Ecopsychology—the use of nature for understanding and healing the soul—has become accepted as a legitimate tool by theorists and practitioners alike. Yet one important dimension of the field has been ignored: metaphysical tracking. This article brings to light a number of mystical phenomena that trackers, ancient and modern, have experienced, and suggests their common root in the so-called...
Reviewed by: The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness Paul O. Ingram The Other Side of Nothingness: Toward a Theology of Radical Openness. By Beverly J. Lanzetta. Albany: State University of New York, 2001. 182 pp. The central thesis of The Other Side of Nothingness is that apophatic mystical experience offers Christians a theology of humility sensitive to religious...
Most traditional art forms around the planet are an expression of the spiritual dimension of a culture’s cosmology and the spiritual experiences of individuals. Religious art and iconography often reveal the hidden aspects of spirit as glimpsed through the filter of cultural significance. Moreover, traditional art, although often highly abstract, may actually describe sensory experiences...
[1] In his new bookGeburt in Gott, the phenomenologist and German translator of Michel Henry's work, Rolf Kühn, aims at no less than a combination of a transcendental phenomenology and mysticism into a new, non-onto-theological metaphysics. He describes his programme right at the beginning of the book. The pure appearance of God as self-revelation does not occur under alien conditions, but in...
Complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapies include chiropractic, acupuncture and traditional Oriental medicine, massage therapy, and herbal remedies; mind-body therapies (such as meditative practices and visualization); and folk practices and religious healing. Of these, modalities based on spiritual healing create a number of conundrums for the clinician, including legal,...
A 25-year-old man was brought to the emergency department from a late-night dance club. A friend reported that the patient commonly used designer drugs that he purchased over the Internet. While at the club, he started to vomit and experience visual hallucinations. He had no previous medical history and took no prescription medications. On searching the patient's clothing, medical staff found...
Near-death experiences, or mystical experiences during encounters with death, are reported to have beneficial effects despite their phenomenologic similarity to pathological states. This study explored the prevalence of near-death experiences and associated psychological distress by using a cross-sectional survey of 832 psychiatric outpatients. Standardized measures of near-death experiences...
When using the phenomenological method, one aims to capture the essential structures of lived experiences. It has been my experience that phenomenology does this well, when researching experiences that are lived through our bodily senses and understood with our minds. When trying to capture and describe experiences that are beyond the understanding of the body and the mind, namely experiences...
Solitary in the Voortrekker community: Ascesis and religious experience in the theology of the Voortrekker woman Susanna Smit (1799-1863) An evaluation of Susanna Smit’s commitment to introspection, meditation and solitary contemplation necessarily has to be undertaken in the light of the major impact of the theological pietism of the Dutch Second Reformation on the Voortrekker community....
Near-death experiences, unusual experiences during a close brush with death, may precipitate pervasive attitudinal and behavior changes. The incidence and psychological correlates of such experiences, and their association with proximity to death, are unclear. We conducted a 30-month survey to identify near-death experiences in a tertiary care center cardiac inpatient service. In a consecutive...