Everything or Nothing
February 10, 2026 DOI: 10.4324/9781003675389-34 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that lacking mystical experience does not disqualify a thinker from writing about it, because phenomena available to outsiders—orgasms, psychoses, and musical experience, and to a lesser degree dreams—resemble or overlap with mystical experience. Proposes that this overlap be understood through the structural relationship between the symbolic system of language and the Real, where language is excluded and immediacy occurs. |
Abstract
What should one do with a writer about mystical experience if he lacks that experience? Does this thinker have the right to speak about it? I am one of those outsiders who—as far as I am aware—has not had any mystical experience. Yet there are holes in this reasoning when one considers that there are phenomena very similar to, and perhaps overlapping with, mystical experiences that people without such contact, i.e., outsiders, may also encounter. I am thinking of having dreams, orgasms, psychoses, and experiencing music. This is perhaps more the case with the latter three than with dreams because imagination still plays a role there. To understand this, I must delve deeper into the matter, which touches on the structural relationship between the symbolic system of language and the Real, where language is excluded, and there is immediacy—the circumstance that the mystic aims at ( Foucault, 1966 ; Lacan, 1994 ).