This book is a follow-up to Jerome Gellman’s previous book on the epistemology of mystical experience, Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief . In the present volume, Gellman, who is a leading contributor to the debate over the evidential value of mystical experience, tackles a series of objections that have been raised to his defense of mystical experience as providing significant evidence for theism.

The objections to which Gellman responds are (in order of appearance): 1) the argument that mystical experiences (ME’s) have little or no evidential value because, unlike sense perception, these experiences have ‘private’ content and are not susceptible to independent confirmation; 2) that the putative object of theistic ME’s – God – cannot be (re)identified because, unlike physical objects, He exists in neither space nor time; 3) that any prima facie evidential weight attaching to theistic ME’s (TME’s) is undermined by better naturalistic explanations for the experiences; and 4) that studies of the epistemology of TME’s by male philosophers have been biased in ways that support patriarchy and domesticate women’s ME’s.

Gellman begins by defining ME as ‘an experience in which a person allegedly has a nonsensory perception apparently of a reality… of a sort that can neither be perceived by sense perception nor known by ordinary introspective self-awareness.’ (p. 4) This way of proceeding is fair enough, but raises a methodological question: if ME’s form something like a natural kind, should we specify the distinguishing marks before theoretical investigation, or only after construction of a theory? The matter is vexed, as typology can influence theoretical insight and vice versa. Gellman’s definition, for example, excludes sensory phenomena – e.g. visions – and therefore prejudges whether ME’s, as he understands them, should be assimilated to certain other phenomena.

A second methodological point: Gellman takes note (p. 27 et passim) of what he calls the ‘next-thing-you-know syndrome’—naturalist refusal to concede some initial, justified point to theists for fear of being dragged down the road to full-fledged Judaism, Christianity, or what have you. This is an astute observation about the psychology of belief, but it would be well for those predisposed to theism to remember that the sword has two edges. If anything, it enjoins caution on all sides.

More important than either of these, I judge, is a third methodological matter. Gellman launches his argument with an appeal to a principle of credulity: TME’s are, in the absence of good counterevidence, to be taken at face value, as veridical. The general strategy here – familiar to those who have read William Alston – is to place ME’s epistemically on a par with sense perception. The motivation for so proceeding is half right and half wrong. It is half right in framing the issue in such a way as to bracket radical skepticism, which would carry away with it perceptual knowledge of any kind. The evidential question about ME’s only becomes interesting if there is a significant difference between them and sense perception even when we set aside worries about induction, the ultimate circularity of appeals to perceptual evidence on behalf of validating perception, etc. It is half-wrong in bracketing skepticism by the device of awarding prima facie warrant to perceptual judgments straight-away, which effectively short-circuits the hard-won skills by means of which we use interlocking perceptual judgments to support a general ‘picture’ of our world and of the sorts of independent checks that validate any given perceptual judgment.

This is central to the objection that ME’s cannot be adequately cross-checked for veridicality by independent tests. Gelman correctly identifies those who have articulated this criticism as (what he calls) ‘weak foundationalists’—that is, those who accept perceptual beliefs as foundational but corrigible. The issues here are too complex for a brief discussion to suffice. Gellman makes the legitimate point that even though the cross-checks for ME’s may be much thinner than for sensory experiences, they may be thick enough. The real worry is that they are either question-begging (as in appeals to sanctification of the mystic) or unsuccessful (as in appeals to ME-inspired prophecy, about whose dismal track record Gellman is silent).

A further worry stems from the immense diversity of ME’s—even TME’s. Gellman regards nontheistic ME’s as evidentially weaker because they allegedly occur under more restricted conditions, and because they are ‘intertwined with bizarre and fantastic elements.’ (p. 37). But this last sounds like the pot calling the kettle black. In any event, Gellman hopes to defuse the objection by looking for ways to interpret the diversity of TME’s in terms of a cohesive theistic understanding, and this is a worthwhile endeavor.

Gellman devotes a chapter to two arguments offered by Richard Gale that purport to show that we cannot take God to be the object of ME’s. Both arguments rely upon the fact that God, unlike physical objects, cannot be situated within the space-time framework of sense experience. The first, conceptual, argument is that we cannot say what it is for a nonspatiotemporal particular to exist independently of being perceived. Gellman responds, plausibly, that God’s having an inner life gives content to His existing outside our subjective experience—plausible, that is, if sense can be made of an aspatial/atemporal being having an inner life.

The second, epistemological, argument is that we could not tell that God was the object of different perceptual experiences, if He could not be located in space and time. The discussion here is more complex. Drawing ingeniously upon Strawson’s thought-experiment that envisions a world in which the only perceptions are sounds, Gellman suggests that, just as Strawson’s ‘master-sound’ provides the background against which individuative practices would proceed, so perceptions of God ‘take place within a practice that recognizes an ontological-valuational center around which all existence becomes organized and understood.’ (p. 51) Just as questions about the reidentification of Strawson’s master-sound cannot arise because the genidentity of this sound defines individuative practice in the sound-world, so questions about reidentifying God cannot arise: ‘The [mystical] practice determines that it is God in all cases.’ (p. 51)

This is, unfortunately, more than a little mysterious—not least because even mystics do not in the first instance ‘organize and understand’ their world in terms of a divine valuational center. It would have been useful, I think, for Gellman to have focussed, not on God’s being a center of valuation, but a ‘center’ of the causal chains that lead to TME’s. This focus would have better engaged an important feature of Gale’s argument (as well as the objection that concerns lack of cross-checks), namely, the claim that it is impossible to trace TME’s to a common cause if that cause lies outside the space-time continuum. In any case, even theistic mystics do not regard the cause of all TME’s to be God.

The next two chapters of the book deal with a number of strategies that might be deployed to undermine the credibility of ME’s by appealing to alternative, naturalistic explanations. Chapter 4 concerns the question whether, even absent any specific naturalistic explanation, we can discount the ‘theistic explanation’ (that TME’s are caused by God in such a way as to count as evidence for His existence) on methodological grounds. Chapter 5 is devoted to two specific types of scientific explanations, one sociological, the other neurophysiological.

A methodology – even a scientific methodology – that preemptively rules out theistic explanations of TME’s is, I think we should agree, ill considered. If we take it to be among the core enterprises of explanation (and of science) to map out the causes of things, then ruling out theistic explanation a priori just amounts to ruling, on conceptual grounds, that God could not be the cause of anything (in the world). Here we return, to be sure, to the conceptual challenge posed by Gale. Theists do owe us, at the very least, some detailed metaphysical account of just how an atemporal/aspatial being could causally interact with the world, and some detailed empirical hypotheses about how God actually does interact (in this case) with the mental states of mystics.

This brings us to scientific approaches to mystical experience. There are two questions here: 1) Can current science offer anything close to plausible explanations of ME’s?; and 2) Do such explanations rule out or make implausible God’s playing a role in the etiology of TME’s—specifically, the kind of role that would permit TME’s to count as veridical God-perceptions?

In previous work, I have proposed that current work in sociology and neurophysiology brings us within striking distance of a good naturalistic understanding of mysticism. Studies by the anthropologist I.M. Lewis have shown a close and intelligible connection in pre-industrial societies between the incidence of religious ecstasy and the need of individuals and groups to legitimate claims made upon the larger society. This pattern appears whether the experiences are ‘theistic’ or not, whether they involve spirits, demons, or gods, whether they are extrasensory or sensory, and whether they involve spirit possession, soul-projection, or other means of achieving intimate contact with supernatural realities. [1] It is not difficult to show that essentially the same pattern can be applied to mysticism in the Medieval and Reformation periods in Europe. Moreover, it appears that Lewis’ analysis can, with some natural modifications, be extended to cover much mysticism of the sorts found in industrial societies.

However, it appears to leave out of account ‘private mysticism,’ the personal – and often unbidden – experiences of ordinary individuals for whom ME’s appear not to function in social negotiations. Rather little is known here: for one thing, the existing studies typically tell us little or nothing about the life histories and social circumstances of subjects. Be that as it may, the natural place to look for an explanation of these is to neurophysiology; and considerable progress has been made on that front. Neurophysiology is, after all, hardly an after-thought or party crasher here: presumably, such experiences have a physiological basis.

Gellman faults this sort of approach on several grounds. First, against the sociological explanation, he presents the histories of four mystics who allegedly do not fit Lewis’ pattern. Here I must confine myself to three remarks. First, very little is known of the lives of at least three of the mystics Gellman offers in evidence. [2] Second, what is known is certainly open to differing interpretations. Third, a few exceptions count for very little in disconfirming Lewis’ theory, especially in view of the availability of neurophysiological explanations of private mysticism. Still, Gellman is quite right to raise the question, and we may hope that further scholarship will clarify the question how successful the sociological approach is.

According to Lewis, mystics must dance a delicate line between pressing their social agendas with effective vigor, and being so aggressive as to garner rebuke rather than reward. During the Reformation, this was true in excelcis for female religious, who were even more socially marginalized than married women. The Church had a deep – and of course justified – suspicion of women mystics, and those who pushed too hard or were not rhetorically adroit enough regularly suffered severe consequences. Gellman sees this as evidence against Lewis; but it seems to me rather to support his view.

Finally, we should consider whether the sociological and neurophysiological accounts can be accommodated to a theistic understanding of God-perceptions as veridical. A familiar difficulty, of course, is posed by diversity: TME’s are not only various, but often have incompatible content. But setting that aside, could Gellman show that the neurophysiological explanation is compatible with the supposition that God makes Himself known in TME’s? After all, we should expect there to be some substratum of brain processes that underlies mystical phenomenology. Why not suppose that the entrained brain mechanisms are set in motion by God, and designed by Him as an organ for perceiving Him?

Trouble comes from several directions. First, we have every reason to expect that nontheistic ME’s (including possessions, visions, and the like) will entrain essentially the same basic mechanisms, independently of culture. Second, the mechanisms that have been proposed help to explain why the cognitive content of ME’s will be culture-bound. Third, we can in many cases give good explanations of how ME’s are triggered in terms of physical causes: drugs, percussive sounds, sensory deprivation, and, in some instances, onset of certain mental illnesses. Fourth, it appears that the brain mechanisms that produce ME’s do not have this as their primary, or even normal, function. These and other considerations might lead us to wonder why God – who presumably could simply bypass brain processes and communicate directly with a human mind – would devise a means of communication so problematic and subject to infirmity. One hopes that Gellman’s excellent, but too brief, discussion of the neurophysiological approach will someday be expanded by him into a fuller discussion of these questions.

Gellman’s final chapter considers critiques from feminist quarters. He rightly rejects those that would dispense with or relativize such central epistemic concepts as those of evidence, rationality, and objectivity. He concludes by considering a theological complaint: that the theistic God, conceived in terms of masculine imagery, is complicit in the marginalization of women. Gellman responds with two interesting proposals. The first (in two versions) offers conceptions of the idea of the imitatio dei that attempt to neutralize the gender biases in human practices inspired by a male deity. The second proposal conceives God’s nature as being so distinctive that, in the relevant respects (e.g., power), God is not to be imitated. Both proposals are theologically engaging, though only indirectly related to the main epistemological project of the book.

Gellman’s book addresses many of the issues currently central to discussion of the epistemic import of mystical experience and, as I’ve indicated, touches upon several other significant matters as well. This lively new contribution to the growing literature on the epistemology of religious experience will give all of us who are interested in the ongoing debates much food for further thought.