Perceptual and Motor Skills
October 1, 1998
M. A. Persinger
While sitting alone in complete darkness, 3 participants who had ingested psychotropic concentrations of lysergic acid diethylamide reported diffuse blobs of white, purplish, or greenish-yellow lights as two horseshoe magnets rotated at 0.5 Hz. The experiences were not reported when the magnets were stationary or removed from the apparatus. The estimated peak-to-peak variation in field strength...
Fortschritte der Neurologie · Psychiatrie
October 1, 1998
C Scharfetter
The concepts and main themes of occultism, parapsychology and esoterics are set in comparison to religion, spirituality, mysticism. The cultural relativity of these concepts is emphasised. Occultism means dealing with phenomena, processes, and/or powers which are not accessible to "normal perception". The manipulation of such powers is effected via (white, black, grey) magic. Parapsychology, in...
Perspectives in biology and medicine
September 1, 1998
Bruce Greyson
43 citations
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES BRUCE GREYSON* Near-death experiences (NDEs) are profound psychological events with transcendental or mystical elements typically occurring to individuals close to death or in situations of intense physical or emotional danger. Such experiences, once regarded as meaningless hallucinations, have become the subject of serious study by medical and other...
July 1, 1998
C. Rawnsley
Voegelin was deeply concerned about a spiritual crisis of consciousness in the Western world as well as the threat of totalitarianism growing in Europe. The realisation led him to the question of ideologies which he considered as attempts to form a closed society. He argued that philosophy should be as Plato and Aristotle envisaged a science of human nature. The discovery by Plato and Aristotle...
Imagination, Cognition and Personality
March 1, 1998
Thomas Natsoulas
By addressing work on consciousness that has been published in this journal, I bring contemporary material to bear on my ongoing exploration of William James's stream. How do psychologists of the present day demonstrate or acknowledge the relevance of their great predecessor's introspectively grounded theses and arguments to their own work? I am considering the first fifteen volumes of...
Choice Reviews Online
February 1, 1998
35 citations
Acknowledgements Introduction Part I. Religion and Reality: 1. Religion and philosophy 2. Where does the world come from? 3. The ontological argument and proof 4. Remarks on reality and religion 5. Natural theology 6. Religion and language 7. Belief in God 8. Wittgenstein on language and ritual 9. Religious practices 10. Notes on religion and reductionism 11. 'The divide' between religion and...
Experimental gerontology
1998
A T De Nicolas
New discoveries in perceptual psychology, brain chemistry, brain evolution, brain development, ethology, cultural anthropology, the more recent work of MacLean on the structure of the brains and the discovery by Gazzaniga of the role of the, so-called, "interpreter module," are the foundations of a new paradigm on human cortical information processing, called by its discoverer, Dr. M. Colavito,...
Behavioral Medicine
1998
H Walach, E Käseberg
Mind machines are said to induce relaxation and an altered state of consciousness. The influence of optical-acoustic (OAS) and electrical stimulation (ES) mind machines on general well-being, electrodermal activity, and altered states of consciousness was investigated and compared with pure rest and a placebo. Thirty participants underwent 4 conditions in random sequence: rest, placebo...
The Innate Capacity
December 4, 1997
Diane Jonte-Pace
Abstract NEARLY A CENTURY after William James initiated the psychological study of mysticism with the publication of The Varieties of Religious Experience, Robert Forman has returned to James’s project by issuing a call for a psychologia perennis. This “perennial psychology” would investigate mystical or nonordinary states of consciousness and the transformative processes that produce them....
The Innate Capacity
December 4, 1997
John Dourley
Abstract JUNG’ s UNDERSTANDING OF the nature and dynamic of the psyche is intrinsically religious in that the encompassing process of psychic maturation it seeks to describe has as its foundational telos, or intentionality, a movement toward a state of consciousness that can, and perhaps must, be described as mystical. “Mystical consciousness,” in this context, is taken to mean the conscious...