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I don't know how serious folks here are about meditation and mysticism, but here is a paper attached to this post that I wrote for a philosophy class and it is most likely going to be the theme of my eventual doctoral dissertation. I got an A+ on it. Mysticism Without God? Do you need a belief in a god or gods to explain mystical experiences? It is my intention to show traditional Western mysticism with its "god-centered" three ways of purgation, illumination and union, from a strongly-rational and materialist point of view, in order to argue that it is materialistic psychological processes and not a gods grace that initiates and determines the process of mysticism. It is my argument that supernatural forces do not cause the mystical experiences of advanced meditators and that they have their source in neuroscience, or perhaps in some advanced, but not yet discovered cosmological physics. 3 Ways Final Paper (Edited).pdf