322 Science Religion and Reality 



floating in the air, and later on one may feel that one does not possess 

 a body at all. In this state, one seems to become depersonalised, as 

 it were, absorbed in the " all," into the soul of the universe. One 

 attains to what has been called cosmic consciousness. 



Now can we find any identical factor in these various experi- 

 ences ? In all except those accompanying muscular exercise, in 

 the anaesthetic revelation, auto- and hetero-hypnosis, etc., one 

 characteristic seems to be the abolition of the motor tendency. In 

 a normal man who goes about his affairs with eyes wide open and 

 mind alert, there is a definite adjustment of muscular activity to 

 the needs of the situation. His muscles are tense and always ready 

 to come into action, and his experience is essentially sensori-motor. 

 It is probably this motor aspect of experience that intensifies the 

 feeling of personality, and if it is brought into abeyance with 

 anaesthetics or special artificial modes of relaxation, the sense of 

 personality disappears with it. The individual is less conscious 

 of the dividing lines between himself and the rest of the universe. 



It is clear that, in mystical experiences proper, we ought to 

 allow for the possible admixture of such experiences as these and 

 discount them ; although it is more than doubtful whether we 

 can say that all religious mystic experience should be explained in 

 terms of such cruder experiences. Some scientists tend to criticise 

 all these experiences as abnormal, because they involve a disturbance 

 of the sensori-motor attitude towards life. But this would be to 

 make a very great assumption, an assumption analogous to the one 

 we have already discussed in connection with determinism. Such 

 scientists map out a general system of explanation, and everything 

 they find in that system they call scientific. Everything not 

 explained in terms of that system they attempt to explain as 

 pathological, and in calling it pathological they deny the validity 

 or importance of it. 



An alternative explanation would be the following : it is very 

 obvious that experience, as we know it, occurs and comes to us 

 under the forms of space and time, because we are embodied minds, 

 because we are limited, finite parts of the universe, and yet we have 

 in us powers that can in some way lift us beyond these limits. It 

 seems quite clear that one such power is that of thought : another 

 is the direct insight of aesthetic appreciation ; and religious 

 experience in its mystical form may prove the greatest power of all 

 in this direction. When, in the mystical experience, we have the 



