What do people experience when they say they sense a divine presence, a profound unity with the world or a transformation of their consciousness? Coordinated in Finland, the PRISM programme is funding eighteen projects to study these experiences, their diversity and their effects on individual and collective life.
Mystical experiences are becoming the focus of international scientific collaboration. Presented in a press release issued on 19 October, PRISM, the Program in the Study of Mysticism, brings together researchers in sociology, psychology, philosophy, theology and religious studies.
Coordinated by Tampere University in Finland, it has already awarded €3.8 million to eighteen research and science communication projects. Running from February 2025 until 2029, the programme is funded by Templeton Religion Trust, a philanthropic organisation that supports work on the relationships between religion, science and society.
The term “mystical” refers here to experiences felt as direct contact with a divine or ultimate reality, sometimes described as a sense of unity, an altered relationship with time or a transcendence of the usual boundaries of the self. Those who report them often attribute lasting effects to these experiences on the way they live and understand the world. Such accounts occur in different religions, as well as among people with no institutional religious affiliation.
The projects selected by PRISM illustrate the breadth of the subjects being studied. Some teams are working on ancient texts, others on contemporary communities, contemplative practices or artistic creation.
In Germany, Michael Lackner and Tommaso Previato, of Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, are studying Islamic mysticism in China. Their research focuses in particular on writings inspired by Sufism, the mystical dimension of Islam, expressed in language shaped by Confucianism. It also examines exchanges with Taoism and Buddhism, and the transmission of teachings within Muslim brotherhoods. This field of study provides an opportunity to explore borrowing and reinterpretation between traditions, a phenomenon that intersects with some of the questions examined under the term religious syncretism.
Another project, led by sociologist Francesco Piraino, explores the relationships between mysticism and contemporary arts. Fieldwork and interviews are planned with Muslim artists in Senegal, Morocco and Egypt, Buddhist practitioners in Asia, and Baul singers in India and Bangladesh, among others. The Bauls belong to a spiritual tradition from Bengal in which singing plays a central role and Hindu and Muslim influences meet. The researchers will seek to understand how artists experience and convey religious experience through music, dance or the visual arts.
PRISM is also interested in how spiritual experience can translate into a commitment to others.
One team is therefore studying the international movement centred on Amma, an Indian spiritual figure known for welcoming those who come to meet her with an embrace. The researchers want to understand how devotional practices, the relationship with this teacher and followers’ experiences connect with the movement’s humanitarian activities. The work includes planned field research at her centre in Kerala and during her European tour.
Other research will examine possible links between mystical practices, collective action and peacebuilding. The question is how an inner experience can influence observable behaviour: relationships with others, community service or participation in social life.
The programme aims to combine several methods: textual analysis, observation of practices, interviews and comparison between traditions. Its research framework gives attention to the experiences themselves, the tools used to study them, interreligious exchanges, and historical and cultural contexts.
One difficulty lies in determining what can actually be compared. Accounts using similar words do not necessarily describe the same experience. Conversely, people from different traditions may use distinct vocabularies to interpret transformations that share certain similarities.
The research will also address the difficult aspects of the contemplative path. A project devoted to transformations of consciousness examines accounts of destabilisation, confusion and a return to equilibrium. The team will seek to establish whether certain sequences recur across several traditions, while making clear that it does not assume from the outset that they are universal.
At this stage, PRISM is therefore presenting questions and programmes of work. The findings should help improve understanding of what people experience, how they make sense of these experiences and the transformations they attribute to them. For religious studies, the aim is also to better document a dimension of spiritual life that extends beyond doctrines, institutions and statistics on religious affiliation.