The 20th-Century Quaker mystic John Yungblut observed: “. . . no word in our religious vocabulary has had such varying and conflicting connotations, nor been more abused than this word ‘mysticism’.” Similarly, pioneering psychologist Lawrence LeShan wrote: “The term ‘mystic’ has long been widely misunderstood in Western culture as referring to an individual who believes in things no one else can understand, who withdraws from the world and has little to do with its ordinary activities, who talks and writes in terms that communicate nothing, and who if not certifiably insane, has drifted so far from common sense that he or she certainly could not be considered sane.” Yet both men spent much of their professional lives in defense of this misunderstood worldview, termed “the perennial philosophy” by Aldous Huxley in his eponymous 1945 classic. What then is mysticism? And what is a mystic? How are mystics made? What Is mystical experience? Are mystics special kinds of people, or are all persons, as Yungblut claims, “special kinds of mystics”? In this course, we’ll explore these questions and more in five two-hour class periods. And we will examine the extraordinary lives and mystical experiences of several well-known 20th-Century mystics.



Dave Pruett is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics & Statistics at James Madison University (JMU). In addition to three decades of mathematics teaching, Dave has a decade of aerospace-related research experience at NASA’s Langley Research Center. He is also the author of Reason and Wonder (hardback by Praeger, 2012, self-published paperback, 2015 and 2023), the outgrowth of an award-winning JMU Honors seminar that explores the nexus of science and spirituality. Since his retirement in 2012, Dave has taught or team-taught a baker's dozen of Lifelong Learning courses and section-hiked all 550 miles of Virginia’s Appalachian Trail. Dave is married to Suzanne Fiederlein, Director of JMU’s Center for International Stabilization and Recovery (CISR). They have one daughter, Elena, a public-defense attorney, cat lover, and outdoor enthusiast.