How Plato and Jung Explain Mystical Experience

Dropping the veil

It was a normal, average cloudy day in the early spring. I can’t remember clearly how it began. Trying to recall it brings a slight unease, like a dream that quickly fades upon waking. I do know that I suddenly dropped behind my thoughts and sensory experience. It was a state that I had never before experienced and had longed for. Writing about it seems unjust, as in painting a gorgeous landscape, while being painfully aware that you cannot capture her beauty, nor will your skill ever be sufficient to do so. I will therefore focus on one specific moment when I took a walk around the block, which occurred at the end of my mystical experience.

I was plunged into a state of non-duality. I was beyond sadness or happiness. I didn’t feel full or empty. You could call it bliss, but it was something beyond words altogether—I was. I remember looking at my phone and thinking, it had been two hours, which I knew was a long time for a mystical state to last. For the first time in my life, I was able to shut off my internal self-talk at will. This is one of the greatest skills any human being can master, but few practice it, and even fewer master it.

And as I walked, I gazed at the trees, the people, the cars driving by, and felt the touch of something far deeper. I was, and felt all-powerful. I could make roses suddenly grow from the grass, lift trees from the earth, let two cars crash, if I wanted to. But with this realized power of knowing all things, where they stem from, what they really are, came a desire-less state. I therefore did not test my power. Why would I? I was no longer interested in the senses, because I knew the nature of all things, and I saw through their mirage. What are roses, trees, humans, but shadows of a deeper, truer, and more beautiful reality.

Saying I was experiencing something is inaccurate, for there was no longer a self. Another insight that struck me was that suffering was nothing but an illusion. Not illusory in the sense that suffering doesn’t exist, but of its dreamlike quality. Similar to having a nightmare, you suffer, but on awakening, you realize it was an illusion. All suffering on this planet I knew to be that. And all my own striving, worrying, and trying to control were completely unnecessary. I wanted to understand this experience, so I turned my attention to philosophy, or love of wisdom, as Socrates once said. I felt it was this discipline that at least should be able to interpret and make some sense of such an experience. There are four primary qualities of a mystical experience: ²

1. Ineffability: meaning the mystical experience is negative in the sense that it cannot be expressed through ordinary means of communication and can therefore only be directly experienced.

2. Noetic quality: although being very subjective—in the sense of being a more of a feeling-based experience—these states are also reported as being states of knowledge, some would even say ultimate knowledge.

3. Transiency: it is very rare for mystical states to last longer than two hours, and when faded, the quality of the experience can only be imperfectly reproduced, yet recurrence is usually recognized.

4. Passivity: the agent self rarely does, or kindles an awakening experience himself, but it is rather felt that a superior power outside him who is responsible for the experience; this is of course because during a mystical experience the normal self is lost fully, or at least partially.

What follows are four ways of interpreting my mystical experience: religion, fantasy, philosophy, and psychology. These perspectives are analogous, but not synonymous with each other, and the comparisons I draw should therefore be taken cautiously. They are not arguments about the true nature of reality, but attempts to interpret an experience. As Lao Tse said: “Those who know the truth do not argue about it; those who argue about it do not know the truth. A mystical experience is so rare, beautiful, and tender that to analyze it would be to break it, like cutting up a flower to know its essence. The only way to understand a mystical experience is to look at the flower itself.

The Ceramic versus the Drama model of the universe

A mystical experience is inherently mysterious, but some of it can be explained… Alan Watts differentiates between the Ceramic model and the drama model of the universe. ⁴ The ceramic model states that the universe is created, like a potter who makes a pot. ‘’God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”⁵ Meaning that a person, when he is God, should be able to do what God can do. So, when Jesus said: I and the Father are one.”⁶ It meant that he had the power of God and could therefore walk over water, heal people, and, should he desire it, turn bread into gold.

The Drama model of the universe is quite different. This Hinduistic view entails that God (Brahma) is playing hide and seek with himself. Brahma dispersed himself into pieces and so created the universe. These individual things are all consciousness, whether rock, plant, or animal. They are part of Lila. A term that portrays the world as a theater where all the different parts, whether humans, trees, or crystals, are all Brahman who no longer realize their true nature. Without forgetfulness, God could not play such a game. When someone in India says they are God, meaning they have realized they are Brahman, it does not mean that they could turn bread into gold or walk on water. Rather, it means they have realized that they are a mask, someone merely playing that they are not God.

My intuitive experience incorporated both views of the universe. On the one hand, I felt I had ultimate power, and I felt reality to be nothing but an illusion. This dichotomy, and tension between these models, and my intuitions are left to be resolved. It seems that the Drama model can incorporate the Ceramic model in its view, yet this is not possible the other way around. This is because in the ceramic model God stands outside of the universe and creates it, while in the drama model God expresses itself as the universe.

So, if the ceramic model is true, then the drama model is false. But if the Drama model is true, the ceramic model can still exist, because then God is pretending while being inside the universe that he isn’t there, and that ‘god’ is somewhere outside of the universe. Again, Brahma playing hide and seek with himself in one marvelous and profound play. I therefore prefer the Drama model. Yet, I soon realized that other interpretations were possible, and I came across one of them almost by accident in the literature of fantasy.

True Names

A mystical experience melts away either fully or to some extent the illusion of a separate self with a name, identity, body, etc. The easiest way to understand human identity is to focus on the names we give each other and the things around us. Naming is a unique quality of human beings. When one identifies with a name, it begins to shape one’s behavior almost immediately. When someone calls himself a teacher, American, or politician, one’s behavior usually changes to match the nature of the name and tends not to contradict it.

Mary and John are powerful names, not because of their sound, but because they refer to a story. and stories, as Rothfuss said, make us what we are: "You see, there’s a fundamental connection between seeming and being. (…) We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be. (…) It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” ⁷

During a mystical experience, the story of the self can fall away entirely as something deeper arises from within. It sheds light on our story, and we begin to see that our identity is only a kind of pretending, a mask beside the truth of our real Self. When we no longer depend on thoughts, words, or sounds, our smaller self ceases to exist. We become awareness without a subject, and somehow get to know who we really are. And if the self is seen as constructed, it raises the question whether the world we perceive is equally constructed. This idea of true names has been around for eons. It states that all things have a true name, that are somehow the essence of what the thing is, and knowing it grants some degree of power over that specific thing. Rothfuss captures this idea well:

‘’Blue.“ What do you mean by blue? Describe it.”I struggled for a moment, failed. “So blue is a name?”“It is a word. Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man’s will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself” ⁹

During my experience, I not only felt my divine essence, but also knew the names of Roses, Trees, and even Causation itself. As if I understood them directly. The objects around me appeared as shadows of something more real. True Names cannot be perceived or taught through the senses, which is what makes the experience ineffable. And when we go back further in time, we see another similar interpretation ‘’Plato himself as we shall see later talks about shadows. Plato defended the idea that our experience of the sensible world is nothing but a copy, an appearance, made on the basis of immutable entities, which we cannot perceive through the senses” ¹º

Plato’s cave

In the Republic, Plato discusses his famous allegory of the cave. Here, a group of people have lived chained to the wall of a cave from their childhood, where they face a blank wall. There, they watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them. Together, they give names to these shadows. These shadows become the prisoners’ reality, but they are not the real representations of the world. The fragmented reality of the shadows is an analogy of our sensory experience—that is, the prisoners’ reality. The true reality, however, lies outside of the cave, away from the shadows, the objects under the sun, which are the forms. This is then the goal of philosophy, according to Plato, to break the chains, go outside the cave, and know the forms.

People, however, are stuck in the cave, blinded by the shadows. ‘’Do you suppose, first of all, that these prisoners see anything of themselves and one another besides the shadows that the fire casts on the wall in front of them?’’ ¹² Plato, 515C.  It seems thus that the idea of finding a true reality underlying or being transcendental to this superficial reality is not only present in modern thought, but can be traced back even to the ancient Greece period from BCE. Plato, however, did not think, or at least explicitly stated, that knowing these forms gave you any direct power over them; it is merely that the shadows are an expression of the true form, and knowing this is the goal of philosophy. His aim was not power, but seeing reality as it truly is and living a good life.

And after the prisoner left the cave, the philosopher is forced to tread the path back towards the shadows in the cave. There, he must then dispel the ignorance of others and help them understand the forms and true nature of the world. This can be compared to the transience of a mystical experience. Unlike Plato’s structured ascent, a mystical experience cannot be controlled, and one must inevitably return to ordinary consciousness. I, too, felt confounded at the end of my experience. I had glimpsed and tasted something way beyond this world, and if the choice was up to me, I would have stayed there. Plato points out that the enlightened man is blinded by the light outside of the cave, and upon returning, is inept in counting the shadows.

This can explain why some people who undergo such shifts in consciousness struggle to function in ordinary life. Because they can no longer move through the world like they used to, and are blind for a while. It took me a long time to restore my connection with the world and get back into the normal rhythm of life. It is thus that I am not totally positive about my experience, nor do I think the mystical experience should be pursued without caution. For there is a high price to be paid in gaining knowledge, and it brings more uncertainty than certainty due to the quality of the experience. But is a mystical experience, or the cave allegory just a fabrication of one’s own mind? Or the opposite: getting to know a deeper, truer reality than this one. And perhaps they are the same thing. Exiting the cave could also point to something symbolic and an internal process, what Carl Jung called: the process of individuation.

The collective unconscious

One of the most influential ideas from the past century is the collective unconscious from Carl Jung. Our conscious mind is what we’re aware off our name, story, personality. But there are deeper parts of you, which are unconscious and often conflicting. When not brought into the light, these unconscious parts can rule our life. The collective unconscious is a shared deeper layer that each person carries and contains the archetypes (universal primordial images and ideas). Plato’s goal was direct knowledge of the Forms; Jung states that we’ll never be able to know these archetypes directly and can only experience their shadows. We can only know the archetypes indirectly, such as through symbols, dreams, and feelings.

Jung was inspired by Plato as he ‘’correlates the archetype with Plato’s ideal forms – it’s like a matrix, a certain willingness, our disposition to think and feel a certain way. And archetypes refer not only to our forms of knowledge but also to our forms of feeling, responding, and behavior, covering all our mental ways of life, starting from the bodily, from the instinctive foundations, and ending with spiritual manifestations.” ¹³ From this perspective, my mystical experience can be understood as a direct encounter with the unconscious, while the interpretations that followed were expressions of archetypal forces arising within me, and are not true knowledge, but shadows of truth. This suggests that mystical experiences may be both noetic and illusory at the same time.

Another differentiation between Jung and Plato is that Jung saw archetypes as shaping the psyche, while Plato saw Forms as external realities. Yet, both agree that they’re something beyond the individual being alone. Forms cannot seize or possess us in the way archetypes can. Archetypes, therefore, offer a stronger explanation for the passive quality of the mystical experience. This aligns with Plato’s more structured ascent toward the light, while Jung points to a more intuitive descent into the depths. We identify with the conscious mind, not the unconscious, from which the mystical experience seems to arise. Making the unconscious conscious is called the process of individuation, the gradual integration of conscious and unconscious elements into a more whole and unified Self. It is thus that we can come to the strange conclusion that a mystical experience, by annihilating the ego, may strengthen the Self.

The return

It is vital to bring something back from any inner or outer journey. Without this, the experience risks losing its value. Yet, when confronted with so many interpretations of mystical experience, it becomes difficult to determine the true nature and purpose. But perhaps that is not the point. Perhaps it is enough to admit that we do not fully understand what happens in such state, and that we never will. If anything, these experiences awaken the mystery within us and remind us that we are part of it.

This may be an important lesson for our modern world. Through science and technology, many truths are now at our fingertips. We no longer need to wonder how far away the moon is, what happens on the other side of the planet, or how trees grow. And yet, something is lost. It is in the moments of awe when we look up at the midnight sky or hear a bird sing that we wonder. And it is in that humility of ignorance that a different kind of wisdom may be found.

Footnotes

1. Tao te Ching, Lao Tse

2. The Tragedy of the Self, Sangiacomo, A., 2023, University of Groningen Press

3. meaning to be able to be scientifically proven, therefore distilled from all subjectivity, and tenable

4. Alan Watts’ ‘Dramatic Model’ and the Pursuit of Peace, Bennett, J., 2015, Self and Society, 43(4), 335–344

5. English Standard Version Bible, Genesis 2:7

6. English Standard Version Bible, John 10:30

7. The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

8. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 10: Civilization in Transition, Jung, C. G., 1970, Princeton University Press

9. The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

10. The Tragedy of the Self, Sangiacomo, A., 2023, University of Groningen Press

11. Complete Works, Plato, 1997, Hackett Publishing, 997, 514a–515a

12. Complete Works,, Plato, 515C

13. Jung’s Most Controversial Idea: What Is the Collective Unconscious?, Sus, V., 2023, TheCollector