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"Religious experience"
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Religious Experiences in the Context of Bipolar Disorder: Serious Pathology and/or Genuine Spirituality? A Narrative Review against the Background of the Literature about Bipolar Disorder and Religion
Literature about bipolar disorder and religion is scarce and primarily encompasses studies with a quantitative design. Results of such studies do not lead to unambiguous conclusions about the relation between bipolar disorder and religion that could be applied in clinical practice. The main focus of this article will be on the domain of religious experiences/religious delusions and hallucinations as explored in two recent PhD studies regarding mixed methods and qualitative research, conducted in the Netherlands and in Canada. In the narrative review of the two studies, the occurrence of different types of religious experiences and various explanatory models of patients to interpret them are presented. The interpretation of religious experiences, often related to mania, proves to be an intense quest, and often a struggle for many patients, whereby fluctuations in mood, course of the illness, religious or philosophical background, and the reactions of relatives and mental health professionals all play a role. Patients combine various explanatory models, both medical and religious/cultural, to interpret their experiences and these may fluctuate over the years. The two studies are placed in the context of literature about bipolar disorder and various aspects of religion to date. Finally, the challenges for future research and the implications for clinical practice will be outlined.
Journal Article
The Jaguar Within
Shamanism-the practice of entering a trance state to experience
visions of a reality beyond the ordinary and to gain esoteric
knowledge-has been an important part of life for indigenous
societies throughout the Americas from prehistoric times until the
present. Much has been written about shamanism in both scholarly
and popular literature, but few authors have linked it to another
significant visual realm-art. In this pioneering study, Rebecca R.
Stone considers how deep familiarity with, and profound respect
for, the extra-ordinary visionary experiences of shamanism
profoundly affected the artistic output of indigenous cultures in
Central and South America before the European invasions of the
sixteenth century.
Using ethnographic accounts of shamanic trance experiences,
Stone defines a core set of trance vision characteristics,
including enhanced senses, ego dissolution, bodily distortions,
flying, spinning and undulating sensations, synaesthesia, and
physical transformation from the human self into animal and other
states of being. Stone then traces these visionary characteristics
in ancient artworks from Costa Rica and Peru. She makes a
convincing case that these works, especially those of the Moche,
depict shamans in a trance state or else convey the perceptual
experience of visions by creating deliberately chaotic and
distorted conglomerations of partial, inverted, and incoherent
images.
eBook
The Anthropocene Age Reveals the Insanity at the Heart of Western Christian Religious Experience
This article claims that the Anthropocene Age reveals the tragic insanity that lies at the core of religious experiences informed by Hebrew and Christian scriptures. In brief, I claim that Western Christianity and its apparatuses produce beliefs, which are an integral part of persons’ religious experiences, that give rise to an ontological rift between human beings and other species. This rift and its attendant beliefs are evident in how religious individuals and communities have (1) overlooked or disavowed the singularities and sufferings of other species, (2) used attendant instrumental epistemologies to justify the exploitation of Othered species (and Othered human beings) and the Earth, and (3) sought to force nature to adapt to human needs and desires. The article addresses the psychological dynamics and consequences of the ontological rift, which further exposes the madness that attends religious experiences that rely on apparatuses of the ontological rift. The article ends with a brief discussion of an antidote, namely, inoperativity.
Journal Article
Blue dreams : the science and the story of the drugs that changed our minds
Explores the discovery, invention, science, and people behind today's major psychotropic drugs, from the earliest, Thorazine and Lithium, through Prozac and Ecstasy, to today's most cutting-edge memory drugs and neural implants.-- Source other than Library of Congress.
The Self as Source and Destination for Intuitive Interpretations of Religious or Spiritual Experiences
Religious or spiritual experiences (RSE) are often difficult to fully express even if one might be able to describe particular aspects of them. Yet the influences that such carry in a person’s mode of being can be vast, and they are clearly a fundamental part of the human condition (whether accepted, denied, or dismissed, their occurrence appears universal). How then might these RSE—and the corresponding grounding implications—be better explained? This paper seeks to elucidate the problematic via an applied investigation of a self-theoretical framework which is composed of three interlaced “sets”: (1) Self-defining traits, (2) Self-directing traits, and (3) Self-evaluating traits. We will suggest that these elements (with consciousness and bodily presence) form a core self that is a separable facet from those of personal identity and whole person; and this finding will in turn require a brief look at consciousness and a two-tiered mental model. Taking the self-view into a phenomenological hermeneutical examination will illuminate the position at which RSE might reside within an individual’s cognition, and thence to exploring the pre-thought (the functionally pre-aware) foundations involved. Finally, some considerations will be given for how an understanding of the foregoing structure (if it be found valid) might contribute towards the purposive shifting of that self-basis from out of and towards which RSE are situated in a lifeworld.
Journal Article
Psychological Analysis of Religious Experience
The aim of this article is to present the issues of religious experience, and the associated experience of God’s presence and God’s absence, and then its operationalization, as well as to construct the Intensity of Religious Experience Scale, IRES (Skala Intensywności Doświadczenia Religijnego, SIDR). The value of psychometric tool, the reliability and validity, were assessed. The study was conducted in three steps. Study 1 concerned the generalization of statements related to conception of Catholic religious experience; i.e., the subjective feeling whether one experiences God’s presence and God’s absence, and how such beliefs affect certain aspects of a person’s life. Study 2 was carried out on the sample of 217 people and was designed to perform Exploratory Factor Analysis and to assess three-week test–retest reliability of the IRES. Study 3 was based on the sample of 368 people and was aimed to perform Confirmatory Factor Analysis and concurrent validation of the IRES. The analysis of the religious experience showed that this kind of human experience has its own structure. The explication of the subject has confirmed the existence of two positive factors of religious experience; i.e., a subjective sense of experience of God’s presence and God’s absence that can influence on life of people living in the Catholic religion environment.
Journal Article