Theo-Monistic Mysticism

Theo-Monistic Mysticism PDF Author: M. Stoeber
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230377068
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
In response to some of the current explanations of mystic phenomena, this book proposes an interpretive framework for understanding mysticism. It clarifies various kinds of mystical experiences, suggesting they are not wholly determined by subjective categories of interpretation, and illustrates how they can be synthesised in a theistic, mystic teleology. In reference to Ramanuja, Aurobinodo, Sankara, Eckhart, Ruusbroec, and Boehme, monistic experiences are understood to culminate in higher theistic realizations, to which other kinds of mysticism can also be related.

Theo-Monistic Mysticism

Theo-Monistic Mysticism PDF Author: M. Stoeber
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230377068
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 143

Get Book Here

Book Description
In response to some of the current explanations of mystic phenomena, this book proposes an interpretive framework for understanding mysticism. It clarifies various kinds of mystical experiences, suggesting they are not wholly determined by subjective categories of interpretation, and illustrates how they can be synthesised in a theistic, mystic teleology. In reference to Ramanuja, Aurobinodo, Sankara, Eckhart, Ruusbroec, and Boehme, monistic experiences are understood to culminate in higher theistic realizations, to which other kinds of mysticism can also be related.

Theo-monistic Mysticism

Theo-monistic Mysticism PDF Author: Michael Stoeber
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780333610640
Category : Christianity and other religions
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
In response to some of the current explanations of mystic phenomena, this book proposes an interpretive framework for understanding mysticism. It clarifies various kinds of mystical experiences, suggesting they are not wholly determined by subjective categories of interpretation, and illustrates how they can be synthesized in a theistic, mystic teleology. In reference to Ramanuja, Aurobinodo, Sankara, Eckhart, Ruusbroec and Boehme, monistic experiences are understood to culminate in higher theistic realizations, to which other kinds of mysticism can also be related.

Theo-monistic Mysticism

Theo-monistic Mysticism PDF Author: Michael F. Stoeber
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312107468
Category : Christianity and other religions
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description


Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality

Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality PDF Author: Ayon Maharaj
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190868244
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Sri Ramakrishna is widely known as a nineteenth-century Indian mystic who affirmed the harmony of all religions on the basis of his richly varied spiritual experiences and eclectic religious practices, both Hindu and non-Hindu. In Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality, Ayon Maharaj argues that Sri Ramakrishna was also a sophisticated philosopher of great contemporary relevance. Through a careful study of Sri Ramakrishna's recorded oral teachings in the original Bengali, Maharaj reconstructs his philosophical positions and analyzes them from a cross-cultural perspective. Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual journey culminated in the exalted state of "vijñana," his term for the "intimate knowledge" of God as the Infinite Reality that is both personal and impersonal, with and without form, immanent in the universe and beyond it. This expansive spiritual standpoint of vijñana, Maharaj contends, opens up a new paradigm for addressing central issues in cross-cultural philosophy of religion, including divine infinitude, religious pluralism, mystical experience, and the problem of evil. Sri Ramakrishna's vijñana-based religious pluralism--when grasped in all its subtlety--proves to have major philosophical advantages over dominant Western models. Moreover, his mystical testimony and teachings not only cut across long-standing debates about the nature of mystical experience but also bolster recent defenses of its epistemic value. Maharaj further demonstrates that Sri Ramakrishna's unique response to the problem of evil resonates strongly with Western "soul-making" theodicies and contemporary theories of skeptical theism. A pioneering interdisciplinary study of one of India's most important philosopher-mystics, Maharaj's book is essential reading for scholars and students in philosophy of religion, theology, religious studies, and Hindu studies.

Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry

Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry PDF Author: Hugh Nicholson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019984237X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
In theological discourse, argues Hugh Nicholson, the political goes "all the way down." One never reaches a bedrock level of politically neutral religious facts, because all theological discourse - even the most sublime, edifying, and "spiritual"--is shot through with polemical elements. Liberal theologies, from the Christian fulfillment theology of the nineteenth century to the pluralist theology of the twentieth, have assumed that religious writings attain spiritual truth and sublimity despite any polemical elements they might contain. Through his analysis and comparison of the Christian mystical theologian Meister Eckhart and his Hindu counterpart ÍaSkara, Nicholson arrives at a very different conclusion. Polemical elements may in fact constitute the creative source of the expressive power of religious discourses. Wayne Proudfoot has argued that mystical discourses embody a set of rules that repel any determinate understanding of the ineffable object or experience they purport to describe. In Comparative Theology and the Problem of Religious Rivalry, Nicholson suggests that this principle of negation is connected, perhaps through a process of abstraction and sublimation, with the need to distinguish oneself from one's intra- and/or inter-religious adversaries. Nicholson proposes a new model of comparative theology that recognizes and confronts one of the most urgent cultural and political issues of our time: namely, the "return of the political" in the form of anti-secular and fundamentalist movements around the world. This model acknowledges the ineradicable nature of an oppositional dimension of religious discourse, while honoring and even advancing the liberal project of curtailing intolerance and prejudice in the sphere of religion.

High Culture

High Culture PDF Author: Christopher Partridge
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190459123
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
History is littered with evidence of humanity's fascination with drugs and the pursuit of altered states. From early Romanticism to late-nineteenth-century occultism and from fin de siècle Paris to contemporary psychedelic shamanism, psychoactive substances have playedcatalyzing people. Yet serious analysis of the religious dimensions of modern drug use is still lacking. the use of drugs and the pursuit of transcendence from the nineteenth century to the present day. Beginning with the Romantic fascination with opium, it chronicles the discovery of anesthetics, the psychiatric and religious interest in hashish, the bewitching power of mescaline and hallucinogenic fungi, the more recent uses of LSD, as well as the debates surrounding drugs and religious experience. This fascinating and wide-ranging sociological and cultural history fills a major gap in the study of religion in the modern world and our understanding of the importance of countercultural thought, offering new and timely insights into the controversial relationship between drugs and mystical experience.

Critical Reflections on the Paranormal

Critical Reflections on the Paranormal PDF Author: Michael F. Stoeber
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791430644
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Collection of essays that clarifies and evaluates the various aspects of paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, psychokinesis, trance-mediumship, near-death experiences and past-life memories.

Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism

Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism PDF Author: Grace Jantzen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521479264
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
In the western Christian tradition, the mystic was seen as having direct access to God, and therefore great authority. In this study, Dr Jantzen discusses how men of power defined and controlled who should count as a mystic, and thus who would have power: women were pointedly excluded. This makes her book of special interest to those in gender studies and medieval history. Its main argument, however, is philosophical. Because the mystical has gone through many social constructions, the modern philosophical assumption that mysticism is essentially about intense subjective experiences is misguided. This view is historically inaccurate, and perpetuates the same gendered struggle for authority which characterises the history of western christendom. This book is the first on the subject to take issues of gender seriously, and to use these as a point of entry for a deconstructive approach to Christian mysticism.

Reclaiming Theodicy

Reclaiming Theodicy PDF Author: M. Stoeber
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023050552X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
In Reclaiming Theodicy , Michael Stoeber explores various themes of theodicy - theology that defends God in the face of evil - by creatively developing a distinction between transformative and destructive suffering. Emphasising the importance of human compassion and illustrating various spiritual experiences of God that are healing, the book proposes a narrative of life within which one might understand suffering in relation to a personal God of ultimate power and love, and suggests basic principles toward developing a politics of compassion.

Re-imagining South Asian Religions

Re-imagining South Asian Religions PDF Author: Pashaura Singh
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004242368
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Re-imagining South Asian Religions is a collection of essays offering new ways of understanding aspects of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, Theosophical, and Indian Christian experiences.