Can a rationalist be a mystic?  This is the question that author Barbara Ehrenreich asks in her latest book, Living With a Wild God.  A life long self-described "hard-core" atheist, Ehrenreich writes in this book about various what she has come to describe as mystical experiences.  Initially, she finds this to be odd:  how could we experience anything that seems to have roots in something beyond what she considers to be this material reality?
     Upon further reflection, however, Ehrenreich comes to think that what she is experiencing is not something with psychosomatic roots, as so many aver, but rather represent "encounters," though she is not certain what they are encounters with.  For this reason, although she rejects the idea of a supernatural, she is willing to use the tools of science to explore the source and content of these encounters.  In short, as she puts it, "Is science ready to take on the search for the source of our most uncanny experiences?"
     While I appreciate this type of experiment, I hope that whoever does it makes herself open to the idea that, despite Ehrenreich's disclaimer, perhaps the source of these "encounters" does indeed have roots in a reality beyond our own.  That she will be willing to deal with the possibility that another but integrated, connected, or encompassing reality may be responsible for or influencing what we experience in this one.
     Beyond this, that Ehrenreich has had these "encounters" demonstrates that regardless of how much we might think we know about ourselves and our world, because we are finite beings living in what Stephen Hawkings has called an infinite universe, we will likely always be touching things we do not understand.  Though we may test them, though we may explore them, we may never fully grasp what they are.
     All to say, there's more to life--and us--than meets the eye.  And that's the point.