March 27, 2003
William Barclay Parsons
1 citation
Abstract In the present climate of fascination with mystical experience and spirituality, an informed grasp of the resurgent psychoanalytic theory of mysticism has become a desired end for those invested in teaching religion and psychological studies. Of course, the literature on this topic is rich and complex enough to be packaged for pedagogical purposes in diverse ways. What follows, then,...
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
2003
E. A. Torchinov
The purpose of this paper is to critically explore the nature and ontological and epistemological significance of differences observed in how various cultural traditions describe and explain such experiences. After an initial consideration of definitional issues, the article focuses on the arguments supporting and challenging the idea of mystical experience being a universal phenomenon and a...
Théologiques
October 2, 2002
John Grim
3 citations
Different indigenous nations in North America provide examples of mystical participation in the processes of creation. Some observers dismiss native communities as fragmented or romantically reimaged as "ecological Indians", yet, the tenacity of their religious insights deserve attention. Intellectually framed in images of interactions between specific peoples with particular geographical...
Social Compass
September 1, 2002
Federico Squarcini
Religious institutions created by the extraordinary efforts of a single founder—like the one examined in this essay—try hard to assure the preservation of charisma, and to guarantee its Weberian “routinization”. But this attempt does not always succeed, and quite often what originally looks like the “power of mysticism”, allowing resolute individual and social transformations, in the gradual...
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
September 1, 2002
Neil F. Goodman
30 citations
This article aims to explore, through established scientific research and documented accounts of personal experience, the similarities between religious mystical experiences and some effects of D-lysergic diethylamide or LSD. LSD predominantly works upon the serotonergic (serotonin-using neurons) diffuse neuromodulatory system, which projects its axons to virtually all areas of the brain...
Sacrificing the Self
July 18, 2002
Lawrence Fine
Abstract A feature normally assumed essential to martyrdom is that it results in physical death. This essay, however, focuses on a variety of traditions in which martyrdom has to do with something other than actual dying. In certain Jewish mystical traditions, particularly medieval Kabbalah and Eastern European Hasidism, we discover a range of rituals that encourage the practice of...
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis
February 1, 2002
Janet Sayers
It is unusual to combine mysticism and psychoanalysis. Marion Milner, however, achieved precisely this. Through her self-analysis and analytic work with children and adults--and using as an illustration her own and others' imaginative ideas, paintings, doodles, drawings and pictures--she drew attention to the potential for health and creativity of undoing the obstacles to mystical experience of...
Temenos - Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion
2002
Anton Geels
1 citation
No abstract available
September 1, 2001
C. R. Albright
Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg's The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience presents a core theory regarding the neurophysical nature of mystical experience; extensions of this theory, focusing upon near-death experiences and the nature of religion itself; and buttressing arguments proposing that genetically based neurophysical “operators” within the brain compel...
Toronto Journal of Theology
September 1, 2001
Michael Stoeber
3 citations
[…]mysticism is quite different from religious experiences in ordinary faith, where the relationship with the Divine is mediated through normal categories of experience given in a person's culture and history. This difference raises the question of the relationship of mysticism to ordinary religious experiences. What is the role and status of mystical experience in the spiritual life? What, if...