Mystical Experiences:   What They Share in Common

The format has been changed slightly from its original paragraph form.  Otherwise, this is quoted directly from this most evocative treatise, A Most Surprising Song:  Exploring the Mystical Experience by Louann Stahl.              1 . The experience is lived, participated in, not comprehended with the mind alone, while the sense of reality and the sense of being at last awake is so great that normal consciousness seems a pale imitation.   2 . It is an experience of overwhelming joy and love, often accompanied by a preternatural light, brilliant and luminous beyond measure.   3 . The mystic experiences the "peace of God, which passes all understanding" (Phil. 4:7), along with a sense of the unity of all creation -- a unity underlying a wondrous and awesome diversity.   4 . While an illumination of the meaning of life is often a part of the mystic's experience, the explanations they attempt are most often obscured in paradoxes the human mind cannot untangle.  Inevitably, the mystics tell us that the experience is ineffable, our concepts and language simply cannot embrace it.  Their tongues are tied, as that of the man who ascended from Plato's Cave.   5 . Time as we know it is transcended; the mystical experience exists outside of time in an "eternal now."                        ~~~~~~~    *    ~~~~~~~   Compare to aftereffects first attributed to NDEs,  later suggested to apply to all types of potential EHEs.   Related pages:   Brief Overview of Exceptional Human Experiences Core Cultural Creatives Shamanic Vocation Translucent Experiences Spiritual Emergence Network Observations of EHEers