t off mystical states from other
states?

The words "mysticism" and "mystical" are often used as terms of mere
reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and
sentimental, and without a base in either facts or logic. For some
writers a "mystic" is any person who believes in thought-transference,
or spirit-return. Employed in this way the word has little value:
there are too many less ambiguous synonyms. So, to keep it useful by
restricting it, I will do what I did in the case of the word
"religion," and simply propose to you four marks which, when an
experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical for the
purpose of the present lectures. In this way we shall save verbal
disputation, and the recriminations that generally go therewith.

1. Ineffability.--The handiest of the marks by which I classify a
state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately
says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents
can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be
directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others.
In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling
than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who
has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it
consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony;
one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of
mind. Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or
the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or
absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an
equally incompetent treatment.

2. Noetic quality.--Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical
states seem to those who experience them to be also states of
knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed
by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full
of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain;
and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for
after-time.

These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in
the sense in which I use the word. Two other qualities are less
sharply marked, but are usually found. These are:--

3. Transiency.--Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except
in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour o