Mystical experiences recur across cultures and centuries through five different pathways.

These experiences often involve profound love, unity, and interconnectedness.

Resuscitation technology and psychedelics for psychiatric problems have increased reports of the mystical.

A friend of mine ate a chicken sandwich in a restaurant, walked into the parking lot, and had a mystical experience.

How does something so extraordinary happen in such an ordinary setting? What does his experience have in common with people who have spent decades meditating, taken psychedelics, survived encounters with death, or participated in experimental virtual reality? I have become fascinated by worldwide reports of mystical experiences across cultures and centuries, through remarkably different pathways.

Reports of mystical experiences are becoming more numerous and more systematically documented, partly because of advances in medical resuscitation and renewed research into psychedelics. More people now survive close encounters with death and can describe their experiences, which strongly resemble previously reported mystical experiences. At the same time, researchers are studying psilocybin and other psychedelics as potential treatments for depression, anxiety, addiction, and other psychiatric conditions. These developments are bringing experiences once studied primarily within religious and spiritual traditions into increasingly systematic scientific investigation.

What Is a Mystical Experience?

Imagine standing beneath a tree and suddenly experiencing yourself, the tree, the ground, and the surrounding landscape as parts of one living reality. The boundaries separating you from the world seem to disappear (Stace, 1960). Intense love expands into what feels like the Universe or God. People describe profound peace, joy, gratitude, awe, and sacredness. Time may expand into an endless present. William James (1902) added Ineffability, difficulty putting these experiences into words and........

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