Those subjective expressions which have been called the mystic experience and described so well by William James 14 are a fairly common experience for our subjects. The strong emotions described in the previous section sometimes get strong enough, chaotic and widespread enough, to be called mystic experiences.

My interest and attention in this subject were first enlisted by several of my subjects who described their sexual orgasms in vaguely familiar terms, which later I remembered had been used by various writers to describe what they called the mystic experience. There were the same feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, of the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placing in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject is to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his daily life by such experiences. 13 29 34

It is quite important to dissociate this experience from any theological or supernatural reference, even though for thousands of years they have been linked. None of our subjects spontaneously made any such tie-up, although in later conversation some semi religious conclusions were drawn by a few, e.g., "life must have a meaning," etc. Because this experience is a natural experience, well within the jurisdiction of science, it is probably better to use Freud's term for it, i.e., the oceanic feeling.

We may also learn from our subjects that such experiences can occur in a lesser degree of intensity. The theological literature had generally assumed an absolute, qualitative difference between the mystic experience and all others. As soon as it is divorced from supernatural reference, and studied as a natural phenomenon, it becomes possible to place the mystic experience on a quantitative continuum from intense to mild. We discover then that the mild mystic experience occurs in many, perhaps even most, individuals, and that in the favored individual it occurs dozens of times a day.
Apparently, the acute mystic experience is a tremendous intensification of any of the experiences in which there is loss of self or transcendence of it, e.g., problem-centering, intense concentration, "muga" behavior as described by Benedict, 4 intense sensuous experience, self forgetful and intense enjoyment of music or art.