In response to Hartelius (2017), I suggest that the evidence for perennialism or essentialism can be tested, and is publicly accessible, through engagement with the spiritual practices that have given rise to cross-cultural mystical experiences with common characteristics. This suggests that essentialism could be included in transpersonal psychology (and psychology in general). I suggest that...
This chapter examines the investigation into second sight undertaken by the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in the closing decade of the nineteenth century. Focusing on its chief researcher, Ada Goodrich-Freer, and on her claim to possess ‘Celtic’ blood, Richardson finds a corollary for this desire for identification and proximity in the contemporaneous Celtic Revival. Reading the SPR’s...
AbstractWittgenstein zitiert in seinen Schriften nur wenige Autoren, den amerikanischen Pragmatisten William James bis in sein Spätwerk hinein jedoch mit auffallender Häufigkeit. Das hängt - so die Leitthese des Beitrags - vor allem mit der Rolle zusammen, die James‘ Erkundungen des Religiösen für Wittgensteins Nachdenken über Religion spielen. Der intrikaten Verbindung Wittgenstein-James wird...
William James's reputation in the field of emotion research is based on his early psychological writings where he defines emotions as 'feelings of bodily changes'. In his later work, particularly in his study of mystic emotion (1902), James comes up with what looks like a completely different approach. Here his focus is on positive feelings of inspiration and joy, but also on downbeat moods...
Background: The States of Consciousness Questionnaire (SOCQ) was developed to assess the occurrence features of the change in consciousness induced by psilocybin, and includes the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ), developed to assess the ocurrence of mystical experiences in altered states of consciousness. Objective: To translate the SOCQ to Brazilian Portuguese and validate the 30-item...
Currently, the whole world is being swept away by spiritual movements seeking divinity in oneself. Yet there are terror attacks, religious disputes and other conflicts continuously taking place on larger and larger scales as well as expanding further and further throughout the world. Interreligious harmony seems like a distant ideal. What is the ultimate cause of religious conflicts? Is...
The aim of the article is to present the general view of mystical experience which emerges from the group of four spiritual writers related to The Golden Age of English Mysticism. All of them lived during the 14th century representing affective mysticism and negative theology. The most significant representatives of the period in English spirituality are Richard Rolle, the anonymous author of...
Many people have dealt with the question of God, as have the entire history of religion and philosophy. Numerous difficulties arise while trying to understand this question. Surely, for great minds of mankind, in the East as well in the West, it was an acceptable thought that God could not be conceived or expressed by no concept or utterance, i.e. defined by no definition. 1erefore, God is for...
The aim of the study is to find mystical elements in Edith Stein's anthropology as a connecting principle between phenomenology and Thomism. Relying on methodological definition of philosophical mystic, as a matching of theological and philosophical doctrines, based upon reflection on experience of ecstatic unity with the Absolute, it was shown that phenomenology is implicitly directed towards...
Purpose. The author will show that metaphysical concepts and the concepts of empirical sciences derive from experience. The only difference is that metaphysical concepts derive from unusual experience, i.e. out-of-body experience, while empirical sciences – from usual one. The example set metaphysical concept of pure being. Methodology. In order to obtain this goal the author uses two methods....