St Andrews Research Repository
November 3, 2010
Carmen Angela Cvetković
The present thesis examines the way in which two twelfth century authors, the Cistercian monks, Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) and William of St. Thierry (c. 1080-1148), used Augustine (354-430) in the articulation of their mystical thought. The approach to this subject takes into account the fact that in the works of all these medieval authors the “mystical” element is inescapably entangled...
Substance Use & Misuse
November 1, 2010
Paolo Nencini, Kathleen A Grant
The recent interest in the psychopharmacological underpinnings of religious experiences has led to both the laboratory characterizations of drug-induced mystical events and psychobiological models of religious experiences rooted in evolution and fitness. Our examination of this literature suggests that these theories may be congruent only within more modern religious and cultural settings and...
October 25, 2010
Guy G. Stroumsa
To See or not to See: On the Early History of the Visio Beatifica "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." (Mat.5:8).The sixth Beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount set the agenda for two millennia of Christian mysticism 1 .In Christian territory, the vision of God is possible, but only under certain conditions, having to do both with purity and interiority.The Beatitude also...
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
September 23, 2010
Janusz Salamon
The question to what extent the putative mystical experiences reported in the variety of religious traditions contribute to the conflict of religious truth claims, appears to be one of the hardest problems of the epistemology of religion, identified in the course of the ongoing debate about the philosophical consequences of religious diversity. A number of leading participants in this debate,...
The Journal of Theological Studies
September 9, 2010
Michael Lane
In this excellent and very readable introduction to the mystics, the author has adopted a case-study approach to the subject instead of the usual historical or systematic approaches (though he does draw on these to some extent). His approach is reminiscent of the one adopted by William James in his famous Varieties of Religious Experience, though it is crucially and deliberately different. For...
Transcultural Psychiatry
September 1, 2010
Simon Dein
30 citations
This article examines the relationship between Judeo-Christian religious experience and psychopathology. It builds on William James's Varieties of Religious Experience and more specifically his discussions of self, agency and the subliminal. Contemporary research on Christian conversion, mysticism, and its relationship to psychosis and mental health and healing are discussed. Future themes for...
Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation
August 3, 2010
Craig Russon, Karen Russon
3 citations
Background: Since publishing a trilogy of articles relating Eastern mysticism to evaluation, the authors have received many inquiries about training. Purpose: The article explains one promising new method under development—adapting the Zen practice of kōans for evaluation training. Setting: Not applicable. Subjects: Not applicable. Research Design: Not applicable. Data Collection and Analysis:...
Cambridge University Press eBooks
July 8, 2010
Adela Pinch
In this chapter, I follow the thread of the previous chapter's investigation of nineteenth-century accounts of mental causation into the later decades of the century. The preceding chapter demonstrated that a focus on consciousness as a form of action could reveal strange philosophical bedfellows in the 1830s – a quirky but compelling idealist such as James Frederick Ferrier, and believers in...
June 30, 2010
José Luis Gómez Toré
The relationship between mysticism and poetry has become an almost inevitable topic in any study on the work of Jose Angel Valente. However, we must be careful when studying this relationship if we want to avoid an erroneous interpretation. We cannot take as starting point an a priori identification of the question about the Sacred (so important not only in contemporary poetry, but also in...
Wrocławski Przegląd Teologiczny
June 11, 2010
Mirosław Kiwka
Bernard McGinn is widely considered the preeminent scholar of mysticism in the Western Christian tradition. He is a leading authority on the theology of the 14th-century mystic Meister Eckhart as well as on various issues concerning apocalypticism. His current long-range project is a six-volume history of Western Christian mysticism under the general title The Presence of God, four volumes of...