Clinical Utility of Mystical Experiences: An Overview and Conceptual Framework

Mystical experiences (MEs) are often profound and transformative encounters with a transcendent reality. Reported across many cultures and religions, these experiences are commonly characterized by a sense of unity, transcendence of time and space, positive mood, ineffability, and a noetic quality. Theoretical models have emphasized psychological, neurological, and sociocultural explanations to account for their positive effects on individuals, and psychometric tools have been developed to offer standardized methods to assess experience intensity and impact. MEs indicate significant potential in clinical psychology and have demonstrated psychotherapeutic benefit in the treatment of various conditions. We propose a novel conceptual framework to guide future use of MEs in therapeutic contexts, as interest in the mystical realm exponentially grows. The framework centers around the ME itself highlighting a requisite non-ordinary state of consciousness to foster intensely felt experiences occasioning profound psychological impact. The framework posits that MEs require three pre-state factors: invitation, context, and individual aptitude. After experiencing an ME, a necessary mediating factor in experiencing beneficial change is the process of integration.