Sensing the Darkness : Dark therapy, authority, and spiritual experience

NENADALOVÁ, Jana. Sensing the Darkness : Dark therapy, authority, and spiritual experience. In The European Association for the Study of Religions Conference, 27 June-1 July, 2022, University College Cork, Ireland. 2022.

Basic information

Original name

Sensing the Darkness : Dark therapy, authority, and spiritual experience

Authors

NENADALOVÁ, Jana

Edition

The European Association for the Study of Religions Conference, 27 June-1 July, 2022, University College Cork, Ireland, 2022

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Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Prezentace na konferencích

Field of Study

60304 Religious studies

Country of publisher

Ireland

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

References:

URL

Organization unit

Faculty of Arts

Keywords (in Czech)

Náboženská zkušenost; prediktivní vyhodnocování; terapie tmou; autorita

Keywords in English

Religious experience; predictive processing; Dark therapy; authority

Tags

International impact, Reviewed

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Abstract

V originále

Subjective religious experiences are important in many traditions. However, to what extent is their content purely subjective and free, and to what extent is it bound to cultural learning and the influence of other people? The cognitive science of religion currently studies religious experience as a composite product of several underlying cognitive mechanisms under the cognitive-computational theory of predictive processing (PPT). I am presently focusing on qualitative field research of religious experiences related to the “alternative spirituality” cultural context (i.e., on spiritual experiences), specifically experiences induced by the alternative-spiritual technique “Dark therapy” (DT). DT combines the prolonged effect of sensory deprivation – participants are usually one week in complete darkness – and probably also authority priming, represented here as a DT guide, who usually consult a participant’s experiences, feelings, and needs once a day. Sensory deprivation and authority priming were previously identified as variables crucial for successful induction of religious experience even outside the DT context. Therefore, during my talk, I want to introduce my innovative theoretical framework for studying religious/spiritual experiences, which combines PPT with evolutionary theories on social dynamics and authority and supplements it with examples of preliminarily gathered field data.