Biologic survival comes down to thousands or millions or billions of unconscious bio-mechanical autonomic functions that run our body and protect us from danger, whereas mysticism could be said to be coming into that state where oneness (of everything) and wholeness are consciously experienced at the same time. It is not always called mysticism as there are variations in this state of consciousness, children experience it when they are playing, athletes experience it when they are "in the zone", artists experience it when "visited by the muse", scientists experience it when realizing a great functional truth, and any individual might experience it when they simply sit and breathe. Some of the key features of this state is no awareness of the passage of time, and the sense of serenity that comes with complete engagement.
Alan Watts describes the impossibility of focussing simultaneously on an image of dual oppositional components (at 2:30)
https://youtu.be/7SfZZlpfaN0
Seeing both images at the same time is similar to seeing "magic eye pictures" http://www.magiceye.com/. One must defocus the eyes in a way to be looking at everything instead of one thing. It may not come easily because focusing on just one thing is a survival mechanism that allows us to find food and detect danger.
So perhaps then the mystical experience is the defocus on just one thing, and instead a focus on "everything" simultaneously. Then might it also be said that the basic conundrum of the human condition is the "tension" between (the autonomic mechanisms of) survival, and the boundless freedom of mysticism?
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