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Publication detail

Religious Experience and the Study of Yoga

Authors: Váchal Marek

Year: 2016

Type of publication: ostatní - přednáška nebo poster

Page from-to: nestránkováno

Titles:

Language	Name	Abstract	Keywords
eng	Religious Experience and the Study of Yoga	If we consider yoga as a kind of religiosity, it is a practice in which one has a religious experience. In the first part of my paper I outline a historical context in which the concept of religious experience was formed. It has three parts. In part one I consider the origin of Protestantism in the 16th century and the encounter of Europeans with Asian cultures in latter centuries. Then, I show how religious affiliation of authors such as F. Schleiermacher, R. Otto and W. James influenced the origin of the concept as a scientific term. In part free I also look at the contemporary scientists engaged in the study of religious experience in yoga such as S. R. Sarbacker or K. Puhakka and I follow how they continue in the tradition described in the previous two steps. In the second part of my paper I introduce results from my fieldwork. In it I focus on the key features of religious experience such as the awareness of the holy, which evokes awe and reverence; the feeling of absolute dependence that reveals a human being’s status as a creature, the sense of being at one with the divine and other features. My question is how these features are understood by European and Indian yogis. Interviews based on my fieldwork show that the concept of religious experience is fully meaningful and intelligible for Europeans, but absolutely meaningless. and unintelligible for Indians	Religious experience; yoga; India studies; protestantism