This dissertation seeks to answer two fundamental questions. First, what is theosis or deification? And second, given that mystics in the three Abrahamic faiths have written experientially of deification, what might be some of the phenomenological and anthropological lessons tha…
The primary purpose of this thesis is to stress that there is a relationship between the texts one reads and the psychedelic experiences one may have. Reading texts has an effect on set and setting with respect to psychedelic experiences. Further, texts read—by figures like Timo…
This thesis is comprised of two case studies of the works Ruslan and Lyudmila and the Mystic Chorus, that were composed by two nineteenth-century Russian composers Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857) and César Cui (1835–1918). The Chapter on Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila trances the influ…
This dissertation project comparatively analyzes two literary journeys to the afterlife: the first by Dante Alighieri in his famous poem, the Commedia ; the second by the prophet of Islam as outlined in the Kitab al-Mi 'raj (`Book of the Stair'), an Islamic eschatological treati…
Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is a novel whose protagonist seeks intellectual knowledge and spiritual fulfillment over a lifetime of scientific experimentation and solitary rumination. The culmination of his efforts is not to independently verify the Islamic faith, as his final product differ…
A significant number of Muslim communities throughout the world reflect varying degrees of involvement in Islamic mysticism. What bridges are present which will facilitate not only evangelism, but also discipleship and community formation? What can be gleaned from the experience…
My dissertation investigates the fields of modern Islamology and Iranology and its late nineteenth and early twentieth-century context. In particular I argue that the discipline of Sufi mysticism--the academic study of Persian mystical poetry--was the site of national, gendered,…
This dissertation examines the convergence of mysticism, genealogical representation, and sanctity in the social construction of a holy man in nineteenth century Mauritania. It takes as its subject Muhammad Fadil wuld Mamin (d.1868) who is regarded in the existing literature as …
The dissertation examines Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche of Lights ) by the famous Muslim jurist, theologian, and mystic Abu H[dotbelow]alamid Muh[dotbelow]ammad al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111). Mishkat al-Anwar explains a verse of the Qur'an (al-Nur /24:35) and a saying (h[dotbelow]adith…
This study examines the life and scholarship of a French Dominican friar, Serge de Beaurecueil (1917 - 2005). His life time investigation of the mystical dimensions of Islam centered around the life and corpus attributed to the 11th century Hanbalī Sūfī shaykh'Abdullāh Ansārī of…
A full study of the conception of wilāya in a variety of juridical trends, theological schools, and mystical doctrines across the Islamic world in general, and in the Shīʿa intellectual history in particular, is too ambitious a project to undertake in one thesis. Therefore, the …
This thesis takes its cue from Roy Fisher's comment, in 1971, that his poems are 'to do with getting around in the mind'. This getting around, however, is not quite the simple process of 'propositions or explorations in aesthetic ideas', which Fisher suggests. This thesis discus…
Bu çalışma İbn Sînâ ve Sadreddin Konevî’de metafizik bilgi, yani ilm-i ilahi olarak anılan bilginin ne olduğu üzerinedir. Birinci bölümde İbn Sînâ’nın çalışmalarında metafizik bilginin nasıl bir tarihsel süreç geçirdiğine ve metafizik bilginin önemine değinildi. Daha sonra İbn S…
The Jesus Prayer is a form of prayer that for centuries has been preserved and practiced by the Hesychasm, the eremitic tradition that is the direct inheritor of the Desert Fathers of early Christianity. Such prayer is deeply similar to the Integral Yoga spiritual practice or sa…
The doctrine of Waḥdat al-Wuǧūd concerns the relationship between oneness, or unity, and existence. Waḥda, means unity or oneness, and Wujūd means existence or being; thus – Oneness of Being, or Unity of existence. It involves an unequivocal assertion: there is only one real bei…
This dissertation analyzes the relationship between several mystic Sephardic texts called the Kabalah which include the three basic mystic books of Judaism: Sefer Yetsira, Sefer Bahir, and Sefer Zohar, and Argentine writer of Jewish descent, Marcos Ricardo Barnatan’s experimenta…
This study examines the lived experience of self for practitioners from the spiritual tradition of Uwaiysi Sufism, a contemplative, mystical branch of Islam cultivated in the Middle East. Sufi Masters suggest the possibility of attaining and embodying a level of psycho-spiritual…
This dissertation is an ethnohistorical study of an Afghan branch of the Naqshbandiyya/Mujaddidiyya order, the Saifiyya. The problem this study addresses is how the Saifiyya order is able to sustain and perpetuate itself over time. Recent historical studies attribute the surviva…