New Course Starts July 13th: Varieties of Religious Experience & Pure Awareness
Sign up as a paid subscriber for July to Register for full access to this course.
Can states of pure awareness give us direct knowledge of the Divine Nature?
In July we are launching our course that takes a look at the differences between religious experiences as accounted for by modern monotheistic traditions, and the state experience(s) that people describe that are associated with the meditative practice(s) leading to pure awareness. How can they inform each other. The course draws on two recent books that offer comprehensive first, second, and third-person perspectives on these experiences:
David B Yaden and Andrew B. Newberg, The Varities of Spiritual Experience: 21st Century Research and Perspectives,
Thomas Metzinger, The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness
This is a month-long course which meets 5 x for 2 hours live online, with course content and video recordings available before and after. Simply sign up as a paid subscriber for the monthly rate ($40) and you will have full access to this course (as well as previous courses). Course dates are Sat. July 13 at 12 nooh; Tuesday July 16th at 4:00 pm; Sat. July 20th at 12 noon; Thursday July 25th at 6:00 pm; Sat. August 3rd at 12 noon (note all times are NY/Eastern).
Topics to be discussed in this course:
The Science of Altered States
What would be a robust understanding of spiritual experience for the 21st century?
How might psychological and neuroscientific perspectives inform a spiritual understanding, and how might a spiritual perspective inform the sciences?
What are the triggers for spiritual experiences?
Are spiritual experiences always positive?
What are the Varieties of Spiritual Experience?
Numinous Experiences: Encountering Divinity
Revelatory Experiences: Voices, Visions, and Epiphanies
Synchronicity Experiences: Everything Happens for a Reason
Mystical Experiences: Unity and Ego-Dissolution
Aesthetic Experiences: Awe and the Sublime
Paranormal Experiences: Ghosts, Angels, and Other Entities
What is Pure Awareness
Why is the study of MPE (minimal phenomenal experience) important, and what can it tell us about consciousness?
Does pure awareness open consciousness to divine revelation?
What characterizes experiences of pure awareness? (Here we delve into a meta-research study of first-person reports): relaxation, peace, silence, wakefulness, clarity, density, soundness, nonidentification, suchness, presence, connectedness, natural state, coming home, nothing to do, joy-awe-bliss-gratitude, simplicity-nothingness-absence, emptiness and fullness, luminosity, witnessing.
What is the nature of consciousness (mapping the phenomenal field)?
Pure Awareness during Dreamless Deep Sleep
Pure Awareness and Lucid Dreaming
From Timelessness to Timeless Change
Space without Structure, Center, or Periphery
Bodiless Body-Experience
Ego Dissolution: Melting into the Phenomenal Field
Nondual Being: Unity
Nondual Awareness: Insight
Transparency, Translucency, and Virtuality
The True Self
Pure Awareness Knows Itslef
It Is Not an Experience
Meditation and Nonmeditation
Timeless Continuity