Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
February 1, 2010
Bruce Greyson
94 citations
Classical physics, based on materialist reductionism, explained everyday mechanics but failed at high speeds or small scales, leading to quantum physics, which incorporates consciousness. Similarly, materialist psychology, modeled on classical physics, describes normal mental functioning but cannot account for mentation under extreme conditions like near-death experiences, where enhanced cognition and memory occur despite brain impairment. Near-death phenomena include accurate out-of-body perceptions and visions of deceased persons unknown to the experiencer. Such complex consciousness during cardiac arrest or general anesthesia, when normal brain function is absent, demands a psychology grounded in 21st-century quantum physics that includes consciousness, rather than 19th-century classical physics.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
July 27, 2015
David B. Yaden, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, H. Andrew Schwartz et al.
68 citations
People who report having had mystical experiences use language that is more socially and spatially inclusive—words like 'close,' 'we,' and 'with'—and fewer overtly religious terms such as 'prayed,' 'Christ,' or 'church' compared to those who have not had such experiences. This pattern emerged from quantitative linguistic analysis of 777 participants' written accounts of their most significant spiritual or religious experience. The findings suggest that mystical experiences, though often described as ineffable, can be meaningfully communicated, and that language analysis offers a way to study them.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
May 1, 2009
Kenneth Bond, Maria B. Ospina, Nicola Hooton et al.
67 citations
A panel of 7 meditation experts reached consensus through a 5-round Delphi study on essential criteria for defining meditation for systematic review. Essential features include a defined technique, logic relaxation, and a self-induced state. Optional features include psychophysical relaxation, a self-focus skill or anchor, altered consciousness, mystical experience, suspension of logical thought, embedding in a religious/spiritual/philosophical context, or mental silence. The results highlight challenges in distinguishing meditative from nonmeditative practices and offer an approach to operationalizing meditation for comparative research.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
August 18, 2014
Surbhi Khanna, Bruce Greyson
31 citations
People who have had near-death experiences (NDEs) report more frequent daily spiritual experiences afterward than those who came close to death without having an NDE. Among 229 individuals who had a close brush with death, those who described an NDE (204 people) scored higher on a measure of daily spiritual experiences after the event, while prior spiritual experience levels did not differ between the two groups. The depth of the NDE was positively linked to the frequency of later spiritual experiences. These findings align with other reported aftereffects of NDEs.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
April 27, 2017
Leslie J. Francis, A. Village, R. Powell
Church leaders who prioritize religious exploration over certainty are shaped by both their psychological predispositions and their mystical experiences. Among 1,265 Australian church leaders, those with higher quest-religious orientation tended to have psychological preferences for extraversion, intuition, feeling, and perceiving, and also reported higher levels of mystical experience. Mystical orientation partly explained the link between intuition and quest orientation, but both psychological preferences and mystical experiences independently contributed to a questing style of leadership.