Attempting to Communicate the Ineffable: An Autoethnographic Approach to Mysticism

     My first mystical experience occurred in childhood, although at the time I did not yet have the tools to categorize and understand the experience for what it was. It was a moment of profound revelation that, even in my still-developing mind, was able to wash over me and hold me in a way that was both foreign and familiar to me. I will relate this first mystical experience but know that my feelings then fall in step with “the trance-like states of insight … which all religious mystics report,” and there exists a poverty of language where syntax falls short of capturing my state of being in that moment.

 

     I am lying in my childhood bedroom on Ferndale Road, the bedroom with the red carpeting. I am having trouble falling asleep. I imagine a farm with vast plains, rolling hills, and wind that blows through the grass. On this farm sits a red barn with double doors and white trim. In a repetitive pattern that resembles the exercise of “counting sheep,” I begin to take note of all things on this farm until I am relaxed enough to sink to a state of soft slumber. “A pig with a big round belly that is soft-pink in color,” “a wooden fence that traces the farm’s perimeter,” “a farmer in a straw hat, denim overalls, and a plaid flannel … there is a piece of hay hanging out the side of his mouth …”

     Suddenly, I am overwhelmed with an unsettling sense of fragility. I am all-too aware that there is me. There is only me. There is only one of me, a single Rachel Pinti on this earth with this body and this mind. How frightening to think that there is no “do over” for my very existence on this planet.

     Then, just as suddenly, I am immersed in a state of absolute comfort, as if I were embraced by something warm, something dear, something like home. In that moment, that frightening sense of dark isolation met the beaming light of knowledge that there is me. There is only one of me, a single Rachel Pinti on this earth with this body and this mind. I am Rachel. Oh, how God must love me, that He made His one and only Rachel.

     Now, all things are One.

 

     I cannot remember the events immediately following this experience, although I assume I slept soundly that night. Very clearly, I remember my experience on that night was ineffable, one that I could not begin to describe to any listening ear. I kept that night a secret for myself only to try and recreate the circumstances of this experience as I aged, like some sort of science experiment I could repeat for patterned results. I envisioned the farm and other similar settings on several nights. I tried to focus myself, to concentrate during my family’s long drives to visit our extended family in Ohio. I thought of other animals—perhaps a mighty tiger would conjure the same feeling that the big-bellied pig did. But, alas, never in my life have I achieved the sensation that that particular mystical experience brought me. Virginia Woolf writes about a similar moment in her childhood, a recognition of “self,” and the lasting impression it leaves: “I am hardly aware of myself, but only of the sensation. I am only the container of the feeling of ecstasy, of the feeling of rapture. Perhaps this is characteristic of all childhood memories; perhaps it accounts for their strength.” Indeed—it sustains itself a powerful memory to me.

     My second mystical experience happened on March 1, 2022, on the move-in date for my new apartment in the city of Buffalo. During this time, I was dealing with a number of stressors that went beyond my life as a worker and as a college student. My mother had just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, had just lost her job, and her sister, my aunt, was about to lose a long battle to cancer herself. My roommate—my longest friend from elementary school whom I will refer to as “Anne” for this paper—and I were unable to renew our previous lease due to property damage caused by Anne’s pet, a rescue dog with severe separation anxiety. At the time, Anne had a boyfriend who seemed to intimidate and sexually target me and my then-girlfriend, whom I will call “Jane” in this paper. Jane had just experienced a tragedy of her own. I will relate the night of this second mystical experience, one that occurred during a time of intense anxiety and despair. Around 11 p.m., after moving in and hauling furniture to the new home, Anne and Jane offered me edible cannabis. I consumed about ½ of the gummy. As with my first experience, no words accurately capture what transpired.

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     I am in my brand-new apartment. It has cavernous 12-foot ceilings and dark woodwork. I am sitting on the couch beside Jane, my girlfriend. Anne, my best friend and roommate, is sitting before us on the matching ottoman. Jane and Anne are clearly stoned. They move lethargically and look on with heavy-lidded eyes. At first, the effects of this edible are bringing me to some unique state of humor. My thoughts are alert and quick, like I am bringing hilarious insight to the mundane occurrences of life. I am pleased to know that Jane and Anne find me so funny right now.

     In this moment, I am becoming increasingly aware that my thoughts are moving faster than my mouth can spit out jokes. I envision a scene from The Incredibles (2004) where the character Dash, gifted with the superpower of speed, is running through a jungle and away from the bad guys. He is coming up on a large body of water. He recognizes it is vast, open, something that will sink him, yet he cannot stop running. I am amused with myself, amused that I am imagining this scene from an animated movie made for children. I try explaining to Anne that my inability to keep up with my own thoughts reminds me of this scene she ought to remember.

     I start to speak and realize I cannot string together a coherent sentence. I am so overcome with the embarrassment of my own physical ineptitude that suddenly I am overcome with sadness. I am distressed. Unlike Dash who finds he is moving so fast that he can run on the water, I am sinking into it.

     Then, my thoughts reverse. I remember that I am high and that was a silly thought.

     Then, my thoughts reverse. I remember that I cannot keep up with myself. I think, “Have I ever been able to keep up with myself? All this thinking I do, all this talking I do, and I cannot say with certainty that I am a girl.”

     I remember that I am high and I think that was a silly thought.

     Then, again, I remember that I cannot keep up with myself. I start to attack or antagonize my own self in that moment. I think that I am something pathetic, something unable to perform. I am reminded of all the times I could not perform, of the times I fell short as a partner, a lover, a friend, a sister, a daughter.

     A daughter. I’m crying.

     While I cannot speak sensibly, these thoughts are so intense and so powerful that my facial expressions are changing at a rapid-fire pace that Anne would later describe to me as “cartoonish.” Smile. Frown. Laugh. Cry. Weep. Deep and breathless weeping.

     I cover my teary face with my palms, desperately grasping for the sentence, the signal, something that might tell my two loved ones there that I need help. I rip my hands from my face and feverishly look back-and-forth between Anne and Jane.

     Anne. My longest friend, Anne. In this moment, she looks intensely beautiful. Her concerned gaze is so penetrating that it illuminates the state of emergency I am in. She rests a hand on my arm.

     Jane. My lover, Jane. I do not like looking at her right now. Her stoned face and heavy eyes make her look apathetic. Jesus, does she not get it? Why doesn’t she get it? She is not coming close to meeting me where I am and … oh … I don’t think she will. I find her frightening. Her face doesn’t look like hers anymore. Jane is now a stranger to me, one with a demonic expression that seems to be the antithesis of Anne’s rescuing and angelic look.

     Something reaches inside me and takes hold of my heart with a white-knuckle grip. There are flames in my chest cavity. I am in so much physical pain that I am now writhing on the couch. It feels like there is something within me so large that my body cannot contain it and, God, if it were not for this skin and these bones, I could just be free.

     It is as if God and the Devil are at war within me. Good versus Evil, and I am powerlessly standing inside myself as a bystander to these titans.

     I look to Anne in desperation. Certain words uncontrollably fall from my lips. I recite them to her in a way that feels more like they originated from reflex than from thought, a way of speaking in tongue: “Anne, I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I would do anything for you, you know that? I love you. I love you so much. You’re my best friend in this whole world. Do you think I’ll make it? Am I going to make it? Tell me I can get through this, please. Please. Please.” She assures me I will see this through.

     My back arches and I yell out with great force. With all my weight on my feet and my head, I look out the window and into the apartment building next to mine. I have an upside-down view of the window next store, the one with the light on. I hope my neighbor sees me. I hope she comes over to rescue me.

     My chest is so tight and the pain so excruciating that I think I need to be taken to the hospital. I’m afraid I might die. This war in me is so much bigger than I can handle, and all I can do is watch from within.

     Then, suddenly, I have an outer body experience. This is the climax of it all. I am standing over my body. I see myself lying on the couch between Anne and Jane.

     I see light shine from my eyes and my mouth in ray-like beams.

     I sit up. The terrifying thought weighs on me that I witnessed a war between God and the Devil, and God lost. Goodness lost. Light was expelled from my own body. It came out of me. I think that if I made it this far, and God lost, I do not want what is next.

     My mom will know what to do.

     I call my mom around 1 a.m. I tell her about the gummy, about Anne and Jane, and that I need her help. She is a nurse and suggests I eat something to expedite the digestion of the drug. She’s right. I need this to pass.

     Anne brings me a bagel with peanut butter. My first bite and the bagel hardly seems edible. I chew it over and over but cannot seem to make it the consistency soft enough for me to swallow. I spit it out onto myself, in a way that Anne would later share “reminded her of an infant.” I take another bite hoping this try is successful.

     “Oh … that’s right … goodness left me. There is only evil left,” I think. I am overwhelmed imagining that within me there is an evil invader. My mind foreshadows a reality where I swallow the bagel and choke on it, the works of the invader to kill my own self. I spit out the bagel again and tell my mother I cannot eat it. I need her to come to me.

     Mom assures me that she is on her way. Seeing the time tick by on the phone call helps anchor me to reality. I know we live 30 minutes apart. The work of Evil in me makes me think that I am hallucinating this phone call. I worry mom will never come. I ask her repeatedly: “Where are you? What road are you on?”

     Finally, when I thought this whole time that my mind and my body were at odds, that I was unable to keep up, I can hear my mom’s footsteps outside the door at the same time I am hearing them on my phone.

     This call was real. Thank God, this call was real.

     In beautiful unison, I hear my mom open the door, the sound echoes through my phone, and thank God I can see her face. I can see her. She is here.

     “Jane, Anne, you see her, right? She is real?”

     “Yes, Rachel, your mom is here,” they say.

     When my mom arrives, Jane and Anne go to the bedrooms to sleep. I ask my mom to stay there with me, to hold me, until this wears off.

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     For days after, I was empty and in some severe depressive state. I could no longer listen to music, nor sit with the lights on. While I understood I was coming down from an intense high, I took seriously the deep-rooted fear that that would be my mindset from thereon out. I really believed that Good lost to Evil that night, and it felt as if goodness was no longer a part of me.

     I discussed these feelings with my father and with one of my professors in the Religious Studies Department at Niagara University. Each in their own way helped me to process the mystical experience. I took away the following:

1. In that battle, Goodness did not lose to Evil. Light was not expelled from my body leaving only darkness behind; rather, light erupted through me in a state of climactic ecstasy. Pure relief came over me, and the knowledge that I needed more help. It brought with it the good sense to call on my mother.

2. While the second mystical experience was more intense and more bodily than the first, I ought to keep in mind the revelation of my first experience. This happened to me. There is only one of me, a single Rachel Pinti on this earth with this body and this mind. No one there understood that night. No sentence, no signal, nothing could capture my encounter with something beyond us, something cosmic, something divine.

     As I worked to understand these experiences further, I conducted autoethnographic research intended to explore beyond the boundaries of empirical logic, setting my work in dialogue with the writings of psychologist William James, a pioneering figure in the modern discourse on mysticism. James writes of the compelling nature of those “feelings of reality … [which] are as convincing to those who have them as any direct sensible experiences can be, and … much more convincing than results established by mere logic ever are … [if you] have them at all strongly, the probability is that you cannot help regarding them as genuine perceptions of truth.” Through sculpture, music, writing, and arts-based data analysis of autoethnography, I examined the phenomenon of losing control and total self-surrender to a higher, spiritual power. My work explored communicating spirituality through art. Where words failed to capture my religious encounter, I hoped to create an experiential mixed-media presentation that helped bridge such a communication gap.