Research published in Religions - The Consciousness Library

Mastery of Natural Self-Evidence: A Phenomenological Psychopathology Study of Shamanic Illness in Modern China

Religions October 27, 2026 Da Fang, Kan Feng

Medical anthropology has played a major role in destigmatizing shamanic illness. It has liberated shamanic illness from psychiatric labels such as hysteria, superstition, and mental disorder, and has relocated it within cultural, social, and historical contexts. However, shamanic illness in contemporary China now faces new challenges of stigmatization. This paper adopts phenomenological...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17111251

Embodied Practice and the Rearticulation of Ethical Life in Chinese Buddhist Mindfulness

Religions October 24, 2026 Jinhua Liu, Kang Wang

The same act of attending to breathing may function as a step on a Buddhist path, a stress-regulation technique, or an exercise in a public meditation course. This article asks how the relations that give embodied attention religious and ethical force are reorganized when practice moves across institutions. It first traces how Indic sati/smṛti was rendered through Chinese nian (念) and...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17111244

The Phenomenology of Embodiment in the Theological Turn in French Phenomenology

Religions October 21, 2026 James Swindal

The Theological Turn in Phenomenology, as represented in works by Chrétien, Levinas, Ricoeur, Marion, Henry, Falque, Lacoste, and others, is not a formal philosophical movement, but a collective set of insights into how revelation and phenomena interrelate. It has made a significant contribution to phenomenological reflection and has accomplished not only a further opening into how Scriptural...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17101236

Spiritual Lifestyle in Ibn ʿArabī’s Mystical Theology: Foundations and Practical Implications

Religions October 15, 2026 Ishraq Ali, Mohammad Esmaeil Abdollahi

Ibn ʿArabī (1165–1240 CE) is best known for his metaphysics; his teaching on how life should be lived has received less attention. Drawing on al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya and the Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, this study asks how four of his central doctrines—the Oneness of Being (waḥdat al-wujūd), the Perfect Human (al-insān al-kāmil), Divine Self-disclosure (tajallī), and the Five Divine Presences (al-ḥaḍarāt...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17101219

Viewing Self-Transcendence in the Zhuangzi and Confucianism Through Dreams

Religions October 4, 2026 Hao Zhong, Gong Hua-nan

Pre-Qin Confucians frequently discussed dreams; it is a significant contribution of the Zhuangzi to elaborate on the self and self-transcendence through the medium of dreams. The particular nature of dreams is closely associated with death and intoxication. The attitude to death and drunkenness indicates that pre-Qin Confucians did not engage in extensive reflection on dreams or the...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17101167

From the Finite to the Infinite: A Comparative Study of the Systematic Thought of Nicholas of Cusa and Zhuangzi

Religions October 1, 2026 Shuang Li, Xia Li

Although Nicholas of Cusa and Zhuangzi belong, respectively, to the traditions of Christian theology and Chinese Daoist thought, systematic comparisons of their philosophies within a shared framework of human finitude and the pursuit of transcendence remain relatively scarce. Both take reflection on the limits of human cognition and on “ignorance” as the point of departure for their thought,...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17101155

J. N. Findlay’s Rational Mysticism

Religions September 25, 2026 Sanford L. Drob

The philosopher John Niemeyer Findlay (1903–1987) held that the insights of mystical experience can be philosophically analyzed and articulated in rational form. Findlay provided two routes to the “mystical pole of the cosmos.” In the first, he appealed to the related notions of impersonality and impartiality to transcendentally deduce a “firmament of values,” which coalesce into an apical...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17101123

“Question” (Wen 問) and “Response” (Ying 應): Examining the Religious Dialogue of Divination in the Study of the Yijing

Religions September 23, 2026 Xian Li, Peijun Su

This study contends that the dialogic structure of “question” (wen 問) and “response” (ying 應) is not only a description of the procedure of divination, but also the logic through which the Yijing constructs the human–divine relation. There are two core questions: First, how does this dialogical structure generate a religious communicative model that presupposes the finitude of the human...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17101116

Beyond Self and No-Self: Reconstructing the Buddha’s Middle-Way Account of Selfhood in the Early Buddhist Nikāyas

Religions September 14, 2026 Donghyun Yoon

Asked by the wanderer Vacchagotta whether there is a self and whether there is no self, the Buddha was silent; he later gave Ānanda not two reasons but four, in two pairs, as to why. Scholarship divided between no-self and affirmative readings of anattā has claimed the episode for one side or the other without accounting for its fourfold form. This article locates the anattā teaching in the...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17091077

The Digital Kōan: Artificial Intelligence, Non-Self, and Contemplative Practice

Religions September 13, 2026 Heather Kempton

This article introduces the concept of the digital kōan, an AI-mediated contemplative prompt that functions as a catalyst for self-inquiry rather than a source of spiritual knowledge. Drawing on Buddhist psychology, cognitive science, and contemplative phenomenology, it examines how dialogue with conversational artificial intelligence can reveal the constructed nature of identity and illuminate...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17091074

Mysticism: Process and Event? From Causality to Motivation in the Phenomenology of Mystical Experience According to Edith Stein

Religions September 10, 2026 Gwendolyn Araya Gómez

(1) Background: This article situates Edith Stein within the 20th-century debate on the nature of mystical experience, framing it as a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between divine initiative and human freedom, and aims to reassess dominant developmental interpretations of mysticism. It argues that, alongside theological models such as that of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange,...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17091055

Can an Algorithm Be Sacred? Affect, Embodiment, and the Spiritual Status of Artificial Intelligence: A Spinozist, Cross-Traditional Inquiry

Religions September 9, 2026 Abdurrazak Gültekin

The question of whether artificial intelligence could bear the imago Dei, possess a soul, be a subject of salvation, or suffer in a religiously weighty sense increasingly frames debates at the intersection of AI and faith. Such debates typically rest on an intellectualist criterion: they treat mind as intelligence or information processing, so that as machine performance advances, the sacred...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17091049 Full text

Too Bad to Keep, Too Good to Throw Away: Negotiating the Boundary Between Religion and Superstition in Korean Protestantism’s Encounter with Kibok Sinang

Religions September 6, 2026 M. Suh

While Korean Protestantism prides itself on being the driving force of the nation’s modernization, it has also been criticized for promoting kibok sinang (祈福信仰), or fortune-seeking faith, allegedly rooted in the superstitious tradition of shamanism. Drawing on Robert Merton’s notion of sociological ambivalence and the East Asian literary trope of kyerŭk (鷄肋; chicken rib), something ‘too bad to...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17091044 Full text

Jarring the Perceptual Field: Walter Brueggemann, Zechariah’s Night Visions, and the Re-Education of Prophetic Perception

Religions September 4, 2026 S. Cook

Walter Brueggemann’s account of prophetic imagination has illuminated how Israel’s prophets contest dominant cultural assumptions by evoking an alternative consciousness. This essay explores the dynamics behind the prophet’s capacity to perceive and proclaim such an alternative. Through close readings of Zechariah’s first two night visions (Zech 1:7–21), informed by form-critical study of...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17091040 Full text

From Technique to Wisdom: Translation-Induced Polysemy of Zhiguan 止觀 Across Chinese Breath-Meditation Texts, the Chengshi lun, and the Dunhuang Commentary Haneda 182 (羽182)

Religions August 31, 2026 Zheng Wang

The Chinese binome zhiguan 止觀 is conventionally associated with śamatha-vipaśyanā. In Chinese breath-meditation texts, however, it also refers to fixing the mind and observing the breath. Related Indic materials use sthāna/sthāpanā and upalakṣaṇā for comparable functions, although precise source terms cannot always be established. Here “translation-induced polysemy” denotes the accumulation of...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17091024

From Idol to Icon: The Problem of Divine Naming in Comparative Perspective

Religions August 30, 2026 Sema Ülper Oktar, Fehmi Ünsalan, E. Ünal

Naming the divine exposes a structural tension: language makes the transcendent intelligible only by confining it within humanly constructed measures. Jean-Luc Marion identifies this risk as conceptual idolatry, opposing the conceptual idol to the icon, a sign that directs the gaze beyond itself rather than arresting it. This article adopts Marion’s distinction not as a genealogical claim but...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17091022 Full text

From Scripture to Practice: The Semantic Multivalence of Parimukhaṃ Satiṃ Upaṭṭhapetvā and the Divergence of Vipassanā Meditation Traditions

Religions August 26, 2026 Byoungjai Lee

The Pāli formulaic phrase parimukhaṃ satiṃ upaṭṭhapetvā appears throughout the Nikāyas in contexts ranging from breathing meditation to non-breathing practices and idiomatic descriptions of meditative states, yet its central term, parimukha, was never defined within the canon. The subsequent commentarial literature did not unify this semantic openness. Rather, through a cumulative process in...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17080909 Full text <i>parimukha</i> <i>sati</i> Pāli Interpretation +2

The Distinctiveness of Yiqing (疑情) in Ganhwa Seon Practice Theory: A Comparison with Contemporary Meditation Classification Frameworks

Religions August 26, 2026 Bon-Su Ku

This study contrasts the Ganhwa Seon (看話禪) practice theories of Dahui Zonggao, Gaofeng Yuanmiao, and Mengshan Deyi with the focused attention/open monitoring (FA/OM) model proposed by Lutz et al. and the three-family model developed by Dahl et al., both of which are meditation classification frameworks based on cognitive mechanisms. Although these two frameworks have served as standard models...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17080981 Full text Mindfulness Ganhwa seon Yiqing Faith +1

Meditation and Aspiration at Kagyu Monlam Chenmo in Bodh Gaya

Religions August 26, 2026 Malwina Krajewska

This article examines practices of meditation and aspiration performed during the Kagyu Monlam Chenmo in Bodh Gaya, within the Karma Kagyu institutional and devotional network associated with the 17th Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje. It focuses on the collective recitation of Samantabhadra’s King of Aspiration Prayers, not only as a liturgical performance, but as a contemplative practice shaped by...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17080911 Full text Buddhist meditation Aspiration prayer Kagyu monlam Karmapa +2

4E Cognition and Major World Religions’ Anthropology and Ontology

Religions August 26, 2026 David H. Nikkel

4E cognition offers resources supporting an anthropology and an ontology that overcome mind/body and related dualisms that contradict the original understandings of some major world religions, including the Western monotheisms and some Asian religions. 4E cognition embraces a holism with respect to the human organism, enabling a rapprochement with the Hebrew biblical, New Testament, and...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17080904 Full text 4e cognition Holism Major world religions Affordances +1

Family-Borne Efficacy: Shamanic Healing in Contemporary Xibo Households in Xinjiang

Religions August 26, 2026 Haiyan Xing, Shuyi Jia, Dongzhi Sangji

This article examines how patients and their relatives in contemporary Xibo families come to understand whether shamanic healing has “worked.” Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2026 in Qapqal Xibo Autonomous County, Yili, Xinjiang, it analyzes two closely observed healing rituals performed by the same shaman for two members of one family: a mother suffering...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17080972 Full text Shamanic healing Family ritual Ritual efficacy Xibo

“I Knew in My Soul It Was the Mood Stabilizer That Messed It Up!”: A Qualitative Study of Lived Experiences of Psychotropic Medication Tapering and Spirituality

Religions August 22, 2026 Stine Madsen Kvaløy, O. Synnes, Anne Austad

Psychotropic medication is widely used in the treatment of severe mental illness, yet its impact on spirituality—understood as relating to the transcendent—remains underexplored. This qualitative study examines how individuals who have reduced or discontinued medication experience and navigate spirituality. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven former inpatients, and...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17090993 Full text

The Onto-Epistemology of Sufi Experience in Khwāja Bāqī Billāh: A Naqshbandī Model Between Presence, Divine Unity and Ethic Authority

Religions August 18, 2026 Serhat Gültaş

One of the most fundamental and debated issues in the history of Sufism concerns not only the nature of mystical experience but also its epistemic value, its authority-generating capacity, and its normative legitimacy. Experiences expressed through kashf (unveiling), ilhām (inspiration), presence, witnessing, and annihilation have never been entirely rejected within Islamic thought, yet they...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17080976 Full text

Negation and Renunciation: Śaṅkara’s Vairāgya and the Dark Night of St. John of the Cross in Comparative Perspective

Religions August 4, 2026 Yixuan Liu

Negation appears across diverse religious traditions and provides a fruitful point of entry for comparative theological reflection. This paper compares St. John of the Cross’s account of the dark night in Christian mysticism with Śaṅkara’s understanding of vairāgya (renunciation or dispassion) in Advaita Vedānta. Rather than classifying Advaita as a form of Christian negative theology, the...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17080921 Full text

Reconciling the Irreconcilable: Sacramental Presence and Mystical Union in John Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola

Religions August 1, 2026 Hansol Goo

Scholarship since the mid-twentieth century has noted a compelling social and spiritual alignment between John Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola despite their position on opposite sides of the sixteenth-century confessional divide. While traditional Eucharistic debates emphasize irreconcilable structural and dogmatic disagreements, this paper argues that shifting the interpretive focus to the...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17080912 Full text

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