Religions - The Consciousness Library

Mysticism and Ethics in the Theology of Religions and Interreligious Dialogue: Re-Reading Paul Tillich and Jacques-Albert Cuttat

Religions January 2, 2026 Santiago García Mourelo

In today’s plural and global context, the Theology of Religions and Interreligious Dialogue play a decisive role in fostering mutual understanding and a genuine culture of encounter. This article examines the theological and spiritual foundations of this task through a re-reading of Paul Tillich and Jacques-Albert Cuttat. Starting from Tillich’s unfinished reflection on the significance of the...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17010050 Full text

The Semiotic Symbolism and Power Configuration of Korean Shamanic Rituals: A Quantitative Analysis of Ssitgim-Gut and Byeolsin-Gut

Religions December 30, 2025 Ting Zhou, Wenbo Ci

In the governance of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), traditional rituals often fall into a paradox of institutional exhibition. The Korean shamanic rites Ssitgim-gut and Byeolsin-gut, respectively, represent the two poles of ritual institutionalization, displaying semiotic logics of original iconicity and institutional textualization. This study, based on audiovisual materials, archival...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17010043

Allowing Similarities: Using Aldous Huxley’s Views on Mystical Experience to Assess the Import of Profound Unitive Experiences Occasioned by Psychedelic Substances

Religions December 22, 2025 Dana W. Sawyer

For more than four decades, the emphasis in the academic study of world religions has been on differences over similarities, and comparative analyses allowing for commonalities have become increasingly rare. This article argues that similarities nonetheless exist and should be studied. After disclaiming the judgment of other scholars that Aldous Huxley attempted to describe the “core” or...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17010009 Mysticism Psilocybin Experiential learning Telepathy +8

Internet and Decorporation: Sensory Reconfigurations of the Body in the Techno-Realist Age

Religions December 19, 2025 Anamaria Filimon-Benea, Ioana Vid

This article examines how Internet technologies reconfigure human sensory experience and induce decorporation—the experiential dissociation of consciousness from the physical body. Drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s media theory and theological anthropology, the study demonstrates that digital immersion amplifies certain senses (vision, hearing) while anesthetizing others (touch, kinesthesia),...

DOI: 10.3390/rel17010002 Full text

Engaged Buddhism in Italy: Space, Practice, and Social Transformation

Religions December 12, 2025 Francesca Benna 1 citation

This study explores the dynamics of engaged spiritualities within contemporary Buddhist communities in Italy. By employing an ethnographic approach, the research examines how physical space fosters spiritual experiences, facilitates social interactions, and serves as a site for personal and collective transformation. The study integrates insights from religious studies, anthropology, and...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16121564 Buddhism Meditation Mindfulness Spiritualities +16

Natural Metaphors: Expressions of Mystical Experience in John of the Cross, Etty Hillesum, and Björk

Religions December 4, 2025 Anderson Fabián Santos Meza

In the twenty-first century, academic approaches to mysticism often risk reducing the Mystery to an object of erudition and historical distance, as if mystical experience belonged solely to a pre-modern past. Yet, when one encounters the “natural metaphors” that emerge within mystical writings—images of rivers, gardens, fire, and wind—it becomes almost impossible to silence the invitation to...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16121531 Full text

The Genesis of William James’s Psychology of Religion: From ‘The Principles of Psychology’ to ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’

Religions November 26, 2025 John R. Snarey, Eunil David Cho, Shelby L. Hall

William James’s two psychological classics—The Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902)—are widely read but rarely connected. How are James’s psychological theories in The Principles applied in The Varieties? Most scholars say they are not. Our thesis is that, throughout The Varieties, James uses The Principles as the foundation...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16111404 Full text Association Attention Character Conversion experience +2

Towards an Evolutionary Science of Sacred Architecture: When Atmosphere Meets Narrative

Religions November 26, 2025 Michael Anthony Arbib

This paper forwards the claim that our early human ancestors had protosacred experiences long before they had languages, architecture, or religions. A mountain may create feelings of awe while a grove in the forest may create feelings of serenity. In some circumstances (and very much dependent on the mental set of the individual), such protosacred experiences may create a sense of ultimacy that...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16111453 Full text Aesthetics Affordances Architecture Atmospheric flow +2

Holy Spirit or Holy Psyche? Energy-Like Somatic Experiences in Contemporary Abrahamic Meditative Traditions

Religions November 10, 2025 Nathan E. Fisher, Elisabeth Irvine, Michael Z. Yonkovig et al.

Meditation practitioners, historically and today, sometimes report experiencing energy-like sensations in their body. While recent empirical studies have explored such experiences in the context of Buddhist and Yogic practice, no comparable research has yet examined energy-like sensations in Jewish, Christian, or Islamic traditions. We interviewed 30 practitioners and 30 teachers from Abrahamic...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16111436 Buddhism Phenomenology philosophy Contemplation Context archaeology +11

Phra Lakkhaṇa Dhamma: A Unique Siamese Meditation Text of the Late 18th Century

Religions November 9, 2025 Phibul Choompolpaisal, Andrew Skilton

The present article is the product of ongoing research by the present authors into pre-reform meditation traditions in Siam. Historical and textual circumstances indicate that the Phra Lakkhaṇa Dhamma (lit., the honorable characteristics of Dhamma) the meditation manuscript under our study here, was copied during the reign of King Taksin (r.1767–1782), the founder of Thonburi, post-Ayutthaya...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16111433

Beyond the Mystical Experience Model: Theurgy as a Framework for Ritual Learning with Psychedelics

Religions November 8, 2025 André Van der Braak

Contemporary interpretations of psychedelic spirituality are dominated by the “mystical experience model,” which emphasizes that psychedelics can lead to well-being through bringing about ego dissolution and a unitive mystical experience. Rooted in perennialist and dualist assumptions—often derived from Christian mysticism, Vedanta, and Plotinian Neoplatonism—this framework has shaped both...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16111430 Mysticism Spirituality Religious experience Transpersonal +13

When Merleau-Ponty Encounters Fazang: Comparing Merleau-Pontian Body-Network with Fazang’s Interpretation of Indra’s Net for a Critical Techno-Ethics

Religions November 7, 2025 Zheng Liu

This paper explores the implicit thought of the “body-network” in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body, drawing from both his earlier and later works. It demonstrates that, for Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenal body is inherently interconnected with the world through motor intentionality. Meanwhile, in his later concept of “flesh,” this interconnectedness deepens into a relationship of...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16111425 Buddhism Interpretation philosophy Phenomenology philosophy Metaphor +6

Magic and the Postsecular: Disenchantment and Participatory Consciousness

Religions November 6, 2025 Simon Dein 1 citation

This paper examines postsecularism, magic and disenchantment in the West with an emphasis on Wicca. Following a discussion of postsecularism, it provides a critical overview of the Weberian notion of disenchantment which describes the decline in magic in modernity. Magic, far from disappearing in the postsecular, has been transformed through a process of psychologization. While there is...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16111413 Disenchantment Magic telescope Spirituality Consciousness +9

Towards a Participatory Philosophical Religion: Foundations for a Sacramental Metaphysics of Psychedelics

Religions October 31, 2025 A Sahaf Kashani

This article explores the emergence of a new philosophical religion arising from the intersection of psychedelic ministry, transpersonal psychology, and participatory metaphysics. Framed within the evolution of Western consciousness and drawing from Friedrich Schelling’s participatory metaphysics, Stanislav Grof’s findings, and Jorge Ferrer’s participatory turn, this article joins the...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16111393 Metaphysics Transformative learning Citizen journalism Consciousness +8

On John M. Allegro’s Suggestion That the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the 12th Century Plaincourault Chapel Depicts an Amanita muscaria Mushroom

Religions October 29, 2025 Ronald V. Huggins

In his book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970), John Marco Allegro claimed that an obscure, 12th century CE fresco of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Plaincourault Chapel in Mérigny, France, provided evidence of the persistence in Christian Europe of an underground sacred mushroom sect that had survived since New Testament times. At the heart of Allegro’s claim is the mushroom-like...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16111374 Chapel Mushroom Good and evil Tree set theory +7

Wittgenstein’s Mystical Will and Catholic Theology: A Continental Philosophy Approach to the Transcendental Dimensions of Human Action

Religions October 28, 2025 Nicos Kaloyirou

This article explores Ludwig Wittgenstein’s conception of the will through close engagement with his primary texts, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Notebooks 1914–1916, and Philosophical Investigations, demonstrating profound resonances with Catholic mystical theology and social teaching. By integrating insights from Peter Tyler’s analysis of mystical strategies, Richard McDonough’s defense...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16111358 Full text

A Spatial Analysis of Shamans in South Korea’s Religious Market

Religions October 21, 2025 J.S. Kim, Yuanfei Li, Fenggang Yang

This study examined the spatial distribution of shamanic practice in contemporary South Korea, focusing on its territorial relationship with institutional religions. Contrary to portrayals of shamanism as a rural remnant or as absorbed by Pentecostal Christianity, population-adjust maps and spatial models reveal substantial concentrations in urban and peri-urban districts. Drawing on a geocoded...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16101327 Buddhism Shamanism Protestantism Ordinary least squares +8

Subjective Configurations in Cacao Ceremonies: A Theoretical Analysis from a Latin American Cultural–Historical Psychology Perspective

Religions October 20, 2025 Rodolfo Bastián Valle-Kendall, Carlos Piñones Rivera

This article explores the heuristic potential of González-Rey’s theory of subjectivity and its use in theorizing neo-shamanic rituals, focusing on the case of the cacao ceremony. In the context of the growing popularity of contemporary spiritual practices, it examines how these rituals may contribute to the well-being of participants, serving as spaces for subjective reconfiguration. Through a...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16101322 Situated Perspective graphical Context archaeology Popularity +6

Editorial: Mysticism Reloaded

Religions October 15, 2025 Ali Qadir

Studies of mysticism have been in a state of turmoil for years [...]

DOI: 10.3390/rel16101311 State computer science Jewish mysticism Criticism Theology

Psychedelic Mystical Experiences Are Authentic

Religions October 11, 2025 Hans van Eyghen

The paper critically discusses whether mystical experiences induced by psychedelics should be considered inauthentic or counterfeit forms of mystical experiences. It examines three arguments against the authenticity of these experiences: pimes are too easy; pimes do not have lasting spiritual or moral effects; pimes do not involve divine grace. Positive arguments for the authenticity of pimes...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16101294 Mysticism Counterfeit Paranormal Sufism +4

A Mystical Therapy: Re-Booting the Mystical

Religions October 10, 2025 Peter Mark Tyler

One of the central themes of this journal is to ‘re-boot’ the mystical tradition for the contemporary seeker. The author, a practising psychotherapist, undertakes this in the present article by connecting three strands of thought and practice to propose a ‘mystical therapy’. First, there is the Christian mystical tradition as exemplified by the medieval tradition of theologia mystica. Second,...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16101285

Digital Bardo: Reimagining the Tibetan Book of the Dead in Virtual Identity and Consciousness Transformation

Religions October 7, 2025 Hong Zeng, Shu Su

The Bardo Thodol (bar do thos grol), commonly known in the West as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, has traditionally served as a spiritual manual guiding consciousness through the postmortem bardo (bar do) states toward liberation or rebirth. While prior interpretations have framed the text in ritualistic, psychological, or mystical terms, this essay proposes an original and interdisciplinary...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16101276 Buddhism Mysticism Consciousness Psychic +11

On the Practical Philosophy of the Nuns’ Buddhist Academy at Mount Wutai Through “One-Week Intensive Buddha Retreats”

Religions October 3, 2025 Y. Li, Yi Zhang, Jing Wang

The educational philosophy of the Nuns’ Buddhist Academy at Pushou Monastery, Mount Wutai, is based on the principles of “Hua Yan as the foundation, precepts as the practice, and Pure Land as the destination.” This philosophy draws upon Buddhist scriptures, integrating descriptions of the Pure Land practice found in the Avatamsaka Sūtra and the Amitābha Sūtra. This approach translates the...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16101267 Mysticism Buddhism Buddhist philosophy Pure land +12

William James and the Pragmatics of Faith: Bridging Science, Religion and Global Indigenous Epistemologies

Religions September 26, 2025 Matthew Crippen

This article examines William James’s philosophy of science through his pragmatic response to epistemic fallibilism, emphasizing how actionability rather than evidential certainty underwrites both scientific and religious practices. While James explicitly drew comparisons between science and Abrahamic scriptures, my account highlights resonances with non-Western traditions, particularly...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16091116 Full text Faith and religion James and pragmatism Non-western thought

A Religious–Psychological Study of Anthony de Mello’s Sadhana Practice

Religions September 26, 2025 Yong Un Choe

This study aims to examine Anthony de Mello’s Sadhana practice from a religious–psychological perspective, applying Carl Gustav Jung’s analytical psychology and views on the Spiritual Exercises. The analysis reveals that Sadhana, which integrates psychotherapeutic methods such as Gestalt therapy and the methodology of Vipassana meditation, holds significant implications. First, based on Jung’s...

DOI: 10.3390/rel16091207 Full text Anthony de mello Sadhana practice Carl gustav jung Gestalt therapy +1

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