Transcending Methodologies: Comparative Mysticism and Textual Affect in Elliot Wolfson's Mystical Hermeneutic

This paper highlights the mystical hermeneutic of Elliot Wolfson as a methodological bridge between the neuroscientific and textual study of mysticism by emphasizing the role of affect within mystical experiences and their textual analysis. Therapeutic and cognitive science of mystical states of consciousness have rightfully recentered the importance of affect within mysticism, an emphasis that has been lacking in the scholarly history of constructivism and perennialism. By setting in conversation Jeffrey Kripal’s *Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom* with the modern therapeutic model, this paper explores how Wolfson’s work demonstrates the necessity of scholarly self-reflexivity and empathetic engagement with the text for a phenomenology of mysticism to be illuminated. While these texts may report memory and reflect culture, they invoke affect, and it is the responsibility of the scholar to adopt a methodology that uncovers the affective states embedded within the text.