Religious
Experience
Resources
Religious
Experience
Top
About course
Housekeeping
Schedule
Galleries
Resources
Wildman's
Weird Wild Web
Home
Links
Jokes
Other Courses
Religious Experience
Resources
Reviews of Books and Articles
These are brief reviews of an extremely diverse array of books and articles related to religious experience. The reviews have been produced by Boston University graduate students interested in studying religious experience.
Index of Topics
It is difficult to classify works on religious experience and related issues. One of the biggest problems is the term "religious experience" itself. In what follows, I boldly solve this problem by designating "religious experience" to refer to whatever sorts of experience are discussed somewhere, explicitly or indirectly, in the books under each heading. It is an arbitrary solution, to be sure, but it is better than pretending that a precise definition of "religious experience" can be proposed and defended.
The abbreviations of the review authors appear after each title in the index below, and the key to the abbreviations is at the end of the page. Here is the list of categories. Some books have been listed in more than one category but I have tried to avoid double listing.
Descriptions of Religious Experiences
Evolutionary or Biological Approaches to Religious Experience
Fictional Treatments of Religious Experience
Investigative Approaches to Religious Experience
Neurological Approaches to Religious Experiences
Pharmacological Approaches to Religious Experiences
Phenomenological Approaches to Religious Experience
Philosophical or Theoretical Approaches to Religious Experience
Practical Guides to Religious Experience
Psychological Approaches to Religious Experience
Sociological Approaches to Religious Experience
Theological Approaches to Religious Experience
Theoretical Approaches to Religious Experience
Key to Abbreviations of Review Authors
Descriptions of Religious Experiences
Al-Ghazálí. The Deliverance From Error [TDC]
Augustine. Confessions, Book 7 [KHK]
Johnson, Clifton H., ed. God Struck Me Dead [CD]
Merton, Thomas. The Seven Storey Mountain [JCM]
Strieber, Whitley; Strieber, Anne; eds. The Communion Letters [TDC]
Evolutionary or Biological Approaches to Religious Experience
Krishna, Gopi. The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius [CD]
Fictional Treatments of Religious Experience
Kazantzakis, Nikos. Saint Francis [MS]
Percy, Walker. The Second Coming [CD]
Investigative Approaches to Religious Experience
Harrison, Ted. Stigmata: A Medieval Mystery in a Modern Age [MS]
Schwarz
Neurological Approaches to Religious Experiences
d’Aquili, Eugene; Newberg, Andrew B. The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience [TK]
Pharmacological Approaches to Religious Experiences
Krishna, Gopi. The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius [CD]
Leary. Timothy. Jail Notes [CD]
Phenomenological Approaches to Religious Experience
Fischer, Roland. "A Cartography of Ecstatic and Meditative States" [TK]
Hardy, Sir Alister. The Spiritual Nature of Man: A Study of Contemporary Religious Experience [TK]
Häring, Hermann; Metz, Johann Baptist; (eds.). The Many Faces of the Divine [KYJ]
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience [TK]
Smart, Ninian. Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs [TK]
Stace, W.T. Mysticism and Philosophy [TK]
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, ed. From the Sacred to the Divine: A New Phenomenological Approach [TDC]
Philosophical or Theoretical Approaches to Religious Experience
Bucke, Richard Maurice, M.D. Cosmic Consciousness [TK]
Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane [TDC]
Katz, Steven T. “Language, Epistemology and Mysticism” [TK]
Katz, Steven T. “The ‘Conservative’ Character of Mysticism” [TK]
Katz, Steven T. 1992. “Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning” [TK]
Katz, Steven T. 2000. “Mysticism and the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture” [TK]
Petroff, Elizabeth. Body and Soul [MS]
Wilbur, Ken. The Atman Project [JCM]
Practical Guides to Religious Experience
Chopra, Deepak. How to Know God [JCM]
Feuerstein, Georg. The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali: A New Translation and Commentary [JCM]
Hanh, Thich Nhat. Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers [JCM]
Shiloh, Ailon. Faith Healing: The Religious Experience as a Therapeutic Process [KYJ]
Tao Teh Ching [KYJ]
Taylor, Barbara Brown. When God is Silent [KYJ]
Psychological Approaches to Religious Experience
Deikman, Arthur J. “De-automatization and the Mystic Experience” [TK]
Deikman, Arthur J. “Experimental Meditation” [TK]
Fromm, Erich. Psychoanalysis and Religion [KHK]
Greeley, Andrew, “Hallucinations Among the Widowed.” [CD]
Hood, Ralph W., Jr., ed. 1995. Handbook of Religious Experiences. Religious Education Press [TK]
Hood, Ralph W., Jr. “Religious Orientation and the Report of Religious Experience” [TK]
Hunt, Harry T. “A Cognitive Psychology of Mystical and Altered-State Experience.” [TK]
Maslow, Abraham H. Religions, Values and Peak Experiences [TK]
Maslow, Abraham H. Toward a Psychology of Being [TK]
Neumann, Erich. “Mystical Man” [TK]
Schachter, S.; Singer, J. E. “Cognitive, Social, and Psychological Determinants of Emotional States” [TK]
Sociological Approaches to Religious Experience
Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion [TK]
Finney, John. Finding Faith Today: How Does It Happen? [JG]
Greeley, Andrew M. The Sociology of the Paranormal [TK]
Theological Approaches to Religious Experience
Berger, Peter L. The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation [TK]
Ford, David F. Theology: A Very Short Introduction [JG]
Fiddes, Paul S. Freedom and Limit: A Dialogue between Literature and Christian Doctrine [JG]
Merton, Thomas. Thoughts on the East [JCM]
Quinn, Philip L.; Meeker, Kevin; eds. The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity [JCM]
Smith, Huston. Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition [TK]
Key to Abbreviations of Review Authors
[TDC] Thomas D. Carroll
[CD] Charles Demm
[JG] Julian Gotobed
[KHK] Kim Han-Kyung
[KYJ] Kim YoungJu
[TK] Tim Knepper
[JCM] Justin C. Maaia
[MS] Maria Smilios
The information on this page is copyright ©1994-2010, Wesley Wildman (basic information here), unless otherwise noted. If you want to use ideas that you find here, please be careful to acknowledge this site as your source, and remember also to credit the original author of what you use, where that is applicable. If you want to use text or stories from these pages, please contact me at the feedback address for permission.