• Language, mysticism, and hypnotizability: a brief communication

    Type Journal Article
    Author Peter J Adams
    Abstract People attempting to communicate religious and mystical experiences tend to use the same language strategies employed in inducing hypnotic trance. Both incorporate vague language that provides receptive listeners the opportunity to insert their own content. This study examines whether people who have had mystical or religious experiences are also more likely to respond to the language of hypnosis. Eighty-one participants completed the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A and the Hood Mysticism Scale. Participants were divided into 3 equal groups based on "high," "ambiguous," and "low" mysticism scale scores. The high group scored significantly higher on hypnotizability compared to the low group. The relationship between openness to mystical and religious experience and susceptibility to hypnotic suggestion warrants further investigation.
    Publication The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis
    Volume 56
    Issue 1
    Pages 73-82
    Date Jan 2008
    Journal Abbr Int J Clin Exp Hypn
    DOI 10.1080/00207140701673100
    ISSN 0020-7144
    Short Title Language, mysticism, and hypnotizability
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/18058488
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:14:17 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 18058488
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adult
    • Female
    • Humans
    • Language
    • Male
    • Mysticism
    • Suggestion

    Notes:

    • People attempting to communicate religious and mystical experiences tend to use the same language strategies employed in inducing hypnotic trance. Both incorporate vague language that provides receptive listeners the opportunity to insert their own content. This study examines whether people who have had mystical or religious experiences are also more likely to respond to the language of hypnosis. Eighty-one participants completed the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A and the Hood Mysticism Scale. Participants were divided into 3 equal groups based on “high,” “ambiguous,” and “low” mysticism scale scores. The high group scored significantly higher on hypnotizability compared to the low group. The relationship between openness to mystical and religious experience and susceptibility to hypnotic suggestion warrants further investigation.

  • Why revelations have occurred on mountains? Linking mystical experiences and cognitive neuroscience

    Type Journal Article
    Author S Arzy
    Author M Idel
    Author T Landis
    Author O Blanke
    Publication Medical Hypotheses
    Volume 65
    Issue 5
    Pages 841-845
    Date 2005
    Journal Abbr Medical Hypotheses
    DOI 10.1016/j.mehy.2005.04.044
    ISSN 03069877
    Short Title Why revelations have occurred on mountains?
    URL http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(05)00295-1/abstract
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:26:55 2009
    Library Catalog CrossRef
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
  • The serotonin system and spiritual experiences

    Type Journal Article
    Author Jacqueline Borg
    Author Bengt Andrée
    Author Henrik Soderstrom
    Author Lars Farde
    Abstract OBJECTIVE: The serotonin system has long been of interest in biological models of human personality. The purpose of this positron emission tomography (PET) study was to search for relationships between serotonin 5-HT(1A) receptor density and personality traits. METHOD: Fifteen normal male subjects, ages 20-45 years, were examined with PET and the radioligand [(11)C]WAY100635. Personality traits were assessed with the Swedish version of the Temperament and Character Inventory self-report questionnaire. Binding potential, an index for the density of available 5-HT(1A) receptors, was calculated for the dorsal raphe nuclei, the hippocampal formation, and the neocortex. For each region, correlation coefficients between 5-HT(1A) receptor binding potential and Temperament and Character Inventory personality dimensions were calculated and analyzed in two-tailed tests for significance. RESULTS: The authors found that the binding potential correlated inversely with scores for self-transcendence, a personality trait covering religious behavior and attitudes. No correlations were found for any of the other six Temperament and Character Inventory dimensions. The self-transcendence dimension consists of three distinct subscales, and further analysis showed that the subscale for spiritual acceptance correlated significantly with binding potential but not with the other two subscales. CONCLUSIONS: This finding in normal male subjects indicated that the serotonin system may serve as a biological basis for spiritual experiences. The authors speculated that the several-fold variability in 5-HT(1A) receptor density may explain why people vary greatly in spiritual zeal.
    Publication The American Journal of Psychiatry
    Volume 160
    Issue 11
    Pages 1965-1969
    Date Nov 2003
    Journal Abbr Am J Psychiatry
    ISSN 0002-953X
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/14594742
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:33:31 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 14594742
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adult
    • Brain
    • Character
    • Hippocampus
    • Humans
    • Male
    • Middle Aged
    • Neocortex
    • personality
    • Personality Assessment
    • Personality Inventory
    • Piperazines
    • Pyridines
    • Raphe Nuclei
    • Receptors, Serotonin
    • Serotonin
    • Serotonin Antagonists
    • spirituality
    • Temperament
    • Tomography, Emission-Computed

    Notes:

    • Objective: The serotonin system has long been of interest in biological models of human personality. The purpose of this positron emission tomography (PET) study was to search for relationships between serotonin 5-HT(1A) receptor density and personality traits. Method: Fifteen normal male subjects, ages 20-45 years, were examined with PET and the radioligand [(11)C]WAY100635. Personality traits were assessed with the Swedish version of the Temperament and Character Inventory self-report questionnaire. Binding potential, an index for the density of available 5-HT(1A) receptors, was calculated for the dorsal raphe nuclei, the hippocampal formation, and the neocortex. For each region, correlation coefficients between 5-HT(1A) receptor binding potential and Temperament and Character Inventory personality dimensions were calculated and analyzed in two-tailed tests for significance. Results: The authors found that the binding potential correlated inversely with scores for self-transcendence, a personality trait covering religious behavior and attitudes. No correlations were found for any of the other six Temperament and Character Inventory dimensions. The self-transcendence dimension consists of three distinct subscales, and further analysis showed that the subscale for spiritual acceptance correlated significantly with binding potential but not with the other two subscales. Conclusions: This finding in normal male subjects indicated that the serotonin system may serve as a biological basis for spiritual experiences. The authors speculated that the several-fold variability in 5-HT(1A) receptor density may explain why people vary greatly in spiritual zeal.

  • The out-of body experience: precipitating factors and neural correlates

    Type Book Section
    Author Silvia Bünning
    Author Olaf Blanke
    Contributor Steven Laureys
    Abstract Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are defined as experiences in which a person seems to be awake and sees his body and the world from a location outside his physical body. More precisely, they can be defined by the presence of the following three phenomenological characteristics: (i) disembodiment (location of the self outside one's body); (ii) the impression of seeing the world from an elevated and distanced visuo-spatial perspective (extracorporeal, but egocentric visuo-spatial perspective); and (iii) the impression of seeing one's own body (autoscopy) from this perspective. OBEs have fascinated mankind from time immemorial and are abundant in folklore, mythology, and spiritual experiences of most ancient and modern societies. Here, we review some of the classical precipitating factors of OBEs such as sleep, drug abuse, and general anesthesia as well as their neurobiology and compare them with recent findings on neurological and neurocognitive mechanisms of OBEs. The reviewed data suggest that OBEs are due to functional disintegration of lower-level multisensory processing and abnormal higher-level self-processing at the temporo-parietal junction. We argue that the experimental investigation of the interactions between these multisensory and cognitive mechanisms in OBEs and related illusions in combination with neuroimaging and behavioral techniques might further our understanding of the central mechanisms of corporal awareness and self-consciousness much as previous research about the neural bases of complex body part illusions such as phantom limbs has done.
    Book Title The Boundaries of Consciousness: Neurobiology and Neuropathology
    Volume Volume 150
    Publisher Elsevier
    Date 2005
    Pages 331-350, 605-606
    ISBN 0079-6123
    Short Title The out-of body experience
    URL http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B7CV6-4H62GJY-12/2/f05e2dfbb9c7a6243ea8deb70c433f38
    Accessed Tue Nov 3 20:53:47 2009
    Library Catalog ScienceDirect
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are defined as experiences in which a person seems to be awake and sees his body and the world from a location outside his physical body. More precisely, they can be defined by the presence of the following three phenomenological characteristics: (i) disembodiment (location of the self outside one’s body); (ii) the impression of seeing the world from an elevated and distanced visuo-spatial perspective (extracorporeal, but egocentric visuo-spatial perspective); and (iii) the impression of seeing one’s own body (autoscopy) from this perspective. OBEs have fascinated mankind from time immemorial and are abundant in folklore, mythology, and spiritual experiences of most ancient and modern societies. Here, we review some of the classical precipitating factors of OBEs such as sleep, drug abuse, and general anesthesia as well as their neurobiology and compare them with recent findings on neurological and neurocognitive mechanisms of OBEs. The reviewed data suggest that OBEs are due to functional disintegration of lower-level multisensory processing and abnormal higher-level self-processing at the temporo-parietal junction. We argue that the experimental investigation of the interactions between these multisensory and cognitive mechanisms in OBEs and related illusions in combination with neuroimaging and behavioral techniques might further our understanding of the central mechanisms of corporal awareness and self-consciousness much as previous research about the neural bases of complex body part illusions such as phantom limbs has done.

  • Epilepsy and religious experiences: Voodoo possession

    Type Journal Article
    Author E Carrazana
    Author J DeToledo
    Author W Tatum
    Author R Rivas-Vasquez
    Author G Rey
    Author S Wheeler
    Abstract Epileptic seizures have a historical association with religion, primarily through the concept of spirit possession. Five cases where epileptic seizures were initially attributed to Voodoo spirit possession are presented. The attribution is discussed within the context of the Voodoo belief system.
    Publication Epilepsia
    Volume 40
    Issue 2
    Pages 239-241
    Date Feb 1999
    Journal Abbr Epilepsia
    ISSN 0013-9580
    Short Title Epilepsy and religious experiences
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/9952273
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:40:49 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 9952273
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adult
    • Attitude to Health
    • Epilepsy
    • Female
    • Folklore
    • Haiti
    • Humans
    • Magic
    • Middle Aged
    • religion
    • Religion and Psychology
    • Superstitions

    Notes:

    • Epileptic seizures have a historical association with religion, primarily through the concept of spirit possession. Five cases where epileptic seizures were initially attributed to Voodoo spirit possession are presented. The attribution is discussed within the context of the Voodoo belief system.

  • Trance, functional psychosis, and culture

    Type Journal Article
    Author Richard J Castillo
    Abstract This paper discusses the hypothesis that the symptoms of functional psychoses can be caused by culturally structured spontaneous trances that may be reactions to environmental stress and psychological trauma. Findings are reviewed of anthropological studies of meditative trance experiences in Indian yogis characterized by divided consciousness (dissociation), religious auditory and visual hallucinations, and beliefs in their own spiritual powers. An explanation of the psychological mechanisms of meditative trance is also provided, highlighting trance-related alteration of consciousness within an Indian cultural context. It is suggested that the psychological mechanisms of meditative trance are similar in structure to spontaneous trances underlying the symptoms of some functional psychoses. Findings from cross-cultural studies are also reviewed, highlighting the effects of culture on the symptoms, indigenous diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes of functional psychoses. In non-Western cultures, transient functional psychoses with complete recovery are 10 times more common than in Western cultures. It is suggested that egocentrism and a loss of spiritual explanations for psychosis in Western cultures constructs a clinical situation in which persons with functional psychoses are treated for a biogenetic (incurable) brain disease rather than a curable spiritual illness. This difference in cultural belief systems leads to poorer outcomes for Western patients compared to non-Western patients. Recognizing cultural differences in symptoms, indigenous diagnoses, and treatment for functional psychoses can help explain the dramatic cross-cultural differences in outcome.
    Publication Psychiatry
    Volume 66
    Issue 1
    Pages 9-21
    Date 2003
    Journal Abbr Psychiatry
    ISSN 0033-2747
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/12710226
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:34:42 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 12710226
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Cross-Cultural Comparison
    • Culture
    • Dissociative Disorders
    • Hallucinations
    • Hinduism
    • Humans
    • Meditation
    • Psychotic Disorders

    Notes:

    • This paper discusses the hypothesis that the symptoms of functional psychoses can be caused by culturally structured spontaneous trances that may be reactions to environmental stress and psychological trauma. Findings are reviewed of anthropological studies of meditative trance experiences in Indian yogis characterized by divided consciousness (dissociation), religious auditory and visual hallucinations, and beliefs in their own spiritual powers. An explanation of the psychological mechanisms of meditative trance is also provided, highlighting trance-related alteration of consciousness within an Indian cultural context. It is suggested that the psychological mechanisms of meditative trance are similar in structure to spontaneous trances underlying the symptoms of some functional psychoses. Findings from cross-cultural studies are also reviewed, highlighting the effects of culture on the symptoms, indigenous diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes of functional psychoses. In non-Western cultures, transient functional psychoses with complete recovery are 10 times more common than in Western cultures. It is suggested that egocentrism and a loss of spiritual explanations for psychosis in Western cultures constructs a clinical situation in which persons with functional psychoses are treated for a biogenetic (incurable) brain disease rather than a curable spiritual illness. This difference in cultural belief systems leads to poorer outcomes for Western patients compared to non-Western patients. Recognizing cultural differences in symptoms, indigenous diagnoses, and treatment for functional psychoses can help explain the dramatic cross-cultural differences in outcome.

  • The spiritual vision within

    Type Journal Article
    Author G Michael Cordner
    Abstract Fantasy experiences, as described by Carl Jung, Ira Progoff and others, and as used by the author in pastoral counseling, are essentially spiritual experiences. They share basic similarities with revelatory religious experiences particularly in terms of the process of surrender to the experience, and incorporation of the completed experience. Revelatory experiences described in scripture, for example, may be viewed as experiences of a fantasy process. Through fantasy, the essential experiential dimension of spirituality is recaptured.
    Publication Journal of Pastoral Care
    Volume 35
    Issue 1
    Pages 42-51
    Date March 1981
    ISSN 0022-3409
    URL http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
    direct=true&db=rfh&…
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Fantasy
    • Imagination
    • Peer reviewed
    • Psychology, Religious
    • Spiritual life
    • Symbolism in religion

    Notes:

    • Fantasy experiences, as described by Carl Jung, Ira Progoff and others, and as used by the author in pastoral counseling, are essentially spiritual experiences. They share basic similarities with revelatory religious experiences particularly in terms of the process of surrender to the experience, and incorporation of the completed experience. Revelatory experiences described in scripture, for example, may be viewed as experiences of a fantasy process. Through fantasy, the essential experiential dimension of spirituality is recaptured.

  • Intimacy and saliency: dimensions for ordering religious experiences

    Type Journal Article
    Author Raymond Currie
    Abstract Rodney Stark proposed a taxonomy of religious experiences based on the degree of intimacy between the human actor and the divine. Those who report higher order experiences on the dimension of intimacy should also report lower order experiences. A logical extension of the taxonomy would suggest that the higher order, more intimate experiences should also be more salient to the individuals. A test of these two hypotheses was conducted on a city-wide random sample of young adults, 15 to 24 years of age. There is support for the taxonomy, although not all experiences fit the model. The saliency of the experiences follows a different pattern. It is not determined by the higher order of the experience but rather by the cumulative effect of having more experiences.
    Publication Review of Religious Research
    Volume 24
    Issue 1
    Pages 19-32
    Date April 1982
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • Rodney Stark proposed a taxonomy of religious experiences based on the degree of intimacy between the human actor and the divine. Those who report higher order experiences on the dimension of intimacy should also report lower order experiences. A logical extension of the taxonomy would suggest that the higher order, more intimate experiences should also be more salient to the individuals. A test of these two hypotheses was conducted on a city-wide random sample of young adults, 15 to 24 years of age. There is support for the taxonomy, although not all experiences fit the model. The saliency of the experiences follows a different pattern. It is not determined by the higher order of the experience but rather by the cumulative effect of having more experiences.

  • The encounter with God in myth and madness

    Type Journal Article
    Author Otto Doerr
    Author Oscar Velásquez
    Abstract BACKGROUND: It is well known how often psychiatric patients report religious experiences. These are especially frequent in schizophrenic and epileptic patients as the subject of their delusions. The question we pose is: are there differences between this kind of religious experiences and those we find in religious texts or in the mythological tradition? RESULTS: An overview on famous mythological narratives, such as The Aeneid, allows us to establish that the divinities become recognizable to the human being at the moment of their departure. Thus, Aeneas does not recognise his mother, Venus, when she appears to him in the middle of the forest at the coast of Africa. A dialogue between the two takes place, and only at the end of the encounter, when she is going away and already with her back to Aeneas, she shows her son the signs of her divinity: the rose-flush emanating from her neck, her hair perfume and the majesty of her gait. Something analogous can be observed in the encounter of Moses with Yahweh on Mount Sinai. Moses asks God: "Show me your glory, I beg you". And God replies, among other things: "you shall see the back of me, but my face is not to be seen". In the same sense, the Emmaus disciples do not recognise Jesus till the moment of his disappearance ("but he had vanished from their sight"), and Saul of Tars falls off his horse just in the moment when he feels the divine presence. In short, the direct encounter with the divinity seems not to occur in the realm of myth or in religious tradition. The realm of madness is exactly the opposite. Our research on religious experiences in schizophrenic and epileptic patients leads us to conclude that God appears to them face to face, and the patient describes God the father, Jesus or the Virgin Mary in intimate detail, always in an everyday setting. So, the divinity is seen in the garden, or in the bedroom, or maybe above the wardrobe, without any of its majesty. The nearness to God also tends to be so extreme that even an identification of patient and God can occur. That light emanating from the world of the divine ceases to be perceived by them. CONCLUSION: While in mythological narratives God appears to the human being at the moment of His departure or showing His back, psychiatric patients with religious delusions experience the divinity in a direct way, face to face. Given the deformation of the divine occurring on the edge of madness we can better understand the mysterious words from Yahweh to Moses in Exodus: "for man cannot see me and live".
    Publication Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine: PEHM
    Volume 2
    Pages 12
    Date 2007
    Journal Abbr Philos Ethics Humanit Med
    DOI 10.1186/1747-5341-2-12
    ISSN 1747-5341
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/17608933
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:15:49 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 17608933
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adult
    • delusions
    • Epilepsy
    • Female
    • Humans
    • Male
    • Mental Disorders
    • Middle Aged
    • Mythology
    • religion
    • Religion and Psychology
    • Schizophrenic Psychology

    Notes:

    • Background: It is well known how often psychiatric patients report religious experiences. These are especially frequent in schizophrenic and epileptic patients as the subject of their delusions. The question we pose is: are there differences between this kind of religious experiences and those we find in religious texts or in the mythological tradition? Results: An overview on famous mythological narratives, such as The Aeneid, allows us to establish that the divinities become recognizable to the human being at the moment of their departure. Thus, Aeneas does not recognise his mother, Venus, when she appears to him in the middle of the forest at the coast of Africa. A dialogue between the two takes place, and only at the end of the encounter, when she is going away and already with her back to Aeneas, she shows her son the signs of her divinity: the rose-flush emanating from her neck, her hair perfume and the majesty of her gait. Something analogous can be observed in the encounter of Moses with Yahweh on Mount Sinai. Moses asks God: “Show me your glory, I beg you”. And God replies, among other things: “you shall see the back of me, but my face is not to be seen”. In the same sense, the Emmaus disciples do not recognise Jesus till the moment of his disappearance (“but he had vanished from their sight”), and Saul of Tars falls off his horse just in the moment when he feels the divine presence. In short, the direct encounter with the divinity seems not to occur in the realm of myth or in religious tradition. The realm of madness is exactly the opposite. Our research on religious experiences in schizophrenic and epileptic patients leads us to conclude that God appears to them face to face, and the patient describes God the father, Jesus or the Virgin Mary in intimate detail, always in an everyday setting. So, the divinity is seen in the garden, or in the bedroom, or maybe above the wardrobe, without any of its majesty. The nearness to God also tends to be so extreme that even an identification of patient and God can occur. That light emanating from the world of the divine ceases to be perceived by them. Conclusion: While in mythological narratives God appears to the human being at the moment of His departure or showing His back, psychiatric patients with religious delusions experience the divinity in a direct way, face to face. Given the deformation of the divine occurring on the edge of madness we can better understand the mysterious words from Yahweh to Moses in Exodus: “for man cannot see me and live”.

  • Self-reparation in religious experience and countertransference

    Type Journal Article
    Author Kevin Fauteux
    Abstract This work examines the regressive nature of religious experience and suggests that some people's experience repairs the underlying wounds that in part motivated the regression while others remained fixated in the blissful absence of those wounds. It also investigates what takes place in those experiences that become reparative as opposed to what might happen in those that lead to permanent escape. Finally it examines how the author's clinical intervention-including the pertinent countertransference issues-affected the potential of three people's religious experiences to be reparative/transformative or escapist.
    Publication The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry
    Volume 37
    Issue 1
    Pages 45-57
    Date 2009
    Journal Abbr J Am Acad Psychoanal Dyn Psychiatry
    DOI 10.1521/jaap.2009.37.1.45
    ISSN 1546-0371
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/19364258
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:08:36 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 19364258
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adaptation, Psychological
    • Adult
    • Buddhism
    • Christianity
    • Countertransference (Psychology)
    • Defense Mechanisms
    • Female
    • Humans
    • Life Change Events
    • Male
    • Psychoanalytic Therapy
    • Regression (Psychology)
    • Religion and Psychology
    • Self Care
    • spirituality
    • Transference (Psychology)

    Notes:

    • This work examines the regressive nature of religious experience and suggests that some people’s experience repairs the underlying wounds that in part motivated the regression while others remained fixated in the blissful absence of those wounds. It also investigates what takes place in those experiences that become reparative as opposed to what might happen in those that lead to permanent escape. Finally it examines how the author’s clinical intervention-including the pertinent countertransference issues-affected the potential of three people’s religious experiences to be reparative/transformative or escapist.

  • Beyond Unity: Religious Experience, Creativity, and Psychology

    Type Journal Article
    Author Kevin Fauteux
    Publication Journal of Aesthetic Education
    Volume 29
    Issue 2
    Pages 93-101
    Date Summer, 1995
    ISSN 00218510
    Short Title Beyond Unity
    URL http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/3333457
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:49:47 2009
    Library Catalog JSTOR
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Full publication date: Summer, 1995 / Copyright © 1995 University of Illinois Press
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
  • Daily spiritual experiences, systolic blood pressure, and hypertension among midlife women in SWAN

    Type Journal Article
    Author George Fitchett
    Author Lynda H Powell
    Abstract BACKGROUND: There is reasonable evidence that religious beliefs and activities are associated with lower blood pressure and less hypertension. It is not known if daily spiritual experiences have similar effects. PURPOSE: We examined the relationship between an eight-item version of the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale (DSES) and systolic blood pressure (SBP) and hypertension. METHODS: With data from 1,060 Caucasian and 598 African-American midlife women participating in Study of Women's Health Across the Nation, in race-stratified models, we used regression equations, logistic regression, and mixed effects regression to estimate the relationship between DSES group and SBP and hypertensive status. RESULTS: We found little difference across DSES groups in adjusted mean SBP for either Caucasian or African-American women. Nor did DSES protect against 3-year increases in SBP, hypertensive status, or incident hypertension. CONCLUSIONS: Daily spiritual experiences do not appear protective for SBP or hypertension in midlife women. Further research should examine factors that condition the religion-BP relationship.
    Publication Annals of Behavioral Medicine: A Publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine
    Volume 37
    Issue 3
    Pages 257-267
    Date Jun 2009
    Journal Abbr Ann Behav Med
    DOI 10.1007/s12160-009-9110-y
    ISSN 1532-4796
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/19662465
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:07:36 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 19662465
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • Background: There is reasonable evidence that religious beliefs and activities are associated with lower blood pressure and less hypertension. It is not known if daily spiritual experiences have similar effects. Purpose: We examined the relationship between an eight-item version of the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale (DSES) and systolic blood pressure (SBP) and hypertension. Methods: With data from 1,060 Caucasian and 598 African-American midlife women participating in Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation, in race-stratified models, we used regression equations, logistic regression, and mixed effects regression to estimate the relationship between DSES group and SBP and hypertensive status. Results: We found little difference across DSES groups in adjusted mean SBP for either Caucasian or African-American women. Nor did DSES protect against 3-year increases in SBP, hypertensive status, or incident hypertension. Conclusions: Daily spiritual experiences do not appear protective for SBP or hypertension in midlife women. Further research should examine factors that condition the religion-BP relationship.

  • Neuro-ontological interpretation of spiritual experiences

    Type Journal Article
    Author Ede Frecska
    Author Luis Eduardo Luna
    Abstract The prevailing neuroscientific paradigm considers information processing within the central nervous system as occurring through hierarchically organized and interconnected neural networks. The hierarchy of neural networks doesn't end at the neuroaxonal level; it incorporates subcellular mechanisms as well. When the size of the hierarchical components reaches the nanometer range and the number of elements exceeds that of the neuroaxonal system, an interface emerges for a possible transition between neurochemical and quantum physical events. "Signal nonlocality", accessed by means of quantum entanglement is an essential feature of the quantum physical domain. The presented interface may imply that some manifestations of altered states of consciousness, unconscious/conscious shifts have quantum origin with significant psychosomatic implications. Healing methods based on altered states of consciousness and common in spiritual or shamanic traditions escape neuroscientific explanations based on classical cognition denoted here as "perceptual-cognitive-symbolic" (characteristic of ordinary states of consciousness). Another channel of information processing, called "direct-intuitive-nonlocal" (characteristic of non-ordinary states of consciousness) is required to be introduced for interpretation. The first one is capable of modeling via symbolism and is more culturally bound due to its psycholinguistic features. The second channel lacks the symbolic mediation, therefore it has more transcultural similarity and practically ineffable for the first one, though culture specific transliteration may occur. Different traditional healing rituals pursue the same end: to destroy "profane" sensibility. The ritual use of hallucinogens, the monotonous drumming, the repeated refrains, the fatigue, the fasting, the dancing and so forth, create a sensory condition which is wide open to the so-called "supernatural". According to contemporary anthropological views, the breakdown of ordinary sensibility/cognition is not the ultimate goal, but the way to accomplish healing, that is psychointegration in the widest sense. From the perspective of system theory, integration needs information to be brought into the system. According to the presented model, when the coping capability of the "perceptual-cognitive-symbolic" processing is exhausted in a stressful, unmanageable situation, or its influence is eliminated by the use of hallucinogens or in case of transcendental meditation, a frame shift occurs, and the "spiritual universe" opens up through the "direct-intuitive-nonlocal" channel. There is little chance either for a psychointegrative effect, or for a meaningful "opening" without ritual context, and with the recreational use of mind altering strategies. .
    Publication Neuropsychopharmacologia Hungarica: A Magyar Pszichofarmakológiai Egyesület Lapja = Official Journal of the Hungarian Association of Psychopharmacology
    Volume 8
    Issue 3
    Pages 143-153
    Date Oct 2006
    Journal Abbr Neuropsychopharmacol Hung
    ISSN 1419-8711
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/17211049
    Accessed Mon Sep 28 23:56:29 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 17211049
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Cognition
    • Consciousness
    • Humans
    • Mental Processes
    • Mind-Body Relations (Metaphysics)
    • Spiritual Therapies
    • spirituality

    Notes:

    • The prevailing neuroscientific paradigm considers information processing within the central nervous system as occurring through hierarchically organized and interconnected neural networks. The hierarchy of neural networks doesn’t end at the neuroaxonal level; it incorporates subcellular mechanisms as well. When the size of the hierarchical components reaches the nanometer range and the number of elements exceeds that of the neuroaxonal system, an interface emerges for a possible transition between neurochemical and quantum physical events. “Signal nonlocality”, accessed by means of quantum entanglement is an essential feature of the quantum physical domain. The presented interface may imply that some manifestations of altered states of consciousness, unconscious/conscious shifts have quantum origin with significant psychosomatic implications. Healing methods based on altered states of consciousness and common in spiritual or shamanic traditions escape neuroscientific explanations based on classical cognition denoted here as “perceptual-cognitive-symbolic” (characteristic of ordinary states of consciousness). Another channel of information processing, called “direct-intuitive-nonlocal” (characteristic of non-ordinary states of consciousness) is required to be introduced for interpretation. The first one is capable of modeling via symbolism and is more culturally bound due to its psycholinguistic features. The second channel lacks the symbolic mediation, therefore it has more transcultural similarity and practically ineffable for the first one, though culture specific transliteration may occur. Different traditional healing rituals pursue the same end: to destroy “profane” sensibility. The ritual use of hallucinogens, the monotonous drumming, the repeated refrains, the fatigue, the fasting, the dancing and so forth, create a sensory condition which is wide open to the so-called “supernatural”. According to contemporary anthropological views, the breakdown of ordinary sensibility/cognition is not the ultimate goal, but the way to accomplish healing, that is psychointegration in the widest sense. From the perspective of system theory, integration needs information to be brought into the system. According to the presented model, when the coping capability of the “perceptual-cognitive-symbolic” processing is exhausted in a stressful, unmanageable situation, or its influence is eliminated by the use of hallucinogens or in case of transcendental meditation, a frame shift occurs, and the “spiritual universe” opens up through the “direct-intuitive-nonlocal” channel. There is little chance either for a psychointegrative effect, or for a meaningful “opening” without ritual context, and with the recreational use of mind altering strategies. .

  • Neural and cognitive basis of spiritual experience: biopsychosocial and ethical implications for clinical medicine

    Type Journal Article
    Author James Giordano
    Author Joan Engebretson
    Abstract The role of patient spirituality and spiritual/liminal experience(s; SE) in the clinical setting has generated considerable equivocality within the medical community. Spiritual experience(s), characterized by circumstance, manifestation, and interpretation, reflect patients' explanatory models. We seek to demonstrate the importance of SE to clinical medicine by illustrating biological, cognitive, and psychosocial domains of effect. Specifically, we address where in the brain these events are processed and what types of neural events may be occurring. We posit that existing evidence suggests that SE can induce both intermediate level processing (ILP) to generate attentional awareness (ie, "consciousness of") effects and perhaps nonintermediate level processing to generate nonattentive, subliminal (ie, "state of") consciousness effects. Recognition of neural and cognitive mechanisms is important to clinicians' understanding of the biological basis of noetic, salutogenic, and putative physiologic effects. We posit that neurocognitive mechanisms, fortified by anthropologic and social contexts, led to the incorporation of SE-evoked behaviors into health-based ritual(s) and religious practice(s). Thus, these experiences not only exert biological effects but may provide important means for enhancing patients' locus of control. By recognizing these variables, we advocate clinicians to act within an ethical scope of practice as therapeutic and moral agents to afford patients resources to accommodate their specific desire(s) and/or need(s) for spiritual experiences, in acknowledgement of the underlying mechanisms and potential outcomes that may be health promotional.
    Publication Explore (New York, N.Y.)
    Volume 2
    Issue 3
    Pages 216-225
    Date May 2006
    Journal Abbr Explore (NY)
    DOI 10.1016/j.explore.2006.02.002
    ISSN 1550-8307
    Short Title Neural and cognitive basis of spiritual experience
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/16781644
    Accessed Mon Sep 28 23:56:34 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 16781644
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Attitude of Health Personnel
    • Attitude to Health
    • Clinical Medicine
    • Cognition
    • Ethics, Clinical
    • Holistic Health
    • Humans
    • NEEDS assessment
    • Physician-Patient Relations
    • Physician's Role
    • spirituality

    Notes:

    • The role of patient spirituality and spiritual/liminal experience(s; SE) in the clinical setting has generated considerable equivocality within the medical community. Spiritual experience(s), characterized by circumstance, manifestation, and interpretation, reflect patients’ explanatory models. We seek to demonstrate the importance of SE to clinical medicine by illustrating biological, cognitive, and psychosocial domains of effect. Specifically, we address where in the brain these events are processed and what types of neural events may be occurring. We posit that existing evidence suggests that SE can induce both intermediate level processing (ILP) to generate attentional awareness (ie, “consciousness of”) effects and perhaps nonintermediate level processing to generate nonattentive, subliminal (ie, “state of”) consciousness effects. Recognition of neural and cognitive mechanisms is important to clinicians’ understanding of the biological basis of noetic, salutogenic, and putative physiologic effects. We posit that neurocognitive mechanisms, fortified by anthropologic and social contexts, led to the incorporation of SE-evoked behaviors into health-based ritual(s) and religious practice(s). Thus, these experiences not only exert biological effects but may provide important means for enhancing patients’ locus of control. By recognizing these variables, we advocate clinicians to act within an ethical scope of practice as therapeutic and moral agents to afford patients resources to accommodate their specific desire(s) and/or need(s) for spiritual experiences, in acknowledgement of the underlying mechanisms and potential outcomes that may be health promotional.

  • The serotonergic system and mysticism: could LSD and the nondrug-induced mystical experience share common neural mechanisms?

    Type Journal Article
    Author Neil Goodman
    Abstract This article aims to explore, through established scientific research and documented accounts of personal experience, the similarities between religious mystical experiences and some effects of D-lysergic diethylamide or LSD. LSD predominantly works upon the serotonergic (serotonin-using neurons) diffuse neuromodulatory system, which projects its axons to virtually all areas of the brain including the neocortex. By its normal action it modulates awareness of the environmental surroundings and filters a high proportion of this information before it can be processed, thereby only allowing the amount of information that is necessary for survival. LSD works to open this filter, and so an increased amount of somatosensory data is processed with a corresponding increase in what is deemed important. This article describes the effects and actions of LSD, and due to the similarities with the nondrug-induced mystical experience the author proposes that the two could have common modes of action upon the brain. This could lead to avenues of research into mysticism and a wealth of knowledge on consciousness and how we perceive the universe.
    Publication Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
    Volume 34
    Issue 3
    Pages 263-272
    Date 2002 Jul-Sep
    Journal Abbr J Psychoactive Drugs
    ISSN 0279-1072
    Short Title The serotonergic system and mysticism
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/12422936
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:36:03 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 12422936
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Brain
    • Hallucinations
    • Humans
    • Lysergic Acid Diethylamide
    • Molecular Structure
    • Mysticism
    • Neurons
    • Norepinephrine
    • Psychophysiology
    • Receptors, Presynaptic
    • Receptors, Serotonin
    • Religion and Psychology
    • Serotonin
    • Serotonin Agonists

    Notes:

    • This article aims to explore, through established scientific research and documented accounts of personal experience, the similarities between religious mystical experiences and some effects of D-lysergic diethylamide or LSD. LSD predominantly works upon the serotonergic (serotonin-using neurons) diffuse neuromodulatory system, which projects its axons to virtually all areas of the brain including the neocortex. By its normal action it modulates awareness of the environmental surroundings and filters a high proportion of this information before it can be processed, thereby only allowing the amount of information that is necessary for survival. LSD works to open this filter, and so an increased amount of somatosensory data is processed with a corresponding increase in what is deemed important. This article describes the effects and actions of LSD, and due to the similarities with the nondrug-induced mystical experience the author proposes that the two could have common modes of action upon the brain. This could lead to avenues of research into mysticism and a wealth of knowledge on consciousness and how we perceive the universe.

  • Contribution of religiousness in the prediction and interpretation of mystical experiences in a sensory deprivation context: activation of religious schemas

    Type Journal Article
    Author Pehr Granqvist
    Author Marcus Larsson
    Abstract M. A. Persinger (2002) claimed that transcranial magnetic stimulation with weak, complex magnetic fields evokes mystical experiences. However, in a double-blind experiment, P. Granqvist, M. Fredrikson, P. Unge, A. Hagenfeldt, S. Valind., et al. (2005) found no effects of field exposure on mystical experiences (N = 89), though a minority of participants reported spontaneous mystical experiences. Following the conclusion of null effects from magnetic field exposure, the setup of this experiment, including pre-experimental assessments of religiousness and sensory deprivation, can be viewed as a prime/setting for such experiences. The authors analyzed subsets of experimental data from P. Granqvist and colleagues with emphasis on the contribution of religiousness in the prediction and interpretation of mystical experiences. They found that a higher degree of religiousness predicted a higher occurrence of mystical experiences with a religious quality, but not of mystical experiences without such a quality. The authors discuss findings in terms of the experimental setup serving as a prime/setting activating the religious schemas of religious participants.
    Publication The Journal of Psychology
    Volume 140
    Issue 4
    Pages 319-327
    Date Jul 2006
    Journal Abbr J Psychol
    ISSN 0022-3980
    Short Title Contribution of religiousness in the prediction and interpretation of mystical experiences in a sensory deprivation context
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/16967739
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:19:06 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 16967739
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adult
    • Female
    • Humans
    • Magnetics
    • Male
    • Mysticism
    • religion
    • Religious Philosophies
    • Sensory Deprivation
    • Sweden
    • Theology

    Notes:

    • M. A. Persinger (2002) claimed that transcranial magnetic stimulation with weak, complex magnetic fields evokes mystical experiences. However, in a double-blind experiment, P. Granqvist, M. Fredrikson, P. Unge, A. Hagenfeldt, S. Valind., et al. (2005) found no effects of field exposure on mystical experiences (N = 89), though a minority of participants reported spontaneous mystical experiences. Following the conclusion of null effects from magnetic field exposure, the setup of this experiment, including pre-experimental assessments of religiousness and sensory deprivation, can be viewed as a prime/setting for such experiences. The authors analyzed subsets of experimental data from P. Granqvist and colleagues with emphasis on the contribution of religiousness in the prediction and interpretation of mystical experiences. They found that a higher degree of religiousness predicted a higher occurrence of mystical experiences with a religious quality, but not of mystical experiences without such a quality. The authors discuss findings in terms of the experimental setup serving as a prime/setting activating the religious schemas of religious participants.

  • Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later

    Type Journal Article
    Author Rr Griffiths
    Author Wa Richards
    Author Mw Johnson
    Author Ud McCann
    Author R Jesse
    Abstract Psilocybin has been used for centuries for religious purposes; however, little is known scientifically about its long-term effects. We previously reported the effects of a double-blind study evaluating the psychological effects of a high psilocybin dose. This report presents the 14-month follow-up and examines the relationship of the follow-up results to data obtained at screening and on drug session days. Participants were 36 hallucinogen-naïve adults reporting regular participation in religious/ spiritual activities. Oral psilocybin (30 mg/70 kg) was administered on one of two or three sessions, with methylphenidate (40 mg/70 kg) administered on the other session(s). During sessions, volunteers were encouraged to close their eyes and direct their attention inward. At the 14-month follow-up, 58% and 67%, respectively, of volunteers rated the psilocybin-occasioned experience as being among the five most personally meaningful and among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives; 64% indicated that the experience increased well-being or life satisfaction; 58% met criteria for having had a 'complete' mystical experience. Correlation and regression analyses indicated a central role of the mystical experience assessed on the session day in the high ratings of personal meaning and spiritual significance at follow-up. Of the measures of personality, affect, quality of life and spirituality assessed across the study, only a scale measuring mystical experience showed a difference from screening. When administered under supportive conditions, psilocybin occasioned experiences similar to spontaneously occurring mystical experiences that, at 14-month follow-up, were considered by volunteers to be among the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives.
    Publication Journal of Psychopharmacology (Oxford, England)
    Volume 22
    Issue 6
    Pages 621-632
    Date Aug 2008
    Journal Abbr J. Psychopharmacol. (Oxford)
    DOI 10.1177/0269881108094300
    ISSN 0269-8811
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/18593735
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:12:02 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 18593735
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Administration, Oral
    • Adult
    • Affect
    • Female
    • Follow-Up Studies
    • Hallucinogens
    • Humans
    • Knowledge
    • Male
    • Middle Aged
    • Mysticism
    • personality
    • Psilocybine
    • Quality of Life
    • Questionnaires
    • religion
    • spirituality
    • Time Factors

    Notes:

    • Psilocybin has been used for centuries for religious purposes; however, little is known scientifically about its long-term effects. We previously reported the effects of a double-blind study evaluating the psychological effects of a high psilocybin dose. This report presents the 14-month follow-up and examines the relationship of the follow-up results to data obtained at screening and on drug session days. Participants were 36 hallucinogen-naïve adults reporting regular participation in religious/ spiritual activities. Oral psilocybin (30 mg/70 kg) was administered on one of two or three sessions, with methylphenidate (40 mg/70 kg) administered on the other session(s). During sessions, volunteers were encouraged to close their eyes and direct their attention inward. At the 14-month follow-up, 58% and 67%, respectively, of volunteers rated the psilocybin-occasioned experience as being among the five most personally meaningful and among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives; 64% indicated that the experience increased well-being or life satisfaction; 58% met criteria for having had a ‘complete’ mystical experience. Correlation and regression analyses indicated a central role of the mystical experience assessed on the session day in the high ratings of personal meaning and spiritual significance at follow-up. Of the measures of personality, affect, quality of life and spirituality assessed across the study, only a scale measuring mystical experience showed a difference from screening. When administered under supportive conditions, psilocybin occasioned experiences similar to spontaneously occurring mystical experiences that, at 14-month follow-up, were considered by volunteers to be among the most personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives.

  • Spiritual and religious experiences of adolescent psychiatric inpatients versus healthy peers

    Type Journal Article
    Author Daniel H Grossoehme
    Author Sian Cotton
    Author Anthony Leonard
    Abstract One hundred twenty-two adolescent psychiatric inpatients with depressive disorders and 80 healthy peers were administered the INSPIRIT, a measure of core spiritual experiences. Healthy adolescents reported a greater frequency of spiritual experiences and a more positive impact of such experiences on their belief in God than did their inpatient peers. Adolescent inpatients reported higher frequencies of experiencing angels, demons, God or guiding spirits; feeling unity with the earth and other living things; and with near death or life after death as compared to healthy peers. Overall, females reported higher frequency of spiritual experiences and higher impact of the experience on their belief in God than did males. It was concluded that the INSPIRIT is a feasible spiritual assessment tool for adolescent populations and may be used by chaplains as a means for guiding clinical conversations with adolescents.
    Publication The Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling: JPCC
    Volume 61
    Issue 3
    Pages 197-204
    Date 2007
    Journal Abbr J Pastoral Care Counsel
    ISSN 1542-3050
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/17958084
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:14:54 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 17958084
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adolescent
    • Adolescent, Hospitalized
    • Case-Control Studies
    • Chaplaincy Service, Hospital
    • Crisis Intervention
    • Depressive Disorder
    • Female
    • Hospitals, Pediatric
    • Humans
    • Male
    • Pastoral Care
    • Psychiatric Department, Hospital
    • Psychometrics
    • Religion and Psychology
    • spirituality

    Notes:

    • One hundred twenty-two adolescent psychiatric inpatients with depressive disorders and 80 healthy peers were administered the INSPIRIT, a measure of core spiritual experiences. Healthy adolescents reported a greater frequency of spiritual experiences and a more positive impact of such experiences on their belief in God than did their inpatient peers. Adolescent inpatients reported higher frequencies of experiencing angels, demons, God or guiding spirits; feeling unity with the earth and other living things; and with near death or life after death as compared to healthy peers. Overall, females reported higher frequency of spiritual experiences and higher impact of the experience on their belief in God than did males. It was concluded that the INSPIRIT is a feasible spiritual assessment tool for adolescent populations and may be used by chaplains as a means for guiding clinical conversations with adolescents.

  • Neurology, psychology, and extraordinary religious experiences.

    Type Journal Article
    Author Daniel A. Helminiak
    Abstract Temporal lobe epilepsy and certain personality disorders often result in experiences described as "religious". TLE research suggests a possible neurological basis for such experiences. Immediately the question arises about the authenticity of these experiences as religious. An experience is authentic if it furthers the authentic growth of the subject, regardless of what triggered it. So pathology may occasion authentic religious experiences, even as history exemplifies. For practical purposes, the further question about God in religious experience is secondary. The exception, miraculous occurrences, should not be granted without sufficient reason. This approach dissolves all conflict between science and faith. [j].
    Publication Journal of Religion and Health
    Volume 23
    Issue 1
    Pages 33-46
    Date Spr 1984
    ISSN 0022-4197
    URL http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/login.aspx?
    direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0000956108&…
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:24:15 2009
    Library Catalog EBSCOhost
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Brain
    • Experience (Religion)
    • God--Knowableness
    • Neurology
    • peer reviewed
    • Temporal lobe epilepsy

    Notes:

    • Temporal lobe epilepsy and certain personality disorders often result in experiences described as “religious”. TLE research suggests a possible neurological basis for such experiences. Immediately the question arises about the authenticity of these experiences as religious. An experience is authentic if it furthers the authentic growth of the subject, regardless of what triggered it. So pathology may occasion authentic religious experiences, even as history exemplifies. For practical purposes, the further question about God in religious experience is secondary. The exception, miraculous occurrences, should not be granted without sufficient reason. This approach dissolves all conflict between science and faith. [j].

  • Normative and non-normative religious experience among high school youth

    Type Journal Article
    Author Dean R. Hoge
    Author Ella I. Smith
    Abstract A sample of 451 Catholic, Baptist, and Methodist tenth-grade youth were asked about definite religious experiences in their lives, and 58 percent reported them. Most took place in church services or at a retreat or camp. The authors categorized the experiences using the Elkind-Elkind and Stark typologies and found that with one additional category the Elkind-Elkind typology was apt. The "salvation or inspiration" type is the most common, especially among the Baptists and Methodists. This type is normative in those denominations, and church life encourages it. The analysis of factors encouraging the experiences showed the necessity of distinguishing normative from non-normative religious experiences, since their determinants are different. The former are encouraged in certain denominations, and their occurrence is patterned. The latter are idiosyncratic and unpatterned.
    Publication Sociological Analysis
    Volume 43
    Issue 2
    Pages 69-81
    Date April 1982
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • A sample of 451 Catholic, Baptist, and Methodist tenth-grade youth were asked about definite religious experiences in their lives, and 58 percent reported them. Most took place in church services or at a retreat or camp. The authors categorized the experiences using the Elkind-Elkind and Stark typologies and found that with one additional category the Elkind-Elkind typology was apt. The “salvation or inspiration” type is the most common, especially among the Baptists and Methodists. This type is normative in those denominations, and church life encourages it. The analysis of factors encouraging the experiences showed the necessity of distinguishing normative from non-normative religious experiences, since their determinants are different. The former are encouraged in certain denominations, and their occurrence is patterned. The latter are idiosyncratic and unpatterned.

  • Forms of Religious Commitment and Intense Religious Experience

    Type Journal Article
    Author Ralph W. Hood
    Abstract A sample of 54 equally religiously committed subjects was divided into a primarily personally religiously committed group (N=25), a primarily institutionally religiously committed group (N=14) and an equally personally and institutionally religiously committed group (N=15). Ss in each group were then individually interviewed regarding their most significant personal experience. All interviews were taped and subsequently rated for the presence of mystical qualities based upon operational criteria derived from Stace (1960). It was found that the primarily personally religiously committed group was more likely to report experiences codifiable as mystical than was the equally personally and institutionally religiously committed group, which in turn was more likely to report experiences codifiable as mystical than was the primarily institutionally religiously committed group. The relevance of these data for the possible antithetical nature of institutional religious commitment and the intense personal religious experience of mysticism is discussed.
    Publication Review of Religious Research
    Volume 15
    Issue 1
    Pages 29-36
    Date Autumn, 1973
    ISSN 0034673X
    URL http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/3510294
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:48:09 2009
    Library Catalog JSTOR
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Issue Title: Religious Values and Viewpoints / Full publication date: Autumn, 1973 / Copyright © 1973 Religious Research Association, Inc.
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • A sample of 54 equally religiously committed subjects was divided into a primarily personally religiously committed group (N=25), a primarily institutionally religiously committed group (N=14) and an equally personally and institutionally religiously committed group (N=15). Ss in each group were then individually interviewed regarding their most significant personal experience. All interviews were taped and subsequently rated for the presence of mystical qualities based upon operational criteria derived from Stace (1960). It was found that the primarily personally religiously committed group was more likely to report experiences codifiable as mystical than was the equally personally and institutionally religiously committed group, which in turn was more likely to report experiences codifiable as mystical than was the primarily institutionally religiously committed group. The relevance of these data for the possible antithetical nature of institutional religious commitment and the intense personal religious experience of mysticism is discussed.

  • The Construction and Preliminary Validation of a Measure of Reported Mystical Experience

    Type Journal Article
    Author Ralph W. Hood
    Abstract A measure of reported mystical experience is presented. This "Mysticism Scale, Research Form D (M scale)," has 32 items, four for each of 8 categories of mysticism initially conceptualized by Stace (1960). Items on this scale are both positively and negatively expressed to avoid problems of response set. A factor analysis of the M Scale indicated two major factors, a general mystical experience factor (20 items) and a religious interpretation factor (12 items). Preliminary evidence indicates that those high on the M Scale have more intrinsic religious motivation as defined by Hoge's (1972) scale, are more open to experience as defined by Taft's (1970) ego permissiveness scale, have more intense religious experience as defined by Hood's (1970) scale, and have moderately higher scores on the L, Hs, and Hy scales of the MMPI.
    Publication Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
    Volume 14
    Issue 1
    Pages 29-41
    Date Mar., 1975
    ISSN 00218294
    URL http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/1384454
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:56:47 2009
    Library Catalog JSTOR
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Full publication date: Mar., 1975 / Copyright © 1975 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • A measure of reported mystical experience is presented. This “Mysticism Scale, Research Form D (M scale),” has 32 items, four for each of 8 categories of mysticism initially conceptualized by Stace (1960). Items on this scale are both positively and negatively expressed to avoid problems of response set. A factor analysis of the M Scale indicated two major factors, a general mystical experience factor (20 items) and a religious interpretation factor (12 items). Preliminary evidence indicates that those high on the M Scale have more intrinsic religious motivation as defined by Hoge’s (1972) scale, are more open to experience as defined by Taft’s (1970) ego permissiveness scale, have more intense religious experience as defined by Hood’s (1970) scale, and have moderately higher scores on the L, Hs, and Hy scales of the MMPI.

  • Psychological Strength and the Report of Intense Religious Experience

    Type Journal Article
    Author Ralph W. Hood
    Abstract A measure of intense religious experience was related to measures of psychological strength in two studies. In the first study a significant negative correlation was found between intense religious experience and Barron's (1953) measure of ego-strength. However, this correlation was reduced to insignificance when the religion subscale was removed from Barron's total Ego-Strength Scale. In the second study intense religious experience was more frequent among persons classified as low on Stark's (1971) Index of Psychic Inadequacy than among persons classified as high. The importance of assessing the relationship between intense religious experiences and psychological health by independently operationalized measures is stressed. Also, the possibility of nonpathological evaluations of intense religious experiences commonly labeled "mystical," "peak," or "ecstatic" is discussed.
    Publication Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
    Volume 13
    Issue 1
    Pages 65-71
    Date Mar., 1974
    ISSN 00218294
    URL http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/1384801
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:48:07 2009
    Library Catalog JSTOR
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Full publication date: Mar., 1974 / Copyright © 1974 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • A measure of intense religious experience was related to measures of psychological strength in two studies. In the first study a significant negative correlation was found between intense religious experience and Barron’s (1953) measure of ego-strength. However, this correlation was reduced to insignificance when the religion subscale was removed from Barron’s total Ego-Strength Scale. In the second study intense religious experience was more frequent among persons classified as low on Stark’s (1971) Index of Psychic Inadequacy than among persons classified as high. The importance of assessing the relationship between intense religious experiences and psychological health by independently operationalized measures is stressed. Also, the possibility of nonpathological evaluations of intense religious experiences commonly labeled “mystical,” “peak,” or “ecstatic” is discussed.

  • Religious Orientation and the Report of Religious Experience

    Type Journal Article
    Author Ralph W. Hood
    Abstract An operationalized measure of religious experience, the Religious Experience Episodes Measure (REEM), was constructed and demonstrated to differentiate persons reliably according to degree of reported religious experience. Further research was concerned with the empirical relationship between the REEM and religious orientation as measured by Allport's Religious Orientation Scale. It was demonstrated that intrinsically religious oriented persons were more likely to report having had a religious experience than were extrinsically religious oriented persons. The lack of a significant difference in reported religious experiences between intrinsically religious oriented persons and indiscriminately pro-religious oriented persons is discussed from a methodological perspective as is the lack of significant difference between extrinsically oriented persons and indiscriminately anti-religious oriented persons in reported religious experiences. The possibility of empirically interrelating measures of religious experience, religious orientation, and secular activities is briefly discussed.
    Publication Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
    Volume 9
    Issue 4
    Pages 285-291
    Date Winter, 1970
    ISSN 00218294
    URL http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/1384573
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:48:05 2009
    Library Catalog JSTOR
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Full publication date: Winter, 1970 / Copyright © 1970 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • An operationalized measure of religious experience, the Religious Experience Episodes Measure (REEM), was constructed and demonstrated to differentiate persons reliably according to degree of reported religious experience. Further research was concerned with the empirical relationship between the REEM and religious orientation as measured by Allport’s Religious Orientation Scale. It was demonstrated that intrinsically religious oriented persons were more likely to report having had a religious experience than were extrinsically religious oriented persons. The lack of a significant difference in reported religious experiences between intrinsically religious oriented persons and indiscriminately pro-religious oriented persons is discussed from a methodological perspective as is the lack of significant difference between extrinsically oriented persons and indiscriminately anti-religious oriented persons in reported religious experiences. The possibility of empirically interrelating measures of religious experience, religious orientation, and secular activities is briefly discussed.

  • Sleep paralysis as spiritual experience

    Type Journal Article
    Author David J Hufford
    Abstract This article presents an overview of the sleep paralysis experience from both a cultural and a historical perspective. The robust, complex phenomenological pattern that represents the subjective experience of sleep paralysis is documented and illustrated. Examples are given showing that, for a majority of subjects, sleep paralysis is taken to be a kind of spiritual experience. This is, in part, because of the very common perception of a non-physical 'threatening presence' that is part of the event. Examples from various cultures, including mainstream contemporary America which has no widely known tradition about sleep paralysis, are used to show that the complex pattern and spiritual interpretation are not dependent on cultural models or prior learning. This is dramatically contrary to conventional explanations of apparently 'direct' spiritual experiences, explanations that are summed up as the 'Cultural Source Hypothesis.' This aspect of sleep paralysis was not recognized through most of the twentieth century. The article examines the way that conventional modern views of spiritual experience, combined with medical ideas that labeled 'direct' spiritual experiences as psychopathological, and mainstream religious views of such experiences as heretical if not pathological, suppressed the report and discussion of these experiences in modern society. These views have resulted in confusion in the scientific literature on sleep paralysis with regard to its prevalence and core features. The article also places sleep paralysis in the context of other 'direct' spiritual experiences and offers an 'Experiential Theory' of cross-culturally distributed spiritual experiences.
    Publication Transcultural Psychiatry
    Volume 42
    Issue 1
    Pages 11-45
    Date Mar 2005
    Journal Abbr Transcult Psychiatry
    ISSN 1363-4615
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/15881267
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:30:11 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 15881267
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Affect
    • Culture
    • Humans
    • Psychological Theory
    • Sleep Paralysis
    • spirituality

    Notes:

    • This article presents an overview of the sleep paralysis experience from both a cultural and a historical perspective. The robust, complex phenomenological pattern that represents the subjective experience of sleep paralysis is documented and illustrated. Examples are given showing that, for a majority of subjects, sleep paralysis is taken to be a kind of spiritual experience. This is, in part, because of the very common perception of a non-physical ‘threatening presence’ that is part of the event. Examples from various cultures, including mainstream contemporary America which has no widely known tradition about sleep paralysis, are used to show that the complex pattern and spiritual interpretation are not dependent on cultural models or prior learning. This is dramatically contrary to conventional explanations of apparently ‘direct’ spiritual experiences, explanations that are summed up as the ‘Cultural Source Hypothesis.’ This aspect of sleep paralysis was not recognized through most of the twentieth century. The article examines the way that conventional modern views of spiritual experience, combined with medical ideas that labeled ‘direct’ spiritual experiences as psychopathological, and mainstream religious views of such experiences as heretical if not pathological, suppressed the report and discussion of these experiences in modern society. These views have resulted in confusion in the scientific literature on sleep paralysis with regard to its prevalence and core features. The article also places sleep paralysis in the context of other ‘direct’ spiritual experiences and offers an ‘Experiential Theory’ of cross-culturally distributed spiritual experiences.

  • Health Outcomes and a New Index of Spiritual Experience

    Type Journal Article
    Author Jared D. Kass
    Author Richard Friedman
    Author Jane Leserman
    Author Patricia C. Zuttermeister
    Author Herbert Benson
    Publication Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
    Volume 30
    Issue 2
    Pages 203-211
    Date Jun., 1991
    ISSN 00218294
    URL http://www.jstor.org/stable/1387214
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Full publication date: Jun., 1991 / Copyright © 1991 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
  • Rumour of angels and heavenly midwives: anthropology of transpersonal events and childbirth

    Type Journal Article
    Author Gregg Lahood
    Abstract Some contemporary women can experience non-ordinary states of consciousness when childbearing. The purpose of this paper is to bring a 'transpersonal' frame to these non-ordinary states of consciousness (hereafter: NOSC). Transpersonal psychology is an interdisciplinary movement in Western science that studies 'religious', 'peak' or 'healing' experiences in different cultures and social contexts. Between 2001 and 2006 in Auckland, New Zealand, while engaged in anthropological fieldwork, I collected stories from mothers, fathers, and midwives who had participated in transpersonal events during childbirth. I will compare the local women's NOSC with ethnographic accounts of spirit-possession and its relationship to indigenous midwifery then revisit and reconstruct the witch-hunts of Medieval Europe from this perspective. Midwives are encouraged to learn to identify and support women's NOSC during labour and birth as many women find strength and wisdom by passing through these states in labour. The subject is also critical to men, whether they are present with women and birth as fathers or health professionals. The hoped for result of this inquiry is to revalorise NOSC among birth-giving mothers, and to educate birth attendants in this field.
    Publication Women and Birth: Journal of the Australian College of Midwives
    Volume 20
    Issue 1
    Pages 3-10
    Date Mar 2007
    Journal Abbr Women Birth
    DOI 10.1016/j.wombi.2006.10.002
    ISSN 1871-5192
    Short Title Rumour of angels and heavenly midwives
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/17127114
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:18:17 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 17127114
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adult
    • Ceremonial Behavior
    • Consciousness
    • Cultural Characteristics
    • Delivery, Obstetric
    • Female
    • Humans
    • Infant, Newborn
    • Midwifery
    • Mothers
    • New Zealand
    • Nurse-Patient Relations
    • Nursing Methodology Research
    • Pregnancy
    • Questionnaires
    • spirituality

    Notes:

    • Some contemporary women can experience non-ordinary states of consciousness when childbearing. The purpose of this paper is to bring a ‘transpersonal’ frame to these non-ordinary states of consciousness (hereafter: NOSC). Transpersonal psychology is an interdisciplinary movement in Western science that studies ‘religious’, ‘peak’ or ‘healing’ experiences in different cultures and social contexts. Between 2001 and 2006 in Auckland, New Zealand, while engaged in anthropological fieldwork, I collected stories from mothers, fathers, and midwives who had participated in transpersonal events during childbirth. I will compare the local women’s NOSC with ethnographic accounts of spirit-possession and its relationship to indigenous midwifery then revisit and reconstruct the witch-hunts of Medieval Europe from this perspective. Midwives are encouraged to learn to identify and support women’s NOSC during labour and birth as many women find strength and wisdom by passing through these states in labour. The subject is also critical to men, whether they are present with women and birth as fathers or health professionals. The hoped for result of this inquiry is to revalorise NOSC among birth-giving mothers, and to educate birth attendants in this field.

  • The "sensed presence": an epileptic aura with religious overtones

    Type Journal Article
    Author Anne-Marie Landtblom
    Abstract "Sensed presence," a religious emotion, has been the focus of recent neurotheological research because it has been claimed that weak transcranial magnetic stimulation can evoke such experiences. Some researchers have recently questioned this claim. However, religion and epilepsy have been linked through history, clinical observations, and research. This article describes the "sensed presence" as an aura in one patient who did not interpret his experience in a religious way. He had bilateral hypoperfusion of the temporal lobes when investigated by SPECT, and hypoplasia of the dorsal part of the left hippocampus when examined by magnetic resonance imaging. This case report illustrates that "sensed presence" can occur as an epileptic aura with or without religious interpretation.
    Publication Epilepsy & Behavior: E&B
    Volume 9
    Issue 1
    Pages 186-188
    Date Aug 2006
    Journal Abbr Epilepsy Behav
    DOI 10.1016/j.yebeh.2006.04.023
    ISSN 1525-5050
    Short Title The "sensed presence"
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/16753347
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:20:17 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 16753347
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adult
    • Cerebral Cortex
    • Cerebrovascular Circulation
    • Epilepsy
    • Functional Laterality
    • Hallucinations
    • Humans
    • Male
    • religion
    • Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon

    Notes:

    • “Sensed presence,” a religious emotion, has been the focus of recent neurotheological research because it has been claimed that weak transcranial magnetic stimulation can evoke such experiences. Some researchers have recently questioned this claim. However, religion and epilepsy have been linked through history, clinical observations, and research. This article describes the “sensed presence” as an aura in one patient who did not interpret his experience in a religious way. He had bilateral hypoperfusion of the temporal lobes when investigated by SPECT, and hypoplasia of the dorsal part of the left hippocampus when examined by magnetic resonance imaging. This case report illustrates that “sensed presence” can occur as an epileptic aura with or without religious interpretation.

  • Self-actualization as related to frequency, range, and pattern of religious experience.

    Type Journal Article
    Author John A. Larsen
    Abstract This study investigated the relationship of frequency, range, and pattern of religious experience to self-actualization. The Religious Experience Measure (REM), a paper and pencil instrument, was constructed to provide measures of Stark's confirming, responsive, ecstatic, and revelational experiences. Validity and reliability studies yielded favorable results. In a classroom setting, the 401 undergraduates who comprised the sample were administered the Personal Data Sheet (PDS), the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI), and the REM. Results showed that high and low self-actualizers alike have religious experiences and that such experiences cannot inherently be viewed as either symptoms of pathology or evidence of positive mental health. However, frequency, range, and pattern are dimensional aspects of religious experience which are differentially related to self-actualization.
    Publication Journal of Psychology & Theology
    Volume 7
    Issue 1
    Pages 39-47
    Date April 1979
    ISSN 0091-6471
    URL http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/login.aspx?
    direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0000771247&…
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:28:15 2009
    Library Catalog EBSCOhost
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Experience (Religion)
    • peer reviewed
    • Self-actualization

    Notes:

    • This study investigated the relationship of frequency, range, and pattern of religious experience to self-actualization. The Religious Experience Measure (REM), a paper and pencil instrument, was constructed to provide measures of Stark’s confirming, responsive, ecstatic, and revelational experiences. Validity and reliability studies yielded favorable results. In a classroom setting, the 401 undergraduates who comprised the sample were administered the Personal Data Sheet (PDS), the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI), and the REM. Results showed that high and low self-actualizers alike have religious experiences and that such experiences cannot inherently be viewed as either symptoms of pathology or evidence of positive mental health. However, frequency, range, and pattern are dimensional aspects of religious experience which are differentially related to self-actualization.

  • Psychoanalysis and religious mysticism.

    Type Journal Article
    Author Stanley A. Leavy
    Abstract Reviews the books, Crucified with christ: Meditation on the passion, mystical death, and the medieval invention of psychotherapy by Dan Merkur (2007); Centers of power: The convergence of psychoanalysis and kabalah by Joseph H. Berke and Stanley Schneider (2008); and Into the mountain Stream: Psychotherapy and buddhist experience by Paul C. Cooper (see record 2007-05046-000). Of the three volumes under discussion in this essay, one, by Dan Merkur, a veteran in these studies, concerns a shift in the fourteenth century within Christian mystical theology, when the traditional concern for spiritual access to supernatural beings and locations gave way to concern for the effects of divine grace as mediated inwardly. The change was not limited to the small groups of ascetics with whom it originated earlier, grandly exemplified by Francis of Assisi, but was part of a general inward turn in Christian devotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
    Publication Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
    Volume 57
    Issue 2
    Pages 477-489
    Date April 2009
    DOI 10.1177/0003065109336186
    ISSN 0003-0651
    Library Catalog EBSCOhost
    Date Added Thu Sep 29 09:07:00 2011
    Modified Thu Sep 29 09:07:00 2011

    Tags:

    • PSYCHOANALYSIS
    • religion
    • religiosity
    • religious mysticism
    • spiritual access
    • spirituality
  • Validation of a typology of religious experience and its relationship to the psychotic experience.

    Type Journal Article
    Author Robert D. Margolis
    Author Kirk W. Elifson
    Abstract A typology of religious experience was validated and an empirical determination of the similarities between the religious and psychotic experiences was made. Expert and non-expert raters (n=16) were asked to differentiate religious experiences (n=12), fabricated religious experiences (n=12), and psychotic experiences (n=12) using the typology of religious experience. A split plot, repeated measures analysis of variance yielded three significant findings: a) Expert raters performed significantly better than non-expert raters at identifying the three types of experiences. B) Non-expert raters with the typology performed as well as expert raters and significantly better than non-expert raters without the typology. C) Psychotic experiences were more easily identified than were religious or fabricated experiences. [j].
    Publication Journal of Psychology & Theology
    Volume 11
    Issue 2
    Pages 135-141
    Date Sum 1983
    ISSN 0091-6471
    URL http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/login.aspx?
    direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0000932670&…
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:24:44 2009
    Library Catalog EBSCOhost
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Experience (Religion)
    • peer reviewed
    • PSYCHOSES
    • Typology (Psychology)

    Notes:

    • A typology of religious experience was validated and an empirical determination of the similarities between the religious and psychotic experiences was made. Expert and non-expert raters (n=16) were asked to differentiate religious experiences (n=12), fabricated religious experiences (n=12), and psychotic experiences (n=12) using the typology of religious experience. A split plot, repeated measures analysis of variance yielded three significant findings: a) Expert raters performed significantly better than non-expert raters at identifying the three types of experiences. B) Non-expert raters with the typology performed as well as expert raters and significantly better than non-expert raters without the typology. C) Psychotic experiences were more easily identified than were religious or fabricated experiences.

  • A Typology of Religious Experience

    Type Journal Article
    Author Robert D. Margolis
    Author Kirk W. Elifson
    Publication Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
    Volume 18
    Issue 1
    Pages 61-67
    Date Mar., 1979
    ISSN 00218294
    URL http://www.jstor.org/stable/1385379
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Full publication date: Mar., 1979 / Copyright © 1979 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
  • Cognitive dimensions of religious experiences.

    Type Journal Article
    Author Debra Moehle McCallum
    Abstract Multidimensional scaling and regression techniques were used to identify and interpret dimensions in the domain of religious experiences. Descriptions of personal religious experiences were collected from college students and adult members of major western religions. Experimental participants judged the similarities among the descriptions and rated them on a number of attribute scales. Analyses indicated that student experiences could be described by four dimensions: spiritual-temporal, aesthetic response, social-individual, and discrete-continual. Three dimensions defined the adult experiences: level of personal control, spiritual-temporal, and social-individual. Points of correspondence and noncorrespondence with previous taxonomies of religious experiences are discussed.
    Publication Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
    Volume 19
    Pages 122-145
    Date 1983
    ISSN 0022-1031
    URL http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/login.aspx?
    direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0000928063&…
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:25:12 2009
    Library Catalog EBSCOhost
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Experience (Religion)
    • peer reviewed
    • Religiousness
    • Social psychology--Research
    • Students--Religious life
    • Tests and measurements in religion

    Notes:

    • Multidimensional scaling and regression techniques were used to identify and interpret dimensions in the domain of religious experiences. Descriptions of personal religious experiences were collected from college students and adult members of major western religions. Experimental participants judged the similarities among the descriptions and rated them on a number of attribute scales. Analyses indicated that student experiences could be described by four dimensions: spiritual-temporal, aesthetic response, social-individual, and discrete-continual. Three dimensions defined the adult experiences: level of personal control, spiritual-temporal, and social-individual. Points of correspondence and noncorrespondence with previous taxonomies of religious experiences are discussed.

  • He Made a Way out of No Way: Religious Experience in an African-American Congregation

    Type Journal Article
    Author Timothy J. Nelson
    Abstract Sociologists have expended little effort to examine the experiential dimension of religion. When social scientists have turned their attention to religious experience, they have used a definition of the concept which has overly restricted its scope. This paper is based upon an ethnographic study of an African Methodist Episcopal congregation made up primarily of the working poor and near-poor. I use the data to study the reported experiences of congregational members concerning the action of spiritual beings in their everyday lives, and I discuss the role of social ties and the cultural devices of metaphor and narrative in shaping these experiences. Finally, I demonstrate the influence of social location -- primarily race and class -- on attributions to supernatural agency.
    Publication Review of Religious Research
    Volume 39
    Issue 1
    Pages 5-26
    Date Sep., 1997
    ISSN 0034673X
    Short Title He Made a Way out of No Way
    URL http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/3512476
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:49:19 2009
    Library Catalog JSTOR
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Full publication date: Sep., 1997 / Copyright © 1997 Religious Research Association, Inc.
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • Sociologists have expended little effort to examine the experiential dimension of religion. When social scientists have turned their attention to religious experience, they have used a definition of the concept which has overly restricted its scope. This paper is based upon an ethnographic study of an African Methodist Episcopal congregation made up primarily of the working poor and near-poor. I use the data to study the reported experiences of congregational members concerning the action of spiritual beings in their everyday lives, and I discuss the role of social ties and the cultural devices of metaphor and narrative in shaping these experiences. Finally, I demonstrate the influence of social location -- primarily race and class -- on attributions to supernatural agency.

  • Descriptions of religious experience using trait and affect adjectives

    Type Journal Article
    Author M E Nielsen
    Abstract 66 adults rated the relevance of adjectives representing dimensions of affect and personality for describing how they felt during religious experiences. Adjectives, representing positive affect (enthusiastic, at ease), low neuroticism (calm, relaxed), and high agreeableness (soft-hearted, sympathetic), conscientiousness (conscientious, reliable), and extraversion (sociable, talkative), were rated to be descriptive of religious experiences. The failure of openness to discriminate religious experiences is consistent with Block's criticism (1995) of the five-factor model of personality.
    Publication Psychological Reports
    Volume 86
    Issue 1
    Pages 308-310
    Date Feb 2000
    Journal Abbr Psychol Rep
    ISSN 0033-2941
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/10778285
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:39:15 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 10778285
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adult
    • Affect
    • Attitude
    • Female
    • Humans
    • Male
    • Middle Aged
    • personality
    • Religion and Psychology
    • Semantics

    Notes:

    • 66 adults rated the relevance of adjectives representing dimensions of affect and personality for describing how they felt during religious experiences. Adjectives, representing positive affect (enthusiastic, at ease), low neuroticism (calm, relaxed), and high agreeableness (soft-hearted, sympathetic), conscientiousness (conscientious, reliable), and extraversion (sociable, talkative), were rated to be descriptive of religious experiences. The failure of openness to discriminate religious experiences is consistent with Block’s criticism (1995) of the five-factor model of personality.

  • Striking EEG profiles from single episodes of glossolalia and transcendental meditation

    Type Journal Article
    Author M A Persinger
    Abstract Transient, focal, epileptic-like electrical changes in the temporal lobe, without convulsions, have been hypothesized to be primary correlates of religious experiences. Given these properties, direct measurement of these phenomena within the laboratory should be rare. However, two illustrated instances have been recorded. The first case involved the occurrence of a delta-wave-dominant electrical seizure for about 10 sec. from the temporal lobe only of a Transcendental Meditation teacher during a peak experience within a routine TM episode. The second case involved the occurrence of spikes within the temporal lobe only during protracted intermittent episodes of glossolalia by a member of a pentecostal sect . Neither subject had any psychiatric history. These observations are commensurate with the hypothesis that religious experiences are natural correlates of temporal lobe transients that can be detected by routine EEG measures.
    Publication Perceptual and Motor Skills
    Volume 58
    Issue 1
    Pages 127-133
    Date Feb 1984
    Journal Abbr Percept Mot Skills
    ISSN 0031-5125
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/6371700
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:47:25 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 6371700
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adult
    • Electroencephalography
    • Evoked Potentials
    • Female
    • Frontal Lobe
    • Humans
    • Occipital Lobe
    • Relaxation Therapy
    • Religion and Psychology
    • Temporal Lobe

    Notes:

    • Transient, focal, epileptic-like electrical changes in the temporal lobe, without convulsions, have been hypothesized to be primary correlates of religious experiences. Given these properties, direct measurement of these phenomena within the laboratory should be rare. However, two illustrated instances have been recorded. The first case involved the occurrence of a delta-wave-dominant electrical seizure for about 10 sec. from the temporal lobe only of a Transcendental Meditation teacher during a peak experience within a routine TM episode. The second case involved the occurrence of spikes within the temporal lobe only during protracted intermittent episodes of glossolalia by a member of a pentecostal sect . Neither subject had any psychiatric history. These observations are commensurate with the hypothesis that religious experiences are natural correlates of temporal lobe transients that can be detected by routine EEG measures.

  • People who report religious experiences may also display enhanced temporal-lobe signs

    Type Journal Article
    Author M A Persinger
    Abstract Religious and god-related experiences have been hypothesized to be a portion of the continuum of phenomena that are generated by endogenous, transient electrical stimulation within deep structures of the temporal lobe. According to this hypothesis, normal people, without psychiatric history, who report intense religious experiences should also demonstrate a wide range of temporal lobe-related private behaviors. To test this prediction, a self-report inventory that contained 140 temporal-lobe-relevant information, opinion-belief, and sampled MMPI statements was administered to two separate groups (n = 108; n = 41) of male and female first-year university students. In Study I, subjects who had reported religious experiences, particularly those who did not attend church regularly, scored significantly higher on a variety of statement clusters (n = 7 to 14 items) that contained temporal-lobe symptomology relative to groups who did not report religious experiences and did not attend church regularly. In Study II subjects, regardless of church attendance, who reported religious experiences scored significantly higher on the temporal-lobe clusters. People who reported religious experiences were more likely to have kept a dairy and to enjoy poetry reading or writing. However, religious experiments and churchgoers did not score higher (in either experiment) on clusters that contained mundane psychological or proprioceptive statements, descriptions of odd sensations, or modified portions of the Lie scale from the MMPI.
    Publication Perceptual and Motor Skills
    Volume 58
    Issue 3
    Pages 963-975
    Date Jun 1984
    Journal Abbr Percept Mot Skills
    ISSN 0031-5125
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/6473043
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:46:55 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 6473043
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Adult
    • Female
    • Humans
    • Male
    • Middle Aged
    • Parapsychology
    • Proprioception
    • Religion and Medicine
    • Temporal Lobe

    Notes:

    • Religious and god-related experiences have been hypothesized to be a portion of the continuum of phenomena that are generated by endogenous, transient electrical stimulation within deep structures of the temporal lobe. According to this hypothesis, normal people, without psychiatric history, who report intense religious experiences should also demonstrate a wide range of temporal lobe-related private behaviors. To test this prediction, a self-report inventory that contained 140 temporal-lobe-relevant information, opinion-belief, and sampled MMPI statements was administered to two separate groups (n = 108; n = 41) of male and female first-year university students. In Study I, subjects who had reported religious experiences, particularly those who did not attend church regularly, scored significantly higher on a variety of statement clusters (n = 7 to 14 items) that contained temporal-lobe symptomology relative to groups who did not report religious experiences and did not attend church regularly. In Study II subjects, regardless of church attendance, who reported religious experiences scored significantly higher on the temporal-lobe clusters. People who reported religious experiences were more likely to have kept a dairy and to enjoy poetry reading or writing. However, religious experiments and churchgoers did not score higher (in either experiment) on clusters that contained mundane psychological or proprioceptive statements, descriptions of odd sensations, or modified portions of the Lie scale from the MMPI.

  • Religious and mystical experiences as artifacts of temporal lobe function: a general hypothesis

    Type Journal Article
    Author M A Persinger
    Abstract Mystical and religious experiences are hypothesized to be evoked by transient, electrical microseizures within deep structures of the temporal lobe. Although experiential details are affected by context and reinforcement history, basic themes reflect the inclusion of different amygdaloid-hippocampal structures and adjacent cortices. Whereas the unusual electrical coherence allows access to infantile memories of parents, a source of good expectations, specific stimulation evokes out-of-body experiences, space-time distortions, intense meaningfulness, and dreamy scenes. The species-specific similarities in temporal lobe properties enhance the homogeneity of cross-cultural experiences. They exist along a continuum that ranges from "early morning highs" to recurrent bouts of conversion and dominating religiosity. Predisposing factors include any biochemical or genetic factors that produce temporal lobe lability. A variety of precipitating stimuli provoke these experiences, but personal (life) crises and death bed conditions are optimal. These temporal lobe microseizures can be learned as responses to existential trauma because stimulation is of powerful intrinsic reward regions and reduction of death anxiety occurs. The implications of these transients as potent modifiers of human behavior are considered.
    Publication Perceptual and Motor Skills
    Volume 57
    Issue 3 Pt 2
    Pages 1255-1262
    Date Dec 1983
    Journal Abbr Percept Mot Skills
    ISSN 0031-5125
    Short Title Religious and mystical experiences as artifacts of temporal lobe function
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/6664802
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:47:51 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 6664802
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Culture
    • Death
    • Humans
    • Mysticism
    • Religion and Medicine
    • Seizures
    • Temporal Lobe

    Notes:

    • Mystical and religious experiences are hypothesized to be evoked by transient, electrical microseizures within deep structures of the temporal lobe. Although experiential details are affected by context and reinforcement history, basic themes reflect the inclusion of different amygdaloid-hippocampal structures and adjacent cortices. Whereas the unusual electrical coherence allows access to infantile memories of parents, a source of good expectations, specific stimulation evokes out-of-body experiences, space-time distortions, intense meaningfulness, and dreamy scenes. The species-specific similarities in temporal lobe properties enhance the homogeneity of cross-cultural experiences. They exist along a continuum that ranges from “early morning highs” to recurrent bouts of conversion and dominating religiosity. Predisposing factors include any biochemical or genetic factors that produce temporal lobe lability. A variety of precipitating stimuli provoke these experiences, but personal (life) crises and death bed conditions are optimal. These temporal lobe microseizures can be learned as responses to existential trauma because stimulation is of powerful intrinsic reward regions and reduction of death anxiety occurs. The implications of these transients as potent modifiers of human behavior are considered.

  • Scientific naturalism and the neurology of religious experience

    Type Journal Article
    Author Matthew J. Ratcliffe
    Abstract In this paper, I consider V. S. Ramachandran's in-principle agnosticism concerning whether neurological studies of religious experience can be taken as support for the claim that God really does communicate with people during religious experiences. Contra Ramachandran, I argue that it is by no means obvious that agnosticism is the proper scientific attitude to adopt in relation to this claim. I go on to show how the questions of whether it is (1) a scientifically testable claim and (2) a plausible hypothesis, serve to open up some important philosophical issues concerning interpretive backgrounds that are presupposed in the assessment of scientific hypotheses. More specifically, I argue that naturalism or scientific objectivism in its various forms is not simply a neutral or default methodological backdrop for empirical inquiry but involves acceptance of a specific ontology, which functions as an implicit and unargued constitutive commitment. Hence, these neurological studies can be employed as a lever with which to disclose something of the ways in which different frameworks of interpretation, both theistic and atheistic, serve differently to structure and give meaning to empirical findings.
    Publication Religious Studies
    Volume 39
    Issue 3
    Pages 323-345
    Date 2003
    ISSN 0034-4125
    URL http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/login.aspx?
    direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0001526321&…
    Accessed Sun Oct 11 14:12:36 2009
    Library Catalog EBSCOhost
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Agnosticism
    • EMPIRICISM
    • Experience (Religion)
    • Neurosciences
    • peer reviewed
    • Ramachandran, V S.
    • Science and religion
    • Science--Methodology

    Notes:

    • In this paper, I consider V. S. Ramachandran’s in-principle agnosticism concerning whether neurological studies of religious experience can be taken as support for the claim that God really does communicate with people during religious experiences. Contra Ramachandran, I argue that it is by no means obvious that agnosticism is the proper scientific attitude to adopt in relation to this claim. I go on to show how the questions of whether it is (1) a scientifically testable claim and (2) a plausible hypothesis, serve to open up some important philosophical issues concerning interpretive backgrounds that are presupposed in the assessment of scientific hypotheses. More specifically, I argue that naturalism or scientific objectivism in its various forms is not simply a neutral or default methodological backdrop for empirical inquiry but involves acceptance of a specific ontology, which functions as an implicit and unargued constitutive commitment. Hence, these neurological studies can be employed as a lever with which to disclose something of the ways in which different frameworks of interpretation, both theistic and atheistic, serve differently to structure and give meaning to empirical findings.

  • Reconsidering Aesthetic and Religious Experience: A Companion View

    Type Journal Article
    Author John W. Richmond
    Publication Journal of Aesthetic Education
    Volume 33
    Issue 4
    Pages 29-49
    Date Winter, 1999
    ISSN 00218510
    URL http://www.jstor.org/stable/3333720
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Issue Title: Special Issue: Musings: Essays in Honor of Bennett Reimer / Full publication date: Winter, 1999 / Copyright © 1999 University of Illinois Press
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
  • The desert-mountain experience : the two faces of encounter with God.

    Type Journal Article
    Author Martha Robbins
    Abstract This article shows the importance of negotiating elemental or primordial images that arise in inner religious experiences in order to consciously appropriate the knowledge and energy that they offer to the person who experiences them. The author uses a case study to illustrate the above process by applying sound psychological principles as tools for interpreting the case study psychologically. She interprets the religious dimension of the case study in terms of biblical images and events, especially the Christ-event. In the light of the insights offered by both of these perspectives, she re-interprets the elemental symbolism described in the case study in a constructive manner.
    Publication Journal of Pastoral Care
    Volume 35
    Issue 1
    Pages 18-35
    Date March 1981
    ISSN 0022-3409
    URL http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
    direct=true&db=rfh&…
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Archetypes
    • Deserts--Religious aspects
    • Experience (Religion)
    • God--Knowableness
    • Mountains--Religious aspects--Christianity
    • Peer reviewed
    • Psychology and religion
    • Retreats
    • Spiritual direction
    • Symbolism, Christian

    Notes:

    • This article shows the importance of negotiating elemental or primordial images that arise in inner religious experiences in order to consciously appropriate the knowledge and energy that they offer to the person who experiences them. The author uses a case study to illustrate the above process by applying sound psychological principles as tools for interpreting the case study psychologically. She interprets the religious dimension of the case study in terms of biblical images and events, especially the Christ-event. In the light of the insights offered by both of these perspectives, she re-interprets the elemental symbolism described in the case study in a constructive manner.

  • Do entheogen-induced mystical experiences boost the immune system? Psychedelics, peak experiences, and wellness

    Type Journal Article
    Author T B Roberts
    Abstract Daily events that boost the immune system (as indicated by levels of salivary immunoglobulin A), some instances of spontaneous remission, and mystical experiences seem to share a similar cluster of thoughts, feelings, moods, perceptions, and behaviors. Entheogens--psychedelic drugs used in a religious context--can also produce mystical experiences (peak experiences, states of unitive consciousness, intense primary religious experiences) with the same cluster of effects. When this happens, is it also possible that such entheogen-induced mystical experiences strengthen the immune system? Might spontaneous remissions occur more frequently under such conditions? This article advances the so called "Emxis hypothesis"--that entheogen-induced mystical experiences influence the immune system.
    Publication Advances in Mind-Body Medicine
    Volume 15
    Issue 2
    Pages 139-147
    Date 1999
    Journal Abbr Adv Mind Body Med
    DOI 10.1054/ambm.1999.0069
    ISSN 1470-3556
    Short Title Do entheogen-induced mystical experiences boost the immune system?
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/10367499
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:40:17 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 10367499
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Ego
    • Hallucinogens
    • Health
    • Humans
    • Immunoglobulin G
    • Models, Theoretical
    • Mysticism
    • Neuroimmunomodulation
    • Psychoneuroimmunology
    • Religion and Medicine
    • Remission, Spontaneous
    • Saliva

    Notes:

    • Daily events that boost the immune system (as indicated by levels of salivary immunoglobulin A), some instances of spontaneous remission, and mystical experiences seem to share a similar cluster of thoughts, feelings, moods, perceptions, and behaviors. Entheogens--psychedelic drugs used in a religious context--can also produce mystical experiences (peak experiences, states of unitive consciousness, intense primary religious experiences) with the same cluster of effects. When this happens, is it also possible that such entheogen-induced mystical experiences strengthen the immune system? Might spontaneous remissions occur more frequently under such conditions? This article advances the so called “Emxis hypothesis”--that entheogen-induced mystical experiences influence the immune system.

  • The neural substrates of religious experience

    Type Journal Article
    Author J L Saver
    Author J Rabin
    Abstract Religious experience is brain-based, like all human experience. Clues to the neural substrates of religious-numinous experience may be gleaned from temporolimbic epilepsy, near-death experiences, and hallucinogen ingestion. These brain disorders and conditions may produce depersonalization, derealization, ecstasy, a sense of timelessness and spacelessness, and other experiences that foster religious-numinous interpretation. Religious delusions are an important subtype of delusional experience in schizophrenia, and mood-congruent religious delusions are a feature of mania and depression. The authors suggest a limbic marker hypothesis for religious-mystical experience. The temporolimbic system tags certain encounters with external or internal stimuli as depersonalized, derealized, crucially important, harmonious, and/or joyous, prompting comprehension of these experiences within a religious framework.
    Publication The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
    Volume 9
    Issue 3
    Pages 498-510
    Date 1997
    Journal Abbr J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci
    ISSN 0895-0172
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/9276850
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 15:53:21 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 9276850
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Epilepsy
    • Hallucinations
    • Humans
    • Nervous System Physiological Phenomena
    • Religion and Psychology

    Notes:

    • Religious experience is brain-based, like all human experience. Clues to the neural substrates of religious-numinous experience may be gleaned from temporolimbic epilepsy, near-death experiences, and hallucinogen ingestion. These brain disorders and conditions may produce depersonalization, derealization, ecstasy, a sense of timelessness and spacelessness, and other experiences that foster religious-numinous interpretation. Religious delusions are an important subtype of delusional experience in schizophrenia, and mood-congruent religious delusions are a feature of mania and depression. The authors suggest a limbic marker hypothesis for religious-mystical experience. The temporolimbic system tags certain encounters with external or internal stimuli as depersonalized, derealized, crucially important, harmonious, and/or joyous, prompting comprehension of these experiences within a religious framework.

  • Measuring the Muse: Reflections on the Use of Survey Methods in the Study of Religious Phenomena

    Type Journal Article
    Author W. Widick Schroeder
    Abstract Foundational problems inherent in the collection, analysis and interpretation of interview and questionnaire data used in the social scientific study of human religious experience are discussed. These foundational problems include: the ambiguity of linguistic symbols, the relation of the causal past to the emerging present, the relation of a whole to its constituent parts, the role of creative minorities in human societies, and the use of a method of difference in data analysis and interpretation. These problematic issues are interpreted from the point of view of process philosophy. An appeal is made to common sense to act as a restraint on specialists who circumscribe too narrowly their grounds for model building and/or overanalyze inherently vague linguistic data. Interpretations of survey research data denying the authenticity of religious experience or ignoring a consideration of the question by appealing implicity or explicitly to a factvalue disjunction in human experience are challenged.
    Publication Review of Religious Research
    Volume 18
    Issue 2
    Pages 148-162
    Date Winter, 1977
    ISSN 0034673X
    Short Title Measuring the Muse
    URL http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/3509649
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:55:39 2009
    Library Catalog JSTOR
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Full publication date: Winter, 1977 / Copyright © 1977 Religious Research Association, Inc.
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • Foundational problems inherent in the collection, analysis and interpretation of interview and questionnaire data used in the social scientific study of human religious experience are discussed. These foundational problems include: the ambiguity of linguistic symbols, the relation of the causal past to the emerging present, the relation of a whole to its constituent parts, the role of creative minorities in human societies, and the use of a method of difference in data analysis and interpretation. These problematic issues are interpreted from the point of view of process philosophy. An appeal is made to common sense to act as a restraint on specialists who circumscribe too narrowly their grounds for model building and/or overanalyze inherently vague linguistic data. Interpretations of survey research data denying the authenticity of religious experience or ignoring a consideration of the question by appealing implicity or explicitly to a factvalue disjunction in human experience are challenged.

  • A pathway to spirituality

    Type Journal Article
    Author Jon A Shaw
    Abstract The phenomenology of mystical experiences has been described throughout all the ages and in all religions. All mystical traditions identify some sense of union with the absolute as the ultimate spiritual goal. I assume that the pathway to both theistic and secular spirituality and our readiness to seek a solution in a psychological merger with something beyond the self evolves out of our human experience. Spirituality is one of man's strategies for dealing with the limitations of the life cycle, separation and loss, biological fragility, transience, and non-existence. Spirituality may serve as the affective component to a belief system or myth that is not rooted in scientific evidence but is lived as if it is true. Spirituality may take many forms, but I will suggest that in some instances it may serve as a reparative process in which one creates in the external world, through symbolic form, a nuance or facet of an internalized mental representation which has become lost or is no longer available to the self; or it may represent the continuity of the self-representation after death through a self-object merger. Lastly I will illustrate from the writings of two of our greatest poets, Dante Alighieri and William Wordsworth, how their poetry became interwoven with a profound spirituality. In Dante we will see the elaboration of a religious spirituality, while in the writings of Wordsworth a secular spirituality emerges interwoven with nature and belatedly his identification with "tragic man" as his mythos.
    Publication Psychiatry
    Volume 68
    Issue 4
    Pages 350-362
    Date 2005
    Journal Abbr Psychiatry
    ISSN 0033-2747
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/16599401
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:20:59 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 16599401
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Attitude
    • Humans
    • Literature
    • Social Identification
    • spirituality

    Notes:

    • The phenomenology of mystical experiences has been described throughout all the ages and in all religions. All mystical traditions identify some sense of union with the absolute as the ultimate spiritual goal. I assume that the pathway to both theistic and secular spirituality and our readiness to seek a solution in a psychological merger with something beyond the self evolves out of our human experience. Spirituality is one of man’s strategies for dealing with the limitations of the life cycle, separation and loss, biological fragility, transience, and non-existence. Spirituality may serve as the affective component to a belief system or myth that is not rooted in scientific evidence but is lived as if it is true. Spirituality may take many forms, but I will suggest that in some instances it may serve as a reparative process in which one creates in the external world, through symbolic form, a nuance or facet of an internalized mental representation which has become lost or is no longer available to the self; or it may represent the continuity of the self-representation after death through a self-object merger. Lastly I will illustrate from the writings of two of our greatest poets, Dante Alighieri and William Wordsworth, how their poetry became interwoven with a profound spirituality. In Dante we will see the elaboration of a religious spirituality, while in the writings of Wordsworth a secular spirituality emerges interwoven with nature and belatedly his identification with “tragic man” as his mythos.

  • The social-psychology of religious experience: a naturalistic approach

    Type Journal Article
    Author Roger A. Straus
    Abstract Religious experiences present a seeming paradox: they are felt to be direct, unmediated experiences of the Absolute, yet substantive religious experiences differ from one another in details and imagery in a way that clearly relates to their sociocultural, biographical and situational contexts. A naturalistic "sociological" social psychological approach is described in which this problem is resolved by differentiating conceptual interpretation from perceptual analogizing and then examining the emergence of expectation, perceptual and intellectual metaphors, and the definition of the situation as a subject moves through his/her biographical experience toward the episode of triggering and having the actual ecstatic peak experience.
    Publication Sociological Analysis
    Volume 42
    Issue 2
    Pages 57-67
    Date April 1981
    URL http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/ehost/resultsadvanced?
    vid=5&hid=3&…
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:32:44 2009
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Notes:

    • Religious experiences present a seeming paradox: they are felt to be direct, unmediated experiences of the Absolute, yet substantive religious experiences differ from one another in details and imagery in a way that clearly relates to their sociocultural, biographical and situational contexts. A naturalistic “sociological” social psychological approach is described in which this problem is resolved by differentiating conceptual interpretation from perceptual analogizing and then examining the emergence of expectation, perceptual and intellectual metaphors, and the definition of the situation as a subject moves through his/her biographical experience toward the episode of triggering and having the actual ecstatic peak experience.

  • Geophysical variables and behavior: XCVI. "Experiences" attributed to Christ and Mary at Marmora, Ontario, Canada may have been consequences of environmental electromagnetic stimulation: implications for religious movements

    Type Journal Article
    Author L A Suess
    Author M A Persinger
    Abstract Since the year 1992 individuals and groups of people have reported religious experiences near Marmora, Ontario, Canada. The experiences, attributed to Christ or Mary, have occurred near the top of a hill adjacent to an open pit magnetite mine that has been accumulating about 15 million gallons of water per month for more than a decade. During the period between 1992 and 1997 epicentres for local seismic events moved significantly closer to this site. Most of the messages attributed to spiritual beings by "sensitive" individuals occurred one or two days after increased global geomagnetic activity. We suggest that conditions produced by local geophysical and geological properties created the odd lights and induced physiological changes within the thousands of people who visited the area. Direct measurements indicated that weak (0.1 microTesla to 1 microTesla) complex magnetic fields, the temporal patterns of which were similar to the experimental fields we have employed to evoke the sensed presence and altered states within the laboratory, may have been generated within the area.
    Publication Perceptual and Motor Skills
    Volume 93
    Issue 2
    Pages 435-450
    Date Oct 2001
    Journal Abbr Percept Mot Skills
    Short Title Geophysical variables and behavior
    URL http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.bu.edu/pubmed/11769900
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 17:37:39 2009
    Library Catalog NCBI PubMed
    Extra PMID: 11769900
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011

    Tags:

    • Catholicism
    • Disasters
    • Electromagnetic fields
    • Ferrosoferric Oxide
    • Humans
    • Iron
    • Magic
    • Mining
    • ONTARIO
    • Oxides
    • Religion and Psychology
    • spirituality

    Notes:

    • Since the year 1992 individuals and groups of people have reported religious experiences near Marmora, Ontario, Canada. The experiences, attributed to Christ or Mary, have occurred near the top of a hill adjacent to an open pit magnetite mine that has been accumulating about 15 million gallons of water per month for more than a decade. During the period between 1992 and 1997 epicentres for local seismic events moved significantly closer to this site. Most of the messages attributed to spiritual beings by “sensitive” individuals occurred one or two days after increased global geomagnetic activity. We suggest that conditions produced by local geophysical and geological properties created the odd lights and induced physiological changes within the thousands of people who visited the area. Direct measurements indicated that weak (0.1 microTesla to 1 microTesla) complex magnetic fields, the temporal patterns of which were similar to the experimental fields we have employed to evoke the sensed presence and altered states within the laboratory, may have been generated within the area.

  • Knowing Through the Body: Dissociative Religious Experience in the African- and British-American Methodist Traditions

    Type Journal Article
    Author Ann Taves
    Publication The Journal of Religion
    Volume 73
    Issue 2
    Pages 200-222
    Date Apr., 1993
    ISSN 00224189
    Short Title Knowing Through the Body
    URL http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/1204878
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:51:29 2009
    Library Catalog JSTOR
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Full publication date: Apr., 1993 / Copyright © 1993 The University of Chicago Press
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
  • Religious Experience and Philosophy

    Type Journal Article
    Author Francis Younghusband
    Publication Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
    Volume 28
    Pages 117-134
    Date 1927 - 1928
    ISSN 00667374
    URL http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/4544133
    Accessed Fri Oct 9 16:49:22 2009
    Library Catalog JSTOR
    Extra ArticleType: primary_article / Full publication date: 1927 - 1928 / Copyright © 1927 The Aristotelian Society
    Date Added Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011
    Modified Sat Oct 1 16:55:15 2011