mystical experience

(noun)

In the mystical experience, all otherness'disappears and the believer becomes one with the transcendent. The believer discovers that he or she is not distinct from the cosmos, the deity, or the other reality, but one with all of these, as part of an interconnected whole.

Related Terms

Examples of mystical experience in the following topics:

  • Religious Experience

    • Characteristic of the shaman, the goal of this type of experience is to leave one's body and experience transcendental realities.
    • Mystical experiences are in many ways the opposite of numinous experiences.
    • In mystical experiences, all 'otherness' disappears, and the believer recognizes that they are one with the transcendent.
    • Because mysticism emphasizes radical unity, which is the opposite of hierarchy, it is often deprecated or persecuted by members of these institutional faiths.
    • The term "spiritual awakening" can refer to a wide range of experiences, including being born again, having a near-death experience, or achieving mystical liberation or enlightenment.

  • Identity Formation

    • Lastly, a religious identity is the set of beliefs and practices generally held by an individual, involving adherence to codified beliefs and rituals and study of ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as faith and mystic experience.

  • Geometric Symbolism

    • According to the psychologist David Fontana, its symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises. "

  • Youth Culture and Delinquency

    • This unprecedented gathering of young people is often considered to have been a social experiment because of the alternative lifestyles that became common.
    • Casual LSD users expanded into a subculture that extolled the mystical and religious symbolism often engendered by the drug's powerful effects, advocating its use as a method of raising consciousness.
    • After the medical trials, Kesey continued experimenting on his own and involved many close friends; collectively they became known as "The Merry Pranksters."

  • Canadian Painting in the 20th Century

    • In the 1920s, Kathleen Munn and Bertram Brooker independently experimented with abstract or non-objective art in Canada.
    • Both artists viewed abstract art as a way to explore symbolism and mysticism as an integrated part of their personal spirituality.
    • As the Group of Seven was enlarged into the Canadian group of Painters in the 1930s, Lawren Harris left the group to also experiment with abstract forms and aimed to represent broad conceptual themes rather than landscapes.

  • Counterculture

    • Unconventional appearance, music, drugs, communitarian experiments, and sexual liberation were hallmarks of the sixties counterculture, most of whose members were white, middle-class, young Americans.
    • The counterculture lifestyle integrated many of the ideals of the time, including peace, love, harmony, music, and mysticism.

  • Utopian Communities

    • However, their experience of revivalism had left them wanting to further reform society.
    • The defining features of the Shakers were their spiritual mysticism and their prohibition of sexual intercourse, which they held as an example of a lesser spiritual life and a source of conflict between women and men.
    • Although this utopian experiment is better known today for its manufacture of Oneida silverware, it was one of the longest running communes in American history.

  • The Bhakti Movement

    • There was no grouping of the mystics into Shaiva and Vaishnava devotees as in the south.
    • The movement was spontaneous and the mystics had their own versions of devotional expression.
    • Ramananda, Ravidas, Srimanta Sankardeva, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Vallabhacharya, Surdas, Meera Bai, Kabir, Tulsidas, Namdev, Dnyaneshwar, Tukaram and other mystics spearheaded the Bhakti movement in the north while Annamacharya, Bhadrachala Ramadas, and Tyagaraja among others propagated Bhakti in the south.

  • Religion Under the Tang Dynasty

    • This is also reflected in many short stories written in the Tang about people accidentally winding up in the realm of the dead, only to come back and report their experiences.
    • In 742 Emperor Xuanzong personally held the incense burner during a ceremony led by Amoghavajra (705–74, patriarch of the Shingon school) reciting "mystical incantations to secure the victory of Tang forces."

  • The Massachusetts Bay Colony

    • Hutchinson's major offense was her claim of direct religious revelation, a type of spiritual experience that negated the role of ministers.
    • In May of 1637, the Puritans attacked a large group of several hundred Pequot along the Mystic River in Connecticut.