19th–20th Century: Mysticism Meets Psychology, Globalization, and Modernity
By the late 19th century, mysticism entered a new era. Industrialization, global travel, mass literacy, and the birth of modern psychology reshaped how people understood the inner life. Mysticism was no longer confined to monasteries or cloisters; it was being reinterpreted through science, comparative religion, and the emerging language of the modern self. This period marks the most dramatic shift in the entire history of Christian mysticism — a transition from a primarily theological and monastic phenomenon to a psychological, global, and democratized one. The rise of psychology fundamentally changed how Western culture interpreted spiritual experience. William James treated mystical states as data — subjective but worthy of study — in The Varieties of Religious Experience . Carl Jung reframed mystical symbols as expressions of the collective unconscious. Transpersonal psychology (mid‑20th century) treated mystical experience as a legitimate dimension of human development. Myst...