Let’s start with an intoxicant you may know well: alcohol. Alcohol dulls broad regions of the brain—the hippocampus (memory), motor cortex (coordination), prefrontal cortex (judgment), anterior cingulate cortex (emotional regulation), and more. That’s why drunk people stumble, forget, and lose restraint. It’s a kind of cognitive blackout.

Psychedelics, by contrast, work like “neural lasers.” Substances like psilocybin and LSD target specific brain systems—especially serotonin and dopamine receptors—and disrupt the brain’s default mode network (the system involved in managing our sense of self and social identity). A high dose of psilocybin often leads to a breakdown of self-other boundaries: users report a dissolving ego, a sense of selflessness.

Interestingly, similar effects can be triggered through physical exertion. Extreme exercise causes dopamine release and suppresses prefrontal activity, leading to experiences like the well-known “runner’s high.”

Mystic practices—like prolonged fasting, intense solitude, breathwork, painful rituals, or advanced yoga postures—can have parallel effects. These stress the body to such an extent that the energy-hungry prefrontal cortex quiets down, allowing other brain regions to generate altered states of consciousness.

So what’s it like? Psychedelics and peak physical states may be our closest approximations to the mystical. But psychologists have gone further and categorized these experiences:

• Extrovertive mystical experiences: a sense of unity within the world, in which all distinct objects appear as one interconnected totality—a “view from above” or a deep coherence in all things. Examples:

  • Nature Mysticism in Romanticism
    Writers like Emerson and Thoreau, and many Indigenous traditions, speak of an animate universe where rivers, trees, and animals are all part of one sacred whole.

  • Taoism:
    The Tao is the source of all being, and practitioners are encouraged to see all opposites (yin/yang, self/other) as flowing from and returning to the same source. In moments of deep attunement, all things appear as harmonized and unified.

  • Psychedelic Mysticism (e.g., ceremonial use of ayahuasca):
    Participants often report that all beings—plants, animals, humans—are linked in a web of energy or consciousness.

• Introvertive mystical experiences: a state of pure, contentless awareness—no thoughts, no objects, no self—just undifferentiated consciousness. Often described as “no-thing-ness.” Examples:

  • Zen Buddhism (especially Soto Zen):
    Practices like zazen (sitting meditation) emphasize non-thinking and dissolving the distinction between subject and object. The goal is often described as realizing emptiness (śūnyatā) or “just sitting” in a state of pure awareness.

  • Christian Mysticism (e.g., The Cloud of Unknowing):
    Medieval Christian contemplatives described a state of total stillness and interior silence, where God can only be approached by giving up all thoughts and images.

  • Advaita Vedanta (Hindu non-dualism):
    Deep meditation leads to realization that Atman = Brahman, the dissolution of individuality into pure, contentless awareness—the ground of all being.

• Horizontally transcendent mystical experiences: union with the divine or sacred “other”. Examples:

  • Sufi Islam:
    Through chanting (dhikr), poetry, and music (e.g., whirling dervishes), Sufis seek ecstatic communion with Allah—often described as divine love or intoxication with God.

  • Christian Contemplative Monks and Nuns (e.g., St. Teresa of Ávila, St. John of the Cross):
    Descriptions of the “spiritual marriage” with God evoke union with a divine presence that is simultaneously intimate and beyond.

  • Bhakti Yoga (Hindu devotionalism):
    Devotion to a personal deity (like Krishna or Shiva) can lead to overwhelming love, self-surrender, and feelings of divine union while maintaining a dualistic relationship.

• Vertically transcendent mystical experiences: union with humankind, nature, or the cosmos—a sense of belonging to something vast and immanent. Examples:

  • Stoicism (with cosmopolitan undertones):
    Emphasis on the rational and deterministic order of the cosmos and the idea that we are all parts of the same divine logos encourages a felt unity with all rational beings.

  • Modern Secular Mysticism (e.g., Carl Sagan’s “star stuff” view of life):
    A cosmic sense of awe grounded in science—seeing oneself as part of the universe, made of the same matter as stars and galaxies.

  • Mahayana Buddhism (e.g., Huayan school):
    Emphasizes the interpenetration of all phenomena—everything contains everything else, and nothing exists in isolation. Realization brings a deep sense of “interbeing.”

That’s about as close as I can get you to knowing what it’s like to have a mystical experience. The next step might be following Plotinus’ system for a Return to The One:)