The Mystic Experience: A Descriptive and Comparative Analysis

By Jordan D. Paper

Explores the human experience of mysticism and looks at it within the spiritual traditions around the world.

The mystic, zero, or void experience-the ecstatic disappearance of self along with everything else-is considered by those who have had it to be the most beautiful, blissful, positive, profound, and significant experience of their lives. Offering both a descriptive and a comparative perspective, this book explores the mystic experience across cultures as both a human and cultural event. The book begins and ends with descriptions of the author's own mystical experiences, and looks at self-reported experiences by individuals who do not link their experiences to a religious tradition, to determine characteristics of this universal human experience.

These characteristics are compared to statements of acknowledged mystics in diverse religious traditions. The mystic experience is also situated within other ecstatic religious experiences to distinguish it from similar, but distinct, experiences such as lucid dreams, shamanism, and mediumism. Jordan Paper goes on to look at how the mystic experience has been considered in various fields, such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, and comparative religious studies.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0791462501
• ISBN13: 9780791462508
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.2" x 8.7"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Have to get past strangely narrow term usage

The Mystic Experience: A Descriptive and Comparative Analysis Jordan Paper [...] Paper puts forth a bizarre terminology usage that breaks the conventions in a strong-arm way: throughout the book every time he writes 'the mystic experience' he means strictly and exclusively one particular experience. He doesn't do a great job of describing that particular experience. He contradicts himself regarding the nature of that experience, making it hard to summarize his portrayal of it. Sometimes he characterizes that experience as a complete loss of consciousness, sometimes as pure awareness without mental content. He's been reading too much Forman, who has an exagerrated near-exclusive interest in 'the pure consciousness event' at the expense of what Paper covers under the broad term 'ecstatic religious experiences'. Paper is basically consistent in his use of the broad term 'ecstatic religious experiences' and his super-narrow use of the term 'the mystic experience'. Against Paper, cessation of mental-construct processing is interesting, but it is not in every sense the ultimate center of all value in mysticism or in the dissociative state of cognition. Cessation of mental-construct processing is a peak religious experience but it is a lack of balance and proportion to make an entire religion (model of mysticism) out of solely that one aspect, that one feature, of the dissociative, mystical cognitive state. The book has a lot to offer after, or if, you can tolerate this constant irritating violation of established usage. The dissociative state has myriad aspects and dynamic features, but Paper only intends a single aspect or feature every time he writes 'the mystic experience'. He writes that "research on near-death experiences... incorporate many features of the mystic experience", yet he always defines 'the mystic experience' in too narrow of a way to allow talking of its "many features". It requires two passes or attempts to review this book: one to remark on the annoying weird usage that narrows the term 'the mystic experience' down to a single particular experience, and another attempt at a review in order to critique that take on that particular experience and critique his overall contributions to the book. The book's overall contributions are blocked and impeded by the issue of Paper's bizarre and irritating super-narrowing re-definition of the term and construct 'the mystic experience'. He ought to use a more specific, less confusing term such as Forman's clear and explicit term 'pure consciousness event'.