Mystical experiences seem to vary across different traditions and times. At least the reports of such experiences seem to vary.

Sometimes the experience is described as a sense of “nothingness” or of an “abyss”. That means, I take it, no object and no subject is appearing in consciousness: consciousness in this form is not intentional, directed from a subject toward an object, yet it is a consciousness. Particularly striking are the Buddhist accounts of this “no-self” form of experience: the “self” is found to be an illusion or, more precisely, an intentional projection or construction not properly found in pure consciousness per se.Footnote 17 Interestingly, fragments of these phenomenological themes recur in Western philosophy quite apart from meditation and mysticism. Hume famously said he could find in his experience no “self’” (this thing I call “myself”), but only a sequence of “perceptions”. Similarly, Sartre famously held that consciousness has no “I” or “ego” (a “subject” from which consciousness aims toward its object), whence the “self” is an “object” that appears only in reflection. In any event, our concern here is the phenomenology of mystical experience.

At the other end of the phenomenographic spectrum, mystical experience is variously described as producing a sense of the oneness of all being, a sense of “wholeness”, as it were, “all-ness”. Thus, the mystic characterizes her experience as achieving a union with Being itself, or the Brahman (= Divinity), or The One, or the Godhead (= Godhood), or simply God! We might say, neutrally, that mystical experience brings a sense of transcendence, a sensibility which may or may not open into a more conceptually framed sense of “God”.

Odd as it sounds, “nothingness” merges with “allness”. For the experience of “nothingness” is a sense of “no-thing-ness”, and therewith “the one” realm of being, experienced without the differentiations that define particular “things” including “self” and “object”.Footnote 18

How does God enter the phenomenology of mystic union—where, it is reported, the sense of self and the sense of object have disappeared? How can the mystic’s experience present a union of herself with God if her experience does not include a consciousness of either subject (herself) or object (God) in the experience of union? And, moreover, how will her tradition’s theological conceptions affect her experience of mystic union? The narrative arc of Nelson Pike’s book leads into just these questions.

Pike’s concern is specifically Christian mysticism. His phenomenography uses richly expressed quotations from a variety of Christian mystics, featuring Saint Teresa especially, but using other Christian mystics’ quotations to sometimes contrast with Teresa’s account. These quotations must be read slowly and meditatively on their own, affording an empathic phenomenology of the experiences described (to the best of our ability and perspective).

Pike’s phenomenography analyzes proto-typical Christian mystical experience as unfolding in characteristic phases, described in the first half of Pike’s book (Chapters 1–4). The second half of the book (Chapters 5–8) addresses the problem of how to appraise a theistic form of mystical experience. In the final chapter, drawing on his prior results, Pike presents his own phenomenology (or phenomenography) of the experience of “mystic union” (Chapter 8).

On Pike’s sensitive interpretation (pp. 159–160), the mystic describes experiences in deep contemplative prayer wherein she experiences distinct forms of “union with God”—distinctive forms of transcendence (if I may import that term):

Prayer of Quiet—where she feels a sense of closeness to God “in here”;

Prayer of Full Union—where she experiences “union” with God;

Rapture—where she experiences a “peak experience” of “union”;

Union Without Distinction—where in “union” the sense of “self” has vanished.

(See pp. 38–39, 208ff, on this latter form of mystical experience.) As an approximation, these forms of consciousness seem to define a gradation of consciousness increasingly moving into communion with God. Another form is that of love as “spiritual marriage”, where, for Teresa, a sense of God as “lover” and “mother” is experienced.

On Pike’s construction, these forms of experience unfold in temporal sequence, where the sense of Quiet leads into the sense of Full Union, which leads into the sense of Rapture, which leads into the sense of Union Without Distinction. However, the mystic may experience Quiet without Full Union or Rapture, or without a sense of Union-without-Distinction. Accordingly, I should like to propose an analysis of levels of consciousness (in due course below). This analysis has the advantage of allowing commonalities between different mystical traditions, while making room (per Pike) for theistic and specifically Christian forms of mystical experience.

Along the way, Pike expands richly on fine points of interpretation. Let me cite just a couple of key points, which fit well with the themes raised in our account of “pure” consciousness.

First, Teresa describes the role of her “soul” in these experiences, as if her soul is moving about in her “interior castle” as she comes into closer and closer communion with God. (pp. 5–6.) But her use of the term “soul” sometimes means a region of consciousness, “an interior world”, and other times means an entity, a substance (notes Pike) like that Descartes assumed.

Now, the phenomenology of her experience would describe this “interior” soul-region, but the soul-substance would be ascribed from a metaphysical perspective external to the mystical experience. When Teresa subsequently reflects on what she experienced in prayer, we might infer, then she thinks in terms of soul-substance. This act of thinking—an act of metaphysical judgment—would “intend” not the soul-region, but the soul-substance. This metaphysical judgment may be distinguished from her experience of mystic union per se. In her theological judgment, then, she might form the belief that her soul-substance came into a special relationship with the great-soul-substance God (if that is what Teresa’s actual theology holds). It is crucial here to distinguish phenomenology from ontology or metaphysics. Teresa’s phenomenology characterizes her consciousness in the experience of mystic union. Her metaphysics, by contrast, characterizes her soul-substance and God and the personal relationship between them—all posited, of course, in acts of judgment articulating her theology, acts that have their own phenomenology.

Second, amplifying the experience of union, Pike quotes Jan van Ruysbroek’s observation that the self is “melted and naughted” in the union (pp. 28–33). Bernard of Clairvaux, Pike finds, is more explicit, writing, “To lose yourself … and to have no sense of yourself, to be emptied out of yourself and almost annihilated, belongs to heavenly not to human love.” (p. 33) This loss of self, Pike notes, is part of “an experience in which the mystic makes no distinction between self and God.” (p. 33) This sense of union sans self, or “union without distinction”, Pike finds, is described in Blosius’s report as an experience wherein the “loving soul … sinks down into the abyss of divine love, … it lives in God … [and] in the infinite solitude and darkness of the godhead …” (The quotation is on pp. 38–39.)

Here we find the phenomenology of loss-of-self describing consciousness as encountering “nothingness” or “abyss” but also as being immersed in “the godhead”. Here, the phenomenology of mystic union seems to lead into a form of theologically informed consciousness wherein “the godhead”—the nature of God—is brought into the experience. As Pike dissects the experience of mystic union, then, we may separate the form of “pure” consciousness (the “abyss”) from the more complex form of consciousness (mystic union) wherein the mystic draws in a theological conception of the “union” experienced, but all within the “pure” mystical experience.

Thus, drawing on our account of nibbanic consciousness, it seems the Christian mystic’s experience of “union with God” can be factored into two levels of experience. First, there is basic nibbanic consciousness. The Christian mystics quoted and interpreted by Pike describe a form of consciousness as an experience of “nothingness”, i.e. an experience sans self and sans object(s)—evidently the same form of consciousness experienced by mystics in other traditions, notably, as long described by Buddhist meditators. Second, in the Christian mystic’s experience of union, there is a further level or factor of consciousness whereby this nibbanic consciousness is infused with a sense of transcendence and indeed, specifically, of God or the Godhead. This theistic element of defines the mystic’s consciousness as if of “God”: more specifically, as of “closeness to God”, or of “union with God”, or of “union without distinction” (rather than as if of “no-thing-ness”). That is, following Pike’s analysis above, the theistic element may develop—temporally—in the different forms described. Then the complex form of consciousness achieved in mystical union, we would further specify, is itself structured into a nibbanic element and a further theistic element.

Now, the theistic element (in whichever form) should be seen as a moment, or dependent part, of the experience of mystic union.Footnote 19 In Husserlian idiom, the theistic “moment” carries the noematic sense or intentional content <God> or <union with God>. However, the nibbanic and theistic elements are distinct factors, “moments”, in the whole experience. One form of consciousness is a pure, nibbanic consciousness, which may occur with no theistic factor. A more complex form of consciousness combines a theistic factor with a nibbanic factor. In that complex experience, the whole experience comprises two dependent parts, or moments: the one factor cannot occur without the other within that form of consciousness. Accordingly, following Pike’s analysis, an experience of mystic union (as described by Teresa et al.) is a fusion of pure or nibbanic consciousness with a sense of transcendence and specifically a sense of “God”. Where Pike’s phenomenology defines a temporal progression through some three phases of Christian mystical consciousness, we are here defining two distinct levels of consciousness within one temporally bounded form of consciousness. This two-level structure informs each of the gradations of mystic union defined in Pike’s phenomenology: respectively, experiences of “quiet”, of “full union”, of “rapture” in union, and of “union without distinction”—the one leading temporally into the next. Nibbanic consciousness is thus the foundation of each of the forms of mystical consciousness that Pike characterizes, an internal “moment” within each.Footnote 20

Where there develops a temporal progression from pure, nibbanic consciousness into a sense of mystic union (involving God), the later theistic experience will typically depend on the prior nibbanic experience. Indeed, as Pike suggests, the later phase of mystical consciousness may depend on prior meditative thoughts, whereby the mystic’s sense of “union without distinction” depends on a retention of the prior phase of consciousness bearing an explicit sense of union between self and God. The sense of “union without distinction” is thus more loaded than the simpler sense of “no-thing-ness” or “all-ness”. Not only is the current phase of consciousness structured into current nibbanic and supra-nibbanic parts or “moments”; the current phase is also temporally structured by a “moment” of retention of the prior phase. (Compare Pike’s analogy on pp. 162 ff.)Footnote 21