Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
by Peter Buckley
Abstract
Autobiographical accounts of
acute mystical experience and
schizophrenia are compared in
order to examine the similarities
between the two states. The appearance of a powerful sense of
noesis, heightening of perception,
feelings of communion with the
"divine," and exultation may be
common to both. The disruption
of thought seen in the acute psychoses is not a component of the
accounts of mystical experience
reviewed by the author, and auditory hallucinations are less common than visual hallucinations in
the mystical state. The ease with
which elements of the acute mystical experience can be induced in
possession cults or in an experimental situation suggests that the
capacity for such an altered state
experience may be latently present in many people. It is postulated that there is a limited repertoire of response within the
nervous system for altered state
experiences such as acute psychosis and mystical experience, even
though the precipitants and etiology may be quite different.
First-Person Accounts of
Mystical Experiences
The classical mystical experience
has usually been interpreted by
those who have undergone it as a
union with the divine, a union
which is considered the ultimate
reality and hence transcendental in
nature. Though mystics have frequently stated that the experience
is ineffable, their descriptions
spanning a vast gulf of time and
religion are remarkably consistent.
One of the earliest extant accounts of a mystical experience is
to be found in St. Augustine's
(1943) Confessions.
517
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ence of God, by becoming his living vessel. In Euripides' "Bacchae" a vivid description is
provided of such self-induced possession states. The Bacchantes
through their frenzied dancing
enter the ecstatic state of merging
with the god-head. In the Voodoo
religion of Haiti, a contemporary
form of the Dionysian bacchanale,
possession regularly occurs among
the participants (Metraux 1959).
The rhythmic drumming and dancing which accompany Voodoo
ceremonies appear to facilitate the
entry into such possession states.
Maya Deren (1970), a European
woman who took part in Voodoo
ceremonies, described one of her
possession experiences in the following manner:
My skull is a drum; each great
beat drives that leg, like the
point of a stake, into the
ground. The singing is at my
very ear, inside my nead. This
sound will drown me! "Why
don't they stop! Why don't they
stop!" I cannot wrench the leg
free. I am caught in this cylinder, this well of sound. There is
nothing anywhere except this.
There is no way out. The white
darkness moves up the veins of
my leg like a swift tide rising,
rising; is a great force which I
cannot sustain or contain,
which, surely, will burst my
skin. It is too much, too much,
too bright, too white for me; this
is its darkness. "Mercy!" I
scream within me. I hear it
echoed by the voices, shrill and
unearthly: "Erzulie!" The bright
darkness floods up through my
body, reaches my head, engulfs
me. I am sucked down and exploded upward at once. That is
all. [p. 260]
Deren goes on to describe an experience of synesthesia:
My memory begins with sound
heard distantly, addressed to
me, and this I know: this is the
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