Religions
December 22, 2025
Dana W. Sawyer
Similarities across religious traditions, particularly unitive mystical experiences, deserve scholarly attention despite decades of emphasis on differences. Aldous Huxley described such experiences as a thread running through traditions, not a core essence. Research studies with psychedelics like psilocybin regularly produce unitive experiences, offering contemporary experiential reports for mysticism scholars. Drawing on Huxley and researchers including Roland Griffiths, Jussi Jylkka, David Yaden, William Richards, and Julie Holland, the article speculates that psychedelic-induced unitive mystical experiences may benefit individuals and society.
Religions
December 4, 2025
Anderson Fabián Santos Meza
Mystical writings use natural metaphors—rivers, gardens, fire, wind—not as decorative language but as symbolic systems that articulate the ineffable through elemental earthly terms. This essay argues that such metaphors sustain a theology of embodiment, relationality, and transformation across epochs and artistic media, bringing together the poetry of John of the Cross, the diaries of Etty Hillesum, and the music and visual art of Björk. The work advocates for a decolonial hermeneutics that resists rigid doctrinal frameworks and colonial interpretations, recognizing mystical experience as still unfolding in the present through poetry, diary, and sound—where theology becomes a matter of vibration, beauty, and embodied openness.
Religions
November 26, 2025
John R. Snarey, Eunil David Cho, Shelby L. Hall
William James's two classic works, The Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), are usually treated as separate, but this article argues that The Principles provides the psychological foundation for The Varieties. The authors identify ten conceptual connections between the texts, showing that James applied his principles on the brain, habit, stream of consciousness, subconscious, self, attention, association, and emotions to religious topics such as conversion experiences, mystical experiences, and saintliness. Some principles were also broadened through contact with religious data. Placing the texts in conversation yields a deeper understanding of James's psychology of religion.
Religions
November 10, 2025
Nathan E. Fisher, Elisabeth Irvine, Michael Z. Yonkovig et al.
Energy-like somatic sensations in the body are commonly reported across Abrahamic contemplative traditions, not only in Buddhist and Yogic contexts. In interviews with 30 practitioners and 30 teachers from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, 40% of practitioners and 43% of teachers reported such experiences. These sensations varied widely in intensity and emotional tone, interpreted either as expected signs of spiritual progress or as surprising events. Participants blended metaphors from multiple traditions and mixed spiritual with psychological explanations. Compared to earlier research on Western Buddhists, both commonalities and differences emerged. The findings suggest these experiences arise from a complex interplay of cultural frameworks, attention, and bodily processes.
Religions
November 8, 2025
André Van der Braak
The dominant 'mystical experience model' of psychedelic spirituality—which holds that ego dissolution and unitive experiences drive well-being—is critiqued for being too religious, neglecting learning processes, and privileging individual extraordinary states over shared ritual. An alternative model based on theurgy (from Iamblichus's Neoplatonism) and Bruno Latour's participatory ontological pluralism is proposed. Theurgy emphasizes ritual mediation, competence, and transformation, accommodating encounters with autonomous entities or 'beings of religion' reported in psychedelic ceremonies. This framework complements the mystical model by focusing on collective transformation within a differentiated cosmos rather than escape into undifferentiated unity.
Religions
November 7, 2025
Zheng Liu
This paper argues that Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body implies a "body-network" in which the phenomenal body is inherently interconnected with the world through motor intentionality, a connection deepened in his later concept of "flesh" into mutual reflection and chiasmic intertwining. It compares this with the Huayan Buddhist metaphor of Indra's Net and Fazang's interpretation, finding resonance between Merleau-Ponty's relationality and reflectivity and Fazang's concepts of mutual identity, mutual inclusion, and the contemplation of many bodies reflected in one mirror. Despite different vocabularies, both construct a relational ontology deconstructing dualisms.
Religions
October 31, 2025
A Sahaf Kashani
A new philosophical religion is emerging from the intersection of psychedelic ministry, transpersonal psychology, and participatory metaphysics. Drawing on Schelling's participatory metaphysics, Grof's findings, and Ferrer's participatory turn, the article argues that psychedelics can function sacramentally, granting participatory access to the creative ground of reality. It proposes transpersonal ministry as a framework to meet the spiritual and metaphysical demands of psychedelics, offering churches, ministers, and congregants a shared language that unites experiential participation with metaphysical inquiry, providing a non-dogmatic framework for integrating transformative states.
Religions
October 29, 2025
Ronald V. Huggins
John Marco Allegro's 1970 book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross argued that a 12th-century fresco in Plaincourault Chapel, France, depicting the Fall of Adam and Eve, shows a mushroom-like Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, evidence of a clandestine psychedelic mushroom sect persisting in Christian Europe since New Testament times. A small group of writers, led by Carl A. P. Ruck, later sought to validate this theory by finding other examples of psychedelic mushrooms in early Christian and medieval art. This article examines these claims, focusing on the Plaincourault tree and similar images, and concludes that the arguments fail because they overpress similarities while ignoring differences.
Religions
October 21, 2025
J.S. Kim, Yuanfei Li, Fenggang Yang
Shamanic practice in contemporary South Korea is concentrated in urban and peri-urban districts, not just rural areas as often assumed. Using a geocoded dataset of 15,639 shamanic sites and 78,323 religious facilities across 229 districts, spatial models show that Protestant church density is consistently associated with lower shamanic presence, especially where Protestant institutions are concentrated. Buddhist temples show no uniform national effect but have positive local associations in some areas, suggesting localized symbiosis. Catholic sites show limited and inconsistent spatial relationships. The findings indicate two contrasting dynamics: expulsion in Protestant strongholds and symbiosis where Buddhist institutions allow more accommodation. Shamanism's contemporary geography reflects adaptation to the territorial politics of institutional religion rather than a cultural revival.
Religions
October 20, 2025
Rodolfo Bastián Valle-Kendall, Carlos Piñones Rivera
Cacao ceremonies, a neo-shamanic ritual growing in popularity, can foster well-being by enabling participants to reconfigure their subjectivity. Drawing on González-Rey's theory, the article argues that cacao acts as a symbolic mediator generating new subjective senses, while rituals stabilize dynamic subjective configurations. Shamans guide this process through discourse, materials, and emotions. These transformations are not mechanically determined by social context but arise as historically situated singular productions. However, the ritual is ambivalent: it can both foster genuine subjective change and reproduce neoliberal logics.
Religions
October 15, 2025
Ali Qadir
The study of mysticism is in a state of turmoil, with ongoing debates about its definition, methods, and boundaries. The authors argue that this crisis stems from conflicting approaches across disciplines such as philosophy, theology, and religious studies, each imposing different criteria for what counts as mystical experience. They propose that a more integrated, interdisciplinary framework is needed to move beyond these disputes. The paper critiques existing models and contends that without a shared conceptual foundation, scholarship on mysticism will remain fragmented and unable to produce coherent knowledge.
Religions
October 11, 2025
Hans van Eyghen
A philosophical paper argues that mystical experiences brought on by psychedelics should be considered authentic, not counterfeit. It examines three counterarguments: such experiences are too easily achieved, lack lasting spiritual or moral effects, and do not involve divine grace. Positive arguments for authenticity include that these experiences rely on similar neural mechanisms and are phenomenologically alike to other mystical experiences. The paper concludes that the positive arguments are more convincing, making a case for the genuineness of psychedelically induced mystical experiences.
Religions
October 7, 2025
Hong Zeng, Shu Su
The Bardo Thodol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead, traditionally guides consciousness through postmortem states toward liberation. This essay proposes that its bardo model can also frame digital identity dissolution and transformation. Drawing on Tibetan Buddhist thought, extended mind theory, digital anthropology, and cognitive science, it reinterprets bardo states as phenomenological thresholds manifesting in virtual liminality—moments of ego disintegration, avatar deconstruction, and reidentification in digital environments. By mapping the six bardos onto digital experiences, the paper synthesizes esoteric Tibetan metaphysics with posthuman theory, offering insights into consciousness, ethical selfhood, and the future of identity.
Religions
July 25, 2025
Henry Albery
A seventh-century Sanskrit yoga manual from Qïzïl describes the practice of immeasurable joy (muditā) as part of a bodhisattva's path to awakening. The manual's author relied on a version of the *Vibhāṣā, a major Vaibhāṣika treatise on Buddhist metaphysics. The paper identifies parallels between the two texts and presents a new edition of select passages from the preface to immeasurable joy, which the text calls a theory of practice (prayoganirdeśa). It shows that Vaibhāṣika ontological and phenomenological principles are instantiated at the experiential, structural, and representational levels of the practice that the manual exemplifies.
Religions
July 21, 2025
Géraldine Mossière
An anthropological study examines how the concepts of energy and movement are used to foster well-being, based on fieldwork with Core Energetics and 5Rhythms groups. The circulation of energy is achieved through bodily movements, dances, sensory attention, somatic self-cultivation, and deep conscious experiences. Ritual elements, including a specific spacetime framework and intersubjective exercises, facilitate experiences that renew one's subjective and intersubjective relationship to the self in a restorative way. The author argues that these mind–body–energy groups conflate two Western sources: the legacy of marginalized early Western medical offshoots and discursive references to contemporary interpretations of quantum physics.
Religions
June 5, 2025
Rotem Meidan, Ofra Mayseless
People who have had past life memories often hesitate to bring them up in therapy, fearing they will be pathologized. When they do disclose, therapist responses vary from validating to dismissive, and dismissive reactions can harm the therapeutic alliance and even cause iatrogenic harm. Based on interviews with 15 individuals who had past life memories outside of therapy, the study introduces the concept of Spiritual-Psychoeducation as a framework for respectfully integrating such experiences into treatment. The findings suggest that clinicians need greater sensitivity to anomalous spiritual experiences as meaningful elements of psychological healing.
Religions
April 16, 2025
Feng Qu, Thomas Michael
Shi (1993) observes that Chinese scholars view shamanism as a prehistoric phenomenon that declined in post-industrial society, yet they are puzzled by its continued vitality in the present day. The paper examines this apparent contradiction, suggesting that shamanism persists and adapts in modern contexts, challenging the assumption that it is solely a relic of the past.
Religions
March 25, 2025
David H. Nikkel
Embodied, enactive, and extended cognition challenges the standard cognitive science of religion, which focuses on unconscious brain mechanisms and downplays religious meaning, adaptiveness, and cultural influence. The standard model treats religion as epiphenomenal, denies its adaptive value except as costly signaling, and views perception as indirect representation. It ignores how social, embodied, and tacit engagement with the world shapes religion, and overlooks how rituals promote bonding through synchrony and endorphins or enhance environmental knowledge, thus missing ways religion can be adaptive.
Religions
February 25, 2025
Denae Dyck
Poetry can evoke spiritual experiences by opening readers to surprise and wonder, moving beyond the divide between religious faith and doubt. Drawing on William James's Varieties of Religious Experience and Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics, this article argues that Victorian lyrics by Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Dollie Radford reimagine hope and reframe revelation as an invitation rather than a proclamation. The analysis shows how receptivity to spiritual states in literature challenges the hermeneutics of suspicion and suggests an interpretive disposition that does not guard against but welcomes poetry's potential to transform.
Religions
January 28, 2025
Jenny Anne Miller
This paper introduces a transpersonal psychological understanding of mystical consciousness by comparing contemplative approaches across Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, and Christianity. Drawing on Thomas Merton's interreligious thinking and Evelyn Underhill's mystical contemplation, it applies post-Jungian theories of the 'Spectrum of Human Consciousness' to the scholarly field of mysticism. The author suggests how Merton might have used transpersonal models to articulate his writings on 'pure consciousness'. The paper concludes by posing a contemplative question: whether the ancient sculpture of the Sleeping Hermaphrodite serves as an art-theological symbol for the soul's inner repose in God's Unity, where action flows as a manifestation of contemplative solitude.
Religions
January 24, 2025
Nirmal Selvamony
The author explains the early Tamil concept of meyppāṭu as a kind of action involving embodying the spirit, manifesting in ordinary emotional experience, love at first sight, theatre emoting, and spirit possession. Using the personaic triad (mūviṭam) from puttiṇai theory, the author outlines meyppāṭu across primal community, state society, and industrialist state. In the primal world (viḻuttiṇai), meyppāṭu ensured a love-based lifeway necessary for the wellbeing of people and non-human beings. The author argues this understanding is needed today to end the Anthropocenic industrialist lifeway that has brought humans and other beings to the brink of disaster.
Religions
January 22, 2025
John C. Thibdeau
Mysticism requires ethical work to cultivate experiences of the divine, and those experiences in turn enable new ethical relationships with oneself, others, and the divine. The article connects ascetic practices (zuhd) with Sufi mystical experiences through the concept of tarbiya, understanding taṣawwuf as an ongoing process rather than an end. It argues for an 'inner-worldly' mysticism absent from Weber's analysis, which does not fit his passive–active distinction between mysticism and asceticism. Drawing on fieldwork with two related Shadhiliyya Sufi orders in Morocco—the Karkariyya and the Alawiyya—the author examines how direct experiences of the divine are made possible by ethical work and how those experiences enable ethical engagement and action, showing mystics as deeply concerned with changing their social worlds.
Religions
January 19, 2025
Arjun Nair
Scholars of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mysticism have found common ground in studying the unio mystica, but the concept is expressed in irreducibly diverse ways across traditions, raising questions about the usefulness of generic cross-cultural categories. Translating mystical texts risks misrepresentation, especially in a post-colonial context. The author argues that specialists of non-Western traditions should approach mysticism from within their own conceptual horizons. This work models that approach by reformulating the unio mystica using the theoretical framework of the 12th/13th-century Muslim mystic Ibn ʿArabī and his early school, unpacking terms like “God,” “the human being/self,” and “union” to challenge prevailing Christian-derived understandings and show the benefits of tradition-specific theoretical development.
Religions
December 16, 2024
Song Bin
Yang Shi pioneered a Neo-Confucian method of self-cultivation centered on quiet-sitting, which involves techniques like breathing and calming the mind to return to a state of centrality. This state, once achieved, is preserved and expanded in everyday life. The practice is grounded in a moral psychology and metaphysics where Tianli, the comprehensive pattern-principle of the universe, becomes fully manifest in the human heartmind. Yang's approach inherits key features from Cheng Hao's philosophy while diverging from Cheng Yi's. Despite his metaphysical views aligning more closely with Huayan Buddhism's idea of perfect fusion between pattern-principle and things, Yang insisted that his quiet-sitting philosophy remained distinctively Confucian.
Religions
September 27, 2024
Michael Andrew Ceragioli
This essay argues that Josiah Royce's communal model of religious experience, presented in The Sources of Religious Insight, complements rather than merely criticizes William James's individualistic account in The Varieties of Religious Experience. Rather than opposing the two thinkers, the author contends that James's concept of the "sick soul" finding health through religious conversion gains depth when paired with Royce's emphasis on overcoming alienation through communal participation. The essay suggests that bringing together these two models offers an instructive account of individual transformation through communal renewal, particularly relevant in times of dislocation and self-preoccupation.