You are invited to submit a paper on the topic of Phenomenology of Religious Experience,  for the topical issue in of De Gruyter Open Theology journal,    which is  prepared in collaboration with the Society in Phenomenology of Religious Experience, www.sophere.org

The topic is Phenomenology of Religious Experience, broadly understood across several disciplines, phenomenological  philosophy and psychology, theology, philosophy of religion, and traditional and cultural philosophies and psychologies. Papers can be in the following areas: phenomenological ontologies of religious experience, theologies related to religious experience, and descriptive phenomenology and the method, with the examples, case studies, and original research.

We  welcom  focus on the relationship between phenomenology and metaphysics. These contributions can come from philosophical perspective as well as from the traditional religious scholarship.  The speakers are asked to self-identify their stance. In particular, we will be interested in papers that examine the existential status of the religious experience. The recent writings in philosophy of religion indicate that there is question if such status actually exists (e.g. constructivist perspectives such as e.g. Penner, recent debates in cognitive science of religion, or analytical criticism of Zangwill). We welcome papers which consider such perspectives in dialog with traditional phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Stein, Heidegger, Henry, Levinas, Marion, Conrad Martius, Tymieniecka,  Schutz, in classical phenomenology, contemporary phenomenology, and the phenomenology of life.

We would like to discuss how phenomenology can increase our actual understanding of religious experience. In particular, we would welcome papers that develop two directions of inquiries: the phenomenological method through which it is possible to pursue the study of religious experience and the descriptive phenomenology of experience itself, which has been insufficiently pursued. This includes perspectives in cognitive science of religion, should the authors want to establish an interpretive link between phenomenology of religious experience and experimental research.

Authors publishing their articles in the topical issue will benefit from:

– transparent, comprehensive and fast peer review,

– efficient route to fast-track publication and full advantage of De Gruyter Open’s e-technology,

– free language assistance for authors from non-English speaking regions,

– complementary membership in the Society for Phenomenology of Religious Experience on favorable conditions.

Publication costs should be covered by so called Article Processing Charges (APC), paid by authors, their affiliated institutions, funders or sponsors. Authors who would like to apply for discounts or free publication are asked to discuss it with Managing Editor of the journal Dr. Katarzyna =Tempczyk (katarzyna.tempczyk@degruyteropen.com) before submitting their article.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Submissions are due June 1, 2017. To submit an article for the special issue of Open Theology, authors are asked to access the on-line submission system at: http://www.editorialmanager.com/openth/

Please choose as article type: “Topical Issue Article: Phenomenology of Religious Experience”.

Before submission the authors should carefully read over the Instruction for Authors, available at: http://www.degruyter.com/view/supplement/s23006579_Instruction_for_Authors.pdf

All contributions will undergo critical review before being accepted for publication.

Further questions about this thematic issue can be addressed to Dr. Olga Louchakova-Schwartz at olouchakova@gmail.com. In case of technical or financial questions, please contact journal Managing Editor Dr. Katarzyna Tempczyk at katarzyna.tempczyk@degruyteropen.com.

Online-residential webinars, which the Circle for Phenomenology of Religious Experience is putting up after the inauguration conference, will be conducted by leading researchers in this topical area.

Questions:

email olouchakova@gmail.com

Sign up:

email susi.ferrarello@gmail.com

Admissions:

GTU students attend free of charge, all others are asked to give a donation to support the online platform.

Suhrawardī’s nūr mujarrad and reduction in Husserl and Henry

Olga Louchakova-Schwartz, ASPS Sept 8-11, Istanbul

My research indicates that Illuminationist philosophy of Suhrawardī must be analyzed in close comparison with phenomenology of Husserl, and even more so, with material phenomenology of Michel Henry. In Suhrawardī’s (Sohrevardî’s) Ḥikmat al-Ishrâq we find an Arabic phrase nūr mujarrad, translated by Walbridge and Ziai as “incorporeal light”, and by Corbin as “immaterial light”, a principle that “cannot be pointed to, nor be located in a body, nor have spatial dimensions” (112).  The adjective mujarrad, which is past participle of the verb jarrada (“to strip away, remove the outside covering, peel off the shell”), does not mean “incorporeal”.  Why does Suhrawardī chose this interesting term, and what does he mean by it? My  paper will present a detailed exposition of philosophical evidence in Part 2 of Ḥikmat, showing that Suhrawardī operates in the phenomenological attitude and applies tajrīd (action noun from jarrada, “to strip away”, etc.), which in this case is a reduction to pure subjectivity resembling Husserl’s analytic approach in his theory of intentionality. Further parallels need to made with the reading of phenomenological reduction in Michel Henry, due to the hyletic dimension present in Suhrawardī’s analysis of subjectivity. Synchronic phenomenological analysis shows how the founder of Illuminationism generates his intuitive metaphysics out of the gestalt of pure subjectivity, which is signified by the term nūr mujarrad.  Following Suhrawardī’s phenomenological approach to the analysis of philosophical evidence, we must use a literal translation of nūr mujarrad  as “light made bare” or “denuded light”, vs. previously used translations “by sense” which reflect the rationalistic /idealistic philosophical biases of the translators and distort the phiolosophical meaning of the Suhrawardī’s argument. This new translation also leads to a different reading of other central terms of this Illuminationism, such as dhāt, “self-essence”, and barzakh, “barrier”.   The phenomenological approach corrects a crucial interpretive error in translations of Suhrawardī’s corpus, and suggests a reading of Illuminationist philosophy in its own terms, as phenomenological ontology. The phenomenological liberation of light from its coverings is further articulated by Suhrawardī’ in his later Persian work Bustān al-Qulūb (Bostān al-Qolub). It is relevant that in Ḥikmat al­-Ishrāq, Suhrawardî derives his Illuminationism from the sage-philosophers of ancient Iran, and it is their “precious philosophy of Light” which he claims to be reviving. For the bestowal of divine light he specifically uses the terms khwarreh and farreh [from Avestan khvarenah ‘glory’]. This is of a piece with his adaptation of a series of pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iranian conceptual terms and personages.

  This link http://www.icpcc2015.org/ will take you to the website of the International Congress of Pastoral Care and Counseling, to be hold at San Francisco on October 15-21. At this conference, Sofia U Professor Olga Louchakova-Schwartz   will give a talk Prayer of the Heart: Transformative Practices in Clinical Pastoral Education, on the research and practice of embodied contemplative practice of internal prayer which can be used as an essential tool in training of the chaplains, counselors, and those who work with death and dying. While any learning includes transformative aspects, there is a way to mutually enhance the content-learning and the transformative aspects by the use of  introspective practices which have specific, scientifically measured psychological and cognitive effects. Our research shows that selected practices of embodied introspection and internal prayer can be adjusted to meet the needs of higher education and training of helping professionals. We successfully used Prayer of the Heart and related practices in higher education and as tools generation of positive change in various communities . The practice can be flexibly adjusted to meet one’s needs;  it induces positive transformation of character, growth of intuition and empathy and development of altruistic traits,  as well as  mnemonic effects and the increase of flexible intelligence. In this workshop, Professor Louchakova-Schwartz  will introduce the basics of this approach with reference to the Sufi Dhikr of Divine Names, Christian Prayer of the Heart, and Hindu Atma-Vicara a.k.a. self-enquiry, as well as similar practices from other traditions. Of course, positive transformation does not happen overnight and is not expected to be the result of one seminar; however, the workshop will have 75% of its time allocated to experimental activities which can be used by the participants in their future work.

From Cassi Vietan, IONS:

We are doing a survey on experiences people have during or after meditation.  It’s anonymous, and takes about 10-20 minutes to complete.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Meditation_Insight_Questionnaire

Thank you so much!

Cassi

Introspection and Religious Ideas In Theophanis’s “Ladder of Divine Graces”

Open to public

On Tuesday, November 11, 2014, 7:30 pm, I will lecture in the Board Room of Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute, on 2311 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94709.

What is the relationship between introspection, prayer and religious thought? We will discuss the living modes of introspection in the Hesychastic Prayer of the Heart and their connection with the ancient metaphor of the Ladder (or in some cases, staircase) associated with the spiritual progression of the soul.  From the example of the poem in the Philokalia by the 7^th century Theophanis the Monk, I will demonstrate how ideas from Gnostic sects, the neo-Pythagorean legacy and possibly Mithraic influences are interlaced with exclusively Christian introspective prayer, and how historical-textual analysis combined with phenomenological analytic methods further the hermeneutic retrieval of strata of idea-formation in religious history.