This article examines the role of embodied knowledge in translating practice-oriented religious texts through a case study of Livia Kohn’s Sitting in Oblivion: The Heart of Daoist Meditation . While Kohn’s translation of the Tang-dynasty Zuowang Lun 坐忘論 exhibits clear markers of phenomenological literacy – experientially precise terminology, recognition of practice progressions, and technical...
This brief article interleaves a reading of nom in Derrida’s Sauf le nom and a reading of nām , a term pivotal to Guru Nānak’s Japji , in Arvind Mandair’s Sikh Philosophy . I configure and construe the syntagm Sauf le nām to indicate a grammar of (un)translatability between not only French and Punjabi, but also between negative transcendence in Christian mysticism and positive immanence in Sikh...
Abstract Occulture describes the growing presence of esotericism, occultism, magic, and spirituality in media, popular culture, and contemporary arts as part of the spiritual revolution in Western contemporary societies. The empirical study of occulture has been carried out through two main theoretical frameworks. In sociology and media studies, scholars have described the mediatization and...
Abstract This article investigates how the Sufi theorist Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī’s (d. 638/1240) conception of metaphysical perplexity ( ḥayra ) relates to the entropic brain hypothesis, which has been proposed by Robin Carhart-Harris in the fields of human neuroscience and psychopharmacology. Studies have demonstrated a correlation between the ego and the default mode network ( DMN ). The ego...
I take “neo-perennialists” to share the following, minimal claim: there exists a cross-cultural category of experiences that can be defined as “mystical”. I first clarify the neo-perennialist project and defend its overall feasibility. I then criticize the narrow focus on mystical experiences that has characterized much neo-perennialist research, and research based on the above-mentioned core...
The study of esotericism emerged during the 1990s as a new academic program of research focused on previously-neglected historical traditions in Western culture. During the first decade of the 2000s, it established itself as a new field that was widely (although not exclusively) referred to as “Western esotericism.” But during the 2010s, questions began to be raised about this focus on the...
The emergence of the academic study of Esotericism was closely linked to both Religious Studies and Sociology. In the 1970s sociologists Colin Campbell, Marcello Truzzi, Edward A. Tiryakian, and Patricia A. Hartman, with historian of religion Mircea Eliade, wrote pioneering studies on occult and esoteric subjects. These initially marginal works gained traction in the study of new religious...
In this afterword, the directors of the Center for Advanced Studies ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’ (CAS-E) at Friedrich- Alexander-Universität offer a brief response to the comments by Carole Cusack, Mark Q. Gardiner, Steven Engler, Wouter Hanegraaff, Elizabeth McAlister, Jason Josephson Storm, and Hugh Urban. Reflecting on various theoretical and...
The guiding proposal for the ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’ project (CAS-E) offers both a particular definition of ‘esotericism’ and an approach to the process of definition itself. This commentary first briefly compares this definition and approach to our parallel definitional work. The CAS-E definition begins by taking “contemporary scientific and...
Abstract Spiritual experiences with entheogens have usually been studied as a form of mystical experiences. However, entheogen users have also reported less intense experiences that they refer to as spiritual experiences. Using data from the Cannabis and Psychedelics User Survey, this study analyzed the characteristics of such experiences in 319 participants. It found evidence of two types of...
Abstract This article first predicts, on the basis of an analysis of deep absorption, a number of features of mystical and related states of consciousness. It then observes that these very same features appear in beliefs held by people who have never experienced deep absorption. Moreover, many people engage in activities that, though not normally leading to deep absorption, bring about lesser...
Abstract Reports of people who have survived death have captured the attention of mainstream audiences. Why do these ideas enjoy persistent and widespread success in contemporary Western culture? Adopting a cognitive approach to the study of afterlife accounts and drawing upon our own research, we argue that mainstream survival narratives are popular because they provide convincing evidence...
Abstract Characteristic of the recent cognitive approach to religion (CSR) is the thesis that religious discourse and practice are rooted in an inveterate human propensity to explain events in terms of agent causality. This thesis readily lends itself to the critical understanding of religious belief as “our intuitive psychology run amok.” This effective restriction of the scientific critique...
We review previous attempts to study mystical experience and point to problems inherent to certain methodologies. Focusing on studies that use controlled environments we advocate taking an experimental approach to mysticism. To demonstrate the viability of this approach, we report findings from a new study that probes the potential for eliciting mystical experiences in the laboratory. We find...
Abstract It has repeatedly been claimed that the study of religion should not essentialize “religion” as an object of study that exists “out there,” waiting for us to discover and understand “it.” Reflection on the contexts and hidden agendas of concepts of religion are part and parcel of scholarly activity. But can there be an end to such a circle of reflection? This paper argues that...
Abstract Advaita Vedāntins consider contemplative practice (nididhyāsana) as one of the primary practices for gaining self-knowledge and liberation. However, the nature of contemplative practice is both ambiguous and contested. How do Advaita Vedānta practitioners actually engage this contemplative process? What are the relationships between contemplative practice, scriptural study, and...
AbstractThis article works with theory of ritual in order to begin addressing a series of questions raised by Brazilian spirit possession rituals (in Kardecism and Umbanda). Four contributions to theory of ritual highlight relevant conceptual issues: Humphrey and Laidlaw on non-intentionality; Bloch on deference; Houseman and Severi on social relations; and Kapferer on virtuality. Strawson’s...
AbstractThe great majority of scholarly definitions of "religion" center around some notion involving experience or awareness of a supernatural dimension (forces, entities). This sense of the supernatural has been found in virtually all human societies extending back into paleolithic times. Advances in neuroscientific research technology have made it possible to assert that phenomenal...
AbstractAlthough the subject matter of religious studies is essentially phenomenal (e.g., conscious acts, attitudes, intentions, worldviews), the analysis of the basic datum, consciousness itself, remains of necessity incomplete because of the discipline's restriction to the phenomenal envelope. Philosophical and psychological analysis contributed to our understanding of consciousness, but,...
Abstract For the Scandinavian tradition of the history of religions, in which I was trained, not the numinous, but the experience of the numinous is the sui generis subject matter of the discipline; and historians routinely emphasize the experiential aspects of religions. The better to understand religious experience, I work interdisciplinarily with psychoanalysis. Freud's treatment of group...