The term ‘mysticism,’ comes from the Greek μυω, meaning “to conceal.” In the Hellenistic world, ‘mystical’ referred to “secret” religious rituals. In early Christianity the term came to refer to “hidden” allegorical interpretations of Scriptures and to hidden presences, such as that of Jesus at the Eucharist. Only later did the term begin to denote “mystical theology,” that included direct experience of the divine. Typically, mystics, theistic or not, see their mystical experience as part of a larger undertaking aimed at human transformation and not as the terminus of their efforts. Thus, in general, ‘mysticism’ would best be thought of as a constellation of distinctive practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions, and experiences aimed at human transformation, variously defined in different traditions.Mystical experiences may represent a complex form of forgotten or suppressed human consciousness. Our minds are usually an enormously complex stew of thoughts, feelings, sensations, wants, snatches of song, pains, drives, daydreams and, so, consciousness itself more or less aware of it all. To understand consciousness in itself, the obvious thing is to clear away as much of this internal detritus and noise as possible. Mystics do precisely that, by way of the techniques of meditation or contemplation in their many forms.
During meditation, one begins to slow down the thinking process, and have fewer or less intense thoughts. One’s thoughts become as if more distant, vague, or less preoccupying; one stops paying as much attention to bodily sensations; one has fewer or less intense fantasies and daydreams. Thus by reducing the intensity or compelling quality of outward perception and inward thoughts, one may come to a time of greater stillness. Ultimately one may become utterly silent inside, as though in a gap between thoughts, where one becomes completely perception- and thought-free. One neither thinks nor perceives any mental or sensory content. Yet, despite this suspension of content, one emerges from such events confident that one had remained awake inside, fully conscious. This experience, which has been called the ‘pure consciousness event’, or PCE, has been identified in virtually every tradition. Though PCEs typically happen to any single individual only occasionally, they are quite regular for some practitioners. The pure consciousness event may be defined as a wakeful but contentless (non-intentional) consciousness.
But the story does not stop here. Regular and long-term meditation, according to many traditions, leads to advanced experiences, known in general as ‘enlightenment’. Their discriminating feature is a deep shift in epistemological structure: the experienced relationship between the self and one’s perceptual objects changes profoundly. In many people this new structure becomes permanent.
In Buddhism such Pure Consciousness Events are called by several names: nirodhasamapatti, or cessation meditation; samjnavedayitanirodha, the cessation of sensation and conceptualization; sunyata, emptiness; or most famously, samadhi, meditation without content. What is most fascinating about traditional Buddhist explorations of this state is that despite the fact that one is said to be utterly devoid of content, according to Yogacara Buddhist theorists one’s consciousness is said to persist as ‘some form of contentless and attributeless consciousness’. That is, despite the fact that one is not aware of any specific content or thought, ‘something persists’ in this contentlessness, and that is consciousness itself: ‘I, though abiding in emptiness, am now abiding in the fullness thereof‘ When discussing this possibility that one may abide in the ‘fullness’ of ‘emptiness’, Vasubandu states:
It is perceived as it really is that, when anything does not exist in something, the latter is empty with regard to the former; and further it is understood as it really is that, when, in this place something remains, it exists here as a real existent.
In sum, the PCE may be defined as a wakeful but contentless (non-intentional) experience. Though one remains awake and alert, emerging with the clear sense of having had ‘an unbroken continuity of experience’, one neither thinks, nor perceives nor acts.