Mystical experience is a major form of religious experience, but it is hard to delineate by a simple definition for two main reasons. First, mystics often describe their experiences partly in terms of doctrines presupposed to be true, and there is no one set of doctrines invariably associated with mysticism. Some of the definitions of mysticism advanced by Western writers are quoted by W. R. Inge in his Mysticism in Religion (p. 25): "Mysticism is the immediate feeling of the unity of the self with God" (Otto Pfleiderer); "Mysticism is that attitude of mind in which all relations are swallowed up in the relation of the soul to God" (Edward Caird); "True mysticism is the consciousness that everything that we experience is an element and only an element in fact, i.e. that in being what it is, it is symbolic of something else" (Richard...