The life of a mystical experience
How mystical experience can evolve into ideologies, and engender self-deception
I’ve been interested in the history of Buddhism for a while. I’m especially fascinated by the cultural, social and political context within which various spiritual traditions have developed.
I’ve been reading A Trackless Path by Ken McLeod, which is an absolutely fantastic book. I’d highly recommend buying and reading it if you haven’t. In it, he describes how the description of a mystical experience takes on its own life and reifies into an ideology. Inspired by it, I’ve decided to write down my own take on how this process seems to typically evolve. This is informed by what I’ve noticed in my own life, and what I’ve read in history.
The point of this chain below isn’t to impose a value judgement on what is happening. Nor does it necessarily assume any bad intent on any of the actors involved. It’s merely a description of observable reality.
Someone has a profound mystical experience. This could either be endogenously (e.g. meditation) or via some psychoactive compound (e.g. psilocybin, LSD, etc.).
This experience might have been disclosed via participation in some already existing spiritual tradition, or via the individual’s unique journey in life.
The experience triggers a cascade of systematic insight at various levels of the person’s existence. Often, at the very core of their being and their participation in the world.
This experience is so deeply powerful, meaningful, compelling, insightful, wonderful and transformative that they feel the experience must reflect a deeper reality.
This experience changes the person’s participation in the world.
Other people start to notice changes in the person, and they start to ask questions. Or perhaps the person themselves is so moved by the experience that they wish for others to have such a transformative experience too. So they start attempting to share their experience.
But these experiences are ineffable. All conceptual approaches fail to capture the full depth of such experiences. At best, a poetic description scratches the surface.
Many people (myself included) have an innate tendency to attempt to control their experience. Intellectualization is a powerful vehicle for this. Inevitably, this language of poetry gives rise to the language of philosophy.
The reification of this philosophy takes place. This ineffable experience gets concretized into a singular description of the experience, aided by the language of philosophy.
Ultimately, the underlying experience becomes a memory. Perhaps the original person dies, or becomes disconnected from the other practitioners. Or they themselves participate in self-deception for whatever reasons.
The memory soon becomes an idea. It becomes further reified via the intellectualization afforded by philosophy.
Unnoticed, it eventually gives way to a system of beliefs and then an ideology. These are all within the realm of propositions/concepts, where the seed of this chain was a direct experience.
Schools and institutions start to appear. They purport to help students achieve the experience based on this reified ideology. The actual experience gets mythologized and systematised. You sometimes see this when you hear talk of jhanas, the direct perception of emptiness, etc.
At this point, the experience has evolved from something “natural” that the original practitioner spontaneously participated walking their path, to an “attainment” that students strive to doggedly possess. In this spiritually materialistic pursuit, they fail to recognize that each student’s path is perfectly unique and that all experiences are unique. So there isn’t even really a “there” that’s possible for them to replicate.
Where the role of the guru might have once served as an inspiration for the student, they now become an object of abject devotion. Devotion can be an extraordinarily powerful vehicle for spiritual growth and insight. Almost all traditions I’ve studied use it. But in these cases, both the guru and student either consciously or unconsciously participate in a self-deception to help the student “attain” some mythologized experience. Perhaps via this participation the student does participate in some charged mystical experiences. But with the guru, they immediately reify the experience. The guru eventually becomes beyond reproach.
Here’s one rule of thumb of whether an institution has fallen prey to this. Is the spiritual hierarchy conflated with the organisational hierarchy? That is, has the “head” teacher become the head of the organisation’s hierarchy, independent of their operational competency. And how often do they get challenged on operational rather than spiritual matters? What level of humility do they possess, and how effectively do they delegate?
In extreme cases, the guru or lama becomes beyond reproach. Where they once served as an inspiration to the student, they become reified as the knower of The One True Way and the gatekeepers of the mythology of the original experience.
But not everything the guru says is strictly speaking unhelpful. Through a confluence of many causes and conditions, the student participates in a deeply powerful mystical experience. The conditions are now ready for the cycle to repeat.
Notice how this chain has the potential to keep spinning and self-perpetuating itself. But there are many places to break this chain of dependent origination. In my case, it’s helped me to recognize that there’s no “beyond” that I need to reach. In the language of Buddhists, I don’t believe that there’s a difference between samsara and nirvana. Everything that I need is available for me right here, if I simply practise maintaining my awareness. And especially if I’m willing to give up reified and preconceived notions of enlightenment, insight, etc. But rather, to be willing to creatively and curiously participate in the mystery disclosed by my awareness, wherever it might lead.