PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

This chapter explores the relationship between the self-ratings as “spir-itual” and mysticism as measured by Hood’s Mysticism Scale (1975). The intro-duction provides an overview of recent attempts to measure “spirituality” psy-chometrically, of the theoretical and empirical approaches to mysticism and already empirically observed relations between mysticism and “spirituality.” Many scales trying to operationalize “spirituality” lack a solid conceptual back-ground and convincing empirical validity. Citing the work of Stace and James, Hood constructed a scale that provided detailed and measurable descriptions of mystical experiences, the Mysticism Scale. Since the Mysticism Scale measures varieties of personal experiences of unity with some kind of transcendence, it proves to be an excellent measure for what many people today call “spirituality.” This can be shown empirically by utilizing the three factor solution of the M-Scale, identified as introvertive, extrovertive, and interpretive mysticism, in struc-tural equation models exploring the relationships between mysticism and self-rated “spirituality” as well as self-rated “religion.” This chapter concludes by ar-guing that “spirituality” may be the product of experiences that can be described in terms of mysticism.