Religions
March 13, 2021
Brentyn J. Ramm
6 citations
Awakening in Chinese Zen Buddhism involves seeing one’s true nature as empty and erasing the boundary between subject and object. Early Zen texts describe this as chopping off your head or seeing your ‘Original Face’. Douglas Harding’s first-person experiments, which investigate the gap where you cannot see your own head, produce experiences strikingly similar to Zen accounts: experiencing oneself as void yet united with the world. These repeatable methods open awakening experiences to empirical investigation and offer new insights into nondual traditions.
Religions
March 6, 2015
Brian Lancaster
6 citations
Mystical texts like the Zohar contain insights into the nature of mind that can inform scientific models in psychology and neuroscience, but these insights are often hidden within complex symbolic systems. By combining a hermeneutic approach with neurophenomenology, three distinct mystical states are identified in the Zohar. The normal state is dominated by the narrative construction of self. The first mystical state emerges as this narrative attenuates, making intentionality of perception and emotion dominant. The second state involves identifying with an associational propensity at the core of memory processing. The final state conveys phenomenality with little intentional content. These insights can enrich understanding of consciousness when combined with neurocognitive data.
Religions
February 23, 2024
Yin Paradies, Cullan Woods Joyce
5 citations
Ongoing colonization, genocide, ecocide, and climate change demand that spiritual practitioners in Australia deepen their engagement with Aboriginal perspectives. Eurocentric habits wrongly categorize Aboriginal sacred experiences as beliefs or hierarchical priesthoods, when in fact Aboriginal spirituality is embodied and practice-based, centered on caring for Country. Such care is an enfleshed, palpable enactment of spirituality, not a fetishized abstraction. Through examples like dadirri (deep listening) and death practices, the paper shows that tending to food, water, and air are contemplative experiences. Caring for Country layers Aboriginal religious expression socially, psychologically, interpersonally, and ritually.
Religions
February 24, 2023
Federico Divino
5 citations
Ancient Buddhism framed complete healing as the ascetic goal of ending the world—transcending ordinary experience through disciplined awareness and presence. Drawing on medical anthropology and historical-philological methods, the analysis shows that early Buddhist asceticism reconciled transcendence with healing by reflecting deeply on awareness and presence. The article contributes to the conceptual history of Buddhist medicine by examining how the ascetic problem of the 'end of the world' served as a path to total health.
Religions
August 25, 2022
Renata Cueto de Souza, Charles Scott
5 citations
The current mindfulness movement has decontextualized and appropriated mindfulness from its Buddhist foundations, favoring a model that offers objectively verifiable biophysical and mental benefits. Self-transcendence, whether from the perspective of Buddhism or Viktor Frankl's Existential Analysis, offers an existentially viable path forward for college students, in lieu of the current medical-therapeutic paradigm promoted by advocates of mindfulness-based interventions. The authors conclude by considering Existential and Buddhist notions of self-transcendence in dialogue, suggesting they offer an educational practice worthy of implementation.
Religions
June 21, 2022
Marc-Henri Deroche, Michael R. Sheehy
5 citations
In Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, mindfulness (smṛti/dran pa) is the foundation of the threefold development of wisdom: study, reflection, and cultivation. In Tibet, this model characterized the gradual approach to awakening, while the simultaneous approach emphasized a state beyond ordinary mindfulness. The Nyingma tradition, which holds Dzogchen as the ultimate teaching, sees these approaches as complementary. This paper analyzes two guidance texts on mindfulness by Rigdzin Jigme Lingpa (1730–1798), including a first English translation of one. Jigme Lingpa articulates a twofold typology: an effortful, conditioned mindfulness and the distinctive mindfulness of Dzogchen inseparable from pure awareness (rigpa). He uses this framework to integrate Buddhist teachings and clarify alternative modes of practice along the Dzogchen path.
Religions
November 25, 2021
Arik Moran
5 citations
Ethnographic film can reveal how religious categories are conceptualized by exposing gaps between colloquial descriptions of divinities and their practical manifestation in ritual. Analysis of scenes from the documentary AVATARA, which focuses on goddess worship among the Khas ethnic majority of the Hindu Himalaya, shows a fundamental difference between the popular depiction of the goddess as a virgin-child who visits followers in dreams and her actual manifestation as a menacing mother during spirit possession séances. Anthropologically informed editing bridges these incongruent images, demonstrating documentary filmmaking's advantage for approximating religious experiences.
Religions
January 23, 2021
Eunil David Cho
5 citations
The concept of narrative identity—the idea that humans are natural storytellers who develop a sense of self through life stories—has been criticized by those who distinguish between Diachronic (narrative) and Episodic (non-narrative) dispositions. This article examines the autobiographical writing of Leo Tolstoy, focusing on his personal religious experience as presented in William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience." The case study shows how an Episodic person can become Diachronic, gaining a sense of unity and self through religious experience. The author argues that Episodic and Diachronic dispositions are not mutually exclusive; individuals may experience their lives in either manner at different points in life.
Religions
June 1, 2019
D. M. Stuart
5 citations
The Buddha observed that the animal realm contains an extraordinary diversity of beings, which he attributed to an even greater diversity of the mind. This paper traces how that early idea develops across a millennium of Buddhist thought, centering on the third-century Sanskrit text Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra. That text bridges early theories of mind and karma with later elaborated doctrines by psychologizing animal behavior and placing it on a continuum with human and divine conduct. Exploring animal embodiments and their karmic limitations becomes a way to examine all beings, inseparable from the human mind. The analysis connects Buddhist philosophy of mind with contemporary embodied cognition theories.
Religions
June 26, 2018
Teng-Kuan Ng
5 citations
A short film by Tsai Ming-Liang uses Zen walking meditation to counter the excesses of modern urban life. Through detailed analysis of the film and premodern Buddhist sources, the paper argues that the film's slowness and simplicity offer a prophetic critique of the contemporary metropolis and present contemplative attentiveness as a therapeutic resource. The film cultivates shifts in viewer perspective, transforming places of distraction or mundanity into sites of beauty, wonder, and liberation.
Religions
July 11, 2025
Hang Sun, Eunyoung Kim
4 citations
A randomized experiment with 30 participants tested whether symbolic imagery in a shamanic ritual affects supernatural beliefs, emotions, and consciousness. The experimental group showed significantly increased supernatural belief scores after the ritual and notable decreases in negative emotions such as tension, anger, and fatigue. Both groups experienced changes in consciousness, but the experimental group's changes were more pronounced. These results suggest that shamanic symbolic imagery can promote consciousness transformation and influence emotion regulation and belief formation through visual perception and symbolic psychological mechanisms.
Religions
May 6, 2023
Shanshan Ma
4 citations
A debate exists over how to interpret zuowang 坐忘, a practice in the Zhuangzi. Some scholars, following a mysticism paradigm, see it as a breath-meditation technique aimed at a transcendental goal, establishing a religious basis for cultivation. Others, mostly Chinese scholars, argue it is primarily a mental state independent of any technique, which they consider philosophically insignificant. The concept of qi 氣, both physical and nonphysical, can reconcile these views. Examining Harold Roth's mysticism paradigm shows that meditative techniques are a necessary step toward mystical experiences, not contradictory to viewing zuowang as mental cultivation. This mind–body transformation pursues authenticity and wholeness, broadening concern for others and other realms, following the universe's perpetual growth. The goal is 'the unity of self,' substantiating the religiousness of Zhuangzi's cultivation.
Religions
November 4, 2022
4 citations
A philosophical essay examines the nature of psychedelic mystical experiences and their therapeutic benefits. While research shows that such experiences can improve mental well-being, the essay argues that the content of the experience itself—not just the drug—may be key. It contrasts two models: Robin Carhart-Harris's REBUS model, which treats mystical experiences as wholly subjective with no external reality, and Edward Kelly's ROSTA model, which allows for an ontological referent. The essay proposes that Aldous Huxley's perspective, which takes the experience as potentially referring to something real, offers plausible insights that could explain why these encounters have profound therapeutic value.
Religions
October 18, 2022
Paul Marshall
4 citations
Mystical experiences often involve a profound sense of contacting deeper realities or seeing the everyday world as it truly is, yet philosophy has largely neglected their metaphysical significance, especially insights into reality, self, consciousness, and time. This article identifies two major obstacles to finding metaphysical significance in such experiences: radical contextualism and reductionist neuroscience. After addressing these obstacles, the author argues that dialogue between mystical experience and metaphysics is now possible, aided by growing interest in alternatives to materialist metaphysics and renewed attention to mystical experiences from psychedelic research.
Religions
August 24, 2022
Masaki Nomura
4 citations
Dōgen's concept of nen (念) in Zen philosophy is the self beyond the sense of body-mind or time, attainable after long cultivation. Examining his Treasury of the True Dharma Eye through the threefold wisdom framework reveals that study and reflection are essential on the Buddhist path alongside practice. Nen connects to critical concepts such as just sitting, dropping off body-mind, and the oneness of practice and awakening.
Religions
September 5, 2021
Monique M. Verrier
4 citations
The paper argues that the transpersonal Self, understood as a source of psychological and spiritual healing, is central to psychotherapy and addiction recovery. It integrates the Internal Family Systems model with nondual wisdom traditions from Advaita Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism to explore how awareness of the Self can be brought into therapeutic work. Drawing on the author's personal experience, the paper examines obstacles to recognizing the Self, methods to facilitate this recognition, and therapeutic benefits for overcoming depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and addiction. Psychotherapeutic interventions for contacting the Self are discussed, along with implications for personal relationships, behavior, inner experiences, and relating to others and the world.
Religions
March 26, 2025
Tobias Tanton
3 citations
Transhumanism typically assumes that mental capacities are brain-bound and that enhancement requires modifying the organism. 4E cognition challenges this by showing how cognitive processes recruit environmental resources. Andy Clark argues that cognitive enhancement occurs through tools and niches that enable brain–body–world coalitions to perform more efficient functions, making humans 'natural-born cyborgs.' This article extends that analysis to religion, arguing that religious practices function as cognitive technologies that count as enhancements. These insights reframe the dialogue between Christian theology and transhumanism: enhancements belong to a long history of self-modification, humans are intrinsically technological, and theologians are already in the enhancement game while transhumanists should consider religious practices.
Religions
July 18, 2024
T. Sparby, Philip Eilinghoff-Ehlers, Nuri Lewandovski et al.
3 citations
Meditation hindrances—phenomena that counteract meditation—can also become grounds for breakthroughs. In a six-day retreat with five participants, a multilevel phenomenological method (biographical exploration, daily notetaking, and micro-phenomenology) revealed that negative effects, often called challenging or adverse, may dissolve into positive outcomes. The concept of hindrances is developed, showing how difficulties can be part of a process leading to breakthroughs.
Religions
July 6, 2024
David Bartosch
3 citations
A transformative revival of intellect-mystical asceticism is argued for, drawing on traditional sources re-examined from a systematic, transcultural philosophical perspective. The approach is distinguished from mystification, science, scientism, and everyday cognition. It aims to foster internal (social) and external (environmental) reintegration of the human noosphere and technosphere in future planetary development. A modern notion of "knowing non-knowing" (wissendes Nichtwissen, docta ignorantia) is developed, inspired by Nicolaus de Cusa and contextualized transculturally. The practical realization of intellect-mystical self-enfolding is discussed through distinct developmental stages outlined in Ibn Sīnā’s Remarks and Admonitions.
Religions
March 28, 2024
Mark Slatter
3 citations
Comparisons between psychedelic-induced mystical experiences and Catholic mysticism are often made in the literature, but these parallels raise questions about the legitimacy of religious ways of knowing and the status of theology in academic culture. The article examines the challenge of methodological displacement, where researchers interpret material outside their discipline's boundaries through their own methodology and worldview, a problem compounded when sciences engage theological themes. Concrete examples of displacement in psychedelic and Catholic mysticism are provided, along with corrections to improve dialogue. The conclusion outlines persistent theological objections to claims of psychedelic mysticism while maintaining hope for further dialogue, focusing on whether correlations between these experiences are critically warranted.
Religions
October 19, 2023
Brian Claude Macallan
3 citations
Christian responses to religious and spiritual experiences (RSEs) arising from psilocybin-assisted therapy (PAT) are explored, proposing four possible perspectives: viewing RSEs as illusions, as inherently evil, as encounters with the Christian God, or as real but occurring beyond Christianity. The paper emphasizes the need for active dialog within the Christian community to avoid hindering individuals seeking mental health relief through PAT.
Religions
July 27, 2022
Michael E. Asbury
3 citations
The transfer of Sufism to the Euro-American sphere, beginning in the early twentieth century, has often been studied for what changes during the process, with emphasis on context over mysticism. Examining the lineage of Indian shaykh Azad Rasool (d. 2006), who from 1976 taught Western seekers in India, reveals substantial continuity with early and pre-modern Sufi doctrines and practices. Textual analysis of primary sources and multi-sited ethnography (participant observation and interviews) among lineage members in Germany, the US, and India between 2015 and 2020 show that shifting focus from context to mysticism itself can reveal much continuity despite changing contextual factors.
Religions
July 14, 2022
Richard H. Jones
3 citations
A positive naturalist understanding of mystical experiences is possible, and these experiences along with their associated practices can be incorporated into a secular mysticism. The text raises philosophical issues about whether a truly secular mysticism is possible, whether mystical experiences provide cognition of transcendent non-natural realities, whether secular mysticism can address the construction of mystical experiences, and whether meaning or purpose in life can be found when non-natural realities and life after death are excluded.
Religions
November 5, 2020
June Mcdaniel
3 citations
On Bali, brahmin high priests (pedandas) achieve religious authority through mystical states that produce the most sacred holy water, essential for all rituals—a rare case where mysticism is vital to daily community life. These priests preserve ancient Indonesian Hinduism against Westernization, Islamization, and modernization. Little ethnographic research exists on them, with no Western-language books and few Indonesian biographies. This paper examines Shiva pedandas' lives and mystical experiences, comparing them with those of Buddhist priests, local healers (balians), and possession trance states.
Religions
July 21, 2020
Carlos Miguel Gómez Rincón
3 citations
Yagé shamanism in Colombia, rooted in the ritual use of a plant medicine, has been central to the medical, spiritual, and cultural systems of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon piedmont of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru for centuries. Since the 1990s, this practice has expanded into urban areas of Colombia and other countries. The article interprets the sense of the sacred in this practice through three stages: exploring origin narratives that present yagé as a source of knowledge and foundational to Indigenous cultures; a phenomenological analysis of yagé shamanic experience as a form of spiritual experience; and a brief discussion of whether this form of experience is valid.