Intentional Transformative Experiences
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Edited by:
Sarah Perez
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Funded by:
University of Bern
About this book
This book offers new theoretical insights into religious, esoteric, and philosophical practices and narratives that deal with "intentional transformative experiences." Exceptional life-changing experiences are often believed to be beyond the individual's control—they are thought to "simply happen." However, many individuals actively and self-reflectively search for transformative experiences.
Intentional Transformative Experiences provides analyses of such intentionally sought experiences in different spiritual, religious, and esoteric milieus. Case studies range from South and Central Asian traditions to Western esoteric practices, compare autobiographical narratives of self-cultivation, and explore attempts to systematize intentional transformative experiences.
Next to applying established theoretical frameworks, such as the cognitive science of religion and philosophy, this volume also includes considerations on subsets of transformative experiences such as the dichotomy of intentionality and unintentionality, risk and failure, as well as the transformation of others instead of one's own self. The result is an important contribution for researchers who deal with narratives or practices that include "transformative experiences."
Author / Editor information
Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
V -
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Chapter 1 Introduction
1 - Part I: Cognitive Analyses of Intentional Transformative Experiences
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Chapter 2 “A Ridiculous Story”: Sri Sabhapati Swami’s Flight to the Celestial Mountain
25 -
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Chapter 3 Direct Transcendence: A Cognitive Perspective on Meditation as an Intentional Transformative Experience
47 -
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Chapter 4 Liberation from the Ordinary: The Unseen in Religious Experience
71 - Part II: Societal and Cultural Analyses of Intentional Transformative Experiences
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Chapter 5 ‘Only This Will Bring Results’: Practising Gurdjieff’s Exercises in a Search Culture
97 -
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Chapter 6 Two Kinds of Experiences: Modern Prāṇāyāma Between the Context of “Science” and “Self-Culture”
121 - Part III: Analyses of Individuals’ Intentional Transformative Experiences
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Chapter 7 A Suggestive Inquiry into Hermetic Rebirth: Nondual Noēsis and Bodily Fluids in Victorian England
149 -
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Chapter 8 Approaching a Universal Pattern? Gopi Krishna’s Transformational Kuṇḍalinī Experience within the Frame of Universalism and Religious Scientism
179 -
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Chapter 9 Building a Typology for Intentional Transformative Experiences: Louis- Alphonse Cahagnet’s Experiments with Magnetic Somnambulism and Hashish
211 - Part IV: Conceptual Analyses of Intentional Transformative Experiences
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Chapter 10 Intentionality and Non-Intentionality in Jung’s Active Imagination
243 -
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Chapter 11 Intentional Transformative Experiences and the Concept of Religious Experience
271 -
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Chapter 12 Through the Looking-Glass: A Stage-Based Approach to the Intentional Transformative Experience of Reality Shifting
293 -
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Contributors
325 -
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Index
329
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Manufacturer information:
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
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10785 Berlin
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