Sidetrack: Mystical Experience

(Cecil Collins, The Divine Land)

Marshall, Paul. Mystical Encounters with the Natural World: Experiences and Explanations. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

I'm thinking about Buddhist figures that Wu Pei-yi talked about in his book Confucian's Progress. One thing they really bring to the biographical party is a sensibility for mystical experiences. Zuqin, for example, had some pretty strange experiences, like this one:

I came back into the hall and was about to go to my seat when the whole outlook changed. A broad expanse opened, and the ground appeared as if all caved in. The experience was beyond description and altogether incommunicable, for there was nothing in the world to which it could be compared....As I looked around and up and down, the whole universe with its multitudinous sense-objects now appeared quite different; what was loathsome before, together with ignorance and passions, was now seen to be nothing else but the outflow of my own inmost nature which in itself remained bright, true, and transparent. (Paul Marshall, p. 47 quoting Suzuki 1970, 118)

I'm struck that there are some things in common with mystical experience and poetry. One common characteristic of mystical experiences, according to Marshall, is a transformation of the "Self," a "relaxation of individual identity; identification with persons, animals, plants, objects, even the entire cosmos." Sometimes we also see a "discovery of deeper self." Isn't this a common characteristic of poetry as well? Or, I mean, at least very thoughtful, nature-oriented poetry, as we most often see in Chinese. Another feature is "unity," "feeling part of the whole; the world contained within; everything intimately connected; community." Are there poems that eschew this sense of unity? Or is more that a good poem crafts up various avenues by which we can re-consider the nature of the self and its connection with the rest of the world?