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
Katherine Godby 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.

231
0031-2789/02/0300-0231/0 ⓍC 2002 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
23 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.
 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
 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 na¨ıve 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
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
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
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,
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
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.
 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).
 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
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.

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