Mystical or religious experience

A mystical or religious experience, also known as a spiritual experience or sacred experience, is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. In a strict sense, "mystical experience" refers specifically to an ecstatic unitive experience, or nonduality, of 'self' and other objects, but more broadly may also refer to non-sensual or unconceptualized sensory awareness or insight, while religious experience may refer to any experience relevant in a religious context. Mysticism entails religious traditions of human transformation aided by various practices and religious experiences.

The concept of mystical or religious experience developed in the 19th century, as a defense against the growing rationalism of western society. William James popularized the notion of distinct religious or mystical experiences in his Varieties of Religious Experience, and influenced the understanding of mysticism as a distinctive experience which supplies knowledge of the transcendental.

The interpretation of mystical experiences is a matter of debate. According to James, mystical experiences have four defining qualities, namely ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, and passivity. According to Rudolf Otto, the broader category of numinous experiences have two qualities, namely mysterium tremendum, which is the tendency to invoke fear and trembling; and mysterium fascinans, the tendency to attract, fascinate and compel. Perennialists like William James and Aldous Huxley regard mystical experiences to share a common core, pointing to one universal transcendental reality, for which those experiences offer the proof. R. C. Zaehner (1913–1974) rejected the perennialist position, instead discerning three fundamental types of mysticism following Dasgupta, namely theistic, monistic, and panenhenic ("all-in-one") or natural mysticism.