Religious Studies
October 1, 1965
Ninian Smart
64 citations
The article examines R. C. Zaehner's classification of mysticism into panenhenic, monistic, and theistic types. It argues that monistic and theistic mysticism likely involve the same kind of experience, differing only in interpretation. Similarly, the Theravādin experience of nirvana, interpreted neither monistically nor theistically, may be substantially identical to those two types. This raises methodological issues about distinguishing experience from interpretation. The fact that mystical experience is substantially similar across cultures does not imply a shared 'perennial philosophy', because mystics' doctrines are shaped by factors beyond the experience itself.
Religious Studies
June 1, 1978
James Kellenberger
10 citations
Scholars of mysticism and psychological researchers have debated whether drugs can induce genuine mystical experiences. R. C. Zaehner, an expert in Eastern and Western mysticism, argued that drug-induced experiences differ from theistic religious mystical experiences. He rejected Aldous Huxley's comparison of his feeling of oneness with a chair to the Beatific Vision, and later critiqued Timothy Leary's claims about LSD. The core disagreement was not whether the experiences were real, but whether they matched the mystical states achieved through spiritual discipline. Psychological researchers like Walter N. Pahnke and R. E. L. Masters and Jean Houston pursued this question through laboratory experiments.
Religious Studies
May 14, 2026
Ricardo Sousa Silvestre
Jīva Gosvāmī's sixteenth-century Bhedābheda Vedānta can be interpreted as a distinctive form of priority cosmopsychism, termed śakti-based Vedānta cosmopsychism. This metaphysical reconstruction uses contemporary philosophy of mind vocabulary to articulate key aspects of Jīva's thought. The paper examines implications for the causal exclusion problem and the explanatory gap problem, reframed as the individuation problem, and addresses objections including a cosmopsychist formulation of the Vedāntic problem of imperfection.
Religious Studies
December 9, 2025
Daekyung Jung
An embodied cognition approach offers a more robust support for the epistemic reliability of religious experience than a strictly cognitivistic or constructivist framework. The article argues that interpreting religious experience through embodied cognition can resolve the long-standing impasse between religious-experience-based epistemology and constructivism. It proposes an integrative framework that moves beyond their traditional opposition, suggesting compatibility and potential synthesis rather than mere coexistence.
Religious Studies
October 30, 2025
Brant Cole Entrekin
Interactions with AI chatbots like ChatGPT can produce genuine mystical experiences, similar to how guided meditation does. Drawing on William James's framework, the author argues that AI chatbots can serve as mediators for such experiences. The paper raises concerns about using AI technologies in religious contexts, including their role in facilitating mystical experiences.
Religious Studies
September 1, 2024
Mark Wynn
Christina Van Dyke's book A Hidden Wisdom argues for recovering an ideal of philosophy as partly a 'way of life' and for reintegrating that ideal into contemporary philosophical practice. This review explores how such a proposal might be developed.