Jurnal e-Bangi/e-Bangi
February 28, 2026
Alexander Stark
Esoteric knowledge in a remote Minangkabau village in Indonesia is not rejected but actively practiced, primarily through Islamic mysticism and folk religion carried out by traditional healers (dukun). Based on ethnographic observation and interviews, two major esoteric traits were identified. The study used semiotics to analyze incantations and the phenomenological concept of the life-world to understand local perception and thinking. Esoteric concepts widespread on social media were not relevant in this village. The findings show that esoteric knowledge in this context is multifaceted and cannot be dismissed as rejected knowledge, especially regarding traditional healing.
Research Square
February 27, 2026
Randi Brown, Kenneth Shinozuka, Irakli Kaloiani et al.
A survey of 151 US veterans who received funding for psychedelic treatment found that after their most memorable psychedelic experience, the proportion who endorsed an active belief in God or a higher power increased significantly, while the proportion who denied such belief decreased significantly. No significant changes occurred in affiliation with spiritual or religious groups, but qualitative analysis indicated shifts in the nature of participants' relationship with spirituality. The findings suggest that psychedelic experiences can catalyze increased spiritual connection and reorientation, especially among those who previously doubted or did not believe.
Journal of Psychology and Neuroscience
February 23, 2026
Julian Ungar-Sargon
A comprehensive analysis argues that Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree can be read as an embodiment of the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of divine immanence in Kabbalistic theology, whose boundless generosity mirrors mystical dynamics between God and creation. Juxtaposing this Kabbalistic reading with the spirituality of the 12-Step Program, the essay explores divine-human interaction, selfhood, ethical responsibility, and therapeutic transformation. Drawing on scholarship in Jewish mysticism and therapeutic theology, it demonstrates how these paradigms illuminate complementary aspects of spiritual engagement. Both The Giving Tree and 12-Step spirituality represent variations on experiences of dependence, transformation, and encounter with transcendence, though they diverge in theological assumptions and practical applications.
Open MIND
February 19, 2026
Seyed Morteza Moossavi
Iranian art functions as a medium of metaphysical vision, rooted in Zoroastrian fire symbolism and evolving through cultural encounters while preserving ancient motifs. With Islam, geometry became the language of unity, ennobling matter through circles and calligraphy. Suhrawardi's illuminationism reconciled rational discourse with mystical purification, embedding esoteric symbols. Architecture created sacred domains mirroring cosmic order, and Shi'i metaphysics emphasized martyrdom as illumination. Together, these dimensions reveal art as philosophy and form as thought, integrating illuminationism, mysticism, and metaphysical truth.
Plant Signaling & Behavior
February 18, 2026
Giulia Parovel
Gustav Fechner's 1848 arguments for plant sentience, long dismissed as mystical, are grounded in empirical observation and inductive reasoning. He proposes that a plant's complete immersion in its environment—earth, water, air, and light—makes every environmental change accessible to its experience. Because plants are sessile, survival demands total presence, so while they lack animal-like memory and anticipation, their immediate sensory experience may be more intense than human perception. Fechner's framework offers biologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists a way to reconceptualize intelligence, suggesting sentience is an intrinsic property of life, not merely a product of neural complexity.
Estudios
February 18, 2026
Isabel González García
An eighteenth-century painting from Puebla is analyzed as a site where mysticism and esotericism converge. Using Antoine Faivre's criteria for Western esotericism, William James's concept of mystical experience, and Victor Stoichita's work on visionary imagery, the article interprets the painting through iconological-hermeneutic visual analysis. It argues that the painting's representational strategies—gesture, imagination, and symbolic mediation—render mystical experience visible and socially legible through shared codes between mystics and painters. Such imagery served as mediating devices between the human and the divine, feeding back into the cultural and religious horizon of its context.
International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research
February 13, 2026
Devajit Das
Mysticism, though formally developed as a field by Western scholars, originates in Eastern traditions such as the Upanishads. It resists precise definition, understood less as a doctrine than as a spiritual mode emphasizing unity, intuition, and transcendence beyond rational analysis. Mystics seek the underlying oneness of existence and union with Supreme Reality through intuition rather than intellect. Historically, mysticism has shaped major religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity—and influenced Western philosophy and literature from Plato and Plotinus to medieval and modern thinkers.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
February 11, 2026
Kingsley Nkrumah
Visionary experiences across cultures—including prophetic revelations, near-death experiences, shamanic journeys, mystical ascents, and symbolic dreams—follow a single universal cognitive architecture. A four-stage sequence—Collapse, Threshold, Irreversibility, and Dissolution/Reboot—appears consistently when structural invariants are isolated from cultural symbolism. This consistency points to a Back-End Law, a source code embedded in the organization of consciousness. The LATTICE PATTERN™ provides the first mechanistic explanation for this phenomenon, offering a unifying framework that bridges comparative religion, cognitive science, anthropology, and consciousness studies. The model is presented as testable, falsifiable, and predictive.
Poornaprajna International Journal of Philosophy & Languages (PIJPL)
February 3, 2026
Ramanathan Srinivasan, P. S. Aithal
2 citations
Tiruvācakam, a 9th-century Tamil Śaiva text by Māṇikkavācakar, presents theology as lived experience through emotion, surrender, and mystical intimacy with Śiva, dissolving boundaries between devotee and deity. This exploratory qualitative study argues that the text functions as an experiential theology prioritizing inner transformation over metaphysical speculation, using motifs of tears, longing, divine grace, and ego-annihilation rooted in personal encounter rather than institutional dogma. By situating it within Tamil bhakti traditions and global mystical literature, the paper highlights its enduring relevance as a spiritual manual integrating ethics, aesthetics, and transcendence, articulating human-divine communion through lived emotional experience.