God Consciousness Research Articles

Spiritual Experience, Religious Orientation, and Self-Reported Behavior

This study found evidence to support the validity of the revised Spiritual Experience Index (Genia, 1997) as an instrument to gauge spiritual experience within a developmental framework. The Spiritual Experience Index's Spiritual Support subscale is related to engaging in formal religious practices, having God consciousness, and having an intrinsic orientation to religion. The Spiritual Openness subscale is related to, but also distinct from, quest orientation. Spiritual openness tended to be inversely related to involvement in formal religious practices among conservative Christians. There was evidence to support Genia's (1997) developmental spiritual typology of growth-oriented, transitional, dogmatic, and underdeveloped.

Project MATCH Client Impressions About Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is the most popular mutual-help program for individuals with alcohol-related problems, and most treatment programs encourage AA attendance during and after treatment. As part of a larger study (Project MATCH, 1997; 1998), this study examined aftercare (n = 621) and outpatient (n = 415) client subjective impressions about AA. As predicted, client ratings of the helpfulness of AA, the importance of encouragement to attend AA, spiritual experiences, and God consciousness were positively related with AA meeting attendance and practicing of prescribed AA-related behaviors, such as having a sponsor. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that commitment to AA-related practices, AA meeting attendance, and subjective impressions about AA formed a single latent construct depicting how individuals experience AA. Increased engagement in AA-related practices and beliefs was predictive of statistically significantly more abstinence and less intense drinking when drinking occurred.

Moral development and higher states of consciousness

This paper discusses possible relationships between the cognitive–moral development theory of Lawrence Kohlberg and Charles Alexander's life-span model. Central to Alexander's model is the role which levels of mind and higher states of consciousness play throughout the general periods of development. Parallel to Kohlberg's cosmic perspective Stage 7—which goes beyond the representational logic and reasoning identified by Piaget's highest stage—are the postrepresentational stages of development, described by Vedic psychology and Alexander's model as "higher states of consciousness"—transcendental consciousness, cosmic consciousness, God consciousness, and unity consciousness. Research indicates that EEG brainwave coherence is associated with the development of higher states of consciousness and Kohlberg's Stage 7. Studies on the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and TM-Sidhi programs as effective technologies for promoting moral development are further discussed.

The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200-1350). Volume III of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism by Bernard McGinn

BOOK REVIEWS613 The Flowering ofMysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200- /350).Volume III of The Presence ofGod:A History of Western Christian Mysticism. By Bernard McGinn. (New York: Crossroad/Herder. 1998. Pp. xv, 526. $60.00.) The present book is the third volume of a projected five-volume work treating the history of Western Christian mysticism. McGinn singles out the year 1200 as one of particular importance in the development of what he calls the new mysticism. In this context, he understands mysticism to be concerned with the "notion of consciousness of God's presence in a deeper and more immediate way" (p. xi). This understanding of the term has the advantage of allowing the author to treat a significant range of religious phenomena of an experiential nature under this more general definition. The volume opens with an introduction that lays out the broader historical context for the material to be treated. One of the very significant factors in the movement from the earlier Christian tradition into the thirteenth century is the move from a spirituality characterized strongly by withdrawal to a monastic setting to a spirituality that is lived in the world outside the monastery. Significant in this regard is the rise of the mendicant Orders, and particularly the early struggle of St. Francis of Assisi. Should his way be one of withdrawal as a hermit , or should he go through the world preaching the Gospel? In a Franciscan text from the early thirteenth century known as the Sacred Exchange, the entire world is seen as a cloister for the friars. Later in the century, and going into the fourteenth, Meister Eckhart could insist that "God could be found, directly and decisively, anywhere and by anyone" (p. 14). McGinn sees this as a movement from a view of action and contemplation as successive steps in a life dedicated to God to a sense that the two could be fused in the context of public activity. Margaret of Cortona is a powerful example of one who was able to combine exceptional asectic and mystical practices even while being engaged in such public affairs as founding a hospital for the poor. Another significant element that could lead one to speak of a new mysticism is the place played by women after the year 1200. This is not to say that women played no role in earlier Christian history. But it is to underscore the fact that written evidence for such a role is meager. And when the evidence becomes more plentiful, as it does in the thirteenth century, one is struck by the diversity among the women. This makes it difficult to argue for a single form of women's mysticism as distinct from a male form. In fact, McGinn chooses not to do so. Rather, he chooses the idea of a "conversation" between male and female mystics as a helpful model for understanding the relation between them. And even when we have written evidence from women mystics, it is often the case that this comes not directly from the women themselves, but from their male admirers . The origin of the well-known text of The Book ofAngela is an excellent example of this sort of collaboration between a female ecstatic and a male cleric. Thus, what may be presented as the writing of a woman may, in fact, be 614BOOK REVIEWS the view of a male writer about what he thought was significant in the life of the woman. To what extent this corresponds to the woman's self-understanding is problematic. But despite this sort of problem, it seems in the long run that such co-operation between male and female mystics led to the enrichment of both. A third element in this historical period is the development of new literary forms and the expanded use of the vernacular. There were academic forms of theological development characteristic of the emerging universities. In that context, one moves from the common monastic lectio of the sacred text with a running commentary to new forms such as the quaestio drawn out in a highly dialectical fashion. The language of the university culture was Latin. During the same period, the...

AFRO‐BRAZILIANS IN SALVADOR:REFLECTIONS OF A WEST AFRICAN CHRISTIAN

International Review of MissionVolume 86, Issue 340-341 p. 125-127 AFRO-BRAZILIANS IN SALVADOR:REFLECTIONS OF A WEST AFRICAN CHRISTIAN Janice Nessibou, Janice Nessibou Janice Nessibou, an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, is the women's coordinator of PROCMURA (Project for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa), based in Accra, Ghana.Search for more papers by this author Janice Nessibou, Janice Nessibou Janice Nessibou, an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, is the women's coordinator of PROCMURA (Project for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa), based in Accra, Ghana.Search for more papers by this author First published: 25 March 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.1997.tb00025.x AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume86, Issue340-341January‐April 1997Pages 125-127 RelatedInformation

The Changing Shape of Late Medieval Mysticism

The historical development of explicit forms of Christian mysticism can be sketched according to a model of gradually accumulating and interactive layers of tradition. The monastic ideal of flight from the world in order to lead a specialized life of penance and prayer, either as a hermit or within a community, formed the institutional context for most forms of Christian mysticism down to the end of the twelfth century. This monastic layer of mysticism was primarily biblical and liturgical in the sense that it sought God in and through personal appropriation of the mystical understanding of the Bible as cultivated within the liturgical life of the monastic community. Most monastic mystics were also “objective” in the sense that they rarely talked about their own experiences of God, but rather sought to express their understanding of mystical transformation through biblical exegesis and theoretical expositions of a mystagogical character (that is, expositions designed to lead readers into the mystery of the consciousness of God's presence)

Maternal cocaine use: Impact onchild health and development

Introduction Children exposed to cocaine prenatally, so-called crack kids, have been portrayed in the popular media as inevitably and permanently damaged. 1 As we have recently summarized, 2,3 the public outcry for the punishment of substance-using mothers and the disenfranchisement of their children as an unsalvageable, almost demonic biologic underclass 4 rests not on scientific findings but upon media hysteria fueled by selected anecdotes. For example, a university president recently quoted in the Boston Globe suggested that health care resources were being squandered by spending immense amounts on crack babies who won' t ever achieve the intellectual development to have consciousness of God. 5 Some clamor for substantially segregated educational programs to be established for children exposed to illicit drugs prenatally. 6 The scientific data in which such drastic public policy proposals are based warrant the most meticulous methodologic evaluation and critical review. This chapter will first review the methodologic issues that transcend any one study of in utero cocaine effects. A transactional model of development 7'8 provides the context for understanding the complex inter-

Nightingale's spiritual philosophy and its significance for modern nursing.

In her manuscript, Suggestions for Thought, Nightingale attempted to integrate science and mysticism. She wrote that the universe is the incarnation of a divine intelligence that regulates all things through law. For Nightingale, the laws of science are the "Thoughts of God." Because of her deep conviction about universal law, she did not believe in miraculous intervention as an answer to prayer. Human beings must discover the laws of God and apply them for health and wholeness. Prayer is attuning or joining one's personal self with the consciousness of God, which is found in the deepest recesses of one's own being. Nightingale's idea of spirituality as intrinsic to human nature and compatible with science can guide the development of future nursing practice and inquiry.

MATURE CONTEMPLATION

Abstract. This chapter extends biogenetic structural theory to a consideration of the biopsychological principles underlying higher phases of consciousness, particularly those attained by the systematic exploration of consciousness called contemplation. The concepts of psychic energy, flow, centeredness, energy circulation, and dreambody are explored as presented in various mystical traditions, and a model of the underlying neurophysiology is presented in terms of ergotropic‐trophotropic tuning. The psychophysiology of various forms of meditation together with emergent peak experiences is examined and integrated into the ergotropic‐trophotropic tuning model. Structural invariance of ergotropic‐trophotropic tuning as well as invariant aspects of contemplation across different cultures and associated with different symbol systems is considered. Finally the nature and implications of Void Consciousness, God Consciousness, or Abssolute Unitary Being are examined.

Azusa and Other Myths: The Long and Winding Road from Experience to Stated Belief and Back Again

AbstractThose must have been marvelous days, when signs and wonders were accompanying the early days of the Pentecostal revival at the beginning of this century. The more Pentecostals search the roots of their movement, the more evidence is found that a charismatic spirituality lies at the heart of the Pentecostal phenomenon that has brought an impulse of renewal to twentieth-century Christianity. I believe that Pentecostals need to learn to appreciate their past metaphorically in order to recover and incorporate that early charismatic spirituality into today's Christian experience. Spiritual thirst today will not be quenched by mere deductive propositions and statements of doctrine. In order to illustrate my point, I invite you first to look at the concept of "initial evidence" as it has been discussed in the recent book edited by Gary B. McGee.1 In a second step, I will illustrate the difficulties arising from a conceptualization, or should I say objectivization, of such a phenomenon. Then, I will suggest reasons and provide tools that encourage believers of today to find their way back to the roots and the early spirituality of Pentecostalism, without, at the same time, rejecting some of the information and interpretive understandings that Pentecostals have gathered from a critical, analytical approach. It is a journey from the marvelous memories of early Pentecostalism, to hypothetic-deductive procedures, and back to a mythic consciousness of God's Spirit working among God's people today.

Action into nature: an essay on the meaning of technology

Numerous studies have examined technological advances and their effects on industry, urbanization, social and economic shifts in power and expertise. Action into Nature assesses technology as the constitutional or political essence of the contemporary world. Drawing upon and expanding the work of political theorists such as Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Hans Jonas and George Parkin Grant, Barry Cooper focuses on the technological society as it has altered human consciousness of God, nature, the world and society. Action into Nature begins with a brief exploration of the genesis and characteristics of the technological society and clarifies some troublesome questions of method. Part Two presents the most easily accessible meaning of the technological society, its worldliness. Part Three proceeds to critical analysis of the policital significance of technology. Cooper argues that the human capacity for action, which is inherently unlimited, carries with it enormous political consequences when it is directed not into the web of human relationships, which is the usual realm of power and politics, but into nature. Action into Nature examines the significance of that change in the human capacity to act.

Om at læse »Danne-Virke« Nogle hermeneutiske overvejelser

How to read Danne-Virke - some hermeneutic ReflectionsBy Kim Arne PedersenIn this paper a new interpretation is put on Grundtvig’s philosophical ideas as represented in the magazine Danne-Virke (D) 1816-1819. Arguments are adduced against the generally accepted understanding of these ideas represented by William Michelsen’s interpretation of Grundtvig’s philosophy as an alternative to Kant’s transcendental idealism and the Absolute Idealism, completely different from these philosophical traditions. According to William Michelsen, Grundtvig stresses the common experience of time as being independent of man and emphasizes the empirical theory of knowledge and the ordinary non-scientific language. Thereby, Grundtvig opposes Kant’s transcendental understanding of time and the ego-orientated speculation of the Absolute Idealism. Grundtvig therefore understands human knowledge as limited by time and space. Grundtvig separates knowledge and faith and claims that the only possible human understanding of God has to be symbolic, because man is created in the image of God. William Michelsen stresses, that Grundtvig never accepts a scientific knowledge of God or proofs of the existence of God.The alternative interpretation in this paper uses a terminological method in reading Grundtvig’s /^-articles, examining the historical roots of his philosophical expressions. Although Grundtvig argues against scientific language, he combines pre-critical Wolffian descriptions of God’s aseite with the Absolute Idealism’s theories of the transcendental ego, founding time and space (cosmos) in God’s self-consciousness and founding the human knowledge in the principle of contradiction, understood as an expression of God’s Trinitarian self-consciousness or ego. Grundtvig is convinced that the limited human consciousness can only be explained by the consciousness of God, and he understands this idea as a variation of the cosmological proof of the existence of God. In this way, Grundtvig gives the human empirical knowledge a speculative foundation in God’s self-consciousness and uses this foundation in his attack on Kant’s transcendental understanding of time. Finally, this paper demonstrates that Grundtvig’s separation of knowledge and faith is not absolute. Faith involves a dimension of knowledge, and this knowledge has to develop from faith.

Sin and Judgment in the Prophecies of Ezekiel

Ezekiel's prophecies reveal with sharp clarity what is also the ironic rhetorical strategy of all Israelite prophets: to bring a faithless and unknowing people to covenant allegiance and consciousness of God's Lordship.

Christian Spirituality and Social Justice

The nuclear arms race and increasing possibility of nuclear destruction demands a fundamental recovery of the Christian spirituality of social justice. After discussing common misconceptions of this spirituality, as well as the dead end offered by atheism insofar as it undialectically negates God consciousness, I will show how recovery of the Christian spirituality of social justice offers the possibility of converting the human drama of history away from death and toward life. Such spirituality unites the Mystery of God with the mystery of human personhood and reveals the redemptive solidarity of God with the poor and oppressed victims of history.

The Death of God and the Death of Persons

‘God is dead’ can mean many things. It can mean that the way God has been thought of is no longer adequate, or that there is no God and never has been, or that human consciousness of God has receded.1 Our concern in what follows begins with ‘the death of God’ in this last sense, in the specific sense of the death of an awareness of God or of an affective consciousness of God. Or rather, this is where half of our concern begins. The other half begins with a phenomenon which is the mirror image of the death of God:the death of persons. By ‘the death of persons’ I mean something analogous to the sense specified for ‘the death of God.’ I mean the death or at least the decline of a consciousness of the inherent worth of persons, of the worth persons have as persons. In Kantian terms the death of persons is the loss of a consciousness of persons as ends in themselves. The death of God and the death of persons are parallel, and, furthermore, they are connected. The connection is not difficult to see, particularly if we remind ourselves of what Nietzsche said about the death of God.

John Cowper Powys' "A Glastonbury Romance": A Modern Mystery Play

John Cowper Powys' first important work, Wolf Solent (1929), is a novel which follows a fairly simple course of narrative development through the experience of a single center of consciousness to a predictable conclusion. It is like a swollen brook running through the plains of Dorsetshire without variation or divergence to the sea. A Glastonbury Romance (1932), Powys' second major novel, is like that vast and chaotic sea itself-a book whose centers are myriad and multiform and whose circumference is an awesome authorial omniscience aspiring toward the cosmic consciousness of God. That the novel has a localized

"Leben Schleiermachers", Volume II: A Review ArticleLeben Schleiermachers, Vol. II: Schleiermachers System als Philosophie und Theologie. Wilhelm Dilthey , Martin Redeker

Previous articleNext article No Access"Leben Schleiermachers", Volume II: A Review Article Leben Schleiermachers, Vol. II: Schleiermachers System als Philosophie und Theologie. Wilhelm Dilthey , Martin Redeker H. Jackson ForstmanH. Jackson Forstman Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 47, Number 4Oct., 1967 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/486076 Views: 3Total views on this site Copyright 1967 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Evil and the God of Love by John Hick, and: God and the Permission of Evil by Jacques Maritain, and: The Lord of the Asburd by Raymond J. Nogar, O. P., and: Nostalgia for Paradise by Sister Sylvia Mary, C. S. M. V.

444 BOOK REVIEWS Evil and the God of Love. By JoHN HicK. New York: Harper and Row, 1966, pp. 404, with index. $6.95. God and the Permission of Evil. By JAcQUES MARITAIN. Translated by Joseph W. Evans. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1966, pp. H!l, with index of proper names. $3.75. The Lord of the Asburd. By RAYMOND J. NoGAR, 0. P. New York: Herder and Herder, 1966, pp. 157. $3.95. Nostalgia for Paradise. By SISTER SYLVIA MARY, C. S.M. V. New York: Desclee, 1965, pp. £30 with index. $4.75. After one of his lectures Raymond Nogar was questioned: "If spacetime history is of the essence of man, and the making of history his free, creative and personal prerogative and obligation, how is it possible to tolerate and to justify the suffering and annihilation of so many people who suffer and are annihilated for the simple reason that their geography sets them in the pathways of history? " (p. 84). The first sentence of John Hick's book reads: " The fact of evil constitutes the most serious objection there is to the Christian belief in the God of love" (p. ix). Jacques Maritain very early in his book comments that the problem of evil, injustice, cruelty " is at the origin of many forms of atheism, at the origin also of what one could call in many the bewildered Christian conscience " (p. 3) . Sister Sylvia Mary informs us that the various mythical versions of an " original paradise, lost through some fault, are of immense importance, and they constantly recur. They reveal the fact that in the heart of man there is a perpetual nostalgia" (p. 11). All four of these books, then, deal in one way or another with the problem of evil. Hick, in an impressive work, faces it fully and attempts an historical and systematic theodicy for our times; Maritain engages only one, though crucial, aspect of it; Nogar brings the light of his studies on evolution to bear on it; and Sister traces the nostalgia for paradise through the myths of ancient cultures as a sign of God's gracious influence on men struggling in the valley of darkness. John Hick suggests for Evil and the God of Love a fuller, more descriptive title: " A critical study of two responses to the problem of evil that have been developed within Christian thought and an attempt to formulate a theodicy for today" (p. 3). The two responses he sees as Augustinian and Irenaean, and his own theodicy, though mainly Irenaean, accepts some elements from the Augustinian. Four theological and four philosophical themes dominate in the Augustinian tradition. The first four are: that creation is good; that pain and suffering are a consequence of the fall of man; that the fall was a felix culpa since it brought redemption; that there is final moral balancing in heaven and hell. The second four are that evil BOOK REVIEWS 445 is a privation, a kind of non-being; that metaphysical evil, i. e. the imperfection in aU creatures below God, is basic; that it is better to have many beings on various levels of perfection than all on the highest level (the principle of plentitude); that the universe should be looked upon as a work of art (the aesthetic principle) . Irenaeus differs from this tradition mainly on three points. He did not place an original perfection in man but saw him as created weak a.'l.d immature yet invited by God to grow spiritually. Thus, secondly, the fall was an understandable lapse and the physical evils of pain and suffering (his third point) must not be regarded as punishment but rather necessary environment in which man is to " make " his soul. To these themes Hick notes some others taken from the thought of Fredrich Schleiermacher who, while not consciously following the teaching of Irenaeus, did develop similar themes independently. "Original perfection" to Sehleiermaeher is the basic structure of human nature whereby it can come to a consciousness of God. It is " original " not in time but exists in all men as a fundamental and constitutive element. " Original sinfulness " is seen as that element in all men which impedes their...