A second puzzle that Wilson can solve is why mysticism, everywhere and always, is about transcending the self and merging with something larger than the self. When William James analyzed mysticism, he focused on the psychological state of “cosmic consciousness”56 and on the techniques developed in all the major religions to attain it. Hindus and Buddhists use meditation and yoga to attain the state of samadhi, in which “the subject-object distinction and one’s sense of an individual self disappear in a state usually described as one of supreme peace, bliss, and illumination.”
