It is easy to see the difficulties people have in grasping spiritual and religious seeking as a constructive subject because of the ease with which science is misplaced in a worldview of scientific materialism. I just watched a debate between Sam Harris and Chris Hedges from 2007, and read up on their biographies. Harris, it turns out, spent some length of time up to eleven years before finishing his bachelors degree. He spent some portion of that time in Asia studying Buddhism and religion there at some level. It´s worth noting that his mother created a popular TV series or two, Soap, the old comedy from the 1970s, for one. That actually begins to explain a few things. Harris´ approach was more a comedy routine, with pop philosophical elements and anti-fundamentalist jibes that play on popular prejudices. While therapeutic psychology would be an appropriate academic subject to use to ground the discussion of spiritual-religious experience, Harris uses none of that. As Hedges pointed out, Harris was talking like those who externalize evil. In my own seeking, observations like Piaget´s in human developmental got my attention, and later Freud´s observations of "abreaction" emotional reconnection as the result of the "talking cure," Freud´s method that spans his work before "free association." By John Bradshaw´s innovative work popularized in the 1990s, Bradshaw referred to the dysfunctional family and "inner child work" in books like "Healing the Shame that Binds You" and "Homecoming." My larger interests have included psychosomatic medicine to address the phenomena of responding to disease, as in OC Simonton MD´s Cancer Clinic and support group, visualization, and psychotherapeutic types of techniques in support of combination treatments. As Simonton quickly began supporting the transpersonal, spiritual interests of his patients, so is comparative religious studies the field that ultimately combines the philosophical methodologies being used to assess spiritual-religious experience. The following text is based on comparative studies
"Having their source in the commonality of empirical findings regarding body-consciousness among various traditions, the
core principles of Psychosomatic Mysticism (PM) include decentralized consciousness, structural correlations between the psyche and the body (namely the map of meaningful and essential elements of the psyche and spiritual experiences pertaining to the bodily centers of consciousness), in-depth understanding of subtle energy as intentionality, and the possibility
of actualizing cosmic awareness in the individual psyche. In Table 1, we present the summary of the essential features of the various forms of PM. These systems are the integral parts of major religions and are immediately connected with the attainment of the grand goals of human fulfillment—such as Enlightenment, Liberation or Union. This includes Hesychasm in Christianity (Dubrovin, 1990; Spidlik, 1986; Ware, 1986), Sufism in general (Renard, 1985), and especially particular systems including the knowledge of lataif (subtle body centers), such as of Simnani (Elias, 1995) and some sections in the work
of al-Ghazzali (Gairdner, 1924/1952) in Islam, Shakta-Vedanta with Kundalini Yoga and Kashmir Shaivism (Briggs, 1938/1998; Muller-Ortega, 1989; Vijnanabhairava, 1979; Woodroffe, 1981) in Hinduism, Buddhist Tantra Vajrayana (Bhattaracharyya, 1999; Lama Kun-zang Rinpoche, August 24, 2002, personal communication), Zen and Ch'an Buddhism (Durkheim, 1962; Hershock, 1996), alchemical
yoga in Taoism (Yu, 1973), and developed forms of paganism (Johnson, 1998; Yagan, 1984). The use of the bodily centers of
awareness is also found in Gnosticism (The Papyrus of Ani, 1998)."
"Health or particular skills-oriented systems of body and energy-work (e.g., Tai Chi, martial arts, Hatha yoga, or Chi-Gong) appear to have developed after, and as the outcrops of, the forms of PM that are listed in Table I. However, this is a preliminary classification not covering the diversity of all existing forms of PM. Classification questions regarding the genealogy of the various forms, their mutual enrichment, and relationship between PM and mystical philosophies, such as Persian philosophy of Illumination (Walbridge, 2000) or the neoplatonic thought of Pseudo-Dionisius (Pseudo-Dionisius, 1987), remain to be researched. Shamanism is also not covered here, as the forms of embodied awareness in shamanism are extremely complex and require special research attention. The material in Table 1 is based on the first author's (Louchakova's) field studies. Psychospiritual practices in all the forms of PM utilize awareness, concentration,
devotion and worship, as well as imagination. Table 1 names only the specific forms of practice, targeting the main centers of embodied consciousness in particular traditions."
Luchakova, Olga and Arielle S Warner. "Via Kundalini: Psychosomatic excursions in transpersonal psychology." The Humanistic Psychologist, 31(2-3), 115-158; March 2003
What are your thoughts about spiritual practice, religion, and these ideas?
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