Ordinary Dreams, Lucid Dreams and Mystical Experience

Abstract

It is difficult to give a definition of mystical experience that would satisfy every scholar. I use the expression mystical experience to mean an apparent experience of some reality greater than oneself that comes by transcending, to some degree, awareness of one’s own physical and mental self and one’s physical surroundings. This reality may be understood as God or some other spiritual being, brahman, Being, the universe, oneness, the void, or nirvana. I would distinguish for my purposes here between the phenomenon that is seen as the mystical experience itself and other more incidental phenomena that precede or accompany the mystical experience, such as visions of disks of light, the feeling of levitation, or bliss.