My analysis demonstrates Luigi Pirandello’s application of spiritual modes of thought ranging from Eastern mysticism to the modern Western movements of Theosophy, Spiritualism and Parapsychology. Using Antonio Illiano’s seminal work, Metapsichica e letteratura in Pirandello (Metapsychics and Literature in Pirandello) as a point of departure, my research incorporates the various philosophical,...
Unitive, mystical, or transcendent experiences; subjective perceptions of connection with God or the divine; spiritual rebirth - for biomedicine these concepts are regarded as wholly subjective, perhaps products of delusion, and thus intractable from a research standpoint. As even sociologists of religion focus their psychometric efforts elsewhere, there is little extant scholarship on...
This article aims at studying the narratives of Phra Kechi Achan, (monks with mystical power) in central Thailand. Four monks’ life narratives, two from the Vipassana group and two from the Vidayagom group, are used as case studies. The study reveals that the narratives of all monks follow the structure of the Buddha’s life due to the Buddhist tradition of using the Buddha’s life as a paradigm...
The post-war 1920s and 30s were decades of uncertainty in the world, where a resurgence of popular interest in mysticism, magic and other "occult" spiritual practices coincided with the growth of extreme political movements. Between 1927 and 1933, a man known as Brother XII ran a notorious spiritual commune in southern British Columbia, which he identified as the spiritual center of the world....
Schopenhauer on Sense Perception and Aesthetic Cognition Bart Vandenabeele (bio) Introduction In Schopenhauer’s view, the whole organic and inorganic world is ultimately governed by an insatiable, blind will. Life as a whole is purposeless: there is no ultimate goal or meaning, for the metaphysical will is only interested in manifesting itself in (or as) a myriad of phenomena, which we call the...
This article considers various comparisons that can be made between Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) and the Zen Buddhist tradition. It first summarizes how D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966) used the comparison between Eckhart and Zen to explain Zen to the West, and how Kyoto School member Ueda Shizuteru (1926-) interprets Eckhart's notion of the birth of God in the soul as an initial stage in a process that...
The Kitab Al-Mawaqif by Al-Niffary (tenth Century) is an illustrative example of Sufi consciousness immersion in Koran. The result of such immersion in the Sacred Islamic Text is an original mystical language, which abounds in poetic expressions. Diversity of the poetic expressions of al-Niffary points at logical impossibility of verbal expression of communication mystery with the Supreme Entity.
This study focuses on measuring the spirituality of alcohol and marijuana users, using the new and exclusively Czech measuring tool, the Prague Spiritual Questionnaire (PSQ). The data from 155 respondents shows that users of both marijuana and alcohol scored significantly higher in the mysticism dimension of spirituality than those who only drank alcohol. People who mentioned that the specified...
Psychedelics can enable a broad and paradoxical spectrum of linguistic phenomena from the unspeakability of mystical experience to the eloquence of the songs of the shaman or curandera. Interior dialogues with the Other, whether framed as the voice of the Logos, an alien download, or communion with ancestors and spirits, are relatively common. Sentient visual languages are encountered, their...
Salvia divinorum may be this generation's answer to magic mushrooms. A hallucinogenic member of the mint family, it has been used for centuries by Mexican shamans for spiritual purposes. Within the past decade it's become popular as a legal high—at least where its use hasn't been outlawed. Now researchers at Johns Hopkins University have conducted the first human laboratory study on the plant,...