The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Norman Prigge, Gary E Kessler
Abstract The belief that mystical experience or that some especially important variety thereof is everywhere the same, regardless of the idiosyncracies of the individual mystic or of his or her cultural tradition, has been tacitly presupposed, dogmatically asserted, or explicitly argued for in much scholarly and popular literature on mysticism. All of this notwithstanding, Steven T. Katz, in a...
Psychological Reports
October 1, 1989
Ellen H. Yeagle, Gayle Privette, Frances Y. Dunham
Descriptions of peak experiences collected from 29 exhibiting artists were compared with parallel data from a comparison group of 123 men and women enrolled in university courses in social sciences. Each person narratively described a personal incident of highest happiness, then rated a series of descriptions on Likert-type scales. A multivariate analysis of variance indicated no significant...
Religious Studies
September 1, 1989
Michael Levine
Two theses are central to foundationalism. First, the foundationalist claims that there is a class of propositions, a class of empirical contingent beliefs, that are ‘immediately justified’. Alternatively, one can describe these beliefs as ‘self–evident’, ‘non–inferentially justified’, or ‘self–warranted’, though these are not always regarded as entailing one another. The justification or...
Journal of Near-Death Studies
1988
Kenneth Ring
7 citations
Not long ago, I invited students in one of my undergraduate courses to participate in a simple experiment."I'm going to mention a word," I said, "and I want you to write down a number from -5 to + 5 in response to that word.The number you choose should reflect your gut feeling about this word.If you feel favorable toward it, choose some positive integer; if you feel unfavorable, choose a...
Faith and Philosophy
1988
Robert K. C. Forman, The Society Of Christian Philosophers
6 citations
Capitalizing on the constructivist approach developed by philosophers and psychologists, Steven Katz argues that mystical experience is in part constructed, shaped and colored by the concepts and beliefs which the mystic brings to it.Merits and problems of this constructivist account of mysticism are discussed.The approach is seen to be ill-suited to explain the novelties and surprises for...
Psychological Reports
April 1, 1986
Gayle Privette, David Sherry
The Questionnaire: Peak Performance and Peak Experience is based on both research and theoretical content found through a comparative analysis of literature germane to peak performance, peak experience, and flow. The Dale-Chall Readability Formula indicated that readability of the questionnaire is at the upper limits of the 9th and 10th grades. A Pearson product-moment correlation, based on 33...
Journal of Religion and Health
March 1, 1986
J Pennachio
31 citations
Near-death experience exhibits many attributes of mystical awareness. Assessing the mystical quality of psychedelic experience, Walter Pahnke identified a nine-category typology of mystical experience. It is used here to illustrate the mystical nature of near-death experience. The typology also describes the self-transformation which follows the mystical state of consciousness....
Teaching of Psychology
December 1, 1985
James Polyson
9 citations
In an exercise described in this paper, u:ndergraduate psychology students wrote about peak experiences they have had as a way of helping them understand Masloeiv's theoretical construct by relating it to meaningful events in their own lives. An additional goal of the exercise was to help stua!ents develop their writing skills. At the end of the semester, students completed an anonymous...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
October 1, 1985
W. Richard Cowling
The purpose of the investigation was to examine the relationship of three variables proposed as correlates of development in a conceptual system. Variables were selected and measured based on congruency with the system and on the theoretical rationale that the diverse perceptual features of mystical experience and differentiation would be conducive to emergent creativity. A volunteer sample of...
Religious Studies
June 1, 1985
J. William Forgie
Much work on mystical experience has taken for granted a certain view about the relation between experience and its interpretation. This ‘traditional view’ has received perhaps its most explicit statement in Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy. It is a view which is attractive to proponents of the doctrine of unanimity, the doctrine (roughly put) that at the phenomenological level all mystical...