Don’t think for a second that mystical experiences are for spiritual masters only. Don’t think that you need to be born with special intuition or that you need to be part of some historic lineage. Anyone can have a rich inner life. YOU can have closeness with God. You can have the mysterious and illuminating experience of “gnosis.”
What is a mystical experience? It’s utterly mysterious and difficult to articulate, but it’s common enough that we have reports of mystical experiences across time and cultures. It’s a state of consciousness, a phenomenon that simply happens to us, and we don’t know why. We can’t predict it. We can’t control it or provoke it. And we even have a hard time defining it.
But today, we’re going to try anyway!
In this post, we’ll be focusing on one of the most famous and influential frameworks for understanding mysticism so that you can discover for yourself:
- What is a mystical experience?
- What is “gnosis” and what does it have to do with mysticism?
- What are the major defining characteristics of a mystical experience?
- How can you have a mystical experience of your own?
William James: The Varieties Of Religious Experience
William James, known as the “father of American psychology,” was so much more than that moniker suggests. He was also a philosopher, a scholar of religion, and something of a holy rebel himself. Inspired by a strange experience of altered consciousness he had under the influence of nitrous oxide (laughing gas), he became interested in understanding the full range of experiences of human consciousness.
This led him, inevitably, to investigate the phenomenon of religious experiences and the states of consciousness associated with them. In a series of famous lectures that came to be collected in a book known as The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James presented his findings. But the most famous of these lectures were lectures number 16 and 17 on—you guessed it!—mysticism.
To James, mystical experience was more than just one type of religious experience. It was the core of all religious experience, of religion itself. Studying the lives and written accounts of the experiences of the great mystics—especially Christian mystics—James came to understand and appreciate just how unique and significant the mystical experience was:
“There is a state of mind, known to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God.”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Yup, sounds like mystical experience in a nutshell!
But William James was determined to study the phenomenon like any good social scientist would. He compared and contrasted all of the accounts of mystical experiences he could get his hands on so that he could identify the recurring themes and churn out a more systematic explanation for what the heck these experiences were all about. The result was his articulation of four major criteria of mystical experiences.
Gnosis
Gnosis is perhaps the most important and defining characteristic of mystical experience for William James. It is a Greek term that translates to “knowledge.” But it is not the kind of knowledge you build over time by studying books. It is a kind of direct knowledge that hits you like a brick. In religious terms, it is what we call revelation. In modern-day technological terms, you might say it’s as though God has updated your operating system. Some new module has been installed in the very depths of your being and you will never be the same again.
The religious historian Elaine Pagels describes gnosis like this:
“So this gnosis is self-knowledge; you could call it insight. It’s a question of knowing who you really are, not at the ordinary level of your name and your social class or your position, but knowing yourself at a deep level. The secret of gnosis is that when you know yourself at that level you will also come to know God, because you will discover that the divine is within you.”
In the mystical experience, you come to fully believe in God because you have been swallowed up by God—you have entered into the Divine but you have also come to understand that the Divine dwells within you as well. It always has been there. But now you know it beyond all doubt.
Ineffability
Ineffability is a big fancy word, but all it means is this: something that you can’t explain in a way that others can understand. For James, mysticism is a “you had to be there” kind of experience. It is perhaps the most important thing that has ever happened to you, but, try as you might, your explanation of it falls on deaf ears.
The great Christian mystic St. Teresa of Avila, for instance, explains the ineffability of mystical experience through the metaphor of a metamorphosing silkworm.
“You must have already heard about His marvels manifested in the way silk originates, for only He could have invented something like that. The silkworms come from seeds about the size of little grains of pepper […] The silkworm, which is fat and ugly, then dies, and a little white butterfly, which is very pretty, comes forth from the cocoon. Now if this were not seen but recounted to us as having happened in other times, who would believe it? Or what reasonings could make us conclude that a thing as nonrational as a worm or bee could be so diligent in working for our benefit and with so much industriousness? […] This is enough, Sisters, for a period of meditation even though I may say no more to you; in it you can consider the wonders and the wisdom of our God.”
St Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle
In other words, to the uninitiated, mystical experience sounds like the fantastical product of an overactive imagination. It sounds entirely implausible. And yet, like the silkworm’s transformation into a butterfly, it is very real. But if you’ve never witnessed it for yourself, it makes perfect sense that you have a hard time grasping it. There’s no substitute for the experience itself. That’s what mysticism is all about.
Transiency
The mystical experience is not all rainbows and unicorns. Like all beautiful things, it must inevitably come to an end. We cannot spend our whole lives living in the clouds. James noticed that mystics often describe their mystical experiences as subjectively feeling like they lasted an eternity when, in reality, they lasted only for a few seconds.
And for many mystics, that one experience was all they got. St. Teresa of Avila describes this bittersweet quality in some of her writings. You have a mystical experience and you spend your entire life longing for that experience again. And yet, it may never recur—not to the same degree of intensity, at least.
In this way, mysticism can teach us something important about letting go. Just as the passing of a loved one can leave us with a hole in our hearts, so too is there something painful about the transiency of the mystical experience. But just as we never forget that loved one, it is that aching feeling of longing that keeps the feeling of God’s Love and presence forever close at hand for those who’ve had a mystical experience. It becomes the foundation for a lifetime of prayer and faith and connection with God. The gnosis is still there.
Passivity
This is one of the most mysterious and frustrating features of the mystical experience. You want that mystical experience so badly—whether you’re a first-timer or trying to recapture the experience of the past. There are all sorts of prescribed practices for connecting with God, but, try as we might, there is no surefire way of initiating a mystical experience. It is a passive experience. As St. Teresa of Avila writes, “However great the effort we make to do so, we cannot enter. His Majesty must place us there and enter Himself into the center of our soul.”
Unfortunately, we cannot just snap our fingers and have a mystical experience. It is a gift granted to us by the grace of God. And sadly, it is not a gift that everyone receives. But, as I will explain later, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to increase the likelihood of having a mystical experience.
Other Characteristics Of Mystical Experience
So, according to William James, the four core characteristics of mystical experience are: gnosis, ineffability, transiency, and passivity.
But there are, of course, so many other features we can point to—so many little things that make mystical experiences so special. And so, here’s three more!
Unity
Look around you right now and find something in the room: a computer, a mug, a book. Or, if you’re outside, look at a tree, cloud, or car. What would it be like if this object suddenly and irrevocably felt like it is your body? What if you suddenly had an experience, like a wave that washes through you, a wave that is utterly convincing (there’s that gnosis again!), that this object or being in front of you IS part of you, in the same way that your hand is a part of who you are? How would that feel?
Weird, right? Awe-inspiring.
Transcending yourself and feeling entirely connected to all things is one aspect of a mystical experience. Hildegard of Bingen, the 11th century German nature mystic says, “Humanity, take a good look at yourself. Inside, you’ve got heaven and earth, and all of creation. You’re a world—everything is hidden in you.”
Unity is a sort of fifth criteria of mystical experience that William James half-commits to. He’s not as confident that it is a universal criteria in the way the other four are, but he does point out that it is definitely a major theme in many mystical experiences.
Personal identity dissolves into something bigger. It’s not that you lose yourself or disappear. Quite the opposite. It’s that you find your real self—and it feels like you expand into more of who you are. Imagine that. As if the external world is no longer “other”, but it’s part of who you are. It is your body.
Meant To Be
The second additional aspect of a mystical experience is an overwhelming sense that everything you’ve ever done has led you to this moment right now. Your choices, successes, disappointments, everything you’ve done, and all the things that have happened to you are part of a harmonious design.
There are no mistakes. This moment is meant to be. You realize that this sensation of destiny is not an intellectual exercise. It’s not a philosophy. It’s called a mystical EXPERIENCE because it’s an EXPERIENCE. It is as real and convincing to you as this moment we’re living right now. It’s a feeling that all is right with the world. Imagine the relief! How would you feel if you knew with every fiber of your being that all is as it’s supposed to be? You didn’t fail. You didn’t make a mistake. You’re meant to be here. It feels like an all-encompassing wave of unconditional acceptance rolls over you and saturates your soul. You don’t even know what hit you! You didn’t know this kind of ecstasy was possible. Complete harmony. Breathe that in!
Share With Others
The Christian mystics are some of the most prolific writers in human history. That’s because they were obsessed with trying to put their experiences into words. On some level, they recognized they were destined to fail, but they wanted to get as close to representing their experiences and gnosis in words as possible. So, they had to rely on all the familiar rhetorical tools of religious scripture: analogies, parables, paradoxical statements, and so forth.
They wanted everyone to know that this mystical experience was possible. They wanted everyone to have a similar experience because they saw how profoundly it had reshaped their own lives and, through it, developed a vision for a better world overall—a world built on peace and love instead of fear and hate.
How To Have A Mystical Experience
Though there are innumerable techniques (like meditation, yoga, breathing practices, prayers, etc) said to be instrumental in cultivating mystical states, there’s still something unattainable about the whole thing. It’s impossible to achieve through your own efforts alone, because it’s given to you—by grace.
But just because it’s not attainable by your own efforts alone doesn’t mean that your efforts don’t matter at all.
Take a moment of pause to really consider the difference there.
There is a quote of contested origin but often attributed to the celebrated Sufi mystic and poet Rumi, which goes like this:
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Bingo!
This is exactly the way St. Teresa of Avila explains the importance of spiritual practice to her fellow nuns. You may do all the right things and never have a mystical experience of union with God. But if you do none of these things, you for sure won’t have such an experience. Why?
Think about what a mystical experience is. It is an experience of entering God, of God entering into you. You can’t make God show up, but if you want It to come to you, you must be able to welcome It in. You have to clear out some space, just as you would spruce up your living room a bit if you knew you had a guest coming to visit your home.
The truth is, you already have everything you need. The Divine already dwells within you. It just might be hidden under a bunch of empty pizza boxes and other junk you haven’t been diligent about cleaning up. But don’t worry! It’s never too late to start!
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