British Journal of Medical Psychology
March 1985
P Fenwick, S Galliano, M A Coate et al.
The 'psychic' experiences of 17 students (sensitives) from the College of Psychic Studies were compared with those of 17 church-going control subjects, who were matched for age, sex, and approximate intellectual level. At interview, 67 items of information relating to the medical history, family history, 'psychic gifts', head injuries, and mystical experiences were obtained. The shortened WAIS,...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1983
Michael A. Persinger
298 citations
Mystical and religious experiences are hypothesized to be evoked by transient, electrical microseizures within deep structures of the temporal lobe. Although experiential details are affected by context and reinforcement history, basic themes reflect the inclusion of different amygdaloid-hippocampal structures and adjacent cortices. Whereas the unusual electrical coherence allows access to...
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
April 1, 1983
John Rowan
20 citations
The concept of self-actualization is central to humanistic psychology. But what is this self that is to be actualized? Maslow, who introduced the term, thought that it belonged to the realm of Being, most easily accessed through peak experiences. It was essentially something transcendent, and to contact it was to partake of something like a mystical experience. But Maslow, in company with many...
December 31, 1982
Philip C. Almond
68 citations
Sinceits founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism,...
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
July 1, 1982
Eugene W. Mathes
53 citations
The research reported here involved the creation of a measure of the tendency to have peak experiences called the Peak Scale, and the testing of several hypotheses drawn from Maslow's theory of peak experiences. It was found that although individuals who report having peak experiences are also likely to report having experiences involving intense happiness, they are even more prone to report...
Psychological Reports
June 1, 1982
E W Mathes
Measures of tendency to have mystical experiences, romantic love, and hypnotic susceptibility were positively intercorrelated suggesting that they all involve the ability to suspend contact with objective reality.
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
1982
Antoon Geels
Since the turn of the century, mystic researchers have pointed to the similarities between mystics on the one hand, and artists, poets, mathematicians, musicians, in short, all those who are involved in creative activity. One common denominator, using the terminology of the day, is a state of inspiration, a sort of creative ecstasy, an immediate insight of some form. However, the question of...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1981
Paul Swartz, Lise Seginer
A group of 60 university students, 30 men and 30 women, completed Hood's Mysticism Scale, Research Form D (M Scale) and performed a motor skills task following body rotation. Subjects with the strongest tendency to mystical experience exhibited least destability, although only for the women was the association statistically significant. Women as a group scored higher on the M Scale and...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
1981
P. Buckley
70 citations
Autobiographical accounts of acute mystical experience and schizophrenia are compared in order to examine the similarities between the two states. The appearance of a powerful sense of noesis, heightening of perception, feelings of communion with the "divine," and exultation may be common to both. The disruption of thought seen in the acute psychoses is not a component of the accounts of...
June 1, 1980
R. J. Morris, R. Hood
40 Baptists and 40 persons who had no religious membership were asked to give experience ratings on religious and unity criteria of mysticism. Both Nones and Baptists acknowledged mystical experience in religious language; an experience of unity was a major characteristic of both religious and non-religious mysticism.