An important form of the Argument from Religious Experience focuses on the issue of mysticism — it might be called the Argument from Professional Religious Experience. What is claimed is that, throughout time, in various cultures and places, there have existed particular individuals who have somehow had direct, personal experiences with God.
Like the general Argument from Religious Experiences, it is claimed that these experiences should be given the same credence as other experiential claims and should not be rejected out of hand. But unlike the general argument, it is observed that mystics spend a lot of time working on understanding and reaching God — they are professionals, in a sense, and their observations and conclusions should be treated like those of other professionals.
How should we respond to this argument? The first thing to note is that, as with general religious experiences reported by others, there is a tremendous amount of variety in the reports by religious mystics over the millennia. Not only are the reports from different religions mutually incompatible, but not even all the reports in a single religious tradition are compatible.
This embarrassment of riches is an Achilles’ Heel of the Argument from Religious Experiences, including mystical reports. If they can’t all be true, how do we differentiate the incorrect reports from the correct reports? How can any one mystic give us a good reason to accept his or her claims over and above the claims made by others?
Another problem with these mystical claims is how the mystical experiences themselves originated. It is unclear how the religious experiences of an “average” person originate, but they are not so intense and spectacular as to require an unusual explanation. Mystical experiences, however, need a bit more digging.
Fortunately, the mystics themselves often provide the answer because even though the reports from mystics vary greatly, the road they take is shared much more closely. The usual recipe for these experiences is some sort of deprivation — going without food, water, and often sleep, sitting in the heat of a desert or sweat lodge, isolation from human contact, the repetition of chants or prayer, and even the use of drugs.
All of this is unusual — they are not the sorts of things that a normal person does over the course of a normal life. Is it really so surprising that going through extremely unusual physical experiences will produce unusual effects in the brain? Deprivation of food, water, sleep and human contact will, over time, result in hallucinations. When you add in certain drugs, visions are even more likely.
Because hallucinations happen in your brain, they are naturally informed by what you know, what you believe, and what you expect. To put it another way, when you are looking to have visions, and actually prepare your brain for them, then you are likely to find just what you were expecting.
Dr. Michael Persinger in Canada can produce mystical visions in people with a mechanical device and what people see is heavily influenced even just by the sort of things he has in his office. When he plays music with an Eastern theme, people tend to have Buddhist-type visions. When he hangs crucifixes in the room and plays Christian chants, people have Christian-type visions.
Because there are possible physical and natural explanations for these mystical experiences, and because they can actually be produced at will in very natural ways, it becomes incumbent upon the supporter of mysticism to help us differentiate between the naturally induced experiences and those which allegedly have a supernatural origin.
