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A psychoanalytic investigation of mystic states meets considerable obstacles. All mystics tell us that one of the characteristics of their experience is its incommunicability. Some of the most famous mystics claim that the absolute truth revealed to them can be described only in negatives. Dionysius the Areopagite, who is considered the fountain-head of Christian mysticism says: “The cause of all things (as revealed in mystic states) is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion, or reason, or intelligence; nor is it reason or intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought. It is neither number, nor order, nor magnitude, nor littleness, nor equality, nor inequality, nor similarity, nor dissimilarity. It neither stands, nor moves, nor rests … It is neither essence, nor eternity, nor time. Even intellectual contact does not belong to it. It is neither science nor truth. It is not even royalty or wisdom; not one, not unity; nor divinity or goodness; nor even spirit as we know it,” etc. ad libitum.2 The famous German mystic Jakob Boehme says: “It may fitly be compared to Nothing, for it is deeper than any Thing, and is as nothing with respect to all things, forasmuch as it is not comprehensible by any of them. And because it is nothing respectively, it is therefore free from all things, and is that only good, which a man cannot express or utter what it is, there being nothing to which it may be compared, to express it by.”3 And Angelus Silesius, my favorite mystic, says: “Gott ist ein lautes Nichts, ihn ruehrt kein Nun noch Hier; Je mehr du nach ihm greifst, je mehr entwind er dir.”4 (God is pure Nothingness, neither Now nor Here can touch him; The more you try to grasp him, the more he vanishes before you.) If we add to this that mystic states are very transient and that they often condition a temporary loss