ERA: Education and Research Archive
2012
Patricia Catherine Worthingham
This integrative study provides an historical review of humankind’s relationship with desire as regarded by philosophers and theologians of western civilization. It examines desire as reflected in the characteristics of our culture and the societies we have built since early history; then highlights which desires, according to Dr. Steven Reiss’ research into what motivates and makes life...
Frontiers in Neurology
2012
Tore Nielsen
We assessed dream recall frequency (DRF) and dream theme diversity (DTD) with an internet questionnaire among a cohort of 28,888 male and female participants aged 10-79 years in a cross-sectional design. DRF increased from adolescence (ages 10-19) to early adulthood (20-29) and then decreased again for the next 20 years. The nature of this decrease differed for males and females. For males, it...
Homo Politicus
December 20, 2011
Andrzej Szyjewski
1 citation
The huge number of interpretations and approaches to religious experiences makes discourse in the scientific studies of religion on the scope and significance of these phenomena extremely difficult. Especially misleading is the identification of them with mystical experieces, as well as attempts to depreciate these types of experience that are alien to researchers. A possible solution is the...
Psychiatric News
December 16, 2011
Joan Arehart-Treichel
Even if ingesting the hallucinogen psilocybin can increase positive feelings of bliss or oneness with the universe, it is questionable whether such feelings represent authentic mystical experience or spiritual growth.
Acta Theologica
December 15, 2011
Celia E.T. Kourie
3 citations
In addition to the unprecedented interest in spirituality in recent decades, both at a popular level and also as an academic discipline, there has also been a resurgence of research dealing with spirituality and scripture. It is readily acknowledged that the hegemony of the historical-critical method is no longer tenable. As a method which sees the text as an artifact of history, there is...
December 9, 2011
Ü. Sayin
Expanded Sexual Response (ESR) is a recently defined phenomenon. It is defined as “being able to attain long lasting and/or prolonged and/or multiple and/or sustained orgasms and/or status orgasmus that lasted longer and more intense than the classical orgasm patterns defined in the literature”. During our detailed preliminary survey to investigate the claimed ESR phenomenon in some particular...
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
December 1, 2011
Zhuo Chen, Qi Wen, Ralph W. Hood et al.
54 citations
This study explores the phenomenological structure of mystical experience among 139 Chinese Pure Land and Chan Buddhist monks and nuns. Semi-structured interviews, thematic coding, and statistical analyses demonstrated that Stace's common facets of mysticism as measured by Hood's Mysticism Scale (M Scale) successfully described Buddhist experience as modified by Buddhist doctrines. Confirmatory...
Epilepsia
November 2011
Markus Reuber, Jenny Jamnadas-Khoda, Mark Broadhurst et al.
Psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) continue to represent a serious diagnostic challenge for neurologists. Video-electroencephalography (EEG) studies have provided detailed knowledge of the spectrum of visible PNES manifestations. However, little is known about how patients or seizure witnesses experience PNES, although many diagnoses in seizure clinics are made on the basis of...
Oxford University Press eBooks
October 20, 2011
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
The inner life rendered as exotic space reflects the modern subject’s sense of self, recognizing primal forces within. The aesthetic imagination, mystical-erotic reverie, and the interior experiences of dreams in works by Gottfried Benn, Robert Musil, and Alfred Kubin engage exotic topographical imagery, where writers undermine the Enlightenment model of a rationally unified self and to explore...
Philosophy and literature
October 1, 2011
James Duban
10 citations
"Oceanic Wonder":Arthur Koestler and Melville's Castaway James Duban This study proposes that "The Castaway" (Moby-Dick, chapter 93) helped shape Arthur Koestler's interpretation of "The Sermon" (Moby-Dick, chapter 9), which figures prominently in Insight and Outlook:An Inquiry into the Common Foundations of Science, Art and Social Ethics (1949). Koestler expanded the work into The Act of...