Abstract Breathwork as a means of inducing non-ordinary states of consciousness is gaining traction as a potential therapeutic modality. We examined the effects of breathwork (in the form of connected breathing) on electroencephalography (EEG) and mood in 20 healthy participants (aged between 23 and 39 years (female = 11, M age = 29). In addition, to compare with other means of inducing...
ABSTRACT Reports of psychedelic experiences may contain similarities and differences across cultural contexts, but most current characterizations and quantifications of psychedelic experiences come from Western medical and naturalistic settings. In this article, we begin with a brief history of the diversity of psychedelic use in non-Western settings. We then compare and contrast accounts of...
The article provides a comprehensive analysis of domestic and foreign developments on the issues of a certain state of man in general and the state of TERMINATION in the religious and secular life of man in particular; the concept of «termination» is substantiated; the content of the leading concepts of the problem is revealed. The signs, types, functions, and qualities of the TERMINATION state...
Desire: An Inoperative Language? Exploring the Mystical Experience of Bernard of Clairvaux with the Philosophical Thought of Giorgio Agamben was published in Der Mensch als Bild des unergründlichen Gottes on page 211.
American Religion 5:1 138Around the time when Jacob Boss approached us with the invitation to contribute to this American Religion roundtable on AI and algorithms, I (Sharday Mosurinjohn) had just been introduced to the esoteric algorithm called "Human Design" 1 by a friend in the psychedelic space, which is where the bulk of my research now takes place. 2 As I delved deeper into the world of...
The aim of this study is to replicate Long & Perry’s (2016) God study using a more updated database and different inclusion criteria. The descriptions of God’s and Jesus’ characteristics as observed by 303 Near-death or Near-death-like experiencers were analyzed for their frequency both in the whole sample and divided by the participants’ religious experience. Both in the whole group and in the...
Mental health problems including depression, anxiety, suicide, and burnout are common among health care providers. Resilience and well-being are factors thought to protect against these incidents. Clinical trials and naturalistic studies of psychedelic compounds have shown decreases in depression, anxiety, and suicidality while suggesting improvements in well-being. This secondary analysis of a...
The emergence of research examining Islamic mysticism or Sufism in recent centuries, reaching its peak in the 20th century, indicates significant development of Sufism outside the Islamic world. This is evidenced by the presence of Muslim communities in the West who adhere to Sufi teachings. The aim of this article is to explore the development of Sufism in the West, focusing on two aspects:...
Objective: We used the ChatGPT-3.5 artificial intelligence (AI)-based language program to compare twelve types of mystical, supernatural, or otherwise anomalous entity encounter narratives constructed from material in the publicly available corpus of information, and compared their details to the phenomenology of spontaneous accounts via the Survey of Strange Events (SSE) and the grounded...
Asceticism or renunciation (zuhd) is generally viewed as turning away from the world and all it has to offer in order to connect to the divine. The well-known mystical theorist, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240), adds a denotation of asceticism to this conventional definition. Ibn ‘Arabī argues that the impetus for the creation of the cosmos was the divine wish to be known by something...