ABSTRACT
Receptivity to a mystical experience (ME) is not characterised for any person by a wide-open highway where there are no obstacles. The nature of a ME and Jung's numinous experience in terms of its psychoanalytic significance is that it essentially creates something new that has a particular form. The potential for rejection is contained within the overwhelming experience; a ME always has an element of fear. There are many barriers to the reception of a ME, both from consciously held views and from unconscious resistance. When a ME is directed to its relationship with the ego, its purpose is to change the ego's sole identification with its normal primary object – ego consciousness. The attribution of an experience to the divine offers an immediate and convenient framework that is complicated by alterative religious doctrines and can channel the impact of what has occurred.
