TThe Mysticism Group of the
American Academy of Religion
| Sessions 2009 |
in Montreal, Quebec, Canada November
5-10, 2009:
Mysticism Group A7-119 Laura Weed, College of Saint Rose, Presiding Theme: Cognitive Science and Mysticism The goal of this session is to explore recent developments in the cognitive science and psychology of religious experience and to probe the increasing interest of scholars of this field in exploring methodologies for studying mysticism and spirituality. The exploration of dreams proves to be a pivotal area in the shift of the discipline away from empirical reductionism towards a tentative accommodation of insights emerging from the study of mystical experience. Cross-disciplinary conversations between cognitive science, phenomenology, and the study of religion lend greater credence to the Jamesian position that views personal experience, cultural construction, and intersubjectivity as the chief explanatory categories for dreams/mystical states. Abstract: Cognitive
science is built upon the rational ordering of sense data alone,
while spiritual experience refers to a total engagement of
personality at all levels and the expansion of consciousness
in all its various dimensions. About this difference, William
James said that it was impossible for psychology to claim that
it could build an entire house with only a hammer and a pair
of pliers in its tool box if sense perception and logic were
its only tools. So, regarding mystical states, is cognitive
psychology just playing catch-up to an alternative psychology
more relevant to human experience flourishing outside the academy?
Or is the present new focus on positive psychology, resilience,
and spirituality the first unconscious step toward a solution
of the Hard Problem in the neurosciences — that mysterious
relation between the mind and the brain — and, inexorably,
toward the ultimate transformation of how cognitive psychology
itself is conducted? Abstract: This
presentation explores patterns of form, content, and meaning in
self-described mystical dreams, drawing on extensive sleep and
dream interviews conducted with one hundred contemporary Americans.
Four major hypotheses regarding mystical experience are tested;
mysticism as psychopathological, as culturally constructed, as
a mode of pure consciousness, and as characterized by four Jamesian
“marks” (ineffability, noesis, transience, and passivity). The
data from this study indicate that mystical dreams are experienced
by around half the population — women more than men — and their
prototypical form involves good fortunes, friendly interactions,
and unusual/non-human characters. These findings provide only limited
validation for the psychopathology and pure consciousness hypotheses,
and somewhat more support for the Jamesian and cultural construction
approaches. Taken together, the results suggest that psychological
efforts to understand religious mysticism will remain incomplete
without systematic reference to contemporary dream research. Responding: Matthew Day, Florida State University
A8-221 Sunday - 1:00 pm-2:30 pm Purushottama Bilimoria, Deakin and Melbourne, Presiding Theme: Spiritual Biographies in Modern Yoga: India, Europe, and America This session will examine the “spiritual biographies” of key figures in the development and transmission of traditions of modern yoga in India, Europe, and America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In particular, we will examine how the innovation of yoga modernists exist in tension between the metaphysical moorings of the sectarian and religious traditions that their practices are rooted in and the cosmopolitan and modernist frames to which they have adapted their practices. Of particular interest in this discussion is the dynamic relationship between yoga as a form of “mysticism” or “spirituality” versus yoga as a form of physical culture aimed at health and material prosperity. It will be demonstrated how the tensions between yoga as spirituality and yoga as physical culture in these “spiritual biographies” have a number of implications with respect to issues of gender, authority, and identity within modern and contemporary yoga traditions. Abstract: Being
the recipient of ‘secret transmission' of the essential, timeless
truths of yoga is commonly assumed to be an essential element
of a ‘traditional’ yoga biography. However, this ‘mystical transmission’
is apparently at odds with the prevalence of certification and
liability insurance required in the contemporary yoga milieu.
This paper will explore how the ‘traditional’ biographies of
two Indian-born yoga teachers were used to legitimize the practice
of yoga in the British adult education system. It will argue
that this can reveal how the current certificate-centred culture
was created. The paper will then consider the implications of
this shift of presentation with particular attention to the extent
transformative life experiences are moderated by institutional
expectations. Abstract: In
the late 1930s, British journalist Louise Morgan redirected surya
namaskar (and by extension, hatha yoga) away from being a practice
performed by Indian men to being a practice performed by Western
women. In so doing, she played as critical a role in the formation
of modern hatha yoga as that played by Shri Yogendra, Swami Kuvalayananda,
K. V. Iyer, Shri Sundaram, Bhavanarao Shrinivasrao, T. Krishnamacharya,
Apa Pant, Swami Sivananda, Indra Devi, K. Pattabhi Jois and B.
K. S. Iyengar. Abstract: Swami Kripalvananda: Biography and Autobiography In 1977 Swami Kripalvananda (1913-1981) moved from India to live in silence and practice yoga sadhana in a small kutir built especially for him on the property of the Kripalu Ashram in the rural area of Sumneytown Pennsylvania. He inspired a transnational community of devotees, and Amrit Desai named his center and his style of yoga teaching in his honor. Yet in spite of the popularity of the Kripalu name, the life of Swami Kripalvananda is little known and has yet to receive scholarly attention. In this paper I examine the biographical account of his fascinating life as told by two of his principal disciples and discuss his autobiography as an adept yogi in search of divine body (divya deha).
June McDaniel, College of Charleston Monday - 9:00 am-11:30 am Thomas Cattoi, Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, Presiding Theme: Liminal Conjunctions: Exploring Emotions at the Edge The term “liminality” indicates a transitory condition characterized by openness, indeterminacy, and ambiguity, in which one’s sense of identity is partially suspended and in which conventional limitations on self-understanding and behavior are suspended. In mystical experience it may also indicate transgressions of the line between conscious and sub- or non-conscious events, or between persons and spiritual beings or a panpsychic world soul. The presence of liminal experiences on the margins of mainstream religious practice challenges institutional and doctrinal claims to control and govern religious experience. This session will explore some instances of mystical liminality across the centuries, charting how mystics across cultures and traditions have used their own experience to subvert conventional constructs of religious authority, hierarchy, and gender. Abstract: During
the Middle Ages, Catherine of Alexandria emerged as one of the
most popular and beloved patron saints. The purpose this paper
is two-fold. First, I explore the relationship between asceticism,
love, and knowledge in her narrative. I isolate the interconnection
between her ascetical practices, her affective mysticism, and
her intellectual capabilities. Second, I argue that Catherine’s
narrative, on the one hand, contains archetypal features of saint
such as a beautiful, young, virginal princess who resists impure
advances, suffers unjust torture and dies, and inspires religious
conversion. However, on the other hand, Catherine’s narrative
is transgressive (and thus problematizes the archetype) because
she as the intellectual converts non-Christians through secular
reasoning and marries Christ. The narrative is also transgressive
in and through its various appropriations where localized reconstructions
(in terms of content and genre) destabilize the meaning and function
of the narrative. Abstract: Contrary
to mind-body dualism or transcendental non-dualism, the monistic
Tantric world view incorporates cognitive and emotive processes
as integral, and body and emotions play as instruments for self-realization.
Rather than transcending somatic conditions in order to achieve
the absolute reality, this approach embraces emotions as the
path. Here not only positive feelings play a role in elevating
self-awareness from the conditioned state of suffering; even
negative emotions of rage, fear, disgust, and perplexity lead
the practitioner to realize the true nature of the self. In this
depiction the self is the totality of awareness. The central
argument of this paper is that Tantric ritualistic and philosophical
paradigms focus not on eliminating emotions but rather on altering
the cognitive and emotional core through a shift of meaning occuring
in the active and induced states of the drama of emotions. Abstract: The
tantric Hindu Shakta yogic tradition and Emanuel Swedenborg’s
mystical marriage system show striking similarities. Gender imagery
is used by both systems analogously. In the Shakta system, the
devotee is seen as the goddess Shakti, who is in ecstatic union
with Shiva. In Swedenborg’s system, the devotee is seen as the
bride in mystical marriage with Christ. Provocative similarities
emerge when the subtle body in Shakta yoga and the spiritual
body in Swedenborg are considered. In both systems the body is
cosmologized and the cosmos is instantiated in the subtle body.
Both systems identify similar pairs of left and right, sun and
moon, right and left, white and red, and masculine and feminine.
Finally inner breath is seen as a means for attaining mystical
union between the devotee and God. In the Shakta system the prana
and apana internal “breaths” are used, while Swedenborg's system
speaks of “internal respiration”. Abstract: This paper examines the importance of penetration and interpenetration to the larger mystical and meditative message of the 'Rothschild Canticles,' a 14th century illuminated manuscript. It will do so through a survey of relevant text-image pairs from the manuscript, many of which reference the mystical union of the Song of Songs. It is the goal of this paper to suggest that the images of penetration provide a framework for understanding the manuscript as a whole, as well as medieval conceptions of vision, body, and the mystical Christian life.
June McDaniel, College of Charleston
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