Mystical experiences have no specific content.¹ They are not perceptions of religious entities (so visions or hearing voices wouldn’t count as mystical experiences in this sense of the term). Of course, not all mystical experiences are objectless (meaning that the mystic loses all awareness of external objects); so-called extrovertive mystical experiences are characterized by a sense of union with the natural world, and of course these experiences involve external objects. Yet, these objects are not essential to the experience. What makes the experi-ence mystical is not its object, but the mode in which the object is experienced. Mystical experiences might therefore best be characterized as a certain kind of altered state of consciousness. To understand them, we need to understand how being mystically conscious is different from being conscious the ordinary way.
Based on C. G. Jung's lifelong research on mystical experiences, I will demonstrate that mystical experiences have indeed a specific content and that it is the object and not the mode that makes the experience "mystical".
The Specific Content: the symbol of conjunction of opposites
In his 1951 book AION, researches into the phenomenology of the Self, Jung described the mystical experience phenomenon he thought was part of the most advanced stages of the individuation process. He characterized those experiences as an extremely numinous symbol of conjunction of opposites. Using the quaternio structure which represents the conjunction of opposites, he identified two symbols appearing in mystical experiences.
The first symbol is a conjunction of the whole with the particle. In those experiences, the subject feels being one with the universe, nature, God, the light, etc. It is always a conjunction of the microcosm with the macrocosm. We see this symbol in the experience of Muz Murray (born 1941) who is a spiritual teacher and author. He recalled his mystical experience of becoming the universe as follows:
“I began to feel a strange pressure in my brain. It was as if some deliciously loving hand had crept numbingly under my skull and was pressing another brain softly into mine. I felt a thrilling liquidity of being and an indescribable sensation as if the whole universe was welling-out of me from some deep center. My “soul” thrilled and swelled and I kept expanding until I found myself among and within the stars and planets. I understood that I was the whole universe! Yet suddenly I became aware of huge entities millions of miles high, maneuvering in space, through which the stars could still be seen…. wave upon wave of extraordinary revelation swept through me, too fast for my conscious mind to record other than the joy and wonder of it. In those moments of eternity, I lived and understood the truth of the esoteric saying “as above–so below.” I was shown that every cell had its own consciousness which was mine.”²
The second symbol is a conjunction of the interior with the exterior. The experiencer feels momentarily that the world is inside his mind. The best description that I have yet found is from Forrest Reid (1875–1947). He described his mystical experience as follows:
“It was as if I had never realized before how lovely the world was. I lay down on my back in the warm, dry moss and listened to the skylark singing as it mounted up from the fields near the sea into the dark clear sky. No other music ever gave me the same pleasure as that passionately joyous singing. It was a kind of leaping, exultant ecstasy, a bright, flame-like sound, rejoicing in itself. And then a curious experience befell me. It was as if everything that had seemed to be external and around me were suddenly within me. The whole world seemed to be within me. It was within me that the trees waved their green branches, it was within me that the skylark was singing, it was within me that the hot sun shone, and that the shade was cool.”²
Mystical experiences have a symbol of conjunction of opposites at their core. It is rarely the case with psychedelic induced mystical experiences. To Jung, a true mystical experience always has that specific characteristic. The object or the symbol is essential to the experience to be identified as mystical.
The symbol of conjunction in itself comes from the subject's life experiences. If he is religious, the symbol of choice will be God or Christ. Jung's mystical experience of December 1913 was about his becoming Christ crucified on the cross. To an agnostic, the symbol will have more secular notes such as universe, nature, etc. The important factor to determine an experience as mystical is the symbol representing a conjunction of opposites.
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| Conjunction of opposites |
The Mode versus the Symbol
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¹ My emphasis.
² From the Institute for Mystical Experience Research and Education Mystical Experience | IMERE.org