Kanz Philosophia A Journal for Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism
June 25, 2026
Taufik Hidayatulloh, Khairil Ikhsan Siregar, Hery Purwosusanto
The crisis of religious authority, identity polarization, and informational disruption in the public sphere creates tension between religious truth claims and the demands of rational deliberation in plural societies. Abdolkarim Soroush's thought distinguishes religion as a transcendent reality from religious knowledge as a historical construction, allowing a reinterpretation of mysticism and political rationality. His ontology of mysticism fosters epistemic humility, which grounds dialogical ethics and deliberative rationality by rejecting absolutized interpretations and affirming intersubjective argumentative validation. This normative foundation supports inclusive political ethics that uphold interpretative pluralism and equality of arguments, integrating spirituality with public rationality and strengthening deliberative democracy through metaphysical awareness and argumentative responsibility.
Topoi
June 25, 2026
Drew Chastain
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus criticizes mysticism as a form of 'philosophical suicide' that escapes absurdity through faith. Brook Ziporyn's Experiments in Mystical Atheism proposes an 'Emulative Atheism' that embraces reality's purposelessness rather than compensating for it, as Camus and Sartre do. This essay argues that Emulative Atheism better supports meaning in life than Compensatory Atheism and is not philosophical suicide. However, a minor critique notes Ziporyn's abstract metaphysics conflicts with everyday lucidity. David Cooper's Daoist 'sense of mystery' within ordinary experience enhances the meaningfulness derived from Ziporyn's mystical atheism.
Religions
June 24, 2026
Leor Roseman
Prophetic or messianic states of consciousness can be charged with moral urgency and become active, historical, and political. The paper examines psychedelic micro-messianic phenomenology and revolutionary dynamics through three historical figures: Allen Ginsberg (LSD), Master Irineu (Daime/ayahuasca), and John Wilson/Moonhead (peyote). In moments of tension and uncertainty, psychedelics can catalyze micro-messianic movements that diffuse these substances into new situations. A revelatory event motivates the subject to spread the substance and practice, creating a movement that eventually becomes routinized or inverted, then stabilizes into a new status quo from which another revelatory event may arise. The analysis draws on Weber, Wallace, Kuhn, Taves, Whitehouse, Rogers, Badiou, and others to show how psychedelic insights and actions intertwine, with revelations seeking to ripple outward into movements.
Psychedelics
June 24, 2026
Oliver Davis
Psychedelics are interruptive, deautomating political technologies that can foster radical democracy rather than reinforce liberal-democratic systems. The article argues that understanding the political implications of psychedelics requires reconceiving psychedelic mysticism and phenomenology to recognize their embodied, agential, and politically potentiating dimensions, correcting neuro-centric views and incomplete phenomenologies. It also links the deautomating aspects of psychedelic experience to an analysis of anti-democratic forces like automation, administrative reason, and computationalist abstraction.
June 21, 2026
Jonathan David, Aviva Berkovich‐ohana, Yair Dor‐ziderman et al.
preprint
Ayahuasca use among ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews is adapted to Jewish contexts, with ceremonies modified to fit religious norms. Motivations for use are primarily therapeutic. Acute experiences include Jewish and Jewish mystical visionary content. Longer-term effects include strengthened belief, connection to Judaism, and changes in religious practice. Religious tensions arise from ayahuasca's perceived foreignness, concerns about idolatry, mixed-gender participation, and competing authority structures. Strategies to address these tensions include medicalization, making the set, setting, and experience religiously permissible ("koshering"), and framing ceremonies as liminal spaces. The findings highlight psychedelics' contextual flexibility and diffusion into understudied populations.
Space and Culture India
June 20, 2026
P Kadek Wulandari Laksmi, P Komang Widhya Sedana Putra, Ign Oka Ariwangsa
Belief in mystical illness, including witchcraft and spirit possession, is positively associated with both work productivity and economic life among economically active individuals in Denpasar, Bali. Work productivity partially mediates this relationship, and religious education moderates the link between belief and economic outcomes, though the moderating effect is modest yet statistically significant. These beliefs do not solely constrain economic performance but form part of a cultural system that can coexist with productive economic activity. The study used data from 200 individuals and PLS-SEM analysis, highlighting the need to incorporate cultural and spiritual dimensions into economic behavior analyses.
Open MIND
June 16, 2026
Jan Keppel Hesselink
The academic study of Western esotericism has developed six research approaches over the past three decades, but a seventh—phenomenological-neurophenomenological—remains underdeveloped. This method brackets cultural and cosmological frameworks to produce a structural description of inner life. The paper proposes a sevenfold taxonomy, argues that the phenomenological approach best conveys a rigorous, first-person, cross-traditionally triangulated account of inner depth, and positions this method relative to Jacob Taubes's theological-hermeneutic reading, Gershom Scholem's decision to study mysticism without practicing it, and Wouter Hanegraaff's empirical-historical approach, each of which reaches a limit the phenomenological method is designed to cross.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 10, 2026
Guy W. Fincham, Edward Caddye, Amy A. Kartar et al.
A single session of high ventilation breathwork produced larger altered states of consciousness—including mystical experience, emotional breakthrough, and feelings of oneness—than body scan meditation in 24 healthy adults. One week later, breathwork was associated with greater psychological insight and self-reported behavioral change. Both groups showed improvements in stress, anxiety, depression, and well-being over time. These preliminary findings suggest breathwork can induce psychedelic-like effects and support further confirmatory research.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 9, 2026
Emma Dobbin
During psychedelic experiences induced by DMT, the intensity of altered consciousness—particularly feelings of disembodiment and out-of-body experiences—is predicted by how much the brain's neural state changes over time, not by any fixed level of brain activity. Static measures of neural integration and complexity showed no link to subjective richness. Instead, the magnitude of neural state transitions, whether increasing or decreasing, correlated with phenomenal intensity and ego dissolution. This suggests that conscious richness depends on dynamic exploration of neural states rather than occupying a specific brain state, challenging static theories of consciousness.
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
June 5, 2026
Osama Bhatti, Mohammad Qasim Latifi
Psychiatry has long held an ambivalent stance toward religion and spirituality, recognizing their importance but remaining cautious about integrating them into clinical practice. This article examines the historical, conceptual, and clinical tensions surrounding spirituality in psychiatry, particularly in light of renewed interest from contemporary psychedelic research. The authors discuss definitions, diagnostic categories, and evidence linking spirituality and meaning to mental health. They explore how psychedelic-assisted therapies highlight both therapeutic potential and ethical risks in addressing existential suffering. Psychiatry faces a challenging opportunity to incorporate spiritual dimensions of distress without undermining scientific integrity, which will shape its future relationship with the sacred.