scholarly journals Hearing spiritually significant voices: A phenomenological survey and taxonomy

2020 ◽  
pp. medhum-2020-012021
Author(s):  
Christopher C H Cook ◽  
Adam Powell ◽  
Ben Alderson-Day ◽  
Angela Woods
Keyword(s):  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Pastoral Work ◽  
Auditory Verbal Hallucinations ◽  
Single Voice ◽  
The Voice

Whereas previous research in the medical humanities has tended to neglect theology and religious studies, these disciplines sometimes have a very important contribution to make. The hearing of spiritually significant voices provides a case in point. The context, content and identity of these voices, all of which have typically not been seen as important in the assessment of auditory–verbal hallucinations (AVHs) within psychiatry, are key to understanding their spiritual significance. A taxonomy of spiritually significant voices is proposed, which takes into account frequency, context, affect and identity of the voice. In a predominantly Christian sample of 58 people who reported having heard spiritually significant voices, most began in adult life and were infrequent experiences. Almost 90% reported that the voice was divine in identity and approximately one-third were heard in the context of prayer. The phenomenological characteristics of these voices were different from those in previous studies of voice hearing (AVHs). Most comprised a single voice; half were auditory; and a quarter were more thought-like (the rest being a mixture). Only half were characterful, and one-third included commands or prompts. The voices were experienced positively and as meaningful. The survey has implications for both clinical and pastoral work. The phenomenology of spiritually significant voices may be confused with that of psychopathology, thus potentially leading to misdiagnosis of normal religious experiences. The finding of meaning in content and context may be important in voice hearing more widely, and especially in coping with negative or distressing voices.

Religious Studies of Democratic Ukraine

2001 ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Anatolii M. Kolodnyi
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Integral System ◽  
The World

Ukrainian religious studies have deep roots. We find the elements of it in the written descendants of the writings of Kievan Rus. From the prince's time, the universal way of vision, understanding and appreciation of the world for many Ukrainian thinkers becomes their own religious experiences. The main purpose of their works is not the desire to create a certain integral system of theological knowledge, but the desire to convey their personal religious-minded perception of the divine nature, harmony, beauty and perfection of God created the world.

scholarly journals Introduction to “Religious Experience in the Hindu Tradition”

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 329
Author(s):  
June McDaniel
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Hindu Tradition ◽  
The Third ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The World

This special issue of Religions brings together a talented group of international scholars who have studied and written on the Hindu tradition. The topic of religious experience is much debated in the field of Religious Studies, and here we present studies of Hindu religious experience explored from a variety of regions and perspectives. They are intended to show that religious experience has long been an important part of Hinduism, and we consider them to be important and relevant. As a body of scholarship, these articles refine our understanding of the range and variety of religious experience in Hinduism. In addition to their substantive contributions, the authors also show important new directions in the study of the third-largest religion in the world, with over one billion followers. This introduction will discuss some relevant issues in the field of Indology, some problems of language, and the difficulties faced in the study of religious experience. It will also give a brief sketch of the religious experiences described by our authors in some major types of Hinduism.

scholarly journals Black Religious Studies, Misogynoir, and the Matter of Breonna Taylor’s Death

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 621
Author(s):  
Ahmad Greene-Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Black People ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Black Religion ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Central Claim

This article reflects on the matter of state-sanctioned death in Black religious studies, with the murder of Breonna Taylor as its central focus. It examines how scholars of Black religion engage with the issues of state-sanctioned murder, antiblackness, and misogynoir, and it endeavors to underscore ways for Black male* scholars of Black religion to respond to the religious experiences and deaths of Black women and Black people of all gendered experiences. This article’s central claim is that if Black male* scholars of Black religion continue to underscore how Black religion has been a catalyst for Black liberation without attention to how cisheteropatriarchy functions as antiblackness, then we ultimately will be unable to speak the name of Breonna Taylor in earnest.

Neurobiology of Auditory Hallucinations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith M. Ford ◽  
Holly K. Hamilton ◽  
Alison Boos
Keyword(s):  
Help Seeking ◽  
Treatment Approach ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Hearing Voices ◽  
Auditory Verbal Hallucinations ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Neurological Conditions ◽  
Language Areas ◽  
The Voice ◽  
The Brain

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH), also referred to as “hearing voices,” are vivid perceptions of speech that occur in the absence of any corresponding external stimulus but seem very real to the voice hearer. They are experienced by the majority of people with schizophrenia, less frequently in other psychiatric and neurological conditions, and are relatively rare in the general population. Because antipsychotic medications are not always successful in reducing the severity or frequency of AVH, a better understanding is needed of their neurobiological basis, which may ultimately lead to more precise treatment targets. What voices say and how the voices sound, or their phenomenology, varies widely within and across groups of people who hear them. In help-seeking populations, such as people with schizophrenia, the voices tend to be threatening and menacing, typically spoken in a non-self-voice, often commenting and sometimes commanding the voice hearers to do things they would not otherwise do. In psychotic populations, voices differ from normal inner speech by being unbidden and unintended, co-opting the voice hearer’s attention. In healthy voice-hearing populations, voices are not typically distressing nor disabling, and are sometimes comforting and reassuring. Regardless of content and valence, voices tend to activate some speech and language areas of the brain. Efforts to silence these brain areas with neurostimulation have had mixed success in reducing the frequency and salience of voices. Progress with this treatment approach would likely benefit from more precise anatomical targets and more precisely dosed neurostimulation. Neural mechanisms that may underpin the experience of voices are being actively investigated and include mechanisms enabling context-based predictions and distinctions between experiences coming from self and other. Both these mechanisms can be studied in non-human animal “models” and both can provide new anatomical targets for neurostimulation.

Listening to the Voices People Hear: Auditory Hallucinations Beyond a Diagnostic Framework

2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 573-601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Longden
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Stressors ◽  
Auditory Hallucinations ◽  
Hearing Voices ◽  
Auditory Verbal Hallucinations ◽  
Clinical Diagnoses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Populations ◽  
Diagnostic Framework ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Voice

While voice hearing (auditory verbal hallucinations) is closely allied with psychosis/schizophrenia, it is well-established that the experience is reported by individuals with nonpsychotic diagnoses, as well as those with no history of psychiatric contact. The phenomenological similarities in voice hearing within these different populations, as well as increased recognition of associations between adversity exposure and voice presence/content, have helped strengthened the contention that voice hearing may be more reliably associated with psychosocial variables per se rather than specific clinical diagnoses. Evidence is examined for understanding voice hearing as a psychological response to environmental stressors, and the implications of this for clinical practice. Consideration is also given to the impact of the International Hearing Voices Movement, an influential survivor-led initiative that promotes person-centered, nondiagnostic approaches to the voice-hearing experience.

On a Sociological Challenge to the Veridicality of Religious Experience

1998 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEROME GELLMAN
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Burden Of Proof ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Mystical Experiences ◽  
Sociological Explanation

This paper replies to Evan Fales' sociological explanation of mystical experience in two articles in Religious Studies vol. 32 (143–63 and 297–313). In these papers Fales applies the ideas of I. M. Lewis on spirit possession to show how mystical experiences can be accounted for as vehicles for the acquisition of political power and social control. The rebuttal of Fales contains three main elements: (a) the presentation of specific examples of theistic mystical experience from Christianity and Judaism which provide counter-examples to Fales' theory; (b) the presentation of some general objections to its plausibility; and (c) an argument for the conclusion that the burden of proof lies with naturalistic, reductionist explanations of religious experiences rather than with theistic interpretations of those experiences.

scholarly journals VoSE: An algorithm to Separate and Enhance Voices from Mixed Signals using Gradient Boosting

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Gupta ◽  
R K Singh ◽  
Sachin Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Frequency Domain ◽  
Gradient Boosting ◽  
Ripple Effect ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
Time Frequency ◽  
Voice Signal ◽  
Single Voice ◽  
Short Time ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Sound Files

Abstract Voice Separation and Enhancement (VoSE) algorithm aims at designing a predictive model to solve the problem of speech enhancement and separation from a mixed signal. VoSE can be used for any language, with or without a large Datasets. VoSE can be utilized by any voice response system like, Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant which as of now work on single voice command. The pre-processing of the voice is done using a Trimming Negative and Nonzero voice filter (TNNVF), designed by the authors. TNNVF is independent of language, it works on any voice signal. The segmentation of a voice is generally carried out on frequency domain or time domain. Independently they are known to have ripple or rising effect. To rule out the ripple effect, data is filtered in the time-frequency domain. Voice print of the entire sound files is created for the training and testing purpose. 80% of the voice prints are used to train the network and 20% are kept for testing. The training set contains over 48,000 voice prints. LightGBM with TensorFlow helps in generating unique voice prints in a short time. To enhance the retrieved voice signals, Enhance Predictive Voice(EPV) function is designed. The tests are conducted on English and Indian languages. The proposed work is compared with K-means, Decision Stump, Naïve Bayes, and LSTM.

scholarly journals Ivan Shevtsev - honorary researcher of the Department of Religious Studies at the Institute of Philosophy named after G.S. Skovoroda of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (nomination in 2000)

2001 ◽  
pp. 89-90
Author(s):  
Editorial board Of the Journal
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Pastoral Work ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Village

Father Ivan SHEVTSIV was born on November 1, 1926 in the village of. Pumpkins in the Zboriv district. Graduated from the Spiritual Seminary in Lviv, theological studios in Rome. In May 1951 he received priestly ordinations. He had pastoral work in England, published a magazine "Our Church" here. In 1959, Bishop Ivan Prashko invited I. Shevtsiv to Australia. Here he established publishing activities, taught religion in Ukrainian schools, edited the magazine "Church and Life", was a pastor in several parishes, and organized the construction of temples.

The Body–Mind Challenge: Theology and phenomenology in Bengal-Vaishnavisms

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 2080-2108
Author(s):  
SUKANYA SARBADHIKARY
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Sexual Experience ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Asian Religions ◽  
Body Complex ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Hindu Deity

AbstractRecent studies of Asian religious traditions have critiqued Western philosophical understandings of mind–body dualism and furthered the productive notion of mind–body continuum. Based on intensive fieldwork among two kinds of devotional groups of Bengal—claimants to an orthodox Vaishnavism, who focus on participating in the erotic sports of the Hindu deity-consort Radha-Krishna in imagination and a quasi-tantric group, which claims to physically apprehend Radha-Krishna's erotic pleasures through direct sexual experience—I demonstrate that, although these devotional groups stress on combating theologies, with emphases respectively on the ‘mind’ and the ‘body’, in their narrations of religious experiences, however, both groups allude to rarefied phenomenological states of cognition and embodiment. So, while influenced by ideas of (mental) ‘purity’ and (bodily) ‘actuality’, respectively, practices of both groups rely on similar states of mind–body continuum. So I argue that the mind–body complex has intensely nuanced articulations in the discursive and experiential domains of these non-Western religious contexts. Through my analyses of the texts and embodiments of these opposed devotional groups, I show that theology gets both organically entangled with as well as challenged by phenomenological experiences. I further argue that explorations in the tenor of religious studies sharply enrich the anthropology of religiosities. Also, such engagements between theology and anthropology have been relatively lacking and need more emphasis in studies of contemporary South Asian religions.

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