scholarly journals Comparison of "mystical experience" from William James and Walter Stace' point of view with Rumi's view

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3C) ◽  
pp. 564-583
Author(s):  
Shirin Shokati Asl ◽  
Fatemeh Sheikhloovand ◽  
Mohammad Farahmand Sarabi ◽  
Azra Ghaffari

This paper recognizes Rumi's views on the subjects that constitute the nature of mystical experiences, which has been less considered by researchers and has provided evidence to test the theory of researchers such as William James and Walter Stace in the field of mystical experiences. First, some explanations about mystical experiences are presented, then, respectively, the common characteristics of mystical experiences from the perspective of James and Stace, and by summing up the opinions of these researchers, eight attributes have been considered for mystical experiences and finally compared with Rumi's verses, which have either confirmed the existence of that characteristic in Rumi's mystical experiences or have been silent about that characteristic or this. These verses have shown the opposite of the feature in question. In each of these stages, the summation of Rumi's general opinions about it has been done as much as possible.

Author(s):  
Ralph W. Hood

The common core thesis contends that mystical experience is an ultimate non-sensuous experience of unity of all things. It can be identified within major faith traditions, whether explicitly religious or not. Its roots are in the work of William James who explored mystical experience outside the limits imposed by what he perceived as only a provisional natural science assumption of the newly emerging discipline of empirical psychology. Following the explicit phenomenological work of Walter Stace, the phenomenology of a universal core to mystical experience has been operationalized and an explicit psychometric measure developed to allow empirical assessment of the claim to a common core to mysticism. It is the linkage of psychometric approaches to the work of James and Stace that is now known explicitly as the common core thesis. The common core thesis needs to be delineated from the perennialist thesis popularized by Aldous Huxley in which there is postulated not only a common core experience, but also values and practices claimed to be associated with this experience if not directly derived from it. Psychometric and empirical evidence for the common core thesis is substantial and continues to accumulate. The common core thesis is restricted to mystical experience and assumes that this experience seeks to express itself in various faith traditions, whether religious or not, but is not restricted to or defined adequately by the culture or language with which this experience is interpreted. Unlike the perennialist thesis, the common core thesis does not assume that any common theology, philosophy, or practice necessarily follows from mystical experience.


Author(s):  
Timothy A. Mahoney

This paper addresses religious epistemology in that it concerns the assessment of the credibility of certain claims arising out of religious experience. Developments this century have made the world’s rich religious heritage accessible to more people than ever. But the conflicting religious claims tend to undermine each religion’s central claim to be a vehicle for opening persons to ultimate reality. One attempt to overcome this problem is provided by "perennial philosophy," which claims that there is a kind of mystical experience common to all religious traditions, an experience which is an immediate contact with an absolute principle. Perennialism has been attacked by "contextualists" such as Steven Katz who argue that particular mystical experiences are so tied to a particular tradition that there are no common mystical experiences across traditions. In turn, Robert Forman and the "decontextualists" have argued that a certain kind of mystical experience and process are found in diverse traditions, thereby supporting one of the key elements of perennialism. I review the contextualist-decontextualist debate and suggest a research project that would pursue the question of whether the common ground of the world’s mystical traditions could be expanded beyond what has been established by the decontextualists. The extension of this common ground would add credibility to the claims arising out of mystical experience.


Author(s):  
Sebastian Gäb

AbstractIt has often been claimed, e.g. by William James or Aldous Huxley, that mystical experiences across times and cultures exhibit a striking similarity. Even though the words and images we use to describe them are different, underneath the surface we find a common experiential core. Others have rejected this claim and argued that all experiences are intrinsically shaped by the mystics’ pre-existing religious concepts. Against these constructivist objections, I defend the idea of a common core by arguing that even if all experience is interpreted through concepts, there could still be a common core. Those who reject the common core thesis usually argue that no distinction between experience and interpretation can be made since all experience is per se already interpreted. The notion of an uninterpreted experience is self-defeating. Drawing on current research on nonconceptual mental content, I argue (a) that experiences can have nonconceptual content; (b) that interpretation must be understood as conceptualization and (c) that conceptualization presupposes a raw mental content that is not conceptualized. This raw content is not experienced as nonconceptual. Rather, the nonconceptual, uninterpreted common core is an abstraction which shows itself only through reflection. Thus, the existence of a common core is compatible with the fact that all experiences are interpreted.


Author(s):  
Ayon Maharaj

This chapter draws upon Sri Ramakrishna’s teachings and mystical testimony in order to develop a new conceptual framework for understanding the nature of mystical experience. In recent analytic philosophy of religion, two approaches to mystical experience have been especially influential: perennialism and constructivism. While perennialists maintain that there is a common core of all mystical experiences across various cultures, constructivists claim that a mystic’s cultural conditioning plays a major role in shaping his or her mystical experiences. After identifying the strengths and limitations of these two positions, Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna champions a “manifestationist” approach to mystical experience that provides a powerful dialectical alternative to both perennialism and constructivism. According to Sri Ramakrishna, mystics in various traditions experience different real manifestations of one and the same impersonal-personal Infinite Reality. Sri Ramakrishna’s manifestationist paradigm shares the advantages of both perennialism and constructivism but avoids their respective weaknesses and limitations.


Author(s):  
Mireia López-Bertran

This chapter explores the funerary rites in the Phoenician-Punic world from a comprehensive point of view, and it focuses on the common points arising from a large amount of data. The concern for burying their deceased and the belief in the soul’s afterlife show that the Phoenicians considered death as a transformation rather than as the end of a person’s life. Through our access to archaeological remains and written sources, we can reconstruct the existence of a meaningful burial program that was destined to provide a “good death” and afterlife. Funerary rituals, thus, are the actions or gestures to achieve this goal. The aim of this chapter is to explain the rites that family members undertook once someone died, in order to transform correctly the deceased person into an otherworldly being, the ancestor. The social implications of the data arising from burials are also briefly considered.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (16) ◽  
pp. 1835
Author(s):  
Antonio Barrera ◽  
Patricia Román-Román ◽  
Francisco Torres-Ruiz

A joint and unified vision of stochastic diffusion models associated with the family of hyperbolastic curves is presented. The motivation behind this approach stems from the fact that all hyperbolastic curves verify a linear differential equation of the Malthusian type. By virtue of this, and by adding a multiplicative noise to said ordinary differential equation, a diffusion process may be associated with each curve whose mean function is said curve. The inference in the resulting processes is presented jointly, as well as the strategies developed to obtain the initial solutions necessary for the numerical resolution of the system of equations resulting from the application of the maximum likelihood method. The common perspective presented is especially useful for the implementation of the necessary procedures for fitting the models to real data. Some examples based on simulated data support the suitability of the development described in the present paper.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 557
Author(s):  
Irene Mariñas-Collado ◽  
Elisa Frutos Bernal ◽  
Maria Teresa Santos Martin ◽  
Angel Martín del Rey ◽  
Roberto Casado Vara ◽  
...  

The knowledge of the topological structure and the automatic fare collection systems in urban public transport produce many data that need to be adequately analyzed, processed and presented. These data provide a powerful tool to improve the quality of transport services and plan ahead. This paper aims at studying, from a mathematical and statistical point of view, the Barcelona metro network; specifically: (1) the structural and robustness characteristics of the transportation network are computed and analyzed considering the complex network analysis; and (2) the common characteristics of the different subway stations of Barcelona, based on the passenger hourly entries, are identified through hierarchical clustering analysis. These results will be of great help in planning and restructuring transport to cope with the new social conditions, after the pandemic.


2001 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-321
Author(s):  
DN Carmichael ◽  
Michael Lye

Heart failure has been defined in many ways and definitions change over time. The multiplicity of definitions reflect the paucity of our understanding of the primary underlying physiology of heart failure and the many diseases for which heart failure is the common end-point. Fundamentally, heart failure represents a failure of the heart to meet the body’s requirement for blood supply for whatever reason. It is thus a clinical syndrome with characteristic features – not a single disease in its own right. The syndrome includes symptoms and signs of organ underperfusion, fluid retention and neuroendocrine activation. The syndrome arises from a range of possible causes of which ischaemic heart disease is the commonest. From the point of view of a clinician, the underlying pathology will determine treatment options and prognosis. The extensive range of possible aetiologies present a diagnostic challenge both to correctly identify the syndrome amongst all other causes of dyspnoea and to identify the aetiology, allowing optimization of treatment.


Management ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 473-487
Author(s):  
Andrzej Czyżewski ◽  
Sebastian Stępień

Summary The objective of the paper is to present the results of negotiations on the EU budget for 2014-2020, with particular emphasis on the Common Agricultural Policy. Authors indicate the steps for establishing the budget, from the proposal of the European Commission presented in 2011, ending with the draft of UE budget agreed at the meeting of the European Council on February 2013 and the meeting of the AGRIFISH on March 2013 and then approved by the political agreement of the European Commission, European Parliament and European Council on June 2013. In this context, there will be an assessment of the new budget from the point of view of Polish economy and agriculture.


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