Mystical States Research Articles

The spiritual brain: a neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul, By Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, New York: HarperOne, 2007, ISBN 978‐0‐06‐085883‐4, 368 pages

The spiritual brain: a neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul, By Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, New York: HarperOne, 2007, ISBN 978‐0‐06‐085883‐4, 368 pages

Mystic States, Motherly Virtues, Female Participation and Leadership in an Egyptian Sufi Milieu

Sufi rituals have historically been more open to women than other Islamic religious practices such as prayer in the mosques, legal scholarship, and preaching. While the past decades have seen some, albeit modest, opening of the latter fields for female participation, even leadership, in the Sufi milieu, the participation of women has been subjected to strong criticism and pressure at the same time. Two interrelated yet contradicting trends, one of a moralist opposition to women's public participation in religious rituals, and another of increasing female presence in the professional and public sphere on the condition of a moral and civic discipline, shape the possibilities of action for Sufi women. Highlighting the importance of class distinctions for the relationship of gender and religious practice, this article traces the styles of leadership and participation that make a significant presence of women possible, the factors that make it precarious, and the strategies that women in position of authority employ to justify their role.Journal for Islamic Studies Vol. 28 2008: pp. 94-126

Sporting Lives: Metaphor and Myth in American Sports Autobiographies (review)

Reviewed by: Sporting Lives: Metaphor and Myth in American Sports Autobiographies Peter Carino (bio) James W. Pipkin . Sporting Lives: Metaphor and Myth in American Sports Autobiographies. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 2008. 161 pp. ISBN 0-826-21779-6, $29.95. James W. Pipkin's Sporting Lives gives scholarly attention to a genre near the bottom of the literary food chain, sports autobiographies. Except in cases of a highly literate athlete, such as former senator and NBA star Bill Bradley or swimmer Diana Nyad (a one-time PhD candidate in comparative literature at NYU), these texts are produced through the efforts of an athlete and co-author, often a sports journalist who crafts them from tapes and interviews, before reshaping the text based on emerging patterns or suggestions from the athlete. Pipkin, early in the book, provides an informative explanation of how these "autobiographies" are actually written, and then goes on to trace several recurring motifs to provide a sense of athletes "beneath the public image" and "an interpretation of sports from the inside out" (2). Pipkin establishes five recurring tropes in these texts. The first, which he calls the "Echoing Green," emerges in nearly all sports autobiographies as an extended world of childhood enjoyed by the elite athlete. Covering multiple sporting lives and eras, from Ty Cobb to Tracy Austin, Pipkin unpacks both the pleasures and pitfalls of the athlete's status as grown child. He further relates this stage to a mythic nostalgia for a place "where to desire is to have" (23), but finds American sports figures particularly appropriate inhabitants of this world because American culture lacks "the mists of a distant past that was the haunt of those ancient giants who lived before the Flood" (19). Subsequent chapters are dedicated to the athletes' acute sense of their bodies, their experience of achieving transcendent (near mystical) moments of peak performance, the pain of aging and retirement, and the post-modern self-fashioning of one extraordinary athlete, Dennis Rodman. Among the most informative and intriguing chapters is "Body Songs." Here Pipkin notes how player autobiographies convey the complexities of existence when the athletic body becomes for both the athlete and the culture a [End Page 494] text to be read. The culture's readings range from the male athletic form "objectified by the gaze of the fan," to admiration for the athletic female body as long as it does not transgress cultural notions of femininity, to awe, curiosity, and revulsion at extraordinary bodies such as those of George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. These three men, Pipkin shows, struggle to forge a positive image against conflicting cultural constructions of them as simultaneously powerful giants to be adulated and freaks to be ridiculed, a dilemma compounded by race for Chamberlain, Jabbar, and other black basketball stars. Aside from negotiating public constructions of their bodies, privately the athletes often vacillate between strong feelings of pride in the instrument they've created and gripping fear of its breaking down. Equally interesting but less the voice of the athletes is the chapter entitled "Magic: The Performing Body." Pipkin here does a fine job of trying to articulate the near mystical state that athletes call, in today's parlance, being in the zone; that is, performing at the top of their game in perfect bodily execution of the mind's intentions. Exploring this "magic" through a variety of sports figures, most notably Bill Russell and most interestingly Diana Nyad, Pipkin elucidates their words with a critical lens of Romantic thought, particularly Wordsworth's, elevating, for better or worse, the peak experience to "a point of confluence between sports, art, and religion" (88). Of course, all athletes, no matter their persistent wish to hold onto a Peter Pan existence on the "Echoing Green," must face the end of their playing careers, and the title of Pipkin's chapter, "The End of Autumn," shows he is aware of the old sports cliché that an athlete dies two deaths: one at career's end, the second, when life actually expires. Though this chapter focuses on those players who have difficulty facing life without games, Pipkin differentiates the degrees of severity and variety of reasons...

Syncretism in the Mediterranean: Universalism, Cultural Relativism and the Issue of the Mediterranean as a Cultural Area

In this article we re‐examine notions of relativism and universalism in the history of anthropology through a re‐appraisal of anthropological research in the Mediterranean. In view of the fact of ongoing, public debates on how to bring about a new world order, we trace the notion of a clash of civilizations in intellectual history and depict early attempts to shed light on cultural techniques of exchange and cohabitation. By examining the material basis of all culture and the body‐techniques of visionary experiences, we will argue that creative human beings are apt to develop social and individual strategies for dealing with one’s own cultural heritage and with Otherness and its various transformations. Following Foucault and Deleuze we concentrate on different modes of “folding”, i.e. subjectivations, along which outside experience is transformed into inside experience and vice versa in order to explore the cultural basis on which resistance as well as any commitment to a “clash of civilizations” is negotiated. In the words of Marcel Mauss, “underlying all our mystic states are corporeal techniques…[and] biological methods of entering into communication with God” (Mauss 1979), and we argue that these have always had the potential to challenge dominant cultural politics and ideologies.

The Erotic Sacrament: Max Weber and Georges Bataille

The aim of this essay is to compare the theories of Max Weber and Georges Bataille on the construction of the erotic sphere in the cultural imagination. Weber and Bataille share several basic premises, especially in their recognition of the connection between religious ecstasy and erotic union. They differ, however, in a crucial factor. Although Bataille acknowledges symbol-making as a basis of erotic expression, he resists the systematic rationalization of mystical states of ecstasy and relies on a kind of naïve naturalism in his theory of eroticism. Weber, on the other hand, argues that all forms of so-called inner experience derive from the same irrational source and must be transformed intellectually, through a creative power, to appear natural and pure. This transformation produces what Weber calls the 'erotic sacrament', which, paradoxically, allows lovers to believe in an erotic union 'eternally inaccessible to rational endeavor'.

Neuroimaging in Schizophrenia: Misattributions and Religious Delusions

Neuroimaging in Schizophrenia: Misattributions and Religious Delusions

Commentary on: Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance by Griffiths et al.

The article by Griffiths et al. in this issue of Psychophar-macology should make all scientists interested in humanpsychopharmacology sit up and take notice. It is the firstwell-designed, placebo-controlled, clinical study in morethan four decades to examine the psychological conse-quences of the effects of the hallucinogenic (psychedelic)agent known as psilocybin. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find a single study of psychedelics from anyearlier era that was as well-done or as meaningful. Perhapsmore importantly, despite the notion by many people thatpsychedelics are nothing more than troublesome drugs ofabuse, the present study convincingly demonstrates that,when used appropriately, these compounds can produceremarkable, possibly beneficial, effects that certainlydeserve further study.Although many people seem to believe that “psyche-delics” simply appeared during the turbulent 1960s, in factthe use of these materials spans back through manymillennia of human history. Ancient substances with namessuch as Soma (India), Kykeon (Greece), and Teonanacatl(South America) served for thousands of years as psycho-pharmacological catalysts in a variety of sacred religiousand magical rituals (Nichols 2004; Schultes and Hofmann1979). Peyote, the ceremonial use of which is now thoughtby anthropologists to date back at least 5,000 years, isrevered as a sacrament by the Native American Church.Ayahuasca, a decoction made from plants that grow in theAmazon basin, is a sacrament used by a syncretic church inBrazil. This church has a small following in the US that hasjust received a favorable decision by the US Supreme Courtallowing them continued use of this material.The parallel between mystical states and the effects ofpsychedelic drugs is well-known among those familiar withthe literature. Aldous Huxley, in his classic but controver-sial 1954 book, The Doors of Perception, (Huxley 1970)noted the similarity of his own mescaline-induced state toexperiences described by mystics and visionaries from avariety of cultures. Perhaps it is not surprising then that thename “entheogen,” with the connotation that these materi-als reveal god within, is becoming increasingly popularamong those who continue to use these substances forpurposes that are neither medical nor “recreational.”We must, therefore, take note of what has come to beknown as the “Good Friday Experiment,” carried out byWalter Pahnke for his Ph.D. studies at a small privatechapel in Boston. His 1963 Ph.D. dissertation was titledDrugs and Mysticism. An analysis of the relationshipbetween psychedelic drugs and the mystical consciousness.He described in an experiment with 20 student volunteersfrom a local Christian theological seminary. Subjects weregiven either 30 mg of psilocybin or 200 mg of nicotinicacid as a “placebo.” The experiment was carried out in areligious setting during a Good Friday service. Pahnkeconcluded, “Under the conditions of this experiment, thosesubjects who received psilocybin experienced phenomenawhich were indistinguishable from, if not identical with,certain categories defined by our typology of mysticism.”Clearly, these substances have profound effects onhuman consciousness, and in the 1950s and 1960s, thedrug known as LSD was hailed as a revolutionary newtechnology for psychiatry. LSD was intensively investigat-ed for its medical potential and for possible use as anadjunct to psychotherapy until clinical research was

Muslim Mysticism: Features and Basic Directions

Modern Ukrainian religious studies have received considerable attention from studies of mystical scholars. This can be explained by the fact that it is mystical cognition that enables a person to fully discover his spiritual potential and experience the experience of union with the Absolute. At the same time, a number of unanswered questions arise that may be the object of study. Above all, various religions offer their own ways of attaining the mystical state and differently consider the following problems concerning it: the essence of the Absolute and being, the place of man in the world, the nature of his relationship with God, the main purpose of mystical practice, practical ways and basic means of union with the Absolute . There are no contemporary scientific publications on the typology of mystical experience.

Detachment: Gateway to the World of Spirituality

Mystical states are common cross-culturally. Here we examine the prevalence and general characteristics of these states. We then proceed to critically examine the theories purporting to explain these states: psychoanalytic, cognitive and neurobiological, all of which attempt to explain the breakdown of the boundaries between the self and external world. We conclude by exploring the implications of mystical states for cultural psychiatry.

On Putting a Cloud in a Bottle: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Mysticism

This essay addresses the psychoanalytic understanding of mystical phenomena and mystical ecstatic states. The study of mystical phenomena is a core area of interest in the ongoing dialogue between psychoanalysis and religion. Mystical phenomena and states are discussed in this essay, with particular reference to descriptions found in an anonymous medieval tract, The Cloud of Unknowing. Some common psychoanalytic views of mystical phenomena are discussed and criticized, and an effort is made to formulate an approach to the understanding of these extraordinary mental and spiritual states that is both more congruent with accounts of authentic mystics and more consistent with psychoanalytic principles.

Ultrarunners and Chance Encounters with "Absolute Unitary Being"

Among the newly enchristianed "extreme sports" category, ultrarunners and the sport of ultrarunning is on the fringe edge. What makes ultrarunners and their "sport" interesting is that ultrarunners regularly report experiences that can be equated to various types of mystical experiences during their "sporting" events. This paper briefly discusses ultrarunners, a hypothetical mystical (mythical) state of consciousness called Absolute Unitary Being, and the psychoneurophysiological aspects of ultrarunning. Through this process, a link is established that connects ultrarunners and their "sport" with many traditional indigenous practices. It is suggested that many of the traditional indigenous practices may have produced experiences similar to those of ultrarunners, and thus we can look to ultrarunners to begin to understand some of the physiological, psychological, neurological, as well as humanistic, phenomenological, and transpersonal experiences and reasons behind many now lost traditional indigenous practices.

THE ‘UNCONSCIOUS’ AND CATHOLICISM IN FRANCE

In nineteenth-century France, science and religion have often been portrayed as irredeemably opposed to one another. This article seeks to revise this interpretation by showing how these apparently dissonant views intermingled in the study of hysteria. Through a survey of attitudes towards Catholicism and in their treatment of Catholic patients, the article shows how French psychiatrists and neurologists were deeply indebted to religious iconography and experience, despite their vehement anti-clericalism. Because of their hatred of the church, they focused on the treatment of female hysterics who manifested ‘religious’ symptoms – demonopathy, mystical states, and stigmata – in order to amass conclusive evidence of Catholic ‘superstition’. Their preoccupation with such patients meant, however, that they paradoxically re-embedded Catholicism into their scientific practice by incorporating religious motifs, bodily poses, and iconography into their diagnosis of hysteria. At the same time, their disdain for the Catholic religious imagination meant that they refused to explore the fantasies of their subjects. For physicians like Jean-Martin Charcot and the more subtle Pierre Janet – a contemporary and competitor of Sigmund Freud – fantasies of bodily suffering, unearthly physical perfection, and an array of Catholic maternal fantasies associated with images of Mary and Christ were all nothing more than delusions, not the stuff from which an appreciation or understanding of the ‘unconscious’ could emerge. The result was that French physicians offered no psychodynamic transformation or symbolic reinterpretation of their words or physical symptoms, a resistance that was one reason among many for their hostility to psychoanalysis.

Denys Turner’s Anti-Mystical Mystical Theology

AbstractIn his book The Darkness of God, Denys Turner claims that medieval mysticism was not based on mystical experiences. This view is called `anti-mysticism’; its opposite is `experientialism’. After giving a brief account of the theology of Dionysius the Areopagite, I argue that an experientialist interpretation of this theology is more plausible than an anti-mystical interpretation. Robert Forman’s classification of apophatic mystical states helps to understand the experiences behind the texts.

Regulation, religious experience, and epilepsy: a lens on complementary therapies

Complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapies include chiropractic, acupuncture and traditional Oriental medicine, massage therapy, and herbal remedies; mind–body therapies (such as meditative practices and visualization); and folk practices and religious healing. Of these, modalities based on spiritual healing create a number of conundrums for the clinician, including legal, regulatory, and ethical issues. Further, the historic relationship between the study of epilepsy and religious experience suggests particular, potential associations between CAM therapies (and especially spiritual healing) and care for epileptic patients. There are at least two dimensions to this exploration: first, the widespread use of spiritual healing for treatment of epilepsy; and second, the hypothesized connection between epileptic seizures and mystical states. A number of legal rules help address potential abuse of authority by health care professionals, and include: (1) medical licensure; (2) scope of practice; (3) professional discipline; (4) malpractice; and (5) fraud. This article offers a preliminary resource for clinicians interested in these topics.

Phenomenological Intentionality meets an Ego-less State

When using the phenomenological method, one aims to capture the essential structures of lived experiences. It has been my experience that phenomenology does this well, when researching experiences that are lived through our bodily senses and understood with our minds. When trying to capture and describe experiences that are beyond the understanding of the body and the mind, namely experiences of deep meditative states, one is confronted with the limitations of the research method itself.One of the fundamental concepts within the phenomenological method is that of Intentionality. It is assumed that human beings experience themselves and their worlds from the perspective of an individual ego that intends an object of consciousness. This subject-object interaction comprises the contents of consciousness itself. The challenge, in this paper, is to describe deep meditative states, whereby the subject and the object of consciousness become one.The phenomenological epoché is performed so that the researcher can be completely open to how the experiential data itself describes mystical experiences. This means bracketing out all preconceptions, all theories including that of intentionality, so that the researcher can open her/himself up to the essence of mystical meditation. When this is done, the mystical state informs an expansion of intentionality to include the state of oneness.

INVITED ESSAY: Mysticism, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Learning From Marion Milner

The article explores the relationship between mysticism and creativity from a psychoanalytic perspective. First, it first surveys prominent psychoanalytic perspectives on mysticism and creativity, situating British psychoanalyst Marion Milner among them. Milner suggests that the same psychological processes are involved in both creative expression and mystical experiences. A state of paradox, affirming both I and not-I, self and no-self, is at the core of mysticism. Similarly, for Milner the paradox of creativity is to break down the barrier of space between self and other while maintaining it. Second, the idea that mystics and artists share a common basic experience is investigated. In both mystical and creative states one finds elements of joy, union, ecstasy, absorption, loss of self-consciousness, and loss of sense of time. Milner's discussion in turn revolves around the I-not-I distinction. She posits that mysticism is one dimension of the creative process-in contrast to the pure oceanic feeling of the mystic, the creative process is constituted by the oceanic state in cyclic oscillation with the surface mind, actively used with the intent to produce something. Third, the relevance of mysticism and creativity for mental health is explored. For Milner, both creativity and mystical experiences are psychologically beneficial in that they undo the overfixed separation self and other caused by the tyranny of the conscious mind. Yet neither mysticism nor creative expression alone, in her view, can heal an underlying lack of sense of self.

Mystical States or Mystical Life? Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu Perspectives

Mystical States or Mystical Life? Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu Perspectives

Psychotic and Mystical States of Being: Connections and Distinctions

Previous analyses of descriptively defined psychotic phenomena have concluded that they can occur in benign spiritual experiences as well as pathological states. Attempts to forge a distinction between psychotic experiences in spiritual and pathological contexts on the basis of the form or content of the experience (broadly described) can be disproved by counterexample; distinguishing on the basis of negative or positive consequences of the phenomena for the individual can be seen to beg the question. In the present paper, it is argued that examining the fundamental conceptual organization of psychotic and mystical mental states not only elucidates the observed similarities between them, but can highlight the differences, and the processes by which negatively evaluated pathological features can be seen to emerge. Oriental philosophical systems such as Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, and Tantric Hinduism, provide conceptualizations of mystical states of mind, from which a model can be drawn, while the epistemologies of these systems provide an illuminating metaphysical perspective on both psychotic and mystical experiences. It is concluded that mystical and psychotic experiences can be distinguished not only by emotional and behavioral consequences, but by real differences in the states themselves; certain features, such as loss of subject/object boundaries and loss of the relative dimensional structure of perception, are common to both processes.

DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research Into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences

DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research Into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences

A reappraisal of medieval mysticism & hysteria

This paper examines the historical association between medieval mysticism and asceticism and the psychopathological condition of hysteria. We first review the particular forms of medieval mysticism and asceticism that seem to have inspired modern psychiatrists and reductive historians to dismiss these phenomena as indubitably neurotic behaviours. Then we review the concept of hysteria as it evolved during the last two centuries for points of convergence with mysticism. Finally, we question the validity of value-laden diagnostic formulations in the domain of personality assessment. A few highly dramatic but culturally endorsed religious behaviours occuring in an otherwise well functioning individual does not constitute a basis for any psychiatric diagnosis, let alone a condemnatory characterological one such as hysteria. We propose a perspective for looking at medieval mystical states of mind and behaviours in context that moves beyond ahistoric assumptions that employ modern Western standards as the yardstick for medieval health and illness.