I don’t know what conventional mystics experience in ecstatic visionary states, but I assume these experiences are related to psychedelic experiences.

In my limited experience, psychedelic experiences were intensely meaningful in ways that are nearly impossible to talk about. Although I did experience vivid visions in that state, I was never terribly fascinated by the visions themselves nor in the question concerning the ontological status of the mysterious noumena. At the time, my strong unexamined inclination was to take them as imaginary, and not to attribute any kind of real existence to them.

I prefer to phenomenologically bracket visions, and approach them phenomenologically. I am most concerned with the significance of the ineffable meaning. I am interested in the genus of this meaning, the question of why this meaning is ineffable, and how we may relate ourselves to it.

Maybe my other conceptual commitments preserve themselves through this attitude and this field of relevance. But my gut tells me that this focus will bear fruit. This doesn’t exactly put me at cross-purposes with traditional mysticism, but it does put me at what could be described as a parallel purpose.