Religions
November 2, 2022
Ismail Lala
Arguably the most influential Sufi thinker in Islam, Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn ʻArabī (d. 638/1240), views revelatory knowledge and mystical experience, what he terms ‘spiritual unveiling’ (kashf), as a form of continuing divine revelation that is bequeathed to the spiritual elite or saints (awliyā’). As the self-proclaimed ‘Seal of Saints’ (Khātam al-awliyā’), who is the mystical heir to the wisdom of...
Journal of Gender Culture and Society
October 22, 2022
El Houcine Ben Cherki
This article explores the mystical experience of Sainte Therese of Avila, mainly the voice of silence as a metaphor for spiritual transformation, more known specifically as the dark night of the soul. Developing a simple and efficient literary language, the Saint has built the founding principles of a mystical discourse marked by its social and religious conditions, which have motivated the...
Religions
October 21, 2022
Mona Jahangiri
What happens in the brain during meditation? Neuroscientists such as Andrew Newberg, who studies religious experiences on the neural level, may provide an answer. He calls the devolution, which is similar to all mystical experiences in different faiths, self-transcendent experience (STE); in a further instance, he also calls it the feeling of Absolute Unitary Being (AUB). A more detailed...
Religions
October 18, 2022
Paul Marshall
4 citations
Mystical experiences can bring an overwhelming sense that deeper realities have been contacted or that the everyday world has been apprehended as it truly is. Philosophical study of the experiences has not given much attention to their metaphysical significance, especially to the insights they may offer on fundamental issues such as the nature of reality, self, consciousness, and time. There...
The Varieties of Spiritual Experience
October 15, 2022
David B. Yaden, Andrew B. Newberg
Abstract Mystical experiences are among the most well-studied spiritual experience. This chapter defines mystical experience as inner experiences involving an intensely felt fading of the sense of self and/or feelings of increased connectedness, up to and including the sense of complete unity. These kinds of feelings go well beyond our normal day to day sense of self-awareness. In ordinary...
Religions
October 14, 2022
Heydar Shadi
This paper puts forward a mystical reading of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave by comparing it with some allegories from Sufi literature, Islamic mystical tradition. The paper argues that the determining parts of the allegory, such as escaping the cave as the world of shadows; seeing the sun/truth and becoming a philosopher; and the necessity of returning to the cave, have significant similarities...
Frontiers in Psychology
October 5, 2022
Anna Søndergaard, Brice Ozenne, Sophia Armand et al.
35 citations
Background Psilocybin-induced mystical-type experiences are associated with lasting positive psychological outcomes. Recent studies indicate that trait mindfulness is increased 3 months after psilocybin intake, preceded by decreases in neocortical serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT 2A R) binding. However, the association between psilocybin-induced mystical-type experiences and subsequent changes in...
Философия и культура
October 1, 2022
Yuliya M. Duplinskaya, M. Shugurov
The subject of the study is the mystical experience as a kind of altered states of consciousness. The purpose of the article is to solve at the conceptual level the problem of distinguishing genuine mystical experience and various kinds of surrogate states with quasi-mystical content. The theoretical basis for solving this problem was the study of the panorama of moments of divergence and...
Cognitive Semantics
September 19, 2022
Kurt Stocker
According to Stocker (in press), seeing in visual experience (visual perception and visual imagery) is organized by Talmyan concept structuring. Here, it is proposed that during seeing in extrovertive visionary experience and extrovertive mystical experience, this visual concept structuring is largely or totally suspended—except for the perspective point (pp), which seems to remain in place in...
INSPIRA
September 5, 2022
Rida Irfan, Ayesha Aziz
The current qualitative study aimed to explore the mystical experiences among religious preachers. A purposive sampling technique was employed to select a sample of (n=10) religious preachers who had encountered at least one mystical experience. The transcendental phenomenological approach was used to capture the essence of the mystical experiences through an in-depth semi-structured interview...