Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (1835 – 1910) was an Italian astronomer and science historian. He is known for his observations of the planet Mars.
During the planet's "great opposition" of 1877, he observed a dense network of linear structures on the surface of Mars, which he called canali in Italian, meaning "channels", but the term was mistranslated into English as "canals". From the incorrect translation, various assumptions were made about life on Mars; as these assumptions were popularized, the "canals" of Mars became famous, giving rise to waves of hypotheses, speculation, and folklore about the possibility of Martians, intelligent life living on Mars. Among the most fervent supporters of the artificial-canal hypothesis was the American astronomer Percival Lowell, who spent much of his life trying to prove the existence of intelligent life on the red planet.
I thought of this story when I read the 2022 book The Varieties of Spiritual Experiences by David B. Yaden and Andrew B. Newberg. In their book, the authors develop a typology of spiritual experiences they believed is an important contribution to the study of these experiences. They describe their typology with three factors which contain each three categories.
The first factor, Numinous Experience , specifically refers to the feeling of the presence of God. It contains numinous, revelatory and synchronity experiences. The second factor, Mystical Experiences involving feelings of unity which contain unity, self-loss and aesthetic experiences. The third factor, Paranormal Experiences involving the presence of deceased relatives or other nonphysical beings contains interactions with known and unknown being.
Although the authors say that they have read thousands of written peak experiences, their work is purely statistical and does not help making sense of the numerous accounts of peak experiences. The authors are still searching canals on Mars even though everybody know that the lines are not canals.
One the major problems with the typology above is that it does not stand on a serious hypothesis. They have collected 461 peak experiences and they have considered that all of them were of equal value. The frivolous ones with the serious ones. This goes against the fact that people use the words mystical, transcendent or peak experiences to qualify any experience that is out of their normal way of living.
If the scientists who are interested in mystical experiences would take the time to read Carl Jung, they would find a serious hypothesis for their work instead of only doing stats. To Jung, mystical experiences are symbols of conjunction of opposites. Those opposites generally fall in two categories: particle v. whole and interior v. exterior. If the account of a mystical experience does not express the symbol of conjunction of opposites, it should not be considered a true mystical experience but something else.
Acounts of experiences of unity with the universe, nature, God fall in the first category. But we also find accounts of the fusion of a child with a parental figure which also represents the conjunction particle/whole. The second category is generally described as if the world is inside the mind of the experiencer thus representing the conjunction of opposites interior and exterior.
In the Yaden/Newberg typology, the symbol of conjunction of opposites cannot be found into one specific factor or category but is spread all across their typology. As such, the experience of being one with God would fall in the first factor, the experience of being one with nature would fall in the second factor and the close encounter with a deceased father (which is Thomas Merton's first mystical experience) would fall into the third factor. With their typology, the authors have lost the essential characteristic of the mystical experience phenomenon. They have found new canals on Mars while actual photos prove that there is no canals.
For more, read Jung's AION or my paper on the subject: