The Innate Capacity
December 4, 1997
Anthony N Perovich
Abstract “SHUT YOUR EYES, and change to and wake another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use.” Plotinus, understood in the context provided by the spiritually charged atmosphere of Neoplatonism and of his own writings, here endorses the idea that an innate capacity for mystical union is possessed by all of us. (He sounds as well the frequently accompanying note in mystical writers...
The Innate Capacity
December 4, 1997
John Dourley
Abstract JUNG’ s UNDERSTANDING OF the nature and dynamic of the psyche is intrinsically religious in that the encompassing process of psychic maturation it seeks to describe has as its foundational telos, or intentionality, a movement toward a state of consciousness that can, and perhaps must, be described as mystical. “Mystical consciousness,” in this context, is taken to mean the conscious...
The Innate Capacity
December 4, 1997
G William Barnard
Abstract SEVERAL DECADES AGO, Western philosophers of religion frequently claimed that mystical experiences were the result of direct contact with an undefined, but usually vaguely Christian, Ultimate Reality. In recent years, however, a significant philosophical shift has taken place. In most contemporary philosophical discussions of mysticism, it is now almost axiomatic that mystical...
The Innate Capacity
December 4, 1997
Robert K C Forman
Abstract It is commonly observed that many, if not most, seminal religious leaders have undergone some form of mystical experiences. Less commonly known is how surprisingly widespread such experiences are; summarizing several large-scale studies, David Hay, in Religious Experience Today, concludes that nearly half-43 percent of all Americans and 48 percent of all British people-have had one or...
December 4, 1997
9 citations
Abstract This book is the sequel to Robert Forman’s well-received collection, The Problem of Pure Consciousness (Oxford, 1990). The essays in the earlier volume argued that some mystical experiences do not seem to be formed or shaped by the language system--a thesis that stands in sharp contradistinction to deconstruction in general and to the “constructivist” school of mysticism in particular,...
Cambridge University Press eBooks
November 13, 1997
Julia Ching
1 citation
INTRODUCTION We are speaking of the appropriation of the sage-king paradigm by the philosophers. This appropriation became further strengthened with the evolution of the theory of Oneness of Heaven and humanity ( T'ien-jen ho-yi ). This theory is usually interpreted within a metaphysical framework. I am doing so while keeping in mind the political Mandate of Heaven, as I understand by the term...
The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
August 1, 1997
278 citations
Religious experience is brain-based, like all human experience. Clues to the neural substrates of religious-numinous experience may be gleaned from temporolimbic epilepsy, near-death experiences, and hallucinogen ingestion. These brain disorders and conditions may produce depersonalization, derealization, ecstasy, a sense of timelessness and spacelessness, and other experiences that foster...
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
June 1, 1997
Harold D. Roth
24 citations
The role of some form of breathing meditation in most of the world's great mystical traditions has long been known, but few have seen much evidence for this in early Taoism. By ‘early Taoism’ I mean the formative stages of the tradition, from its mysterious origins to the completion of theHuai-nan-Tzu (139 B.C.). Perhaps scholars have seen so little evidence of meditative practice in early...
Women & Therapy
May 19, 1997
Summary The recent emergence of mystical experience in psychological literature and the burgeoning of spirituality within mainstream counselling are beginning to challenge many assumptions on which the field of counselling psychology is precariously perched. Mystical experience itself is being reported by significant numbers of clients, and a developing theory describes it as a positive and...
The End of Magic
May 15, 1997
Ariel Glucklich
Abstract: Westerners who arrive in Banaras, a city in India, to conduct research, study music, or just live among Indians, waste no time in shedding the outer signs of their Western identity in favor of kurtas and pajamas. During the past century, the phenomenon of magic, which is dispersed more widely than even religion, has been attacked from various quarters. On the one side have been the...