 The approach that opposes both essentialism and perennialism is “contextualism.” Under this approach, all mystical phenomena, including the mystics’ own understanding of their experiences and of what they experienced, must be understood in term of each particular mystic’s culture and era. “Constructivists” assert the conceptual “construction” of mystical experiences by cultural influences — i.e., beliefs, memories, expectations shaped by a mystic’s cultural structure the experiences. There are cultural, social, psychological, and linguistic influences. Thus, context penetrates mystical experiences themselves and not merely the post-experiential understanding given by mystics. There is no way to separate mystical experiences completely from their interpretations since our conceptual apparatus shapes our very experience. (See Jones 1909, introduction; Katz 1978 and 1983; for criticism, see Evans 1989; Forman 1990 and 1999; Stoeber 1992).