Spiritus
March 1, 2014
Paul C. Martin
2 citations
The Colorful Depictions of God in Mystical Consciousness1 Paul C. Martin (bio) Introduction In 1960 Walter T. Stace suggestively wrote that “[t]here are underground connections between the mystical and the aesthetic (whether in poetry or in other forms of art) which are at present obscure and unexplained.”2 Since that statement there has been tremendous work done by commentators and scholars on...
March 1, 2014
Jason N. Blum
Recent evidence in neuroscience and psychology militates against the dominant theory of consciousness that has typically been used in explaining mystical experience—a neo-Kantian model that emphasizes concepts and language as the necessary foundations of consciousness. Findings in neuroanatomy, psychology, and evolutionary biology indi-cate that emotion is more fundamental to consciousness than...
Journal of Aesthetic Education
March 1, 2014
Gregory Aisemberg
Abstract In this paper, I explore how John Dewey, through an application of his antiessentialist empirical naturalism, deconstructs the essentialist phenomenology of stasis as the dialectical development of preconceived notions constructed without any reference to aesthetic-mystical experience as it is lived. I endeavor to show that the only empirically justified phenomenological...
Personality and mental health
February 2014
Aurel Nirestean, Emese Lukacs, Dana Cimpan et al.
Narcissistic traits interfere in the process of self-determination and the individual motivational strategies of human beings. The grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic personality subtypes have difficulties in their education, interpersonal relationships and quality of life. The latter is also affected by ageing, whose attributes influence, above all, one's self-esteem, especially in women....
Mental Health, Religion & Culture
February 1, 2014
Current research on mystical experience is offering community mental health professionals the opportunity to re-consider the role of love within clinical care. In psychological literature the historical conflation of love and sexuality is fraught with ethical concerns about professional impropriety, and the abuse of power. But the intimacy, intensity and beauty to be found within the...
January 31, 2014
T her e seem to be two ways to discover the nature of religious experience. One way is to appropriate the historical formulation of one religion, denomination, or school of religious thought. Another way is to start from mystical experience or Sufism. Such is the case with Sufism, the generally accepted name for Islamic mysticism. To approach its partial meaning we have to ask ourselves first,...
Drug and Alcohol Dependence
January 15, 2014
Elias Dakwar, C. Anerella, Carl L. Hart et al.
125 citations
Background Sub-anesthetic ketamine infusions may benefit a variety of psychiatric disorders, including addiction. Though ketamine engenders transient alterations in consciousness, it is not known whether these alterations influence efficacy. This analysis evaluates the mystical-type effects of ketamine, which may have therapeutic potential according to prior research, and assesses whether these...
2014
Lucille Villasenor-Caron
This is an autoethnography that provides a thick description, analysis and reflection of my personal Multiple Sclerosis healing journey, supported by a transpersonal modality based on an ancient shamanic wisdom.This research explores Ayahuasca as a transpersonal therapy, which is facilitated by a spiritual plant that has been used for centuries by Indigenous Peoples in the Amazonian region for...
2014
Leslie J. Francis, M. Robbins
This study addressed two research questions among three samples of 14- to 18-year-old adolescents: 203 Muslims, 477 Christians, and 378 religiously unaffiliated young people in England and Wales. The first question examined the comparative extent to which the religiously unaffiliated reported mystical experience. The second question examined the association between mystical experience and...
BIROn
2014
Kasper Opstrup Frederiksen
3 citations
This thesis explores a 'hidden' cultural history of experiments to engineer culture to transform humanity. Through a mixture of ideas drawn from artistic avant-garde movements as well as new social and religious movements, it examines the radical political and hedonist imaginaries of the experimental fringes of the UK Underground. Even though the theatres of operation have changed more than...