How People Describe Their Mystical Experiences: Analyzing Language, Narrative, and Digital Expression

Mystical experiences, long considered ineffable by scholars like William James, are frequently and richly articulated on social media. Analyzing posts from five religion-focused subreddits using computational and qualitative methods, the work shows that users share detailed narratives through metaphor and emotion. The framing of these experiences varies by community: Buddhist subreddits emphasize meditative mechanics, Christian subreddits rely on scriptural language, and atheist subreddits focus on epistemology. The findings suggest that ineffability may stem from social constraints rather than an inherent quality of the experience, as digital anonymity and community-specific scripts enable detailed, socially negotiated expression.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This study investigates how mystical experiences are articulated in digital environments, especially in religion-focused communities (“subreddits”) on Reddit, a popular social media platform. Classical theorists like William James argued that mystical experiences resist linguistic expression; in other words, according to the traditional scholarly view, these phenomena are inherently “ineffable.” However, this study finds that social media users share detailed narratives of their mystical experiences through a blend of metaphor, emotion, and storytelling. Using the Reddit API, data are retrieved from five subreddits representing different faiths and religious emphases: r/religion, r/Christianity, r/spirituality, r/Buddhism, and r/DebateAnAtheist. Mixed-method analyses were then conducted, combining computational text analysis, including VADER sentiment analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling, with qualitative techniques, including narrative and cultural analysis. In addition to the abundance of effable expression of mystical experience, it is also revealed that community identity significantly shapes how mystical experiences are framed. For instance, r/Buddhism emphasizes meditative mechanics and doctrine; r/Christianity mostly relies on language derived from the Scripture and the Church; r/DebateAnAtheist focuses almost exclusively on epistemology and materialist inquiry with little experiential description. Thus, the study argues that “ineffability” may be a product of social environment rather than an inherent quality of the experience. When digital anonymity and community-specific “scripts” provide individuals an opportunity to escape the confines of the traditional social environment, their subjective religious encounters are translated into detailed, though socially negotiated, narratives. This study demonstrates that digital environments, such as social media, are a crucial platform where individuals can seek meaning, validation, and identity.