The Epistemology of Religious Experience.
Mystical experience poses severe problems for empirical research.
In addition to the difficulties in determining when we have a case thereof, it is something that cannot be induced at the will of the researcher and so is not amenable to experiment. Attempts to get around this by substituting drug-induced analogues are of little value, since it is an open question whether findings concerning these analogs can be extrapolated to spontaneous cases. Hence the data are subject to all the well-known problems that attach to such reports. It is not surprising that theories like those of Freud, Marx, and Durkheim rest on a slender thread of evidential support and generalize irresponsibly from such evidence as they can muster. Nor do the prospects seem rosy for significant improvement.