As an human experience, _mysticism_ is beyond reason. An association with _unity_ and _love_ complicates it to become one of the Inadequate World Hypotheses. Mysticism is criticized for its Inadequacies in World Hypotheses, on grounds of Scope and Precision, specifically due to _inadequate scope_.
> ยง4. _The mystic world hypothesis, an example of inadequate scope_.
> Here we begin with a very impressive immediate fact, the mystic experience, a fact that is never lost sight of and never apologized for, a fact that is as certain as a fact can be. > * But the certainty of this fact is so intense that it undertakes to absorb the whole universe within it. Where it does not plausibly succeed, it denounces the unsubmissive "facts" as unreal; and, since there are many of these, it spreads unreality far and wide. > As _the_ philosophy of unity and love, it is the most destructive of all world theories in cognition and finally destroys itself by the very intensity of its desire for unity and peace. [p. 127, editorial paragraphing added]
Pepper chooses William James' selections in his _The Varieties of Religious Experience (1928)_ for analysis. The feelings are reduced into two categories.
> These seven points are a rough statement of the categories of mysticism. For convenience they may be reduced to two: > * (I) the revelatory, beatific, emotional quality which is the ultimate ground of all evidence (1, 2, 3, and 4), and > * (II) principles of reduction by means of which all other apparent evidence is reduced to the ultimate ground (5, 6, and 7).
Pepper first takes the case of a mystic who isn't doing the deep philosophical dive.
> Now, hypothetically, a mystic need not be a metaphysician. He might have and enjoy his experience and make no cognitive claims for it beyond his having had it and enjoyed it. As such, it would be like any intense emotional experience -- like being absorbed in a sunset, thrilled with a piece of music, or in love with a girl. [...] > But a typical mystic would resent the implications of the previous paragraph. > * For him, the distinctive characteristic of the mystic experience is that it does make a cognitive claim -- a superlative cognitive claim, in fact, which is never rescinded. > * The mystic himself, of course, does not make the claim. > * It is not a claim on the grounds of arbitrary authority, or any other authority in the manner of animism. > * The mystic simply reports the claim which the experience itself reveals. > * The stronger the experience the stronger the claim, and in the apical form of the experience (which in our terms would be the mature root metaphor of the theory)the claim becomes unique and cancels out all other cognitive claims whatsoever. > The revelation of the experience is the truth (or The Truth), and all other cognitive claims are completely or partly false, apparent, and unreal. > This, here, is the stand of the unsystematic metaphysical mystic. [p. 131, editorial paragraphing added]
Then Pepper takes the case of a mystic who tries to fix the metaphilosophy.
> But some mystics, like Plotinus, have had a philosophical bent and have tried to give a systematic account of the world in terms of their insight. > * These are the systematic metaphysical mystics. > * These men assume the absolute credibility of the experience. > * But they have a cognitive curiosity to know how this indubitable experience is connected with the ordinary "facts" of the world. > There is, moreover, a practical utility in developing such a world theory as a means of showing common men how they may proceed from common "facts" to the truth. > The immediate temptation here is to deny outright the reality of all "facts" except the one mystic Fact. > * There is also an aesthetic delight in such wholesale destruction through the possession of an inner secret. [p. 131, editorial paragraphing added]
An emotional theory of truth with _love_ as the root metaphor is inadequate for reality of the world.
> ... we may venture to describe the typical structure of the mystic world hypothesis as follows: The ordinary common "fact" of the root metaphor is the common emotion of love. > * This emotion in its most intense sublimated form is taken as the mature root metaphor. > * The hypothesis states that this emotion is the substance of the universe, and that so far as we differentiate things, these are generated from this substance and are ultimately nothing but this substance. [p. 133, editorial paragraphing added]
> Those "facts" are most real which are most intense in the beatific quality of the emotion of love, most completely fused and unified in that emotion, and most widely comprehensive in the inclusion of fact. > * By extrapolation, it follows that the most intense, completely fused, beatific, loving feeling of the whole wide world would be an intuitive experience of the whole of reality itself, and would be Truth itself. > * Such an experience one seems to have in the apical mystic experience, which is, moreover, sealed with the feeling of indubitable certainty. > * "Facts" are false, and unreal, and apparent in proportion as they fall away from this apical experience. > So pain, misery, sorrow, sadness are unreal, as opposed to beatific quality; pleasures, comforts, sensuous delights are false from lack of intensity; intellect, logic, science, analysis, definition, discrimination, differentiation are falsifying as opposed to fusion; selfishness, lust, hate, war are unreal as opposed to comprehension. > Appearance and unreality spread wide over the field of "facts." [p. 134, editorial paragraphing added]