The goal of mysticism

What mystics hope to achieve differs from culture to culture. Shamans, theurgists, Daoists, Kabbalists, Western esotericians, and many others are primarily interested in mystical experiences as a means of performing magic. The gnostics of late antiquity, Hindu mystics, and Buddhists have sought liberation from ignorance through the apprehension of truth, and Christian and Sufi mystics seek consolation in God.

For the most part, mystics are engaged in acquiring a set of skills that will enable them to have visions, unitive experiences, possession states, and so forth. In a few cases, however, the purpose of mystical practice is to produce personal transformation. Confucianism, for example, is aimed at the cultivation of sagehood. Fourteenth-century Roman Catholic meditations on the Passion of Christ, which induced death-and-resurrection experiences that were considered mystical unions with Jesus, were consciously aimed at reforming the soul in both faith and feeling. Early English Methodism was aimed at the achievement of a state of “sanctification,” in which sin ceases to be tempting and virtue is effortless. Tibetan Buddhism is directed toward the production of enlightened individuals, called bodhisattvas, who inevitably acquire compassion as a side effect of their progress toward truthful understanding.

Modern psychological research has established that both Buddhist “insight” meditation and Jesuit spirituality, the latter based on the teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, promote healthy growth of the personality. Other researchers, however, have argued that mystical practices can be used as a form of brainwashing that promotes cult behaviour. Brainwashing typically involves a blend of attraction and coercion that subverts a person’s sense of integrity and inculcates a new set of values. Positive techniques such as support from the in-group coincide with negative techniques such as shaming, guilt-making, physical abuse, and isolation from friends, family, and other outsiders. In such a context, the euphoria of mystical experience may enhance the attractiveness of a cult. It is not the positive techniques, however, but only the negative ones that reach traumatizing intensity, accomplishing coercion rather than persuasion. In all, mysticism may be regarded as an emotionally intense experience, in which the personality is unusually plastic. Change for both the good and bad is possible to a greater than usual extent.

In 1966 David Bakan, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, argued that Sigmund Freud’s practice of psychoanalysis—and, by extension, all of the psychotherapies derived from it—constitute a modern revival of rational mysticism. Bakan contended that free association is a type of meditation that is intended to induce moments of inspiration that psychoanalysts call “insight.” Psychoanalytic insights not only provide intuitive access to truths that are not manifest but also disclose a unity that underlies the apparent disconnectedness or nonintegration of manifest thought. Whereas the Aristotelian mystics of antiquity and the Middle Ages meditated on nature outside themselves, Freudian clients meditate on their own natures, arriving at results that are no less mystical. In keeping with Bakan’s intuition, several initiatives have sought to coordinate traditional religious mysticism with contemporary psychotherapy. For example, transpersonal psychology, which developed from humanistic psychology in the 1970s, proceeds from the assumption that, because some mystics have demonstrably enjoyed superlative mental health, selected uses of classical mystical techniques may facilitate the therapeutic goal of self-actualization. Westerners who engage in Buddhist forms of meditation have frequently attempted to use them as a kind of self-therapy, leading meditators who are qualified psychotherapists to place programs of meditation on a professionally responsible foundation. Within Freudian psychoanalysis, a very small number of practitioners have recognized both free association and the analyst’s practice of “analytic listening” as types of meditation and have attempted to articulate further the mystical character of psychoanalysis. At the same time, many of the world’s religions are becoming massively psychologized. Religious counseling and pastoral work are everywhere becoming increasingly sophisticated in both psychotherapeutic competence and psychological understanding. If deep psychotherapy is indeed a rational form of mysticism, then a new era in mysticism worldwide could be at hand.