 235, 247, 276, 299, 307, 358, 359–60, 368, 382
Sharf, Robert, 41
silence, 21, 35, 147, 192, 197, 200, 217–19, 268, 339, 347
Sloan, Richard, 122, 133, 150
Smart, Ninian, 20, 32, 46, 108, 118, 352
Smith, Huston, 32, 170
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, x
Staal, Fritz, 130, 374
Stace, Walter, x, 6, 20, 52, 53, 128, 228, 239, 249, 295, 298, 308, 354, 358, 378
Stoeber, Michael, 35–36
Strassman, Rick, 381
Sufism, 9, 11, 21, 181, 192, 196, 335
surveys, ix, 128–29, 336, 354, 365–66
Suso, Heinrich, 64
Swinburne, Richard, 83–84, 91, 110, 356

Tantrism, 100, 293, 307, 320, 347, 369, 382

Tart, Charles, 129, 360
Tauler, Johannes, 64
Taves, Ann, 44, 45
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 186, 274
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 176
Teresa of Avila, 7, 20, 62, 105, 137
Tertullian, 248
testing and checking of mystical claims, v, 75–76, 78–79, 81, 86, 95, 97, 104–6, 167, 173, 174, 234,
265–67, 271, 305, 355, 350, 365, 380, 383
Theologia Germanica, 10
theories in neurology, 122–23, 125–31
Tillich, Paul, 181, 345, 372
timelessness, mystical, 6, 91, 133, 139, 178, 200, 276, 323, 361, 363, 366, 369, 372
Toland, John, 193
Tolstoy, Leo, 296
transcendent realities, 3, 4, 6, 12, 19, 23, 173, 186–88, 219–23
triggers, artificial, 3, 84, 135, 136, 148, 149, 151–53, 161, 169
Trungpa, Chogyam, 297
Turner, Denys, 41, 42

ultimate decisions, 117–20, 170

Underhill, Evelyn, 197, 329
union, mystical, 193–98
unknowing, mystical, 8–9, 43, 64, 68, 242, 270, 349–50
Upanishads, 7, 16, 64–65, 180, 189, 197, 205, 206, 226, 264, 276, 282, 286, 305, 306, 340, 349, 350,
368, 376

via negativa, 150, 175, 201, 209, 226–29

visions, 4–5, 10, 55, 57, 62, 145, 147, 154, 170
Vivekananda, 383
Voltaire, 139

Wainwright, William, x, 33, 302, 304

Wallace, B. Alan, 22, 80–81
Walsh, Roger, 129
Weber, Max, xiv
Weil, Simone, 64
Whitehead, Alfred North, 175, 384
Whorf, Benjamin, 66, 375
Wilber, Ken, 33
Wilson, Edward O., 343
Winch, Peter, 375
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, xii, 54, 119, 129, 189, 207, 210, 268, 368, 370, 371, 372, 375
world, mystical sense of the, 177–84, 275–77

Yandell, Keith, 89, 356, 359

Yoga Sutras, 4, 10, 11, 124, 349
“You are that,” 305–8

Zaehner, Robert, 32, 102, 135, 297, 307

Zen Buddhism, ix, 4, 9, 28, 30, 32, 100, 211–12, 231, 237, 249, 316, 354, 384–85
Zeno, 379
Zhuangzi, 29, 35, 211, 237, 318, 321, 375
 Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Postmodernist Concerns
Methodological Issues
The Analytical Philosophical Approach
1 Mysticism and Mystical Experiences
Mystical Experiences
Mystical Paths
Extrovertive Mystical Experiences
Mindfulness
Introvertive Mystical Experiences
Depth-Mystical Experiences
Mystical Enlightenment
A Typology of Mystical Experiences
Weighting Mystical Experiences
2 Mystical Knowledge and Religious Ways of Life
Experience and Knowledge
Are There Genuine Mystical Experiences?
Attribution Theory
The Depth-Mystical Experience and Its Conceptualizations
Mystical Experiences and Mystical Ways of Life
Constructivism
Nonconstructivism
Constructivism and the Depth-Mystical Experience
Can the Constructivism Dispute be Resolved?
The Possibility of Mystical Insight
3 Are Mystical Experiences Cognitive?
Can Nonmystics Judge the Veridicality of Mystical Experiences?
What Can Mystics Claim to Know?
Mysticism and Empiricism
The Principle of Credulity
 The Analogy to Sense-Perception
Problems of Justifying Specific Doctrinal Claims
The Limitation of Any Mystical Claim to Knowledge
Can Mystical Knowledge-Claims Be Compared?
Do Mystical Knowledge-Claims Genuinely Conflict?
Can One Mystical System Be Established as Best?
Is It Rational to Accept Mystical Knowledge-Claims?
“Properly Basic Beliefs”
Ultimate Decisions
4 The Scientific Study of Mystics and Meditators
Scientific Study Versus Mystical Practices
Are New Theories of the Mind Needed?
Can Mystical Experiences Be Studied Scientifically?
Scientific Explanations of Mystical Experiences
Sociocultural Explanations of Mystical Experiences
Explaining Away Mystical Experiences
Problems with Sociocultural Explanations
Problems with Physiological Explanations
Do Natural Triggers Produce Mystical Experiences?
Natural Phenomena and Mystical Insights
The Compatibility Problem
Applying Occam’s Razor
Our Epistemic Situation
Is Naturalism or a Transcendent Alternative More Plausible?
The Neutrality of Science
5 Mysticism and Metaphysics
Mystical Metaphysics
The Status of the World
The Nature of Transcendent Realities
Consciousness
The Self
The Question of Mystical Union
Mysticism and the Closure of Mystery
6 Mysticism and Language
Ineffability
The Mirror Theory of Language
And Yet Mystics Continue to Talk
 An Analogy
Silence
Positive Characterizations of Transcendent Realities
Mystical Utterances and Knowledge
Negation
Defending Mystical Discourse
7 Mysticism and Rationality
Rationality and Styles of Reasoning
Paradox
Resolving Paradoxes
Understanding the Paradoxical
Nagarjuna’s Reasoning
Mysticism and the Question of Universal Reason
8 Mysticism and Science
Scientific and Mystical Approaches to Reality
An Analogy
Beingness and Science
Mystical Experience Versus Scientific Measurement and
Theorizing
Indirect Avenues of Aid
Science, Mysticism, and the Natural World
The Difference in Content
Science and Mystical Metaphysics
Complementarity
Reconciling Mysticism and Science
9 Mysticism and Morality
The Basic Question of Compatibility
Are Mystics Necessarily Moral?
Mystical Selflessness and the Presuppositions of Morality
Emotions, Values, and Beliefs
“You Are That”
A Metaphysics of Wholeness and Morality
Factual Beliefs, Values, and Mystical Experiences
“Beyond Good and Evil”
Will Any Actions Do?
Mystical Decision-Making
Mystical Selflessness and Morality
Epilogue: The Demise of Mysticism Today
The Antimystical Climate Today
Accepting Mysticism Today
A Mystical Revolution?
A Thirst for Transcendence
Notes
References and Further Reading
Index
Back Cover