(RNS) — In his new book, ‘Desmond Tutu: A Spiritual Biography of South Africa’s Confessor,’ Michael Battle delves into the ways Tutu’s religious formation shaped a vision that helped topple apartheid ...

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Temporal lobe epilepsy can trigger intense religious or spiritual experiencesSeizure type and brain area influence mystical ...

It was 1995, and I had just arrived at St. John’s University in New York, fresh from a summer spent at a Hindu monastery. I was on a spiritual quest—a journey sparked, in part, by post-traumatic ...

Notable theologian and author John Piper has warned Christians not to pursue mysticism or believe that one can connect with God in a supernatural realm to gain hidden knowledge. In a recent episode of ...

In two perceptive, quietly stirring books published this week, an old and a young American gave their testimony about mysticism. A Call to What Is Vital (Macmillan; $2) is the last book written by ...

A woman is walled into a small room, which is attached to the side of a church. In that room, there is not much she can do other than contemplate and pray. There are two small holes carved into the ...

Conventional ascetic, mystical theology is based on an affective, purgative, illumined, unitive rising of the soul to God, following paths set forth by Ss. Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Francis ...

Rick Doblin had come to believe that psychedelic experiences are the "common core" of all religions, and he wanted to test this thesis. In February 1984, the 31-year-old college student living off a ...

In the smoke-filled cellar cafés and cold-water flats of San Francisco’s waterfront and Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, the word these days is “beat.” Patriarch and prophet of what he calls “the beat ...