The Power of the Paranormal (and Extraordinary): Review Essay (original) (raw)
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International Journal for the Study of New …, 2011
Authors of the Impossible continues Jeffrey Kripal's explorations into popular expressions of mystical phenomena. It originated during the writing of his forthcoming Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, an examination of how paranormal phenomena such as human flight and telekinesis hold a prominent position in contemporary Western culture through the popular artistic genres of science-fiction and superheroes. Kripal became interested in several authors whom he considered to have had a particular influence on these "modern mythologies" (6), yet were largely neglected by contemporary religious scholarship. Despite different starting points and a period of more than a century, he considers their work to come to the same essential conclusion -that humans have potentials that remain untapped in the majority of individuals, but which find expression in both psychical phenomena and the popular imagination.
"Unutterable Experiences of Consciousness Alteration" (Introduction, pp. 1-15) , 2020
Any person interested in mysticism will find this book of great value. Although writing about mystical experiences can be likened to “sending a kiss by mail,” there is much to be learned from the essays here. The book covers topics ranging from the anthropology of Mongolian shamanism to psychedelic drugs, symbolic aspects of mystical experiences and attempts to communicate such experiences, attempts to scientifically explain mystical states, and questions of the very possibility of such explanations. Important and provocative questions are raised: What sort of experiences count as “mystical?” Of the variety of such experiences, how can they be explained? Are there only physiological and psychological grounds or is there a transcendent reality that is contacted during mystical experiences? If a transcendent reality, how is it that it appears different to different people? How can such experiences be described if they are ineffable? And, what difference might there be between a mystical experience and the ordinary experience of our everyday world? -- Burton Voorhees, Athabasca University This book is a vast, profound, and modern approach to mysticism. The high-level researchers and authors participating in the book come from philosophy, spiritual studies, cognitive sciences, art studies, psychiatry, and literature, bringing authentic and meaningful interdisciplinary approach to the subject. -- Louis Hébert, University of Quebec at Rimouski "Mysticism and Experience: Twenty-First-Century Approaches" embarks on an investigation of the concept of mysticism from the standpoint of academic fields, including philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, mysticism studies, literary studies, art criticism, cognitive poetics, cognitive science, psychology, medical research, and even mathematics. Scholars across disciplines observe that, although it has experienced both cyclical approval and disapproval, mysticism seems to be implicated as a key foundation of religion, along with comprising the highest forms of social, cultural, intellectual, and artistic creations. This book is divided into four sections: The Exposure, The Symbolic, The Cognitive, and The Scientific, covering the fundamental aspects of the phenomenon known as mysticism. Contributors, taking advantage of recent advances in disciplinary approaches to understanding mystical phenomena, address the question of whether progress can be made to systemically enrich, expand, and advance our understanding of mysticism. The "Introduction: Unutterable Experiences of Consciousness Alteration" is by the volume's editor, Alex S. Kohav.
Literature is the offspring of mysticism; it appropriates a world that goes beyond the logic of antonyms and synonyms and explains the genesis of both literature and mysticism. Mysticism resides in human body as illumined in the Yoga; in the Kundalini form of Goddess Kali. The exploration of the subliminal layers of the Gita, Rig Veda and Upanishads unfolds how mystic seeing is in the sense of the syncretic — both conscious and unconscious. The cognoscibility of human faculties is concomitant to divine experience. It is neither the supplement nor a surrogate. This is what the Upanishad says: a flight from the beyond to the beyond. The endeavor of the one engaged in the quest-the Sadhaka - establishes a telic relationship with a supramental power that guides him across a journey through ages and eras. The poetry of Meera, Kabir, Tulsi, Dadu, Nanak and Namdev among others testifies that man’s search for his real existence leads to the production of literature. Awareness of the syncretic nature of imagination makes evident how Buddha’s deconstruction of the idea of logocentric presence finds reappearance in the Derridean discourse. A reading of the syncretic mysticism in Eliot and others reveals how in spite of owning immensely to the Hindu mystic thought, Eliot remained fettered to the organized Christianity. The greatest danger in the contemporary literature however is the loss and disappearance of the sublime. Apprehending the secrets of language lets one know how fraught it is for it contains the secrets of heaven and the realities earth. Mystics take the former route while the novelist the latter.
50th Anniversary Issue: The Future of the Study of Religious and Spiritual Experience
Journal for the Study of Religious Experience, 2021
This issue has its roots in the Religious Experience Research Centre's 50th anniversary conference, which was held on the weekend of 1st-3rd July 2019 in Lampeter. Most of the papers here were initially given as presentations at the conference, and have since been reviewed, edited and written up for publication. The theme of the conference was 'The Future of the Study of Religious and Spiritual Experience,' and with this in mind the papers collected in this issue explore different theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of a variety of religious and spiritual experiences. There is also an emphasis in the papers that follow on experiences that have tended to fall outside of the remit of academic research on extraordinary experience, but which may have a large contribution to make to our field if taken seriously. My own paper, entitled 'Deep Weird,' for example, points to the stranger reaches of extraordinary experience research, and examines why some of the most unusual reports of extraordinary experiences come to be neglected in the scholarly discourse. Encounters with UFOs, fairies and other strange entities are often ignored in academic research precisely because they are so strange and do not fit into often quite riding academic categories. As I point out in the paper, however, there are many reasons to think that these 'high strangeness' experiences share common phenomenological features and underlying processes with other more established forms of religious and spiritual experience. In the context of the theme of this issue, the paper suggests that a greater academic engagement with 'high strangeness' experiences could provide fruitful new directions for the future of religious experience research. Alison Robertson's contribution also shines a spotlight on a class of extraordinary experience that has been marginalised in academic conversations. Robertson argues that the experiences fostered by practitioners of BDSM (bondage, dominance, sadism, masochism) share commonalities with other forms of ecstatic and religious experience, and as such also deserve to be taken seriously as the subject of research on