516 Mystical Experience andSchizophrenia

by Peter Buckley Abstract

Autobiographical accounts ofacute mystical experience andschizophrenia are compared inorder to examine the similaritiesbetween the two states. The ap-pearance of a powerful sense ofnoesis, heightening of perception,feelings of communion with the"divine," and exultation may becommon to both. The disruptionof thought seen in the acute psy-choses is not a component of theaccounts of mystical experiencereviewed by the author, and audi-tory hallucinations are less com-mon than visual hallucinations inthe mystical state. The ease withwhich elements of the acute mys-tical experience can be induced inpossession cults or in an experi-mental situation suggests that thecapacity for such an altered stateexperience may be latently pres-ent in many people. It is postu-lated that there is a limited reper-toire of response within thenervous system for altered stateexperiences such as acute psycho-sis and mystical experience, eventhough the precipitants and etiol-ogy may be quite different.

It has often been noted clinicallythat the onset of an acute psychot-ic episode may be heralded by astate of confusion and acute anxie-ty which is then replaced by thepsychotic individual's sudden"understanding" of the "mean-ing" of the experience. This "un-derstanding" may include the be-lief that the person has beenchosen to be God's agent, if notthe Messiah, and a conviction thatknowledge hidden from others isnow in his or her grasp. This senseof noesis is often accompanied bya state of exultation and a feeling

of being in direct communion withGod.

A representative account of suchan episode is to be found in MoragCoate's (1965) description of theonset of her psychosis:

I got up from where I had beensitting and moved into anotherroom. Suddenly my whole beingwas filled with light and loveli-ness and with an upsurge ofdeeply moving feeling fromwithin myself to meet and recip-rocate the influence that flowedinto me. I was in a state of themost vivid awareness and illu-mination. What can I say of it? Acloudless, cerulean blue sky ofthe mind, shot through withshafts of exquisite, warm,dazzling sunlight. In its first andmost intense stage it lasted per-haps half an hour. It seemedthat some force or impulse fromwithout were acting on me,looking into me; that I was intouch with a reality beyond myown; that I had made direct con-tact with the secret, ultimatesource of life. What I had read ofthe accounts of others acquiredsuddenly a new meaning. Itflashed across my mind, "This iswhat the mystics mean by thedirect experience of God."[p. 21]

While studying the mystical ex-periences that occurred to somemembers of a contemporary reli-gious cult (Buckley and Galanter1979), I was struck by the similari-ties between the accounts ofnonpsychotic members of the sectwho had undergone acute mysticalepisodes and subjective accountsof experiences of "significance" in

Reprint requests should be sent toDr. P. Buckley, Rm. 4S13-Nurses Res-idence, Bronx Municipal HospitalCenter, Dept. of Psychiatry,Eastchester Rd. and Pelham Pkwy. S.,Bronx, NY 10461.

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psychosis. Just as in some cases ofacute psychosis, a period of confu-sion and anxiety would be re-placed by a revelation.

One member of the sect de-scribed his mystical experiencethus:

I was desperately lonely andanxious a lot of the time, com-pletely unsure as to what Iwanted to do with myself. I wasreally depressed. Then I at-tended Satsang [The term for apolemical sermon in this partic-ular cult]. I liked the way every-body there seemed to belongand L really liked the fact thatthey believed in something. Thesecond time I went I had misamazing experience. The womangiving Satsang suddenly seemedto be surrounded by light, like aglowing halo. This golden lightfilled the room and gradually ex-tended to fill my whole self sothat I was filled with this light. Ifelt uplifted, happier than Icould remember being. I knewthen that I was in the presenceof God. Time seemed to standstill. I knew with absolute con-viction that Satsang was thetruth. From that time on my de-pression vanished, [p. 283]

The similarity between some as-pects of mystical experience andthe onset of psychosis has beennoted previously by clinical re-searchers such as Bowers andFreedman (1966). They reportedsubjective accounts by patients of"psychedelic" experiences in someearly psychotic reactions and com-pared these to the phenomenaseen in certain natural and drug-induced states. They noted that allthese states have an experientialcharacteristic in common ofheightened consciousness orawareness.

Recently there has been an in-crease in interest in studying auto-

biographical accounts of psycho-sis. Freedman (1974) hassuggested that a careful examina-tion of these accounts could gener-ate a number of hypotheses aboutschizophrenic cognition and per-ception and be potentially usefulin differentiating subtypes of theschizophrenic syndrome.

A systematic comparison of thesubjective phenomenology ofhallucinogen ingestion and schizo-phrenia as derived from autobio-graphical accounts was presentedby Kleinman, Gillin, and Wyatt(1977) in this journal. They con-cluded that there was not a verygood correspondence between thetwo states, but they did note thatmany of the phenomena experi-enced by schizophrenics have beenreported by users of hallu-cinogens.

I felt that a similar comparisonbetween autobiographical accountsof mystical experiences and schiz-ophrenia would be of interest inlight of the similarities that havebeen observed between some reli-gious conversion experiences andacute psychotic episodes.

First-Person Accounts ofMystical ExperiencesThe classical mystical experiencehas usually been interpreted bythose who have undergone it as aunion with the divine, a unionwhich is considered the ultimatereality and hence transcendental innature. Though mystics have fre-quently stated that the experienceis ineffable, their descriptionsspanning a vast gulf of time andreligion are remarkably consistent.

One of the earliest extant ac-counts of a mystical experience isto be found in St. Augustine's(1943) Confessions.

Our conversation had broughtus to this point that any pleasurewhatsoever of the bodily senses,in any brightness whatsoever ofcorporeal light, seemed to us notworthy of comparison with thepleasure of that eternal Light,not worthy even of mention.Rising as our love flamed up-ward to that Selfsame, we pas-sed in review the various levelsof bodily things, up to the heav-ens themselves whence sun andmoon and stars shine upon thisearth. And higher still wesoared, thinking in our mindsand speaking and marvelling atYour works: and so we came toour own souls, and went beyondthem to come at last to the re-gion of richness unending,where You feed Israel foreverwith the food of Truth: andthere life is that Wisdom bywhich all things are made, boththe things that have been andthe things that are yet to be. Butthis Wisdom itself is not made: itis as it has ever been, and so itshall be forever: indeed "hasever been" and "shall be forev-er" have no place in it, but itsimply is, for it is eternal,[p. 164]

This description of St. Augus-tine's may be compared with JohnCustance's (1952) description ofhis psychosis:

From the first the experienceseemed to me to be holy. What Isaw was the Power of Lovethename came to me at oncethePower that I knew somehow tohave made all universes, past,present and to come, to be utter-ly infinite, and infinity of infini-ties, to have conquered the Pow-er of Hate, its opposite, and thuscreated the sun, the stars, themoon, the planets, the earth,light, life, joy and peace, never-ending. . . .

In that peace I felt utterly andcompletely forgiven, relievedfrom all burden of sin. Thewhole infinity seemed to open

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up before me, and during theweeks and months which fol-lowed I passed through experi-ences which are virtually inde-scribable. The completetransformation of "reality"transported me as it were intothe Kingdom of Heaven. The or-dinary beauties of nature, par-ticularly, I remember, the skiesat sunrise and sunset, took on atranscendental loveliness be-yond belief. Every morning,quite contrary to my usual slug-gish habits, I jumped up to lookat them, and when possiblewent out to drink in, in a sort ofecstasy, the freshness of themorning air.

I feel so close to God, so in-spired by His Spirit that in asense I am God. I see the future,plan the Universe, savemankind; I am utterly and com-pletely immortal; I am even maleand female. The whole Uni-verse, animate and inanimate,past, present and future is with-in me. All nature and life, allspirits, are co-operating andconnected with me; all thingsare possible, [pp. 46, 51]In both accounts, the feeling of

being transported beyond the selfto a new realm, together with theeffect of ecstasy and a heightenedstate of awareness, is common.

Loss of self-object boundaries, afrequent accompaniment of acutepsychosis, is often seen in the clas-sic mystic experience of which thefollowing account is representa-tive:

It was as if I had never realizedhow lovely the world was. I laydown on my back in the warm,dry moss and listened to theskylark singing as it mounted upfrom the fields near the sea intothe dark clear sky. No othermusic gave me the same pleas-ure as that passionately joyoussinging. It was a kind of leaping,exultant ecstasy, a bright, flame-

like sound, rejoicing in itself.And then a curious experiencebefell me. It was as if everythingthat had seemed to be externaland around me were suddenlywithin me. The whole worldseemed to be within me. It waswithin me that the trees wavedtheir green branches, it waswithin me that the skylark wassinging, it was within me thatthe hot sun shone, and that theshade was cool. A cloud rose inthe sky, and passed in a lightshower that pattered on theleaves, and I felt its freshnessdropping into my soul, and I feltin all my being the delicious fra-grance of the earth and the grassand the plants and the richbrown soil. I could have sobbedfor joy. [Reid 1902, p. 42]

Distortion of time-sense, in par-ticular time-dilation, is also oftendescribed in the mystic experience:

Rapt in Beethoven's music, Iclosed my eyes and watched asilver glow which shaped itselfinto a circle with a central focusbrighter than the rest. . . .Swiftly and smoothly I wasborne through the tunnel. . . .The light grew brighter. . . . Icame to a point where time andmotion ceased. [Allen, cited inHappold 1963, p. 133]Schreber (1955), in his classic

autobiography of his psychosis,recounted the experience of timestanding still:

From the sum total of my recol-lections, the impression gainedhold of me that the period inquestion, which, according tohuman calculation, stretchedover only three to four months,had covered an immensely longperiod; it was as if single nightshad the duration of centuries, sothat within that time the mostprofound alterations in thewhole of mankind, in the earthitself and the whole solar system

could very well have takenplace, [p. 84]Frank perceptual changes are

common to both the psychoticstate and the mystical experience.These changes include synesthe-sia, and either the dampening ofor the heightening of perceptions,distance (1952), in describing hispsychosis, wrote:

First and foremost comes a gen-eral sense of intense well-beingthe pleasurable and some-times ecstatic feeling tone re-mains as a sort of permanentbackground closely allied withthis permanent background isthe "heightened sense of real-ity." If I am to judge by my ownexperience this "heightenedsense of reality" consists of aconsiderable number of relatedsensations, the net result ofwhich is that the outer worldmakes a much more vivid andintense impression on me thanusualThe first thing I note isthe peculiar appearances of thelightsthey are not exactlybrighter, but deeper, more in-tense, perhaps a trifle more rud-dy than usual. Certainly mysense of touch is height-enedmy hearing appears to bemore sensitive, and I am able totake in without disturbance ordistraction many different soundimpressions at the same timeItis actually a sense of communionin the first place with God, andin the second place with allmankind, indeed with allcreationthe sense of commun-ion extends to all fellow crea-tures with whom I come intocontact, [pp. 30-40]

Happold (1963, p. 85), in hisstudy of mysticism, notes that inthe classic mystical experiencethere is frequently found a new vi-sion of the phenomenal world "asif there had been an abnormalsharpening of the senses." Amember of a religious cult

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(Buckley and Galanter 1979) de-scribed the following experience:

Everything in the room becamedearercolors were brighter,much more intense, glowingalmost. I felt as if I was ineternity.Frank hallucinations also may be

found in the mystical experience.These are more often of visualthan auditory type. St. Teresa ofAvila (quoted in Underhill 1961)wrote:

It was our Lord's will that in thisvision I should see the angel inthis wise. He was not large, butsmall in stature, and mostbeautifulhis face burning, as ifhe were one of the highest an-gels, who seem to be all onfire. . . . I saw in his hand along spear of gold, and at theiron's point there seemed to be alittle fire. He appeared to me tobe thrusting it at times into myheart, and to pierce my very en-trails; when he drew it out, heseemed to draw them out alsoand to leave me all on fire with agreat love of God. [p. 292]The sensation of seeing and

being enveloped in "light" may becommon to both states. Thefounder of Alcoholics Anonymous(1957) described his conversion inthe following manner:

My depression deepened un-bearably, and finally it seemedto me as if I were at the very bot-tom of the pit. I still gagged bad-ly on the notion of a Powergreater than myself, but finally,just for the moment, the lastvestige of my proud obstinancywas crushed. All at once, Ifound myself crying out, "Ifthere is a God, let Him showHimself! I am ready to do any-thing, anything!"

Suddenly the room lit up witha great white light. I was caughtup into an ecstasy which thereare no words to describe. It

seemed to me, in the mind'seye, that I was on a mountainand that a wind not of air but ofspirit was blowing. And then itburst upon me that I was a freeman. Slowly the ecstasy sub-sided, I lay on the bed, but nowfor a time I was in anotherworld, a new world of con-sciousness. All about me therewas a wonderful feeling of Pres-ence, and I thought to myself,"So this is the God of thepreachers." A great peace stoleover me and I thought, "Nomatter how wrong things seemto be, they are still right. Thingsare all right with Godand Hisworld." [p. 63]Coate (1965) described the fol-

lowing during one of her psychoticepisodes:

I went back into my own roomand got into bed, but now Icould not sleep, and this wasdangerous for the room wasfilled with an unearthly lightand my hand cast no shadow onthe wall. . . . Time wasstretched out like an elastichand, each minute of it was atonce thinner and longer thanusual. At last the stage wasreached when external timeceased altogether and only Ilived on. [p. 58]

Possession Cults andMystical Union

Lewis (1971), in his study of ec-static religion, has shown howubiquitous the "seizure of man bydivinity" has been in the religionsof many disparate cultures. Suchtranscendental experiences haveusually been conceived of as statesof "possession" by God.

As Sargant (1975) has noted,such possession states are oftendeliberately induced in religiouscults to give the individual themost direct and immediate experi-

ence of God, by becoming his liv-ing vessel. In Euripides' "Bac-chae" a vivid description isprovided of such self-induced pos-session states. The Bacchantesthrough their frenzied dancingenter the ecstatic state of mergingwith the god-head. In the Voodooreligion of Haiti, a contemporaryform of the Dionysian bacchanale,possession regularly occurs amongthe participants (Metraux 1959).The rhythmic drumming and dan-cing which accompany Voodooceremonies appear to facilitate theentry into such possession states.

Maya Deren (1970), a Europeanwoman who took part in Voodooceremonies, described one of herpossession experiences in the fol-lowing manner:

My skull is a drum; each greatbeat drives that leg, like thepoint of a stake, into theground. The singing is at myvery ear, inside my nead. Thissound will drown me! "Whydon't they stop! Why don't theystop!" I cannot wrench the legfree. I am caught in this cylin-der, this well of sound. There isnothing anywhere except this.There is no way out. The whitedarkness moves up the veins ofmy leg like a swift tide rising,rising; is a great force which Icannot sustain or contain,which, surely, will burst myskin. It is too much, too much,too bright, too white for me; thisis its darkness. "Mercy!" Iscream within me. I hear itechoed by the voices, shrill andunearthly: "Erzulie!" The brightdarkness floods up through mybody, reaches my head, engulfsme. I am sucked down and ex-ploded upward at once. That isall. [p. 260]

Deren goes on to describe an ex-perience of synesthesia:

My memory begins with soundheard distantly, addressed tome, and this I know: this is the

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sound of light. It is heard light,a beam invisible but bright,scanning the void for substanceto fix upon; and to become uponthat substance light. Around thesharp directness and direction ofthat sound the darkness shapesitself and now it is as if I lay atthe far distant end of an infinite-ly deep-down, sunken well.Slowly still, borne on its light-less beam, as one might rise upfrom the bottom of the sea, so Irise up, the body growing light-er with each sound. The thun-dering rattle, clangoring bell,unbearable, then suddenly: sur-face; suddenly: air; suddenly:sound is light, dazzling white.

How dear the world looks inthis first total light. How purelyform it is, without, for the mo-ment, the shadow of meaning. Isee everything, all at once, with-out the delays of succession, andeach detail is equal and equallylucid, [p. 261]Bourguignon (1976) has noted

that the cultural institutionaliza-tion of such possession states iswidespread. In his worldwidesample of 488 societies, 52 percenthave possession trance as a part oftheir indigenous religion. He con-cludes that in the possessiontrance one is dealing with a humanpotential that is utilized by thevast majority of societies.

Experimentally InducedMystical ExperiencesBy reviewing the mystic literature,Deikman (1963, 1966) observedthat the procedure of contempla-tive meditation has been a princi-pal agent in producing the mysticexperience. He conducted an ex-perimental study of contemplativemeditation and was able to evoke anumber of phenomena in some ofhis subjects, including heightenedsensory vividness, time distortion,

a feeling of merging with the ob-ject that was being concentratedon, and fusing and alteration ofnormal perceptual modes.

Examples given by his subjectsat different sessions of their con-templative meditation included thefollowing:

. . . somewhere between thematter that is the wall and my-self, somewhere in between thematter is this moving, thisvibrating light and motion andpower and very real substance. . . it's so real and so vital that Ifeel as though I could reach outand take a chunk off and hand itto you.

It seems as if you were turninga light down, that you wereturning the intensity of the lightdown and I still had this kind ofshimmering sensation of verybright light simultaneous withthe idea that everything isgetting dark.

You can't discern shimmeringin the room, can you, a color orbright shimmering in this wholearea. . . .

Well, it's very real to me, it'sso real that I feel you ought to beable to see it. [p. 104]The ease with which he could

evoke these phenomena in hissubjects suggested to Deikmanthat a capacity exists, under condi-tions of minimal stress, for an al-teration in the perception of theworld and the self that is far great-er than is customarily assumed tobe the case for normal people.

He concluded that the classicalmystic experience, LSD reactions,and certain phases of acute psy-chosis represent conditions of spe-cial receptivity to ordinary stimulithat are ordinarily excluded or ig-nored in the normal state of con-sciousness. This is consistent withthe hypothesis that a breakdownin the "stimulus barrier" is re-

sponsible for some of the subjec-tive phenomena experienced dur-ing psychosis.

Conclusions

The subjective experience of somepsychotic episodes at their onsetand of the acute mystical experi-ence appear from these accounts toshare some characteristics. The ap-pearance of a powerful sense ofnoesis, heightening of perception,feelings of communion with the"divine," and exultation may becommon to both. The disruption ofthought seen in the acute psycho-ses, however, is not a componentof the accounts of acute mysticalexperience reviewed here. Theself-limited and generally briefspan of mystical experiences alsodifferentiates them from the psy-choses. This differentiation, how-ever, in at least one possiblesubtype of schizophreniaschizophreniform psychosisisless clear cut since these psychosesmay also be self-limited and re-solve without psychotic sequelaesuch as crystallized delusions,blunted affect, or impaired socialrelations. Clinical observations ofthe self-limited nature and goodprognosis of schizophreniformpsychoses, together with theiraffect-laden presentation, have ledto the hypothesis that they are infact variants of the affective disor-ders (Pope and Lipinsky 1978).This raises the possibility thatwhat is shared by some acute psy-chotic states and the classic mys-tical experience is simply an ec-static affective change whichimbues perception with an in-creased intensity.

Schizophrenic disorders thathave a more insidious onset seemto have little in common with the

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acute mystical experience.Thought blocking and other dis-turbances in language and speechdo not appear to accompany themystical experience. Auditory hal-lucinations are less common thanvisual hallucinations, and flatnessof affect is not an accompanimentor sequel of the mystical state.Other phenomena that may occurin acute psychotic states, such asself-destructive acts and aggres-sive and sexual outbursts, are nota part of the mystical experience,though the latter have been ob-served'in some states of "posses-sion."

The ease with which elements ofthe acute mystical experience canbe induced in possession cults oreven in an experimental situationsuggests that the capacity for suchan altered state experience may belatently present in many people.Bowers and Freedman (1966) havesuggested that the wide range ofcontexts in which states of height-ened awareness are found to occurand the variety of initiating causesreflect an innate capacity of thehuman mind. This particular al-tered state of consciousness mayform a final common pathway forthe mystical experience and atleast some variants of acute psy-chosis. To a large extent, the con-tent will be determined by the so-cial context and the personalityand psychodynamics of the indi-vidual undergoing the experience,but certain structural phenomenasuch as the heightening of percep-tion and the feeling of transcend-ence seem to be constant. Thisraises the possibility that there is alimited repertoire of responsewithin the central nervous systemfor such altered state experiences,even though the preripitants for

entering this altered state may beextremely different.

Though the correspondence be-tween the comparatively benignmystical experience and the onsetof acute psychosis is a limited one,sufficient overlap exists to warrantsystematic biological and psycho-logical investigation of suchaltered state experiences in thehope of illuminating further thenature of both.

References

Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age.New York: Alcoholics AnonymousPublishing, 1957.Bourguignon, E. Possession andtrance in cross-cultural studies ofmental health. In: Lebra, W.P., ed.Culture-Bound Syndromes, Ethno-psychiatry and Alternate Therapists.Honolulu: The University Press ofHawaii, 1976. pp. 47-55.Bowers, M.B., Jr., and Freedman,D.X. "Psychedelic" experiences inacute psychoses. Archives of Gener-al Psychiatry, 15:240-248, 1966.Buckley, P., and Galanter, M.Mystical experience, spiritualknowledge, and a contemporaryecstatic religion. British Journal ofMedical Psychology, 52:281-289,1979.Coate, M. Beyond All Reason. NewYork: J.B. Lippincott, 1965.Custance, J. Wisdom, Madness, andFolly. New York: Pellegrini andCudahy, 1952.Deikman, A.J. Experimental medi-tation. Journal of Nervous and Men-tal Disease, 136:329-343, 1963.Deikman, A.J. Implications of ex-perimentally induced contempla-tive meditation. Journal of Nervousand Mental Disease, 142:101-116,1966.

Deren, M. Divine Horsemen: TheVoodoo Gods of Haiti. New York:Delta, 1972.Freedman, B.J. The subjective ex-perience of perceptual and cogni-tive disturbances in schizophrenia:A review of autobiographical ac-counts. Archives of General Psychia-try, 30:333-340, 1974.Happold, F.C. Mysticism.Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963.Kleinman, J.E.; Gillin, J.C.; andWyatt, R.J. A comparison of thephenomenology of hallucinogensand schizophrenia from some au-tobiographical accounts. Schizo-phrenia Bulletin, 3:560-586, 1977.Lewis, I.M. Ecstatic religion: Ananthropological study of spiritpossession and shamanism.Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971.Metraux, A. Voodoo. New York:Oxford University Press, 1953.Pope, H.G., Jr., and Lipinski, J.F.Diagnosis in schizophrenia andmanic-depressive illness. Archivesof General Psychiatry, 35:811-828,1978.Reid, F. Following Darkness.London: Arnold, 1902.St. Augustine. Confessions. Trans-lated by F.K. Sheed. New York:Sheed and Ward, 1943.Sargant, W. The Mind Possessed.Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1975.Schreber, D.P. Memoirs of MyNervous Illness. London: WilliamDawson and Sons Ltd., 1955.Underhill, E. Mysticism. NewYork: E.P. Dutton, 1961.

The Author

Peter Buckley, M.B., Ch.B., is As-sociate Professor, Department ofPsychiatry, Albert Einstein Collegeof Medicine, Bronx, NY.

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