Over 120 years since “The Father of American Psychology,” William James, wrote Varieties of Religious Experience, mysticism remains on the periphery, as psychology recovers from an imbalance toward pathology. Mainstream theory and therapies have done incredibly well at mapping the shadow. Much less attention is paid to the light, the potent force known as the superconscious.
There’s an understandable tentativeness when psychology enters so-called spiritual territory. The stumbling block with integrating the superconscious is its metaphysical associations. Mysticism, the idea that union with the divine is an experiential possibility, contradicts the dominant ideology of materialism.