---
title: "Mystical or religious experience"
chunk: 5/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystical_or_religious_experience"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:59.266126+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Stace finally argues that there is a set of seven common characteristics for each type of mystical experience, with many of them overlapping between the two types. Stace furthermore argues that extrovertive mystical experiences are on a lower level than introvertive mystical experiences.
Stace's categories of "introvertive mysticism" and "extrovertive mysticism" are derived from Rudolf Otto's "mysticism of introspection" and "unifying vision".
William Wainwright distinguishes four different kinds of extrovert mystical experience, and two kinds of introvert mystical experience:

Extrovert: experiencing the unity of nature; experiencing nature as a living presence; experiencing all nature-phenomena as part of an eternal now; the "unconstructed experience" of Buddhism.
Introvert: pure empty consciousness; the "mutual love" of theistic experiences.
Richard Jones, following William Wainwright, elaborated on the distinction, showing different types of experiences in each category:

Extrovertive experiences: the sense of connectedness ("unity") of oneself with nature, with a loss of a sense of boundaries within nature; the luminous glow to nature of "nature mysticism"; the presence of God immanent in nature outside of time shining through nature of "cosmic consciousness"; the lack of separate, self-existing entities of mindfulness states.
Introvertive experiences: theistic experiences of connectedness or identity with God in mutual love; nonpersonal differentiated experiences; the depth-mystical experience empty of all differentiable content.
Following Stace's lead, Ralph Hood developed the "Mysticism scale." According to Hood, the introvertive mystical experience may be a common core to mysticism independent of both culture and person, forming the basis of a "perennial psychology". According to Hood, "the perennialist view has strong empirical support," since his scale yielded positive results across various cultures, stating that mystical experience as operationalized from Stace's criteria is identical across various samples.
Although Stace's work on mysticism received a positive response, it has also been strongly criticised in the 1970s and 1980s, for its lack of methodological rigueur and its perennialist pre-assumptions. Major criticisms came from Steven T. Katz in his influential series of publications on mysticism and philosophy, and from Wayne Proudfoot in his Religious experience (1985).
Masson and Masson criticised Stace for using a "buried premise," namely that mysticism can provide valid knowledge of the world, equal to science and logic. A similar criticism has been voiced by Jacob van Belzen toward Hood, noting that Hood validated the existence of a common core in mystical experiences, but based on a test which presupposes the existence of such a common core, noting that "the instrument used to verify Stace's conceptualization of Stace is not independent of Stace, but based on him." Belzen also notes that religion does not stand on its own, but is embedded in a cultural context, which should be taken into account. To this criticism Hood et al. answer that universalistic tendencies in religious research "are rooted first in inductive generalizations from cross-cultural consideration of either faith or mysticism," stating that Stace sought out texts which he recognized as an expression of mystical expression, from which he created his universal core. Hood therefore concludes that Belzen "is incorrect when he claims that items were presupposed."

=== Religious experiences ===

==== Norman Habel - mediated and immediate ====
Biblical scholar Norman Habel defines religious experiences as the structured way in which a believer enters into a relationship with, or gains an awareness of, the sacred within the context of a particular religious tradition. Religious experiences are by their very nature preternatural; that is, out of the ordinary or beyond the natural order of things. They may be difficult to distinguish observationally from psychopathological states such as psychoses or other forms of altered awareness. Not all preternatural experiences are considered to be religious experiences. Following Habel's definition, psychopathological states or drug-induced states of awareness are not considered to be religious experiences because they are mostly not performed within the context of a particular religious tradition.
Moore and Habel identify two classes of religious experiences: the immediate and the mediated religious experience.

Mediated – In the mediated experience, the believer experiences the sacred through mediators such as rituals, special persons, religious groups, totemic objects or the natural world.
Immediate – The immediate experience comes to the believer without any intervening agency or mediator. The deity or divine is experienced directly.

==== Richard Swinburne - public or private ====
In his book Faith and Reason, the philosopher Richard Swinburne formulated five categories into which all religious experiences fall:

Public – a believer 'sees God's hand at work', whereas other explanations are possible e.g. looking at a beautiful sunset
Public – an unusual event that breaches natural law e.g. walking on water
Private – describable using normal language e.g. Jacob's vision of a ladder
Private – indescribable using normal language, usually a mystical experience e.g. "white did not cease to be white, nor black cease to be black, but black became white and white became black."
Private – a non-specific, general feeling of God working in one's life.
Swinburne also suggested two principles for the assessment of religious experiences:

Principle of Credulity – with the absence of any reason to disbelieve it, one should accept what appears to be true e.g. if one sees someone walking on water, one should believe that it is occurring.
Principle of Testimony – with the absence of any reason to disbelieve them, one should accept that eyewitnesses or believers are telling the truth when they testify about religious experiences.

== Interpretation: perennialism, constructionism and contextualism ==

=== Perennialism ===