‘Mystical’ is any altered state of consciousness with a mystical flavour, ie oceanic, blissful, transcendental-feeling, powerful, convincing, divine, that one can actually ‘experience’, meaning apprehend as a tangible occurrence taking place in some relation (albeit radically altered) to the self that is oneself. Mystical experiences, apparently ineffable, always conform to thoroughly ‘effable’ parameters, and can be read about in all the famous mystical testimonies.

I’ve had all these experiences myself, and continue to have them occasionally, completely unasked-for, as they don’t add anything to the experiential parameters of which I’m already aware. I can also achieve complete and permanent union with the divine – at a time of my own choosing - with narcotics and alcohol.

All that falls under the ‘blissful’ category. There are also negative experiences to be had, which are so terrible that one would gladly never have been born, nor had any conceivable chance of ever coming into existence. These are well-known to some psychotics and schizophrenics, and also to some meditators and mystics. In their own vicious way, they are more powerful than anything beatific. If the two were compared, horror would win hands down.

I’ve had some of those as well, and I wouldn’t wish any of them on my worst enemy.

Once again, that all of this comes under ‘mystical’, both positive and negative.

However, there are other insights to be had, of a wholly metaphysical nature, which are not experiences, as they do not have any tangible quality to them. They cannot be perceived or apprehended, and ‘take place’ in a realm beyond experience. So they qualify as ‘events’ rather than experiences, although they are not time-constrained. They are beyond the realm of ‘things’. Everything perceivable/apprehendable – from the grossest to the most subtle – is a ‘thing’ – yet there is also a realm beyond ‘things’ and ‘beyond the possible experiencing of things’. This is where elemental lucidity is ‘situated’. This is the one and only realm of the spiritual.

All the rest is ‘mystical /experiential’, and subject to the laws of experience which, if and when one is familiar with them, are astonishing trivial: the experience of ‘cosmic divine and everlasting consciousness’ and the experience of some minor irritation like a moth fluttering about are composed of the same sort of stuff, and are of no more ultimate significance than is any passing and momentarily forgotten thought.