The study of mystical and ecstatic experience is out of fashion in the modern field of Religious Studies . Analysis of religious consciousness has been obscured by interest in politics and sociology, in conflict and power structures. This was particularly visible at the 2017 meeting of the American Academy of Religion , at a session on Huston Smith and perennialism.

All cultures have both similarities and differences, but the study of similarities came in for some heavy condemnation. Studying common themes was condemned by the speakers are “boring,” “dated,” “pointless,” in general a waste of time. It was something not worth doing any more, only suited to scholars from a century ago. What was modern and interesting was the study of differences, especially those that led to conflicts and wars. This was what was exciting. There were some speakers in the session that spoke in favor of the perennial approach, but they could not match the visceral hatred of religious experience shown by the speakers who condemned it. This was shown in the sneering laughter at the “wreck of the good ship Eliade,” and statements of relief that we are no longer living in the “bad old days” of looking for commonalities in religious experiences that occur to people in different cultures. Indeed, sympathy and interest in the experiences of other cultures was described by several of the participants as “so old-fashioned.”

Academic fields often reflect the cultures of their writers, and modern Western culture clearly emphasizes differences as well. Political parties, social groups, and religions themselves are at high levels of conflict and fragmentation, a process which has been under critique since the 1960s. ¹ The breakdown of society into various sorts of competing factions comes to be the major focus of much of modern Religious Studies .

In this book, I choose to describe something unfashionable. I would like to bring the field back to the study of religious consciousness, at least partly by documenting how much of the field opposes it. The modern study of ecstatic religious consciousness over the last thirty to forty years has largely been a study of objections to its subject matter. I believe there is a need for counter voices, to respond to this change.

We see this in Theology as well as Religious Studies . The general Religious Studies response to mystical experience has been that it is impossible to study in itself (the neo-Kantian view), that is largely irrelevant to politics and society (the Marxist view) or that it should be left to the theologians. But the theologians don’t want it either—as scholars, they are historians, linguists, ethicists and textual interpreters, as well as voices for social change. The study of mystical and ascetical Theology , along with metaphysics generally, has been largely de-emphasized in modern seminaries. Like the religionists, theologians have largely shifted their interests to the social and political world, often substituting classes in practical skills like small-business organization, finance, leadership, and preaching skills for areas like ascetical and mystical Theology . Ecstasy is the “hot potato” that neither religion nor Theology wants.

As the Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast has recently noted, “Every religion seems to begin in mysticism and end in politics.” ² He compares mystical states to the hot lava of a volcano, and organized religion to the dry crust and ash that forms as it cools, when it settles and loses energy. In a similar way, he notes that the volcanic passions of mystical states turn into the organized religious institutions that show the symptoms of “rigor mortis.” This is not merely to say that human experiences inevitably come in contact with concrete material and social life, but that they become the dominant aspects of religious understanding.

In this approach, he follows William James . In 1902, James wrote in his Varieties of Religious Experience about the contrast between religion as a “dull habit,” and its role as an “acute fever.” ³ The “dull habit” role has become quite popular among scholars of both religion and mysticism , with the emphasis on culture, language, and politics which limit intense religious experiences to prescribed methods of expression and predetermined contexts. As we have noted, the study of James’ “acute fever” or “hot place” has been largely rejected. From the interest in religious origins, found in early writers like Rudolf Otto and Friedrich Scheleiermacher, we have moved to the political ends, found in critical theory and the current interest in the influence of politics and economics on religious activities. While James saw the acceptable religious states supported by religious institutions as secondary and imitative, we now see the reverse, where the mystical state itself is viewed as derivative, an imitation of current political and social models. Study of the mystical state as the origin of religions thus becomes a historical artifact, a quaint reminder of nineteenth-century scholarship.

During the early twentieth century, scholars of religion considered the exploration of ecstatic religious experience important for the study of religion. But over the last thirty years or so that approach came in for sharp criticism. Many scholars wanted to get away from issues like ecstasy and mysticism because they seemed to suggest an experiential essence of religion, which they wished to avoid, and turned instead to analyzing discourses about experience, power, and privilege. This problem is well-documented in Leigh Eric Schmidt ’s article “The Making of Modern Mysticism” in his 2003 article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion . He calls mysticism a “beleaguered category,” subject to a fall from theoretical grace due to the recent emphasis on the body and the material world in the field of Religious Studies . Writers in the field who are more interested in a materialistic or naturalistic view of the world have no compunction about insulting the category—mysticism is an “essentialist illusion,” a “false category,” a strategy to protect religious claims from scientific investigation and a way of avoiding political and ethical concerns. It is “sunk in disrepute,” nothing but a fabricated category which is only an evasion of more important categories, such as analyses of power relationships. We see mystical and ecstatic experiences described as regressive, narcissistic, morally inferior, colonizing, solipsistic, and delusional. ⁴

This is the sort of hostility that used to be found in theologians talking about heresies. However, the modern writers attacking mystical and ecstatic states work from a different set of assumptions. It is not that essentialist or perennialist claims come from beliefs about the wrong religion, but rather that there can be no truth to any possible religious claims about ecstatic and mystical states, for there is nothing to be found beyond history, culture, language, and the body. Schmidt looks at some eighteenth-century critiques of ecstasy , when it was associated with enthusiasm , the experience of the “god within.” He notes many examples of horror at mystical and ecstatic states, perhaps the most memorable by Bishop William Warburton, who compared such states to the “excremental waste” of reasonable religion. ⁵

This horror has found new modern incarnations in critical theory and the hermeneutic of suspicion . However, while these approaches are popular in academic circles, social behavior does not always follow academic values. According to a recent Pew research poll, almost 50% of Americans reported that they had a mystical or ecstatic experience. In 2009, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a report on spirituality in America. Entitled “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths,” the report points out that many Americans are now choosing to “blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs” and that “sizable minorities of all major U.S. religious groups” have said that they have had supernatural experiences. For the first time in 47 years of polling, the number of Americans who said that they have had a religious or mystical experience was greater than those who said that they had not had such an experience. It notes:

Approximately half of Americans (49%) say they have had “a religious or mystical experience - that is, a moment of religious or spiritual awakening.” This is roughly the same as the number that said this in 2006 (47%), but it represents a sharp increase over the past four decades. In 1962, only 22% of Americans reported having had such an experience, which grew to about a third in 1976 (31%) and 1994 (33%). Since then, the number has continued to increase to roughly half of the public in this decade. ⁶

Mystical and religious experiences are particularly common among the “religiously unaffiliated,” among whom 51% have reported having a religious or mystical experience. This is quite a striking number of people who do not have a dominant religious commitment or model through which to interpret such experiences. This category “sunk in disrepute” needs another look; any academic theory which claims that there is a pathology that afflicts half of the individuals in a society should be subjected to considerable scrutiny. ⁷ Religious Studies scholars cannot justify ignoring the experiences of half the population when they claim mysticism is an false category and therefore unworthy of study. Mysticism and ecstatic religious experiences are not outliers to be easily ignored, devalued, and explained away.

We may also note that in the shorter Pew Research Survey published in 2016, “Americans may be getting less religious, but feelings of spirituality are on the rise,” religious affiliation has not grown, but spiritual experiences have. The data compared a 2007 research survey with a 2014 one, on “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” The Pew Survey specifically asked respondents about whether they have had a feeling of deep spiritual peace and well-being once a week (a number that rose from 52% in 2007 to 59% in 2014), and whether they feel a deep sense of wonder at the universe (which rose from 38% in 2007 to 45% of respondents in 2014). ⁸ Religious affiliation was evaluated by standard measures such as how important respondents say religion is to them and their frequency of religious service attendance and prayer. The authors state that “The growth of the unaffiliated population and their decreasing religiosity have been the main factors behind the emergence of a less religious public overall. But, interestingly, the rise in spirituality has been happening among both highly religious people and the religiously unaffiliated.” As the authors note (with some surprise), the rise in deep wonder at the universe among atheists rose 17 points, from 37 to 54% of the respondents.

There is also a Daily Spiritual Experience Scale , developed in 2002 by Lynn Underwood and Jeanne Teresi, which studies the frequency of spiritual experiences. They examine the issue from a more psychological perspective, noting that such experiences are linked to decreased total alcohol intake, improved quality of life, and positive psychosocial status. ⁹ However, their focus is on the frequency rather than the intensity of such experiences, and their interest is in the psychological and social impact of such states. The fact that spiritual experiences have beneficial social effects is another reason why it is important to study them.

Some modern understandings of spirituality and ecstatic experience have been explored by Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead in their book The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. They describe spirituality as a major cultural shift, a turn away from life lived in terms of external or objective roles, duties, and obligations, and “a turn tow...