A debate in mysticism asks whether a universal core experience exists across religions. This investigation combines Jamesian and social constructivist views, arguing that stable experiential facets combine differently across cultures to form local interpretations, which still share a family resemblance—a mystical common core. Confirmatory factor analyses of data from 240 Tibetan Buddhist adults show that a three-factor model fits better than a unidimensional model, indicating that pure experience can be distinguished from its context-specific interpretation.
Among 139 Chinese Pure Land and Chan Buddhist monastics, the common facets of mysticism identified by Stace and measured by Hood's Mysticism Scale successfully described Buddhist experience, though modified by Buddhist doctrines. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that Stace's three-factor structure fit the data, but the hypothesized separation between introvertive and extrovertive unity converged in this Chinese Buddhist context. These results strongly support the idea that mystical experience has a common experiential core across religious traditions and that this core can be studied with mixed methods.