Mystical Encounters with the Natural World

Experiences and Explanations
Erscheinungsjahr 2005
ISBN: 978-0-19-927943-2
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 145 mm x 222 mm, Gewicht: 611 g

Some experiences of the natural world bring a sense of unity, knowledge, self-transcendence, eternity, light, and love. This is the first detailed study of these intriguing phenomena. Paul Marshall explores the circumstances, characteristics, and after-effects of this important but relatively neglected type of mystical experience, and critiques explanations that range from the spiritual and metaphysical to the psychoanalytic, contextual, and neuropsychological. The theorists discussed include R. M. Bucke, Edward Carpenter, W. R. Inge, Evelyn Underhill, Rudolf Otto, Sigmund Freud, Aldous Huxley, R. C. Zaehner, W. T. Stace, Steven Katz, and Robert Forman, as well as contemporary neuroscientists. The book makes a significant contribution to current debates about the nature of mystical experience.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Marshall, Paul

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophie des Geistes, Neurophilosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Parapsychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Sonstige Religionen: Spiritualität, Mystik
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- I. The experiences

- 1: Extrovertive mystical experience: definition and incidence

- 2: `Being all, knowing all, loving all': phenomenology

- 3: Sex, drugs, and Beethoven? Circumstances and consequences

- II. The explanations

- 4: Divine cosmos: encountering spirit in nature

- 5: Empty your mind: uncovering pure consciousness

- 6: Scholars lock horns: construction or deconstruction?

- 7: On the couch, in the lab: pathology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience

- 8: Mind beyond the brain: reducing valves and metaphysics

- 9: Fashions, failures, prospects

Über Autor(innen)

Paul Marshall is an independent scholar with research interests in the philosophy and psychology of religion, the philosophy of mind, and the study of science and religion.