In fourteenth-century England, a form of lay spirituality emerged, influenced by the writings and example of the famous mystics, both English and continental, of that period, but much affected by other developments as well. Against the background of socio-economic and political change, the emergence of lay spirituality is examined, with particular emphasis upon continuity and change within the church, the religious instruction of the age, and the spirituality of the English mystics. Finally, the sole surviving written record of lay spirituality of the period, The Book of Margery Kempe, is investigated, along with its author, Margery Kempe - pilgrim, visionary, and aspiring mystic.

In this qualitative phenomenological study, the researcher interviewed 18 hospitalised patients and community members in rural Appalachia to learn about their mystical experiences in the context of health care. A loosely structured interview format addressed factors that initiate mystical experience and essential qualities of mystical experience. In addition, the researcher examined the nursing process, focusing on assessments and actions which supported the participants in sharing their experiences. The researcher also considered her response to being the recipient of these shared experiences. Data were analysed using the crystallisation/immersion method and concept mapping. Mystical experience was conceptualised as a process incorporating initiation, occurrence, maturation, and integration of mystical experience. Essential aspects of the mystical experience itself were found to include sensory-motor perception, interaction with the supernatural, interaction with dead and living members of the family, conviction of reality, cognition, dynamic tension and emotional intensity. Nursing actions which supported the participant included listening and support. The researcher's response to the participants' sharing their experiences included tension, intimacy and empathy, sense of awe and autonomic responses. In addition, the researcher developed an appreciation of the mystical in everyday experience. / Health Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (Health Studies)

This study focuses on orthodoxy and mysticism in the religious thought of Shaikh Mul,tammad ibn Tahir al-Fattani (914/1508-986/1578), a sixteenth century Sunui Rohra scholar. Islam had persistently presented two faces: one that was shari ah­ minded and concerned with the outward, socially cognizable behaviour and anothE'r mystkal-minded, concerned with the inward, personal life of the individual. The former was the domain of the "ulama", whereas the Sufi pirs accepted the care of the latter. While there were always those who accepted the one face of Islam as genuine and mistrusted the other or even regarded it as spurious, Shaikh al-Fattani succeecded in marrying the two. He was at once both a mystic pir and an orthodox religious scholar. A biography of Mul}ammad ibn Tahir al-Fattani based on the previous works is attempted with the aim being to collect the factual information pertaining directly to the details of his life. The last years of Shaikh al-F'attani's life were devoted to his reform involvement in his community and particularly to the removal of the Mahdawiyyah thoughts of Sayyid Muhammad Jawnpuri)who had declared himself the promised Mahdi. Against this backdrop of the life account of al-Fattani elements of orthodoxy and mysticism are identified in his scholarly works. Best known for his work Majma bihar al-anwar fi gharaib al-tanzil wa lataif al-akhbir, all the extant works of the Shaikh are discussed. To understand tbe subject within the context of his ethnic identity, aspects of the Bohra community are studied . lt is shown that their occupation as merchants and a history that emphasised their ancient link to the faith of Islam were some of the factors that shaped their group identity. Religious affiliation of the Bohras is explored in detail and after examining the various religious groupings it is evident that the principal communities amongst them differ substantially in their belief systems. Muslims of Sunni Bohra descent are to be found in South Africa. The Sunni Bohra community in general and their ulama in particular are today constantly challenged to not only be devoted to orthodoxy but to sufi doctrine and discipline as well. / Religious studies / D.Litt. et Phil. (Religious Studies)

Attributes associated with mystical experience among Christians, Buddhists, Jews and Pagans are explored in psychometric data presented in this thesis. Two such attributes in particular, the personality trait of psychoticism and attitudes held towards mysticism, are given focal attention. Psychoticism, a trait at one time supposedly linked with vulnerability to psychosis, has been much assessed in previous research into religiosity- personality correlates, and a more recent emerging literature has assessed this trait in relationship to religious experience. However, as this thesis clarifies, good grounds exist for challenging the view that this is a homogeneous trait. Assessments of traits relating to distinct facets of psychoticism, specifically the three traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience, provided solid grounds for taking apparently significant positive correlations between mystical experience and psychoticism as evidence that the former is associated with creativity rather than psychosis. In each religious group studied, a significant positive correlation was found between attitudes to mysticism and mystical experience. However, this thesis also presents grounds for distinguishing these concepts. The possibility that psychoticism relates in different ways to these constructs, and the implications this has for the question of whether mysticism arises through social learning or reflects an innate tendency invariant across creed, are considered

Notre recherche porte sur la théologie mystique chez Grégoire de Nysse et effectue une relecture de la mystique du Nysséen à partir de deux thématiques capitales dans l’œuvre de ce dernier : la thématique gnoséologique et la thématique érotique. Au cours de cette étude, nous montrons la place considérable de la gnôsis dans l’œuvre grégorienne et nous redéfinissons le statut de celle-ci dans l’ascension de l’âme vers Dieu en lien étroit avec l’amour. Cet amour, désigné par l’érôs, constitue le double mouvement de l’expérience mystique et se définit comme l’érôs de Dieu pour l’homme (l’incarnation du Christ) et l’érôs de l’homme vers Dieu (la divinisation de l’homme). Cette conception de l’érôs résulte à la fois d’une continuité et d’une discontinuité par rapport à l’héritage philosophique grec, dans une relation qui nous invite à redéfinir la théologie comme généalogie. À partir de cette aventure érotique entre Dieu et l’homme, Grégoire établit une relation intrinsèque entre foi et raison et pose les fondements d’un dialogue véritable entre théologie et philosophie puisque, selon lui, la véritable ascension mystique ne saurait être détachée de la démarche gnoséologique, elle-même étroitement liée à l’expérience érotique. Ainsi la mystique, fondée sur la gnôsis et l’érôs, redéfinit-elle la théologie comme mystique. / This piece of research into Gregory of Nyssa’s mystical theology provides a rereading of Gregory’s mysticism, based upon two leading themes in his work: gnoseology and eros. The study demonstrates the considerable space Gregory gives to gnôsis in his work, and redefines the role it plays in the soul’s ascent to God, which is closely connected with love. This love, designated as erôs, constitutes the dual movement of mystical experience, and is defined as the erôs of God for human beings (incarnation of Christ) and as the erôs that draws human beings towards God (divinisation of humanity). Such a conception of erôs is both continuous and discontinuous with the Greek philosophical tradition, a relation that invites a redefinition of theology as genealogy. On the basis of this erotic adventure between God and humankind, Gregory establishes an intrinsic relation between faith and reason, and lays the foundations of a genuine dialogue between theology and philosophy. For according to him, authentic mystical ascent cannot be detached from the gnoseological process, which, in turn, is closely linked to erotic experience. In this way, a mysticism founded on gnôsis and erôs leads to a redefinition of theology as mysticism.

The concept of compassion has recently held a controversial role in political thought. Critics have tied it with the condescension and latent self-interest of pity, while proponents have asserted it as the ethical posture from which to approach the suffering of others. This thesis looks at the role of compassion in the political sphere, arguing that political compassion involves a decentring of oneself as the primary subject of political action, looking instead to forego one’s own desire and to replace it with the desire of another. It pays particular attention to the thought of Hannah Arendt, who excludes this self-sacrificing compassion from the political sphere, due to the importance of speech to political action, and in turn, the importance of muteness to compassion. To Arendt, political speech intends to performatively bring one’s uniqueness into the world, whereas compassion performatively denies this subjectivity and is fundamentally unpolitical. She asserts that not only do public displays of compassion destroy their very value, but moreover, that a focus of compassion and suffering in the political sphere overshadows the need for cool, sober discourse between equals. I argue that, even in accepting Arendt’s definition of the political, there is space for compassion as a political labour. While Arendt asserts the need for speech and action in the political sphere, she conflates the free will involved in the plurality and uniqueness of the content of speech with the uniform, natural will to speak. Her articulations of the political realm, which require one to make oneself heard among equals, invoke at that same moment an immediate need for the labour of others foregoing their own desire to speak and act, to instead passively listen. Instead of being a realm exclusively to manifest one’s will, the political instead requires a reciprocity of desire, and its abnegation. / Graduate / 0615 / 0422 / 0681 / charlebois@u.northwestern.edu

Thesis with title The Vision of Merkabah and its Reflexion in Rabbinical Judaism deals with jewish's mysticism. The work has point evidence, that jewish's mysticism starts yet in early medieval times. During centuries extends further and its line achieves until today's time. It compares most old mysticism texts with their occurrence at a later literature. It focus on mystical groups and theirs incidence. The work attends to difference mystic of jewish in different geographical regions in course of time. Keywords Ezekiel, prophets, mysticism, kabbalah, merkabah, sefirot, God

Traversé par une insatiable soif de spiritualité et de liberté, le XXe siècle est connu pour être celui de la « Mort de Dieu » ou plus explicitement celui du repositionnement de l’homme au centre du divin. C’est dans l’élan de modernité, de renouvellement spirituelle, donc de rejet de toute sorte de tradition religieuse que s’inscrit l’expérience poétique de Pierre Jean Jouve, Georges Bataille et Paul Valéry.Alors que rien ne semble a priori les réunir, ces trois poètes aux idées divergentes et souvent opposées, un croyant iconoclaste et hétérodoxe, un athée hanté par la quête du sacré et un pur rationaliste à la recherche de son « Dieu », ont fait de l’univers de la poésie un lieu de questionnement, d’exploration profonde de l’intériorité et de quête de soi. A travers une extase à la fois poétique et mystique qui fait le lit à l’éros, à l’amour, à la musique et à la mort dans une sorte de jonction entre Immanence et Transcendance, il se dessinent de nouvelles voies d’expérimentation spirituelle qui érigent ces poètes en véritables prophètes de leur époque. / Crossed by insatiable one thirst of spirituality and freedom, the XXth centuryis known to be the one of «God’s Death or more explicitly that repositioning of theman in the center of the divine. It is in the moose of spiritual modernity, of renewal,thus various rejection of religious tradition that joins the poetic experience of PierreJean Jouve, Georges Bataille and Paul Valéry. While nothing seems to gather them, these three poets in the divergent andoften set ideas, an iconoclastic and heterodox believer, an atheist haunted by the questof the sacred and a pure rationalist in search of his "God", made of the universe of the poetry a place of questioning, deep exploration of the interiority and quest of one.Through an ecstasy at the same time poetic and mystic which makes the bedfor éros, love, music and death in a junction of Immanence and Transcendence, it take shape new ways of spiritual experiment which set up these poets as real prophetsof their time.

The thesis deals with the author's personality and the novels of Miloš Urban. The aim was to map their existing reception, especially with regard to the development and reflection of author's style and appearance of the narrator. With respect that this is the current author and his work is not yet reflected in a separate monographic material consisted the thesis primarily of review works, both published in the literature review journals and those published by the daily press. Work focused on confrontation the perspective of the reviewers and my own critical reading of the author's novels.

Atualmente, a Alfabetização Científica e a Natureza da Ciência são perspectivas de reconhecida importância no Ensino de Ciências, a serem utilizadas com o objetivo de formar cidadãos responsáveis, críticos, reflexivos e atuantes na sociedade. No entanto, apesar do reconhecimento da importância dessas perspectivas, há pouco consenso sobre o seu significado, como elas devem ser ensinadas e em que medida elas realmente contribuem para o exercício da cidadania. Muitos desses questionamentos se devem à falta de uma abordagem histórico-social, que leve em conta, além dos fatores sociais que influenciam a ciência, os fatores que influenciam na apropriação e na circulação do conhecimento científico em meios não-científicos. Nesse contexto, podemos destacar os diferentes usos e interpretações dos conceitos e da teoria da Física Quântica que vêm sido feitos nas últimas décadas em meios não-científicos, culminando no fenômeno cultural denominado misticismo quântico. Trata-se de um exemplo concreto de um conhecimento científico, que foi apropriado e adquiriu novos significados e interpretações, ao circular no meio sociocultural. Os novos usos adquiridos por essa teoria são considerados, principalmente por cientistas e educadores de ciências, como sendo inapropriados, porém pouco se sabe sobre sua origem e sobre o seu processo de difusão no meio social. O presente trabalho investiga as possíveis origens histórico-sociais e os processos de difusão dos diferentes usos e interpretações da Física Quântica e a gênese da sua relação com o misticismo, tomando como principal referencial teórico a epistemologia do médico e filósofo da ciência Ludwik Fleck, acerca da circulação do conhecimento. Também se fará a Análise do Discurso de dois livros místicos que utilizam a Física Quântica, a fim de compreender as características que esse fenômeno assumiu mais recentemente. A partir disso, se fará uma reflexão acerca das implicações desse estudo para o Ensino de Ciências, mais especificamente sobre os objetivos da Alfabetização Científica e de se trabalhar a Natureza da Ciência em sala de aula. / Currently, scientific literacy and Nature of Science are two Science Education perspectives of recognized importance. They aim to train people to be responsible, critical, reflexive and active citizens. However, besides the recognition of their importance, there is no consensus about what exactly they mean, on how they must be taught, and if they really contribute for practicing citizenship. Many of these questions are due to a lack of a social-historical approach that includes social factors which influence science, and elements that influence on appropriation and circulation of scientific knowledge on non-scientific groups. In this context, the different uses and interpretation of Quantum Physics that have been made by non-scientific groups in the last decades are highlighted. These uses and interpretations culminated on the cultural phenomenon called quantum mysticism. This is a concrete example of a scientific knowledge that was appropriated and that acquired new meanings and interpretation, when it circulated on society. These new uses acquired by this theory are usually considered as inappropriate by scientists and science educators. However, little is known about its origins and about its diffusion processes in society. The present work investigates the possible social-historical origins and the diffusion processes of the different uses and interpretations of Quantum Physics and the genesis of its relationship with mysticism. For this, we based the research on the epistemology of the philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck, about the circulation of knowledge. And, to understand better the more actual characteristics of this cultural phenomenon, we also make the Discourse Analysis of two mystical books that talk about Quantum Physics. Based on this analysis, we also show the possible implications of this study to Science Education, more specifically about the objectives of scientific literacy and of teaching about the Nature of Science.