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Pastoral Psychology, Vol. 50, No. 4, March 2002 (°

C 2002)

Mystical Experience: Unveiling the Veiled

Katherine E. Godby1

Mystical experience is not unusual. Nearly half of all Americans report having
had one or more mystical experiences. The author looks at how these experiences
are moments of knowing—Do they unveil what is hidden?—and at how pastoral
theologians and clinicians may help others come to understand their experience.
Some thoughts on what this area of study may contribute to pastoral theology and
pastoral counseling are also provided.
KEY WORDS: mysticism; epistemology; Paul Ricoeur; William James.

In July 1986 while on vacation in California, business executive Anne

Turney, 34, looked out over the Pacific from a cliff near Big Sur. Without warning,
she later told me, she suddenly felt her whole being expand, becoming one with
everything—the rocks, the sea, the trees, all of life. “I felt myself melting into
this Allness,” she said, “and there was an accompanying sense of freedom and an
overwhelming love. I felt I could actually die, right then and there, and that death
would be like finally coming Home. Then I saw my body, spread out into the shape
of the cross and staked to the cliff. I was pouring myself out, giving everything I
am to this All. The whole thing lasted only a few minutes before I returned to a
sense of myself as an individual.”
Anne later reflected that this experience was a moment of knowing. More
than anything else, she said, she has come to think that it provided her with “the
certain Truth of who we are as human beings. We are not separate from God, and
we are meant to realize this union.” As a result of the experience, an intense desire
for God was uncovered within her, a longing that she has sought to realize and to
foster in a variety of ways since then.

1 KatherineGodby is a Ph.D. candidate at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, Texas.
She received her M.Div. at Brite and is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Address correspondence to Katherine Godby, 3432 Rogers Avenue, Ft. Worth, TX 76109; e-mail:
katherineg@mindspring.com.

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232 Godby

What happened to Anne likely resonates with others who have had similar
mystical experiences. This article is a brief examination of these experiences. I am
interested first of all in their epistemology. In what sense are mystical experiences
moments of knowing? Do they unveil what is hidden? I set the stage by delineating
two basic epistemological stances and two types of mystical experiences. One of
these types of experiences is staunchly disputed by constructivist philosophers,
and I contrast their argument with postconstructivist claims regarding the possi-
bility of transcultural phenomena. The postconstructivist scholar, Robert Forman,
whose argument I briefly describe, however, remains strictly subjective and posits
no “givenness” about mystical experiences whatsoever. William James offers an
intriguing epistemology that is not only open to both constructivist and post-
constructivist claims, but in some ways goes beyond them both by positing that
mystical experiences may indeed unveil what is hidden. I then briefly exam-
ine Jamesian notions regarding how a field model of reality might explain how
mystical experiences connect the mystic to God.
I am also interested how pastoral theologians may come to better understand
mystical experiences. The hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur offers an engaging lens
in this regard, and I offer a preliminary translation model based on his thought. I
conclude with a word about how mystical experience as a part of the psychology
of religion may contribute to the work of pastoral theology.

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

The whole of human life may be thought of as one vast exercise in knowing.
From those mysterious moments on the cusp between slumber and wakefulness
to the equally mysterious moments just before we lose consciousness and enter a
world of dreams, every movement we make is based on knowing something. Our
senses, volition, thoughts, emotions, perceptions, intention, and more—indeed,
all aspects of what it means to be an embodied self—work together to provide a
kind of certainty that allows us to function. In my subjective experience, I awake
to a piercing sound and perceive an object outside of me next to the bed. In a
tremendously complex exercise involving all kinds of mind/body connections,
I groggily construct “ALARM CLOCK,” fill that construction with a certain meaning
(UGH! TIME TO GET UP!), and reach out to muzzle its hideous clamor. For better or
worse, this is the ordinary way of knowing.
Non-ordinary ways of knowing, on the other hand, can mean a host of dif-
ferent things—from paranormal/pathological experiences of all types to religious
experiences, some of which are said to be mystical. Anne’s experience in California
illustrates well this second epistemological stance with which I am concerned. Her
sense of nonseparateness at the heart of reality and her sense of having been given
certain insight into the way things are constitute the most crucial components in
what I mean by mystical experience.
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Mystical Experience: Unveiling the Veiled 233

The Greek mystery cults gave us the adjective mystikos, providing us today
with an etymological foundation linking the mystical with knowing, for the cults
involved a higher and secret form of knowledge (Dupre and Wiseman, 1988). Al-
though knowledge is apprehended in various ways, three forms are fairly common
in the Christian mystical literature. Ecstasy is literally a “going-out” from oneself
that enables a type of cognition such that divine things may be known. Illumination
is an apprehension of the Absolute or another order of reality, and a movement
of consciousness from a centeredness in self to a centeredness in God (Underhill,
1995, p. 169, 233–234). Infused contemplation is a “supreme manifestation of that
indivisible power of knowing” in which one grasps Reality itself (Underhill, 1955,
329–330).
Scholars generally agree that in a mystical experience either the mystic is
“given” certain knowledge during the experience itself or the experience itself is
free of all content and the mystic comes to “know” something after the experience.
In both instances this knowledge is said to transcend the usual human ways of
knowing. Richard H. Jones delineates these two types of mystical experiences as
either “nature-mystical” or “depth mystical.” The former occurs when sensory and
some kind of conceptual awareness remain present, as in Anne’s visual conception
of her body in the shape of a cross. While a perception of a subject merging with an
object (or with all of reality) may be present, a sense of differentiation within the
whole remains detectable. In nature-mystical experiences, knowledge is obtained
during the experience itself. By contrast, in the “depth-mystical experience” the
mind is completely stilled or emptied. The mystic has no sense of differentiation
and her or his mind is free of all conceptual and sensory content whatsoever.
Knowledge comes only after the depth-mystical experience is over (Jones, 1993).
The claim of “depth-mystical experience” is philosophically controversial.
Philosophers liken this type of experience to a PCE, Pure Consciousness Event, and
define them both as claims of unmediated, contentless awareness—states of con-
sciousness empty of thought and containing no subject/object dichotomy (Barnard,
1997). One part of the epistemological debate centers on mystics’ claim, based
on their own experience, that PCE’s do exist, versus philosophers like Steven
T. Katz who maintain that PCE’s cannot possibly exist because all experience
is constructed and has a conceptual element. Some mystical experiences, cer-
tainly those of Buddhist flavor, are not described as PCE-like contentless expe-
riences. Content is part of the experience, but the Buddhist mystic maintains an
attitude of non-attachment toward it. The similarity lies in an eventual awareness of
nonseparateness.
Katz expresses a certain frustration with adherents’ assertion that unless one
is already a mystic, there is little chance of true understanding (1978):
A body of literature [is created] which is primarily enthusiastic, committed, and personal
rather than sober, careful, and reasonable. Thus, generally, the studies produced under these
inspirations have the dubious distinction of preaching to the converted while dismissing
the “unenlightened” as poor souls who must still await their entrance into this enchanted
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234 Godby

mystical paradise. At the same time such approaches usually limit, a priori, all serious
conversation about the subject and certainly preclude it altogether between the mystic and
the non-mystic. (p. 2)

Serious conversation is by no means precluded amongst philosophers, of

course, and whether mystics are paying attention or not, Katz goes on to assert
that their cultural, social, and language milieu not only determines how the mystic
will attempt to describe and indeed come to understand the experience but actu-
ally determines and constitutes the experience itself. His position is that Jewish,
Christian, Hindu or Buddhist mystics will have experiences of Jewish, Christian,
Hindu or Buddhist mysticism, respectively, because they have been preconditioned
to expect it.
There are NO pure (i.e., unmediated) experiences . . . This “mediated” aspect of all our
experience seems an inescapable feature of any epistemological inquiry, including the in-
quiry into mysticism . . . Yet this feature of experience has somehow been overlooked or
underplayed by every major investigator of mystical experience whose work is known to
me . . . [T]he Christian mystic does not experience some unidentified reality, which he then
conveniently labels God, but rather has the at least partially prefigured Christian experiences
of God, or Jesus. (p. 26)

He carries this view as well into the mystics’ reporting of the “givenness” or
“suchness” of a mystical experience:
Closely allied to the erroneous contention that we can achieve a state of pure conscious-
ness is the oft used notion of the “given” or the “suchness” or the “real” to describe the
pure state of mystical experience which transcends all contextual epistemological col-
oring. But what sense to these terms have? . . . Analysis of these terms indicates their
relativity . . . Phenomenologists seem especially prone to this fruitless naivety—all intuit
the “given” but their intuitions differ significantly . . . [T]here is no evidence that there is
any “given” which can be disclosed without the imposition of the mediating conditions of
the knower. All “givens” are also the product of the processes of choosing, shaping and
receiving. (pp. 58–59)

Katz’ analysis is straightforward and perhaps convincing so long as it is kept

in mind that he is focusing on nature-mystical experiences. Other philosophers and
probably most mystics today would agree with his basic premise that experience
in general is indeed constructed. It is particularly interesting to note that the unrea-
sonable dogmatic position of which Katz accuses adherents of mysticism is clearly
seen as well in his position on depth-mystical experiences. In steadfastly maintain-
ing that all experience is constructed, as noted above, he must completely dismiss
any possibility of an unmediated experience. In these instances, apparently, mystics
are the unenlightened poor souls and victims of a most naı̈ve self-deception.
Postconstructivist philosophers like Robert Forman are open to the possi-
bility that mystics have, within the limits of language, accurately described the
depth-mystical experience as one which is in some sense beyond any system of
concepts, including linguistic. If this is the case, then there is indeed nothing within
the experience to structure. Forman and others, who describe their position as
postconstructivist, decontextualist, or as a perennial psychology, agree that some
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Mystical Experience: Unveiling the Veiled 235

kind of innate human capacity produces or enables depth-mystical experiences

(Forman, 1998).
Before describing Forman’s position, it may be helpful to say something
about a postconstructivist philosophical stance toward mysticism in general. R. L.
Franklin (1998) points out that constructivists correctly maintain that as historical
beings we are conditioned by our culture. What is often overlooked is that the
culture that forms our belief system presents reality to us:
. . . in a pre-formed way, which both makes understanding possible and yet restricts it.
Surely, too, our belief system mediates not only our thinking but also our experience itself,
yet the relation between them is a two-way process in which each continually affects the
other. Our whole belief system is potentially involved in our judgment about what we see
in front of us. But an experience we do not expect may challenge the beliefs that produced
the expectation. (p. 232)

Constructivists argue that the mediated aspect of experience means that mysticism
is no indicator of any kind of ultimate reality. Postconstructivists like Franklin
counter that while any one culture may indeed produce a certain flavor of mysti-
cism, the experience of “passing beyond discursive thought into nonseparateness
would remain a transcultural phenomenon” (p. 242).
Forman’s brand of postconstructivism, which he calls perennial psychology,
argues that mysticism is an expression of our own consciousness, of awareness
itself. He writes that
Those constructivists who have suggested that remembering a PCE necessarily signifies
that one was using language, thinking thoughts, or remembering something in particular
were wrong. They have misunderstood the nature of awareness’s self-recollection. While
we often employ these processes to think about ourselves, awareness’s merely tying itself
together through time is of a wholly different order—and it is that other order that is tapped
by . . . mystics. (1998, p. 27)

This awareness of our own consciousness is “separate from all sensation, percep-
tion, and thought, and thus separate from the cultural aspects of human experience”
(p. viii). He also asserts that this ability to become aware of our own consciousness
is sui generis, reflexive and self-referential, and an immediate and direct form of
knowledge. It is an innate human capacity, arising from deep structures within the
psyche which enable it. For Forman, however, this unique capacity is kept within
the bounds of subjectivism. He makes no claims for it to serve as a bridge to an
objective other.
The epistemology of William James does offer a bridge to an objective other,
and it is to his work that I now turn. James acknowledges that mystical experi-
ences are shaped by our cultural, linguistic, social, and historical milieu. Indeed,
according to G. William Barnard, James often stresses that our minds construct
sensory data into recognizable forms so that what we perceive attains meaning.
We are “co-creators” of the world we experience (1997, p. 123). This creative
action takes place by selecting certain aspects of our experience to notice. Such
things as cultural assumptions and memory, personal desires and interests, and the
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236 Godby

spacio-temporal aspect of the mind all play an important role in which aspects of
the chaos of experience we choose to help us construct reality (pp. 123–124).
For James, however, this is not the end of the epistemological story. Unlike
the constructivists, a radical empiricist understanding of mysticism is open also to
the objective otherness present in many mystical experiences. While the world is
“malleable, waiting to receive its final touches at our hands” (Barnard, 1997, 125),
it is also given to us. We can change it somewhat, but we do not create it per se.
The constructivism advocated by Katz and others has:

. . . difficulty accounting for any mystical experiences that appear to contradict the mystic’s
theological and cultural assumptions, since these experiences are understood as completely
constituted by those very assumptions. James’s “incomplete constructivism,” however, can
easily account for [them], since it postulates the existence of an extra “something” that is op-
erative within mystical experiences in additional to the mystic’s psychological and cultural
categories, “something” that the mystic finds (or that finds the mystic), . . . “something” that
has . . . the power necessary to transform the mystic’s self-understandings and tacit world-
views. This “something” is malleable; it can and does appear to mystics in forms that they
are most easily able to comprehend, but it also can and often does appear to mystics in ways
that they never imagined, in ways that confound the mystics’ personal expectations and
cultural assumptions, in ways that surprise and disturb them. (Barnard, 1997, pp. 125–126)

Having established an openness to the possibility of a “given” in mystical

experiences, (perhaps they do indeed unveil what is hidden), I want to explore how
human beings are able to connect to this other distinct realm of being. James ap-
proaches this question from his position of radical empiricism, seemingly trying to
keep everything within the subjectivity of our own experience. In his psychological
writings, James was firmly opposed to Hume’s atomistic conceptions by arguing
that experience is more like a stream of consciousness. Each moment of experience
is not so much individual and disjointed but is, rather, intrinsically flowing into
the next, connected by “vaguely felt transitive relations” (Barnard, 1997, p. 139).
He then moves outside total subjectivity in a jump from psychology to ontology,
positing that this connectivity in our consciousness is also an “inherent ontological
quality of the universe itself” (p. 139). The connectivity is our link to the given.
Our ability to know a distinct realm of being is also seen in James’ notions
of “pure experience.” The psychological/ontological “connectivity” mentioned
above functions to link moments of experience. In its deepest or highest reality,
experience for James is both subjective and objective, neither completely mental
nor completely physical, but arises from a prior non-dual reality. His epistemology
attempts to show that the distinction between subject and object is a “post-facto”
operation based on the consequences of the experience. For example, take my
experience of waking up and, however groggily, reaching out to silence the alarm
clock. In one sense the alarm clock is an external item in the environment. In
another sense, though, it is a perception in my mind—through my eyes, ears, and
fingers. The question James asks is this: How can physical objects simultaneously
be mental perceptions? His answer, according to Barnard, is that, like one point can
be on two lines simultaneously if it is situated at their intersection, experience is
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Mystical Experience: Unveiling the Veiled 237

both a “field of consciousness” and the physical object, yet remaining one thing. My
flow of consciousness—with its cognitions, feelings, categorizations, movements,
etc.—ends in the present moment and intersects with the box-shaped object with
numbers that shine in the dark, which is also here in the present moment. Since
there are consequences, obviously, to this intersection, James would say that we
can classify the experience as at least partially objective.
The distinction between subjective and objective experience is not made from
some inherent quality, but rather from the context or function of the experience. In
this way James notes that since mystical experiences often carry significant con-
sequences, we cannot simply dismiss them as totally subjective. Plus, when the
overall subject/object distinction itself is called into question, the mystics’ claim
of nonseparateness, i.e., the mystics’ claim to know a distinct realm of being, is
fortified (Barnard, 1997, p. 144). By maintaining that experience arises from a
more basic non-dual reality and by placing the distinction between subjective and
objective experience in the context or function of the experience itself, James offers
an epistemology that bridges the chasm between constructivism and postconstruc-
tivism. The non-dual reality posits a given and the specific context or function of
the experience will depend on our construction of it.
The non-dual foundation of experience has important ramifications in
Jamesian thought. Throughout the whole body of his work, Barnard notes James’
continuing attempts to address issues of unity within diversity, the many and the
one, etc. After all, how are differences to be accounted for when working from
a foundation of non-dualism? How can a Christian mysticism viewing God as
“wholly other” explain the mystical experience of unity? And how can monistic
traditions in which All Is One account for ordinary experiences of subject/object
dichotomy (p. 208)?
In response to these questions, Jamesian epistemology posits the field model
of self and reality. This theory begins with the notion of the compounding of
consciousness, which means that simpler states of consciousness combine to form
complex states of consciousness. For example, as I move to turn off the alarm clock
buzzer, I feel irritated, I think “I don’t want to get up yet!,” I realize I’m too groggy to
hit the “off” button with precision, and I feel the air on my arm and realize it’s cold
outside the covers. All of these separate awarenesses, feelings, movements, and
thoughts are simple, diverse states of consciousness, but they are experienced as a
unity. When this unity-within-diversity aspect of our consciousness was added to
his already formulated nonduality of pure experience, James concluded that reality
was more than logic alone (Barnard, 1997, p. 200). He realized that the immediate
feeling of life “has no problems with a oneness that is also a manyness, or with
the philosophical dilemma of how something could possibly be itself and yet still
manage to be connected with something else” (p. 201).
From this base, James began to envision reality as fields of energy. And he
began to see individuals not as monads with an essential unchanging core, but
as constantly moving, porous fields—fields of behavior, hopes and anticipations,
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238 Godby

thoughts, backgrounds of memories and cultural expectations, emotions, inten-

tions, etc. While these fields retain enough autonomy to avoid being engulfed into
a stultifying oneness, through the field of the subliminal self they also offer us
another whole world of “intuitions, passions, fantasies, paranormal cognitions,
and mystical ecstasies” (Barnard, 1997, p. 207). The field model of reality offers a
way to think about mystical experiences as moments when our “normal” mode of
awareness suddenly opens up through the subliminal self onto a broader interpen-
etrating field of the divine. This model accommodates the paradoxes of mystical
experience as well. It leaves room for the wide variety of experiences which are
no doubt culturally determined, while:
. . . remaining open to the very real likelihood that each mystical experience is also shaped,
in ways that we may never be able to determine, by a wide variety of transcultural and
transnatural influences [italics added] as well. A field model of reality would . . . be receptive
to, and even encourage, a wide variety of theoretical approaches to mystical experiences,
respecting and valuing the countless different ways in which we each choose to explore the
unseen worlds that surround and interpenetrate our being. (Barnard, 1997, 211)

A PRELIMINARY HERMENEUTICAL MODEL

FOR MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

Pastoral theologians who come to understand mystical experiences through

a Jamesian lens may find not only that it provides an epistemological framework
allowing them to move inside the constructivist/postconstructivist tension with
some intellectual integrity, but also that it provides one way of discerning more
clearly what may be happening in a mystical experience. Pastoral theologians here
labor within the world of ideas. Ever aware of the human tendency toward self-
deception and our limits as finite creatures—and laboring also within the very
important world of practical pastoral work—pastoral theologians also endeavor
to gain an understanding of the meaning of a mystical experience for a partic-
ular individual. They strive to help interpret the mystical in such a way that its
overwhelming emphasis on subjective experience is balanced to some extent by
rational analysis.
I want to now briefly address this task of interpretation. Paul Ricoeur’s
hermeneutics offer a promising beginning for a translation model for mystical
experiences, especially when one encounters his sense that the task of hermeneu-
tics is that of “unveiling what was veiled” (Ricoeur, 1978, p. 215). Let me begin,
however, with an important caveat. As much as this particular phraseology may
remind some of mysticism, Ricoeur is not focusing on mystical experience of any
kind. My sense is that while he respects a certain mystery at the heart of experience,
he is not concerned to examine it per se. This sense is derived from an interview
with Ricoeur published in Critique and Conviction in which he is asked whether it
is possible to perceive something of what lies beyond the language within which
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Mystical Experience: Unveiling the Veiled 239

he says he lives. His answer is basically “Yes,” that perhaps in reflecting on the
experience of death something fundamental may express itself. He likens this to
the experiences of mystics, of which he has no experience at all, he says. He then
quickly moves on to talk about areas that have been of interest to him (Ricoeur,
1998, p. 145). Although I believe this translation model is beneficial, I am aware of
using Ricoeur’s work in a limited and incomplete way. It is not in any kind of one-
to-one correspondence but rather in a fairly loose sense that I am proposing a link
between Ricoeur’s text and “mystical experience,” between reader and “mystic.”
One of the most important applications of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics to mystical
experience is the crucial role he gives to reason and to meticulous intellectual anal-
ysis. In his study of Freud, for instance, Ricoeur identified two types of language:
language of force and language of meaning. The language of force included Freud’s
sense that human beings are subject to certain internal drives that determine our
behavior. The language of meaning pointed toward the understanding of symbols
and symbolic acts (Thiselton, 1992). But even when Ricoeur is moving inside
the language of symbol, myth and poetry, he insists on rigorous methodologies,
rarely if ever resorting to human intuitive capacities. This provides a helpful bal-
ance in interpreting mystical experience. Despite thoroughgoing inquiry, as James
and others have provided regarding epistemological foundations for mysticism,
pastoral theologians require an exacting interpretive method to help people avoid
the dangers of a radical and perhaps dangerous subjectivity. I will look briefly at
some specifics below, but before that, three preliminary areas of convergence must
be delineated.
First, in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, texts have immense power to disclose whole
new worlds, and the worlds they make known have the power to transcend the im-
mediate situation of the text itself and of the reader. Indeed, the relationship between
the text and the reader is a reciprocal one. Readers interpret the text, but texts also
interpret readers by confronting them with new possibilities, new concepts, news
ways-of-being in the world, etc. which the reader may then appropriate or not. If
the new world is appropriated, the reader is then empowered to transcend her or
his immediate situation (Capps, 1984).
Second, in his interest in what kind of world the texts open up, Ricoeur
pays close attention to genre. In developing a hermeneutic of revelation, he lists
five types of biblical genre, each of which in its own way provides a doorway
to an aspect of revelation. Prophetic discourse, for instance, carries within it the
implication of a Voice behind the voice (Ricoeur, 1977, p. 25), while in wisdom
literature, the sage “knows that wisdom precedes him” and that he “participates in
wisdom,” which is held to be a gift from God (p. 13).
Third, understanding how a text opens up a new world is accomplished, for
Ricoeur, through an analysis of metaphor. Metaphors allow multiple meanings to
address the reader who can choose to stay within its local, immediate meaning or
move into its broader, world-disclosive meaning.
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240 Godby

Bringing these three points of convergence together, I believe it is easy to

discern the correspondence between the world-disclosive power of a text and the
world-disclosive power of a mystical experience. Genre, too, can be easily linked
to forms of mystical experience—this could be Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, etc.,
or it could be the difference between nature and depth-mystical experiences. In any
case, the genre would set certain limits regarding what kind of world a mystical
experience might disclose. The metaphor as a means of disclosing a world points
us toward the how of mystical experiences. Field theory provides an interesting
correspondence with its basis in Jamesian understanding of diversity (multiple
meanings) within unity (one word/one story, etc.) The paradoxical nature of the
whole question of diversity within unity also fits well with metaphor, which can
point toward paradox’s notion of both the similarity and the dissimilarity between
phenomena (Capps, 1984).
Beyond these three more preliminary links, Ricoeur’s discussion of under-
standing and explanation provide the intellectual rigor required to avoid the dangers
of overly subjective interpretations. In his terms, the analysis of understanding and
explanation help us elude a vicious hermeneutical circle. By avoiding overly sub-
jective interpretations of mystical experience through a systematic methodology,
pastoral theologians and psychologists of religion guard against self-deception—
idolatry and pathology, respectively.
When a reader (mystic) has reoriented her life toward the world disclosed
in the text (mystical experience), she is said to have personally appropriated it,
i.e., she has understood it. But she can only set about the task of understanding
by first intentionally distancing herself from the text through the use of more
objective methods. She must begin the explanatory process within a hermeneutic
of suspicion (Thiselton, 1992). A couple of points are helpful.
First, Ricoeur held up Marx, Nietzsche and Freud as thinkers who help us
identify a false consciousness. By identifying the ideology of domination, Marx
brought to light the illusions we bear regarding class struggle. Through Nietzsche
the “intentions” in a strong will are revealed. And in Freud we can see how desire
for religion, for instance, may be compensation for pleasures we deny ourselves
when trapped by cultural restrictions. Together these three “masters of suspicion”
point us toward the positive contribution that doubting can make (Ricoeur, 1978,
p. 216–217). They also provide some criterion from which one can judge when
false consciousness ends. Specifically, Capps notes that through Ricoeur’s analysis
of Marxian thought, we know false consciousness is ended when “what we do is
commensurate with what we say, and when our work is commensurate with who
we are” (1984, p. 32). Through Freud the analysis of false consciousness precedes
that of Marx. We must first ask, “Is what we say and do a reflection of what we truly
desire?” There is a sense in which Freud’s critique of false consciousness would
help us discern the world-disclosive power of a mystical experience by looking
at the fruit of how we have reoriented our lives toward it and asking whether this
reorientation truly reflects our deepest desires (Capps, 1984, pp. 32–33).
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Mystical Experience: Unveiling the Veiled 241

Second, Ricoeur stresses that meaning is found through structures, and he

uses illustrations from Claude Levi-Strauss’s structuralism to suggest looking for
patterns which may evidence the text’s disclosive power. Margaret Lewis Furse’s
study of William Hocking offers what seems to me to be an interesting parallel for
mystical experience. She notes Hocking’s attention to the pattern of alternation
in the lives of mystics, who, in moments of mystical experience are aware of
the “whole,” but who must continually drop back when the experience is over
and focus attention only on the “parts.” Our existence impedes us from having
both the particulars and whole simultaneously, except perhaps in the following
way. When we do a structural analysis and discover this pattern of alternation, we
can be empowered to recover our “spiritual integrity by bringing the whole down
among the parts, and treating it as a thing of time and space like ourselves” (1988,
pp. 57–58).

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PASTORAL THEOLOGY

Anne Turney’s mystical experience, while extraordinary, is not unusual.

Nearly half—43 percent of all Americans and 48 percent of all British people—
report having had one or more mystical experiences (Forman, 1998, p. 3). While
this alone might offer ample reason for pastoral theologians to concern them-
selves with the study of mystical experience, other aspects also come to mind in
considering how this topic may contribute to our work.
The psychology of religion has approached mystical experience mostly from
an objective biological lens or as some kind of psychopathology. Although mysti-
cal theology has made its contributions, for the most part it has seen itself relegated
to the sidelines of theology. Yet, increasingly, neuropsychological study is explor-
ing the frontier of human consciousness. And theology—in a need to move toward
relevancy both in support of the church and in today’s intellectual marketplace—
is being urged to engage contemporary issues of embodiment and transpersonal
spiritualities. These current impulses point toward the notion that the pastoral the-
ological study of mystical experience might be a most fruitful endeavor in future
discourse with other disciplines.
The study of mystical experience also affords the pastoral theologian with
a particularly fascinating psychological lens through which to look at issues of
divine-human encounter. Even if they were open to the possibility of an ultimate
transcendent being, the more radical constructivist philosophers would have us
believe that connecting to this objective divine Other is beyond human capaci-
ties. I have been impressed, however, with how other thinkers, using an empiricist
approach in which the deepest aspects of human experience and psyche are metic-
ulously examined, come to the conclusion that consciousness itself is endowed
with some kind of ability to engage that which is beyond the human. James’s field
model of self and reality is a most intriguing conceptualization, one that seems to
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242 Godby

have much potential for a powerful harmonization with aspects of quantum physics
as well as with the neuropsychological study of consciousness.
At its heart, this article has looked at an intellectual synthesis of science
and religion, reason and faith. The desire for this synthesis no doubt arises from
the human quest for knowledge, the desire to allay a dark ontological anxiety
with a sense of certainty’s light, and the intuition that mystical experience may
indeed provide a brilliant window into ultimate reality. I think it appropriate then
to conclude, from a faith perspective, with the words of Evelyn Underhill who
writes of mystics coming back to us:
. . . from an encounter with life’s most august secret, as Mary came running from the tomb;
filled with amazing tidings which they can hardly tell. We, longing for some assurance,
and seeing their radiant faces, urge them to pass on their revelation if they can . . . But they
cannot say: can only report fragments of the symbolic vision, not the inner content, the final
divine certainty. (1955, p 450)

Theologians and philosophers offer intellectually engaging and appealing propos-

als, and we do indeed sense a necessity to interpret the mystical through a rigorous
and rational methodological analysis. In the end, however, what we seek will likely
be satisfied only in an openness to following in the footsteps of the mystics or in
simply delighting ourselves in the twists and turns of the quest itself, gradually
realizing the hues of grace which vividly color those angles and curves of life.

REFERENCES

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