Abstract This chapter focuses on exploring various models of spiritual and transpersonal development. It first addresses philosophical dilemmas underpinning the concept of spiritual development by questioning whether these can be addressed without metaphysical assumptions embedded in religious worldviews and thus understood in any consensual way across different historical and cultural...
Abstract This chapter presents an anthropological assessment of religions and spiritual practices stripped of their sectarian dogmas. It discusses them not on the basis of faith but as systems of empirical observational science developed over generations for the purpose of allowing followers the opportunity to open to nonlocal consciousness. The chapter describes how religions begin as the...
Abstract Virtually all of the world’s major spiritual and religious traditions incorporate elements of meditation or contemplative prayer, although the nature, prominence, and precise features of such practices vary between traditions. Neuroscientific findings indicate that meditation is associated with significant, enduring alterations in patterns of activity in specific brain areas. These, in...