Mystical Dimension Research Articles

Teresa Urrea: Mexican Mystic, Healer, and Apocalyptic Revolutionary

This article is a study of the mystical and apocalyptic dimensions of Teresa Urrea. As explained in this article, Urrea’s mystical experiences and visions are unique for their connection with a propheticapocalyptic and political worldview. This apocalyptic dimension is more than a communication of a hidden message or spiritual world; it also includes a reading of history that is catastrophic and discontinuous. The crisis and terror of history are given expression in Urrea’s mystical and apocalyptic pronouncements. In particular, the chaotic and oppressive circumstances of Mexican society during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz was confronted and denounced in Urrea’s mystical and apocalyptic ministry. This apocalyptic healer castigated those culpable or even complicit with the injustices affecting the indigenous communities of Mexico during the late nineteenth century. In the case of Urrea, the transformation and healing of Church and society was an important aspect of her spiritual, healing powers. Because Urrea possessed neither arms nor the weapon of the pen, her sole weapon became her mystical experiences and the insight and healing powers that flowed from them. People of Mexico—especially indigenous groups—began to flock to her hoping that she would bring God’s presence to the troubled and chaotic circumstances of their lives. Her compassion and tenderness for the afflicted as well as the apocalyptic expectations that she stirred up among the indigenous groups of Northern Mexico were enough to get this mystical-political Mexican mestiza exiled from her homeland.

Marcel and Dewey on Hope

We live in times when hope is in short supply. Continuing ecological destruction, expanding ethnic and political conflicts, and widening gaps between wealthy and poor make it difficult to be hopeful about humanity's future. Living in such times, it is natural to turn to philosophers for insight about how to maintain hope despite the escalation of national and international crises. Unfortunately, however, not many contemporary philosophers systematically discuss hope, and, with few exceptions, ' those who do discuss it take a theistic or supernaturalistic approach.2 Further, on the rare occasions when those outside the theistic tradition explore the topic of hope, they do not make their main focus bringing theistic and nontheistic approaches into dialogue.3 Our intention in this essay is to begin such a dialogue by comparing the work of two men whom we see as representative of these opposing traditions: Gabriel Marcel, a theist, and John Dewey, a nontheist. Our decision to focus on Marcel should not be surprising since his philosophy has hope at its center. However, our choice of Dewey as the nontheist with whom we will contrast Marcel, is less obvious since nowhere in Dewey's voluminous work does he explicitly discuss hope. Nevertheless, Dewey seems a good choice to us because he maintained a positive outlook across his long career despite the many personal and public crises he endured and witnessed: the death of two young sons, significant U.S. labor violence, a global economic depression, and two world wars. In addition, by drawing upon several of Dewey's major works, including Democracy and Education, Human Nature and Conduct, Experience and Nature, Art as Experience, and A Common Faith, we believe we can construct a theory of hope for him. In doing so, we emphasize aspects of Dewey's thought, including his deep piety toward nature and his sensitivity to the mystical dimensions of experience, that are sometimes underappreciated in Dewey scholarship. Thus, our more specific intention in this essay is to compare Marcel and Dewey on hope in light of the theory of hope we construct for Dewey. Given the fact that Dewey is a naturalist who sees all human experience as having a natural origin and a natural end, and, by contrast, Marcel is a theist who views the mysterious dimension of human experience as an intimation of a transcendent realm, it is not unexpected that we find strong differences in their views of hope. For example, the object of Dewey's ultimate hope is full engrossment in present experience leading to individual and social growth, whereas the object of Marcel's ultimate hope is salvation as eternal communion with God. Sharp differences also distinguish their views of how to overcome hopelessness. For Dewey, this requires a gradual rather than a radical change. It requires moving our emphasis from extending the harmonies we achieve via successful adjustment with our environment to focusing on the process of adjustment itself. By contrast, for Marcel, overcoming hopelessness requires a transformation of the self: a letting go of one's desiring, acquisitive ego while birthing a selfless, spiritual being. Whereas these radical differences between Dewey and Marcel are predictable, the noteworthy similarities we find, places where these theorists' footsteps on the terrain of hope overlap, are unexpected. For example, we find that Dewey and Marcel both believe that faith in oneself and in the sources of one's being is important for maintaining hope. In addition, they both believe that communion-feeling part of a larger whole-is an important condition for maintaining hope. Finally, the overlap we find most interesting is that, for both Marcel and Dewey, this need for communion is satisfied by experiences that are mysterious, experiences that are ineffable and indescribable. We begin our essay by explicating Marcel's theory of hope. Given, as we say, that we live in times when it is easy to become hopeless, and given that we turn to philosophers for ways to overcome these feelings, we explicate Marcel's theory by exploring his responses to two questions: (1) What causes people to become hopeless? …

Psychiatry and mysticism

Psychiatry and mysticism are both concerned with human experience. Psychiatry is concerned with disorders of experience. Mysticism is concerned with that dimension of human experience which brings the individual into contact with transcendent reality in a particularly direct, unmediated and intimate way. Mystical experience may easily be misdiagnosed as psychiatric disorder. Even where a psychiatric disorder is appropriately diagnosed, there may still be a mystical dimension to the experience of the patient which may be understood and integrated in a positive way if treated sensitively by clinicians, therapists and the wider community. Where the benefits of a mystical experience to an individual are denied, and where psychiatry colludes in pathologizing such experiences, the individual and the community are the poorer as a result. These benefits of mystical experience may, or may not, include a degree of resilience towards psychiatric disorder, as has been suggested by some research. However, they definitely do reflect a transcendent dimension to the life of the human community which is appreciated by many as being life enhancing in its own right.

Defining spirit at work: finding common ground

Debate over the definition of “spirit at work” continues in both the popular and academic literatures. The lack of a clear, accepted definition has hindered the development of useful measures and has delayed research that would advance our understanding of the conditions/characteristics that influence the experience of spirit at work and the individual and organizational outcomes that result from spirit at work. To obtain a clearer understanding of an individual level construct of spirit at work, an exploratory, qualitative study was conducted. A total of 14 professionals, who not only experienced spirit at work, but whose work also involved researching or promoting spirit at work, participated through face‐to‐face interviews, telephone interviews, or written surveys. Participants were asked about what is spirit at work and then they were asked to describe a personal experience of spirit at work. Although most people had difficulty providing a comprehensive definition for spirit at work, they found it very easy to recall and describe such an experience. These rich descriptions of their personal experiences of spirit at work revealed much consistency in experiences among individuals. Participants’ descriptions revealed that spirit at work is a distinct state that has physical, affective, cognitive, interpersonal, spiritual, and mystical dimensions. This state involves physiological arousal, positive affect, a belief that one's work makes a contribution, a sense of connection to others and common purpose, a sense of connection to something larger than self, and a sense of perfection and transcendence. The usefulness of a clear, comprehensive definition of spirit at work to advancing theory, research, and practice is discussed.

"Peering through the Lattices": Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period. Ephraim Kanarfogel

<i>"Peering through the Lattices": Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period</i>. Ephraim Kanarfogel

Book Review: Ephraim Kanarfogel, Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period

Book Review: Ephraim Kanarfogel, Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period

Medjugorje's Living Icons: Making Spirit Matter (for Sociology)

The sociology of religion is at an impasse in its analysis of the mystical dimension of its object. Inspired by the ethnomethodological perspective, this paper proposes an alternative analytical strategy. This approach maintains that claims of mystical influence can be dealt with by sociological enquiry without transforming their self-definition. The strategy is exemplified in the analysis of video accounts of apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Hercegovina. It is argued that the accounts constitute the apparitions through a process of transubstantiation, the visionaries becoming the embodiment of the Virgin Mary's aesthetic qualities, moral features and historical role, and her religious function.

The Word (Vāc) in the Cosmology and Soteriology of Kashmir Śaivism

The article deals with the meaning of the Divine Word in the agamic Kashmiri Śaiva tradition. At first, making a brief overwiev of the history of the sacred word in Indian culture, attention is drawn to the fact, that the function of word and oral language as an agent of transformation from the human realm to the divine has been perennial concern of Indian theological speculation, since language in Hinduism is nearly always identified with both human consciousness and the divine cosmos. It has been pointed out, that an elaborate mysticism of the word found in the Śaiva Tantras has Vedic precendents and presupposes the philosophy of Bhartrhari. Tantra has the assumption that man and the universe correspond as microcosm and macrocosm and that both are subject to the mysterious power of words and letters. The Tantric Kashmiri tradition, while building upon the Śaiva-Āgamas and Grammarian tradition, formulates its own unique rational theology of traidic monism and of complex verbal cosmology, wherein sacred Verbum is fundamental to both the creation of the universe and to the reintegration of the soul into the cosmos. The climax of a hermeneutics of synthesis and the sacred word exegesis is represented in Abhinavagupta’s works. Abhinavagupta’s subtle speculation on the Word extends from its mystical dimension to the intricacies of Sanskrit alphabet and linguistic speculation, from psychological subtleties to philosophical reasoning.

Human heart, heavenly heart: mystical dimensions of Chu Hsi's neo-Confucianism

Human heart, heavenly heart: mystical dimensions of Chu Hsi's neo-Confucianism

Human Heart, Heavenly Heart: Mystical Dimensions of Chu Hsi's Neo-Confucianism

L'article est consacre au philosophe chinois neo-confuceen Chu Hsi (XIIeme siecle) habituellement tenu pour rationaliste. L'A. etudie l'aspect mystique de ses ecrits a propos de l'identification faite entre le coeur et l'esprit avec le coeur du ciel et de la terre et le coeur du sage, et mene une reflexion sur la maniere dont le terme mysticisme peut etre employe.

Oxbridge's Tudor Gothic Influences on American Academic Architecture

Since the founding of Harvard College in 1636, Oxford and Cambridge have significantly influenced American institutions of higher learning. Yet, their architectural legacy has received scant attention. This article addresses this important dimension in four ways. First, the architectural historiography of American higher education is discussed by reviewing both comprehensive works and institutional histories of colleges and universities. The second section explores the meaning of the Gothic architectural style, with particular attention devoted to its theological and mystical dimensions. Insights from Aquinas and Bonaventure are used to explain the rationales for building the earliest Gothic cathedrals and the meaning of their structures. The large third section then describes the importation of these Gothic and Tudor Gothic designs to American campuses, as noted in architectural digests and institutional histories. There appear to be four overlapping stages in the adoption of this academic architectural style in the United States: (1) the early Gothic up to 1880; (2) the Tudor Gothic from 1880 to 1920; (3) the Gothic Revival from 1892 to 1930; and (4) the modern Tudor Gothic from 1930 to the present, particularly developed at church‐sponsored colleges and universities. Finally, a coda focuses on the relationship between the recurring crises in American undergraduate education and the recourse to strengthening residential life. It suggests that college leaders embroiled in curricular upheavals often embraced Tudor Gothic architecture as a way to reclaim the historic English collegiate ideal for their campuses.

WHY SCATTING IS LIKE SPEAKING IN TONGUES: POST-MODERN REFLECTIONS ON JAZZ, PENTECOSTALISM AND 'AFRICOSMYSTICISM'

This essay considers the relationship between two areas of African American cultural expression: music and religion. It posits that they are joined by an African aesthetic that is best termed 'non-mimetic'. This non-mimetic discourse is understood by modern critical theory as a post-modern sensibility which emphasises the creative, spontaneous, abstract and mystical dimensions ofhuman consciousness. The authors use examples from modern jazz (bebop artists) and pentecostalism (glossolalia) to carry the argument that African Amencan culture was particularly sensitive to the transformation from the modern to the post-modern era.

SALVADOR AMONG THE WORLD MISSION CONFERENCES OF THIS CENTURY

International Review of MissionVolume 86, Issue 340-341 p. 19-26 SALVADOR AMONG THE WORLD MISSION CONFERENCES OF THIS CENTURY Jacques Matthey, Jacques Matthey Jacques Matthey, from Switzerland, is general secretary of the Missionary Department of the Protestant Churches in French-speaking Switzerland, located in Lausanne.Search for more papers by this author Jacques Matthey, Jacques Matthey Jacques Matthey, from Switzerland, is general secretary of the Missionary Department of the Protestant Churches in French-speaking Switzerland, located in Lausanne.Search for more papers by this author First published: 25 March 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.1997.tb00005.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 onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume86, Issue340-341January‐April 1997Pages 19-26 RelatedInformation

Culture brésilienne et médiation symbolique, le triangle rituel

Brazilian culture and symbolical mediation : the ritual triangle. The Brazilian society is probably one of the most contrasted and non egalitarian among the developing countries. As it is a very intricate society, it can be analysed according to various criteria that permit several multiple interpretations depending on the focus chosen. However, there is a principal bipolar relation that is based on the master/slave relationship rooted in the colonial history. This has always been used as a basis for any analysis of the Brazilian society. This permanent opposition is represented on the one hand by the social codes that symbolize the field of the home and on the other hand by the codes inspired by the field of the street. This text offers a sociological analysis based on a symbolic triangle ; the ambivalent and somewhat conflicting relation between the home and the street would be softened by the intervention of a third element, the other world that characterizes the mystical dimension of the social field. This is how the symbolic triangle of social interpretation is built. It can take the shape of various cultural fields such as carnival, literature and television.

Introduction to Sufi Music and Ritual in Turkey

It is difficult to appreciate and understand Sufism fully without an informed exposure to the expressive cultural forms that help define and enhance it. It is this dimension of Islamic mysticism that transports the seeker on the path of spiritual attainment into higher states of consciousness that promise spiritual intoxication (Wajd) and a unique and intimate union, even annihilation (fanā), in the supreme being. This emotional expression of faith is intensified and externalized in elaborate forms of meditation and esoteric techniques that are part of ritual ceremonies.Through ritual, many Sufi orders and Sufi-related sects throughout the world of Islam have been able to articulate doctrines and beliefs through artistic traditions such as sung poetry, instrumental music and dance-like movements (samā’ or spiritual concerts) and have utilized meditation patterns that combine corporeal techniques and controlled breathing (dhikr, Turkish, zikr) to induce or conduct trance and ecstatic states.

German Romantic Literary Theory

Preface List of abbreviations Chronology of early Romanticism Introduction 1. Formation and main representatives of early Romanticism in Germany 2. Poetry in the early Romantic theory of the Schlegel brothers 3. The theory of Romantic poetry 4. Novalis and the mystical dimension of early Romantic theory 5. Wackenroder's and Tieck's conceptions of painting and music 6. Theory of language, hermeneutics, and encyclopaedistics 7. Conclusion: early German Romanticism and literary modernity Notes Bibliography Index of works cited Index of subjects and names.

The psalms of Islam: al-Saḥīfat al-Kāmilat al-Sajjādiyya (review)

148 Reviews dispossessed poor and found the 'fourth sort' to be negligent office-holders, as well as far too interested in dangerous Presbyterianism. As such, he straddled the fence Hughes tries to construct and was therefore perhaps as typical of educated Englishmen in the 1640s as he was in the 1570s. Glyn Parry Department of History Victoria University of Wellington Imam Zayn al-'Abidin, The psalms of Islam: al-Sahifat al-Kdmilat alSajjadiyya , trans. William C. Chittick, London, The Muhammadiyya Trust, 1988; pp. xlvi, 301; R.R.P. AUS$175.00 [distributed in Australia by Oxford University Press]. This is an attractively produced bilingual, Arabic-English, edition of a most highly regarded collection of Shfa Muslim supplications. The text, or rather most of it is attributed to the fourth ShTa Imam, 'All ibn al-Husayn ibn 'AIT, known as al-Sajjad and as Zayn al-'Abidln (ca. 658-713 A.D.), great grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. A proper understanding of Islamic spirituality, law, theology, and philosophy would be incomplete without some familiarity with the rich ShTa religious literature of which this text is a precious specimen. Because of its supplicatory form and intent and the nature of the tradition within which this text has been preserved, it would be out of place to dwell on questions of authenticity and textual criticism. This is a collection of private prayers that have been piously transmitted and somewhat amplified on the basis of a text that purports to go back to the fourth Imam who, together with his ancestors and descendants, is regarded with the utmost veneration and devotion in the Shfa tradition. The Arabic text particularly the bulk of it containing thefifty-fourmain supplications, reflects a coherent and weU balanced structure that would conceivablyfitinto the style of the time of Zayn al-'Abidin and his two immediate successors, his son al-Baqir and grandson Ja'far al-Sadiq, as known from therichShTa hagiographic tradition. As the translator acknowledges, the Zayn al-'Abidin of tradition may be considered by critical scholars to be different from the Zayn al-'Abidin of 'historical fact'. Apart from its value of introducing a ShTa dimension of Islamic spirituality and piety, the text can provide some insights into the thought world of ShTa spiritual leaders from the times of the early imams to the Reviews 149 present with then emphasis on the strong bond with the descendants of "Ah" and Fatima as the holy family of M u h a m m a d . B y deliberately shunning politics in the mundane sense, Zayn al-'Abidin and his descendants, particularly al-Baqir and Ja'far al-Sadiq, were able to devote their time to teaching, contemplation, and spirituality. It is in this context that the text needstobe understood. Although the spiritual and mystical dimensions of Islam have received some attention from scholars of Sufism, more work needs to be done in the area of popular spirituality and private devotion. Readers w h o are familiar with medieval Christian texts of this spiritual type, whether emanating from the Eastern Orthodox or Western Catholic tradition, for example, should be able to relate easily to this text. At another level, this book also provides a counter balance to the usual emphasis on politics, law, warfare, and economics in the encounter and parallelism between the medieval Christian and Islamic worlds. Historians of culture, anthropologists, and all those interested in the comparative study of spirituality m a y find useful insights in this and similar Islamic texts. The Arabic text would lend itself to new studies of structure, content and social semiotics, particularly if considered with other texts from the first two centuries or so of Islamic history, including early Sufi traditions. The translator provides a useful, though deliberately non-critical, introduction explaining aspects of the text and the place of supplication, as distinct from formal 'prayer', in the Islamic tradition. His translation, on the whole, keeps to the original in literary accuracy, style, rhythm, and poetic flavour. In addition to the fully vocalized and attractively executed text in Arabic calligraphy which should appeal to students of Islam, Chittick's excellent translation makes this unusual text accessible not only to the spirituaUy...

Folk Taxonomy and Mythology of Birds of Paradise in the New Guinea Highlands

Folk taxonomy and myth have conventionally been treated as disparate provinces of cultural meaning, the one dealing with culturally represented but concrete and objective realities of the natural world, the other with the fantasy world of symbolic cultural constructs. While some convergence between conventional approaches to these phenomena has been mooted (e.g., Colby et al. 1981), actual examples in the ethnographic literature remain limited (among them, Bulmer 1967, 1968; Ellen 1972; Jorgensen 1991). My point of departure is that a recurrent deficiency of much of the literature of folk taxonomies (and on ethnosciences in general) is the concentration on the mundane, pragmatic, objective and positivist, rather than the symbolic and interpretive. This has resulted in methodological rigor and a rich body of ethnographic data that reveal two major theoretical preoccupations: the convergence between folk and scietific taxonomies (e.g., Berlin et al. 1974; Boster et al. 1986; Humm 1977); and the debate concerning the practical origins of taxonomies (e.g., Berlin 1990; Hays 1982; Hunn 1982). I do not advocate counterbalancing the pragmatic and mundane aspects of folk taxonomies simply with attention to mystical dimensions. This parallels the questionable distinction between the sacred and profane in anthropological studies of religion, an approach arguably rooted in Western cultural constructs, and is therefore liable to misrepresent other cultural universes. Rather, I adopt the perspective that folk taxonomy and myth are not necessarily separate provinces of meaning, but are elements of more embracing cosmologies. Both myth and folk taxonomy are cultural representations of a collective apprehension of order and regularity--a sense of comprehension--that the human mind discerns in the discontinuities of the realms of society and nature. Here I seek to analyze the intersection of the representations of Birds of Paradise among the Maring of New Guinea, as discernable in the folk taxonomy of the birds and associated discourse on ethno-ornithological lore, and in mythology in which the birds figure prominently. This analysis highlights the symbolic connection between birds and humans, a connection that is evident in everyday Maring discourse on birds, and elaborated upon and metaphorized in myth. I suggest that for the Maring, and indeed, many other Melanesians, animals stand both collectively and in the identity of particular species, as metaphors for the human condition. Birds seem to be particularly singled out for symbolic manipulation (Bulmer 1967; Feld 1982; Healey 1985, 1988, 1991). Why this should be the case is too big a question to address here. But in brief I suggest that two particular features of birds impress themselves on the human observer in New Guinea: the diversity and brilliance of plumage; and the prominence of bird song. Melanesians of my acquaintance are alert to the fleeting movement of birds and the sound of their voices in the dark forest; birds embolden the world in a way quite unlike the retiring character of New Guinea mammals, and their vocalizations are among natural sounds that most approximate human speech (cf. Feld 1982). Certainly, birds in general, and particulary Birds of Paradise, have captured the attention of the Maring. This is evidenced in various aspects of Maring culture. Many individuals accumulate impressively detailed and accurate knowledge of bbird behavior and ecology, much of it based on personal observation(2). Birds feature prominently in mythology and stories, and avian imagery is a notable feature of Maring body decorations, poetics, jokes, and personal names. Finally, birds are important in the local economy, primarily as the focus of intensive hunting of plume-bearing birds for decorations and to supply the traditional plume-trade (Healey 1990). THE MARING There are some 8,000 Maring-speaking people(3) distributed in the Simbai and Jimi Valleys on the slopes of the Western Bismarck Mountains on the northern fringe of Papua New Guinea's central highlands. …

The Mystical Dimension of Ministry and Pastoral Care

AbstractPresent theology and ministry are heavily dependent on rationalism and verbal skills. Missing from ministry is an appreciation for mystical experience as a separate approach to reality. This article attempts to illuminate religious experiences as mysticism, an essential part of any ministry. Mysticism is not an altered state of consciousness but an awareness of the Holy in the realm on normal existence. Ministry is defined as eliciting the mystery of God.

Gershom Scholem and the Mystical Dimension of Jewish History. Joseph Dan

Gershom Scholem and the Mystical Dimension of Jewish History. Joseph Dan