ABSTRACT
The word was used in connection with the rituals of initiation into Greek mystery religions, and the word “mystery” is said to be derived from it. Mysticism shares many concepts with the religious mysteries of the ancients, primarily the effort of the individual to achieve union with a universal being. That mysticism has prevailed widely and still does, both in historical times and in geographical space, encourages us to infer that both its visible manifestations and the unconscious mental processes that underlie the visible are represented fairly uniformly in mankind. It will be even more interesting if, apprehending what these unconscious determining mental processes are; we can establish relations between mysticism and other behaviours that share these processes. What are the things that we would wish to know about mysticism or about the individual varieties of mysticism that we shall encounter here—that is, what are its dimensions?
