The Ineffable Experience: its attainment and qualities

There is a class of human experiences - certain emotions/feelings and correlated perceptions/paradigms - which do not have suitable metaphors in modern, scientific terminology. These are the experiences which are so powerful so as to dissolve the normal parameters of functioning including the most precious notions of time, space, causality, multiplicity of objects, distinction between self and other, or any one thing from any other thing. This experience is genuine 'Mysticism.'

It is a known fact that increased sensory activity lowers self-representational activity. IAO131 discussed this on his blog. This is known as "getting lost in the moment," "losing yourself," "being in the zone," "flow," etc. These are all more mild forms of this class of human experience mentioned above. It is plausible that this "losing yourself" is simply the same phenomenon except at a milder degree.

Often the degree of intensity of sensory activity/emotion necessary for having this 'Mystic Experience' is achieved through gradual means such as religious asceticism of all sorts including yoga, prayer, meditation, etc. It can also occur in short periods as with the use of drugs like the Hindu 'soma,' Native American 'peyote,' and LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, etc. in more modern times. It may also occur spontaneously as evidenced in the literature of Zen Buddhism. Yet most of these people have gone through previous rigorous training, like the previously mentioned ascetics, and only the actual illumination is sudden.

This illumination is often likened to a lightning flash for its power, intensity, destructiveness (to old notions & ideals), and its brightness. The words 'illumination' and 'enlightenment' show that the metaphor of light is naturally intertwined with this new perspective.

And the subjective qualities of this experience are:

1. Ineffability - The experience is beyond words in description, they do not do it justice.
2. Duality dismantling - This is connected with the ineffability of the situation because words work by dualities. The understanding of duality being in truth unity, that 2 is 1, that "Thou art that" (Tat tvam asi) leads inevitably to the realization of the fatuity of language in expressing this Condition.
3. Destruction - The experience is seen as subjectively destructive in the sense that all of our foundations for understanding the world - time, space, causality, separateness, and multiplicity - are seen to be false. All attachments to things external (things and people and places) and internal (ideals and memories), even your notion of 'self', are all stripped away. This is 'ego death.' This is why non-attachment is also counseled by many mystics, for it becomes less of a shock if attachments are discarded voluntarily. This is also the basis for all 'self-denial' for the same reasons.
4. Invigoration - There is always felt an infusing of energy as if from outside of oneself. A power infuses one's awareness that seems infinite and/or omnipotent. Psychologically, unconscious potencies have breached the threshold of consciouss awareness. Also, the apparent destructiveness gives away to a realization that this destruction was necessary for this new-found freedom. The destruction has cleared the obstructions and delusions which obscured our natural boundless potential.
5. Passivity - The highest attainment is always gotten by giving away absolutely everything. Only thereby do you gain everything. In this Mystic Experience, since one is felt subject to such an invigorating energy one feels oneself to be the passive receptacle of the forces. "I am not I; I am but an hollow tube to bring down / Fire from Heaven. / Mighty and marvelous is this Weakness, this / Heaven which draweth me into Her Womb, this / Dome which hideth, which absorbeth, Me. / This is The Night wherein I am lost, the Love / through which I am no longer I." - Book of Lies, ch.15