Near-death experiences occur in approximately 15% of intensive care unit survivors. Despite their profound impact on post-intensive care syndrome and long-term psychological recovery, near-death experiences remain under-addressed in clinical settings. To systematically map and synthesize evidence regarding the subjective experiences, influencing factors, assessment tools, and prognostic impacts...
Setting up a psychedelic study can be a long, arduous, and Kafkaesque process. Researchers are faced with a host of challenges in this rapidly evolving field, necessitating a range of considerations that remain largely unstandardised. Many of the complexities inherent to psychedelic research also challenge existing assumptions around, for example, approaches to psychiatric prescribing, the...
This research involved a literature review on the recreational, Western medicinal and ethnobotanical uses of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Search engines such as PubMed and Google Scholar, among others, and Boolean operators were used. A total of 60 scientific papers in both Spanish and English were analyzed. Since the 11th century, Japan has recorded the consumption of the butterfly mushroom,...
Dance is one of the earliest and most fundamental modes of human expression, emerging alongside the evolution of humanity as a means of communicating emotion, rhythm, and experience through the body. From spontaneous movement to structured forms, dance has developed across cultures. The recurring presence of dance in social and cultural celebrations underscores its role in expressing joy,...
The article expands on my recent research on the Platonic milieu of Origen’s perception of the soul as feminine in his Comments on the Song of Songs by tracing the influence of this concept on Maximus Confessor and his Mystagogia. Origen reads the Song as an allegory about the experiences of the soul as it embraces a new state of consciousness through its union with Christ. Drawing on Plato’s...
This article proposes a theological re-reading of Augustine’s De musica, arguing that it should not be interpreted as a merely technical treatise on Latin metrics, but as a foundational text for an Augustinian theology of interiority. Through a close analysis of Book VI and the doctrine of the hierarchy of numbers (numeri sonori, sensibiles, memoriales, iudiciales, aeterni), the study...
Junayd al-Baghdādī (d. 297/909), one of the prominent figures of early sufism, stands out as among the first sufis to systematically and analytically articulate sufi concepts during the formative period of sufism. His explanation of the experience of tawḥīd (divine unity) within a framework of self-purification (tazkiyat al-nafs), contemplation (tafakkur), annihilation (fanā’), subsistence with...
This study examines Jung Young Moon’s essay Vaseline Buddha, focusing on its fragmented and chaotic structure shaped by the stream-of-consciousness technique. The text offers a narrative that foregrounds absurdity and the flâneur experience, exploring the modern individual’s search for meaning, the fragility of memory, and the absurdity of everyday life. The narrator’s mental and physical...
Phenomenological epistemologies of moral and religious experience face a small number of characteristic logical pitfalls whose consequences, when they are not avoided, ramify through an entire programme. Three such pitfalls are examined in this paper through their systematic exemplification in the work of Anthony J. Steinbock, whose programme spanning Moral Emotions (2014), Phenomenology and...
In the contemporary Mpika District of Zambia, Bemba Catholics have continued to maintain their belief in and practice of the mystical powers of the indigenous Bemba cosmology and spirituality. This is despite a century of evangelisation and condemnation of the mystical beliefs and practices. To understand the enduring nature of this belief and the reasons for its endurance, a descriptive case...