Is Mystical Experience Everywhere the Same?

A common assumption in mysticism scholarship is that mystical experiences are fundamentally the same across individuals and cultures. Steven T. Katz challenged this view, arguing that mystical experiences are shaped by the mystic's language and cultural background. The authors, who had previously accepted the universalist view, examine Katz's argument and identify a defect shared by most literature on the topic, including Katz's article. They aim to respond to his challenge and explore the implications for understanding mystical experience.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract The belief that mystical experience or that some especially important variety thereof is everywhere the same, regardless of the idiosyncracies of the individual mystic or of his or her cultural tradition, has been tacitly presupposed, dogmatically asserted, or explicitly argued for in much scholarly and popular literature on mysticism. All of this notwithstanding, Steven T. Katz, in a recent article entitled “Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism,”1 has attempted to show this belief false. This attempt came to the two of us as a direct challenge, for we had long assumed (rather uncritically it must be confessed) that the belief in question was true, even obviously so. In trying to respond to Katz’s challenge, we became more aware of a defect that inheres in most of the literature on mysticism, including Katz’s article.