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Currently the blog contains 149 entries.
Varieties of Religious Experience
From the earliest times humans have reported extraordinary experiences. They’ve sometimes been referred to as mystical, religious, non-ordinary or sacred. They’ve sometimes been sought, by means of fasting, chanting, dancing, drumming, meditating or the ingestion of psychedelic substances, and they’ve sometimes occured spontaneously. They’ve often been described as ecstatic, sometimes as hellish, but nearly always as deeply engaging. They’ve often changed the directions of lives, sometimes for the better and sometimes not.
Two questions arise from these experiences. Firstly, are they authentic – do they provide real information about the world beyond the experiencer, or are they generated entirely within the individual’s nervous system? If the answer is that they are authentic, the second question becomes whether they are related to or arise from the supernatural realm of regular, scriptural religion.
One of the earliest studies of extraordinary states was conducted by the American psychologist, William James, and published in his 1902 book Varieties of Religious Experience. A particularly good discussion of this was conducted by Melvyn Bragg for the Radio Four series In Our Time.
You can download the podcast from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl
If you have had a religious experience or have an opinion on their cause or validity, do leave a comment below.
AGORA: An Allegory for Consciousness Studies?
The recently released film, Agora, shows the last gasps of ancient religion and philosophy in 4th century AD Alexandria, where a fanatical form of Christinianty is in the process of taking over all political and intellectual authority. The main character is the historical figure of Hypatia, the only female astronomer and mathematician known from the ancient world, who is murdered by the Christian mob, because of their suspicion of her science.
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