Stringent federal laws that now make it nearly impossible to do research with psychedelic drugs in the United States have effectively foreclosed the further investigations that would help to clarify the complex processes involved. The fundamentalists have presumably set their sights on heaven instead, and take the fate of the earth to be in God's hands. In those for whom the sense of transcendence is strong we find a rather different attitude. Among the predictable characteristics of mystical experience are a sense of the sacredness of all life and a desire to establish a new, more harmonious relation with nature and with other human beings. There is a corresponding renunciation of the various expressions of self-seeking, including the ethos of manipulation and control.
Mystical experience is manifest in a great many forms, some of which are of rather doubtful value.
Some psychologists of religion treat mystical experience as an optional element of religion, a potential correlate of one or another way of being religious. For others, however, the mystical attitude is the defining feature of religion, whatever tradition or individual forms it may take. Construed broadly enough to encompass Otto's mysterium , or Smith's sense of transcendence, mystical experience must be considered essential to any living religious faith or tradition. Those for whom the phrase is misleading or otherwise problematical may wish to substitute another, much as Maslow felt compelled to do. What is crucial is not what we call this dimension of experience but that it be adequately taken into account.