Mystical Experience
Author: Ben-Ami Scharfstein
Publisher:
Published: 1974
Total Pages: 195
ISBN-13: 9780140039047
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Reality and Mystical Experience
Author: F. Samuel Brainard
Publisher: Penn State Press
Published: 2010-11-01
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780271041810
DOWNLOAD EBOOKResponding to our modern disillusionment with any claims to absolute truth regarding morality or reality, this book offers a conceptual approach for discussing absolutes without denying either the relevance of divergent religious and philosophical teachings or the evidence supporting postmodern and poststructuralist critiques. Case studies of mysticism within Advaita-Vedānta Hinduism, Mādhyamika Buddhism, and Nicene Christianity demonstrate the value of this approach and offer many fresh insights into the metaphysical presuppositions of these religions as well as into the nature and value of mystical experience. Like Douglas Hofstadter's Gōdel, Escher, Bach, this book finds ultimate reality to be rationally graspable only as an eternal fugue of pattern and paradox. Yet it does not so much counter other philosophical views as provide a conceptual tool for understanding and classifying incommensurable views.
The Mystic Experience
Author: Jordan Paper
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2012-02-01
Total Pages: 187
ISBN-13: 0791484289
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe mystic, zero, or void experience—the ecstatic disappearance of self along with everything else—is considered by those who have had it to be the most beautiful, blissful, positive, profound, and significant experience of their lives. Offering both a descriptive and a comparative perspective, this book explores the mystic experience across cultures as both a human and cultural event. The book begins and ends with descriptions of the author's own mystical experiences, and looks at self-reported experiences by individuals who do not link their experiences to a religious tradition, to determine characteristics of this universal human experience. These characteristics are compared to statements of acknowledged mystics in diverse religious traditions. The mystic experience is also situated within other ecstatic religious experiences to distinguish it from similar, but distinct, experiences such as lucid dreams, shamanism, and mediumism. Jordan Paper goes on to look at how the mystic experience has been considered in various fields, such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, and comparative religious studies.
Mystical Experience of God
Author: Jerome Gellman
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-11-01
Total Pages: 223
ISBN-13: 1351786636
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis title was first published in 2001: Engaging contemporary discussion concerning the validity of mystical experiences of God, Jerome Gellman presents the best evidential case in favor of validity and its implications for belief in God. Gellman vigorously defends the coherence of the concept of a mystical experience of God against philosophical objections, and evaluates attempts to provide alternative explanations from sociology and neuropsychology. He then carefully examines feminist objections to male philosophers' treatments of mystical experience of God and to the traditional hierarchal concept of God. Gellman finds none of the objections decisive, and concludes that while the initial evidential case is not rationally compelling for some, it can be rationally compelling for others. Offering important new perspectives on the evidential value of experiences of God, and the concept of God more broadly, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers including those with an interest in philosophy of religion, religious studies, mysticism and epistemology.
Sacred Knowledge
Author: William A. Richards
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015-12-08
Total Pages: 279
ISBN-13: 0231540914
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSacred Knowledge is the first well-documented, sophisticated account of the effect of psychedelics on biological processes, human consciousness, and revelatory religious experiences. Based on nearly three decades of legal research with volunteers, William A. Richards argues that, if used responsibly and legally, psychedelics have the potential to assuage suffering and constructively affect the quality of human life. Richards's analysis contributes to social and political debates over the responsible integration of psychedelic substances into modern society. His book serves as an invaluable resource for readers who, whether spontaneously or with the facilitation of psychedelics, have encountered meaningful, inspiring, or even disturbing states of consciousness and seek clarity about their experiences. Testing the limits of language and conceptual frameworks, Richards makes the most of experiential phenomena that stretch our understanding of reality, advancing new frontiers in the study of belief, spiritual awakening, psychiatric treatment, and social well-being. His findings enrich humanities and scientific scholarship, expanding work in philosophy, anthropology, theology, and religious studies and bringing depth to research in mental health, psychotherapy, and psychopharmacology.
The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia
Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2012-02-01
Total Pages: 262
ISBN-13: 1438407459
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book represents the first wide-scale presentation of a major Jewish mystic, the founder of the ecstatic Kabbalah. It includes a description of the techniques employed by his master, including the role of music. There is a discussion of the characteristics of his mystical experience and the erotic imagery by which it was expressed. Based on all the extant manuscript material of Abulafia, this book opens the way to a new understanding of Jewish mysticism. It points to the importance of the ecstatic Kabbalah for the later developments in mystical Judaism.
Dimensions of Mystical Experiences
Author: Ralph W. Hood
Publisher: Rodopi
Published: 2001
Total Pages: 194
ISBN-13: 9789042013391
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMain headings: Part 1. Conceptual issues in the empirical study of mysticism. - Part 2. The measurement of mysticism. - Part 3. The quasi-experimental elicitation of mystical experience. - Part 4. Mysticism, religious orientation, eroticism and death. - Part 5. Triggers and evaluation of mystical experience. - Part 6. The veridical nature of mystical experience. - Epilogue.
The Neuroscience of Religious Experience
Author: Patrick McNamara
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2009-11-06
Total Pages: 319
ISBN-13: 1139483560
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTechnical advances in the life and medical sciences have revolutionised our understanding of the brain, while the emerging disciplines of social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience continue to reveal the connections of the higher cognitive functions and emotional states associated with religious experience to underlying brain states. At the same time, a host of developing theories in psychology and anthropology posit evolutionary explanations for the ubiquity and persistence of religious beliefs and the reports of religious experiences across human cultures, while gesturing toward physical bases for these behaviours. What is missing from this literature is a strong voice speaking to these behavioural and social scientists - as well as to the intellectually curious in the religious studies community - from the perspective of a brain scientist.
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Author: William James
Publisher: The Floating Press
Published: 2009-01-01
Total Pages: 824
ISBN-13: 1877527467
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHarvard psychologist and philosopher William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature explores the nature of religion and, in James' observation, its divorce from science when studied academically. After publication in 1902 it quickly became a canonical text of philosophy and psychology, remaining in print through the entire century. "Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the Methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind."
Mysticism and Experience
Author: Alex S. Kohav
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2020-10-15
Total Pages: 330
ISBN-13: 9781498599375
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"This book embarks on scholarly investigations of mystical phenomena, including shamanism, near-death experiences, and the paranormal. Contributors address queries such as why religious experiences are ineffable, what the explanatory mechanisms of altered states of consciousness are, and how literature and art express the mystical"--
