In human spiritual culture there exists a class of methods that aim at exerting infl uence upon psyche of a man, a group of individuals or society at a whole. We shall refer to these methods as psychological practices — or psychopractices. Psychopractices can bear both conscious and unconscious character, their target may be either getting into temporary altered state of consciousness or initiating a long-period rearrangement of mentality; they can be either self-purposed or directed onto other people. Being harmoniously intertwined with traditional cultures, such methods have been accompanying mankind within its evolution history, yet it is for the recent decades that one can observe an abrupt growth of interest in psychopractices — both their application and their study. Th ere are a lot of samples of such interest: manifold (in dozens of times) increase of religious and mystic fellowships that use ecstatic techniques; fancy for oriental and archaic traditions; substantial growth of psychotherapy role in social life; penetration of psychedelic subculture into mass culture; continued discussing by mass media of such topics as psychological violence and manipulation, control of consciousness, informative-psychological war — the
“intra-psychological” theme plays yet more and more important role for a common mind.
Th ere is a counterintuitive tendency appeared in modern culture that notwithstanding the apparent predominance of rationalism and skepticism, secularization and refusal from traditional forms of religiosity, shamanism, antique mystery plays, mystic and esoteric traditions of Middle and New Age such as Sufi sm, Cabbala and Hesychasm are once again in demand. Th e onsetting globalization brings up gradual diff usion of Eastern and Western cultures, and even mixing of Eastern and Western mind-set, active mastering of new types of psychological culture and psychopractices by representatives of European civilization.
Th e predominance of “ratio” and corporeity disal owance, so traditional for European culture, gradual y succumbs to the “ecstatic culture”. Today the means of getting into particular states of consciousness that were previously available for restricted community only — those ascetics, heremeits and representatives of mystic societies — are open for 10 Andrey G. Safronov. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS
practical y everyone interested. A whole industry of ecstasies reproduction is being actively developed, including state-of-the-art elaborations of psychopharmacology and technical means of psyche aff ecting. Taking into consideration inconsistency of al these tendencies and their signifi cance for modern culture, there is a need for performingtheir thorough and integral philosophic apprehensionthat would be based upon both modern material as well as general understanding of cultural value of psychopractices that is also to be formed.
On the other side, the study of psychological practices has a suffi -
cient anthropological value. In fact, the loss of metaphysical, and then totalitarian, ideological and technocratic ideals that happened within the age of post-modernism has once again brought to the foreground the problem of the man, fi rst of al , of his anthropological perspectives.
Th e right and technical capability of selecting not only the way of one’s corporal existence, but also the state of one’s consciousness urges for both comprehension of the whole set of perspectives already enunciated by mankind as well as development of the new ones, establishment of the new “self-concern” that would correspond to current realities. In this aspect the study of experience of wel -developed systems of psychopractices that existed within traditional cultures, including the non-European ones (archaic and oriental) becomes actual, since but for revealing such perspectives it would help to formulate new methodological approaches to apprehension of human problem.
Notwithstanding the abundance of practical material on such psychopractices, its main part is not conceptualized in terms and notional structures of modern science. Th eir role in culture is also poorly investigated. Today there are only few works that consider separate types of psychopractices, mainly the oriental ones, from scientifi c point. Some aspects of this topic have been touched upon in contiguous scientifi c areas. Th e main part of literature that deals with these terms of reference can be divided into six groups:
1. Literature on religious psychology that encompasses elaborated methodology of psychological experiences’ study. Th ere are considerable results attained in this direction in the framework of psychoanalysis (Z. Freud, A. Freud, K. Jung, E. Fromm) and pragmatic psychology of W. James.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS. Andrey G. Safronov 1 1
2. Anthropologic and culture-study surveys of religious ritual representing abundant practical material on the issue of psychopractices that are present in many rituals in an inexplicit form (J. Fraser, E. Taylor, C.
Levi-Strauss, L. Levy-Bruhl, M. Eliade).
3. Research studies within the sphere of childhood ethnology and anthropology, in particular, in the problem of children upbringing in diff erent cultures and their “initiation” into those cultures norms (M.
Mead, E. Erikson, I. Kohn).
4. Phenomenological studies of psychopractices proper, mostly narrow-specialized, that appeared within the recent years. For the most notorious we should note the works of N. Abaev, E. Torchinov, S. Khoruzhij.
5. Texts that continue the “self-concern” discourse formulated by M.
Foucault.
6. Empirical surveys of psychological manipulations that are used by modern social institutes, in particular, by religious systems (R. Lifton, S. Hassan, E. Volkov).
Today there isn’t any research investigation that should contain integral approach to phenomenon study of religious psychopractices.
Section 1
CONCEPTUAL FIELD:
RELIGION, RELIGIOSITY,
MYSTICISM
AND ESOTERICISM
1.1. MAIN COMPOUNDS
OF RELIGIOUS CULTURE
1.1.1. The Issue of Defi ning the Term “Religion” In order to perform appropriate analysis of the here consideredissue of religious psychopractices and their cultural value it is necessary to make thorough analysis of the terms “religion” and “religiosity” themselves. Since — and it will be shown in this section — these notions are rather ambiguous, we shall try to consider the broadest range of cultural phenomena that might refer to the topic in concern, and generate a working defi nition that would be the most satisfactory for the purpose of this research study.
Th e term “religion” is considered to have been initial y introduced by Ancient Greek politician, philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Ci-cero (years 106-43 BC). Th e term is supposed to have originated from the Latin “religio” — contrition, piety, theopathy, cult object; “relig-are” — to bind, to attach; “religere” — to turn back, to contemplate, to be afraid of [48].
Today there exist more than hundred defi nitions of religion, their most complete list can be found in the Oxford Dictionary [399]. Existing defi nitions can be divided into the exclusivistic ones that insist upon absoluteness of some sole religion and correspondingly contain the defi nition of this religion only, for example, defi nitions of religion by Christian authors that go back to Lactantius: “Religion is a link to God through one’s piety” [399. Hereinafter the marking refers to quo-PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS. Andrey G. Safronov 1 3
tations of works that are foreign to the author and that have been translated by the translator, while the marking stands next to quotations that are cited in original or have been translated into English by English-speaking translators — translator’s note], and the inclusivistic ones which substantially expanded defi nition of religion can actually account for any social phenomenon, that is, for example, the defi nition of religion given by E. Fromm “I understand by religion any system of thought and action shared by a group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion. In fact, there wasn’t any culture — and it might never appear — that would have existed without religion in this broad sense” [335].
For a long time (while some researchers stil continue to support this point of view) the main criterion of religion was the belief in existence of some supernatural creature or supernatural reality. Th e natural — supernatural dichotomy was considered basic for religion existence. In this case religion can be defi nes as “the synthesis of belief in the supernatural with rites devoted to the supernatural” [399].
Defi nitions of such type leave undisclosed the question of what that supernatural actual y is. Let us turn to the origin of the word “natural”.
Th is is a derivative from the word “nature”. Th ere is another synonym to this word — the “super-essential”. Th us, supernatural is a phenomenon that is beyond the laws of nature, and a link to this phenomenon is eff ected by means of religion.
Still, though such defi nition correlates with description of traditional Western religions, being, in fact, formulated on their basis, it comes to obvious contradiction with modern religious experience. And it is absolutely inapplicable to many oriental religions. For example, should one take the “contact” between contactee-ufologists and the UFO for the act of worshipping, and consider UFO to be a supernatural creature? Where should we draw the line between science and mysticism in Dianetics and similar religious psychological systems? Would it be appropriate to refer belief in extrasensoryto religious beliefs? Or how can we explain from the point of this defi nition the activity of Raëlists who consider cloning a child (in complete correspondence with science, and hence — with Nature) to be a religious act? One can proceed further with the line of irrelevances between modern religious realities and the aforesaid defi nition.
14 Andrey G. Safronov. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS
E. Durkheim was the fi rst to approach this issue in a new way, having considered forthe major criterion of religion the division of social phenomena into two spheres — sacred and profane(secular). According to Durkheim, “A religion is a unifi ed system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbid-den—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community cal ed a Church, al those who adhere to them” [83; 399]. Th is point of view was further developed in works of religion phenomenologists of the XXth cent. — R. Otto, N. Soderblom, M. Eliade [355–359] where the sacred — secular dichotomy became central in consideration of religious phenomena.
Still, today this class of defi nitions becomes less coherent withreality requirements as well. Religions become more integrated into the “profane” life while the sacred is becoming a prerogative of non-religious systems. As example of the fi rst process one could draw the so-called religious marketing, that is: usage of special manipulation techniques for involvement of new community members and keeping the old ones.
In this, the deliberate struggle for the “clientele” is typical not only of neo-religious systems, but of rather traditional ones as wel . Let us remember the recent Russian Orthodox Church act of “promoting” its web-sites in the Internet [149, pgs. 46-49]. One can speak about peculiar market of spiritual services that in modern mentality makes no contradiction to religiosity spirit. Such “market” approach manifests through enabling a person to simultaneousvisiting of several religious communities, this being mostly typical of neo-Christian and neo-Oriental systems [255, 248]. Moreover, in our time it also becomes more diffi cult to defi ne the category of religiosity itself [105, pg. 36].
It is also notable that the defi nition of E. Durkheim, as well as any other purely sociological defi nition, is not able to embrace the individual aspects of religiosity such as personal mystic experience [236, 292], unconscious religiosity [105, pg. 38; 230] etc.
Final y there exists a legal y adopted practice of religion defi ning. In compliance with laws eff ective in major countries the system is taken for religious in case its members consider it be this. Stil , such practice has also more than once showed its complete inadequacy [248, 251]. A considerable number of groups that contain religiosity elements don’t declare themselves and are registered as social organizations making PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS. Andrey G. Safronov 1 5
it more complicated for state structures to interact with them [251].
Members of these groups often don’t even apprehend their system as religious despite the fact that it boasts with al criteria of religion, or, being aware of it, they conceal from those “uninitiated” the true character of their activity [172]. On the other hand there are known incidents of commercial activity concealed under umbrella of religious community charity status. Th e imperfection of scientifi c base results in fl aws of related legal issues, thus bringing the problematic case beyond the “purely scientifi c” aspects. One’s addressing to legal experience in a philosophic work is truly justifi ed since today real religious practice goes signifi cantly ahead of scientifi c research studies in corresponding sphere. In general, our days are unique for the purpose of performing cultural studies since today it is possible to investigate a lot of newly-born religions currently staying at the very early “apostolic” stage.
For the purpose of this investigation we shal formulate a working defi nition that would to the maximum cover all phenomena that are of interest to us, and would also correspond to realities of modern sentience. In this research work we shal be taking for religion the whole irrational element of human culture. As for generic features of religious system we shall single out it having fi ve compounds: religious image, mythology, rituals, symbols and commandments. Such defi nition obviously does not provide with complete understanding of this phenomenon, though such understanding is not provided by any of existing defi nitions as wel . As it is said by a wel -known western philosopher John Bowker, “… one can draw dozens of other defi nitions that would tell us a lot about religion, but they shall not answer the question what religion is” [399]. Stil , the task of investigating essential characteristics of religion is not the target of the present study. We need the formulated defi nition only for the sake of bringing into our vision fi eld maximal number of phenomena that are or can be in a way related to the studied issue of religious psychopractices. In particular, one should investigate phenomena contiguous to religion that, depending upon defi -
nition, can be acknowledged as those being and being not related to it, them being occultism, esotericism, modern spiritual movements (being non-religious according to their own opinion) and systems of psychopractices that have arisen within modern psychotherapy but bear some features of religiosity.
16 Andrey G. Safronov. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS
1.1.2. The Notions “Mysticism”
and “Mystic Experience”
Th e problem of mysticism and mystic experience is one of the most signifi cant issues in anthropological studies, even more so in research works on religious psychopractices. Th e subject of “mystic experience” was in due course contemplated by famous religious philosophers like G. Skovoroda, Vl. Solovyov, V. Rozanov, N. Lossky, N. Berdyaev, P. Florensky. From position of phenomenology the questions of mysticism and mystic experience were investigated by M. Eliade, S. Kierkegaard, A. Schweitzer, W. James, P. Berger. Stil , as it was pointed out by professor E. Torchinov in his monograph [290] and his work dedicated to this subject [292], the term “mysticism” itself is used in literature in several completely diff erent meanings, thus making the things even more confused.
1. To designate the experience of unity or merger with ontological fundamental principle of the world and the whole objective reality, the whole being in general (the God, Absolute, etc.). Th is defi nition is majorly used in philosophic literature.
2. To designate various types of esoteric activity.
3. As a synonym to occultism that sometimes bears an eventual y pseudo-scientifi c character — magic, astrology, mantics etc.
4. In common mind the “mystic” sphere also encompasses various stories about unusual phenomena with zombies, werewolves and vampires involved.
It is clear that all these phenomena are completely diff erent, and in this way the word “mysticism” leads one astray and makes obstacles for one’s proper comprehension.
Another problem, according to E. Torchinov, is connected to perception of mysticism within the context of peculiar percipience of such categories as faith and knowledge, faith and intel igence by Judaist-Christian mind; mainly to the fact that mysticism is fi rmly associated with irrationalism, thus making modern scientifi c and philosophical audience a kind of prejudiced intheir turning to the issues of mystic experience [292].
Meanwhile such contraposition of “mystic” and rational is strange for other cultures, whilein no way the “mystics” of corresponding tradi-PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS. Andrey G. Safronov 1 7
tions do reject intelligence (ratio) to bean ultimate authority within the sphere of its competence; moreover, they often establish rather rational philosophic systems based upon comprehension of their “mystic” experience [292].
Th e mentioned confusion in terminology suggested to some authors that they should substitute the word “mysticism” and its derivatives with a more appropriate term. Th us, E. Torchinov off ers using the term “transpersonal experience”, that is, “going beyond the limits of individuality and trivial experience” instead of “mystic experience”
[290]. Th ough agree with necessity of the term substitution, we should point out that introduction of the aforesaid term stipulates methodology of further research work, implicitly limiting it within the framework of transpersonal psychology — the way it actually happened with E.
Torchinov’s research investigation. Since we are not wil ing to restrict ourselves by such methodology, we shall be using the category “altered states of consciousness” (ASC) as a term for designation of the corresponding states.
It should be noted that the discourse of mystic experience and mysticism is not limited by religious life experience only, being a signifi cant phenomenon of philosophy. As it is said by S. Khoruzhij in his work [310, pg. 61], “In the sphere of traditional subject matter and problematic of European view that never faded despite all kind of positivism and rationalism, we can fi nd a number — or, if you like it this way — a bunch of ideas, intuitions, paradigms and simply cases that obviously belong to the “transcendence topos” and that is obviously not encompassed by genuine transcendence of pure mind. Th e
“epistophe” of Neo-Platonists, the “ecstasy” of all mystic traditions (Heidegger’s ontology as well), Patristics’ “theosis” and the “metanoia” of Ascetic, the “little spark of the soul” of Meister Eckhart, the “meta-morphosis” of Goethe, the Rilke’s “transformation” (Wandlung)… —
all these are the avatars of transcendence, or its neighbours, or its aspects…”.
It is obvious that the issue of altered states of consciousness is directly connected to religious psychopractices and it is situated within the fi eld outlined by the object of the present research work.
18 Andrey G. Safronov. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS
1.1.3. Esoteric Systems in Religious Life-Mode
Th e term “esotericism” is also as much semantical y impure as the earlier considered term “mysticism” is, being sometimes used as a synonym to it. Still, basing upon authentic Greek origin of this word — “internal”, “concealed” — it would be more appropriate to treatfor esoteric those systems that are hidden from majority of common people due to some particular reasons. Such systems that are used by restricted number of adherents have actual y existed in almost every culture. As an example one can draw Indian yoga, the Dao doctrine of inner elixir, Hesychasm, Ignatius of Loyola’s spiritual exercises, Sufi s’ order etc.
While investigating the issue of esoteric systems one natural y faces the questions likewhether these systems are religious and if it is correct to consider them to be some kind of “sects” (as it is often done with Sufi sm) insidethe world-known religions.
In fact, practical y al known esoteric systems became available to us through some religious tradition. Moreover, many adherents and founders of such systems were even canonized, for example, Gregory Palamas and Ignatius of Loyola, Kabir. Th us, corresponding systems should be unconditionally treated for an integral element of the society religious life. Still, esoteric systems shall not be related to separate “sects”, for their representatives were performig respective functions within the wel -known religious systems. Along with this, esoteric systems in most cases existed within — or, to be more exact, under the cover of their exoteric antipodes — traditional religions.
One starts to understand the essence of esoteric systems while reading corresponding texts, for example, the already mentioned
“Spiritual Exercises” by Ignatius of Loyola [144]. Unlike the majority of religious texts, they are almost completely free from theologic and philosophic issues. In fact, these are methodic guidelines to performance of specifi c psychopractices that are apprehended exactly in this way. Esoteric systems are extremely psyche-related and practical at the same time, and this can be considered as one of their main typical features. It was yet M. Weber who drew his attention to this feature of such systems: “Mystic knowledge… is a practical (Weber’s emphasis) knowledge. Mysticism intends a state of “possession”, not action,that can provide basis for a new practical way of getting one-PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS. Andrey G. Safronov 1 9
self oriented in common world, and in some cases even for new communicative cognition” [37, pg. 205].
Many of those who used to researchdiff erent kinds of esoteric practices (E. Torchoniv, S. Khoruzhij) come to paradoxical conclusions without consideration of the fact that religion and esotericism are crucial y not identical. E. Torchinov, for example, asserts the necessity of transpersonal experience reproduction as one of religion essential functions [290, pg. 64]. Stil one can easily see that major part ofreligionad-herents do not have any “transpersonal” experience, and yet it does not prevent them from remaining the believers. One can easily understand the origin of such mismatch if one draws one’s attention to the fact that though speaking about religions, E. Torchinov actual y analyses their esoteric compounds but not the traditional y accepted forms. But esoteric psychopractices are neither elements of religion nor a method of religious practices like the fast, the sermon or the confession, since for the majority of common believers they were incomprehensible, let alone available.Moreover, esoteric systems should be considered as completely separate phenomena of religious life mode, since they were bearing religious-forming function as wel . It is noteworthy that fol owers of religions were completely aware of the diff erence between the religion and the esoteric practice that existed “within” the religion. For example, in his recently published book “Th e Sufi sm” ProfessorC. Ernst brings the fol owing remark: “But the most amusing thing happened every time when my Pakistan acquaintances inquired about my job…
Having heard that I was studying Islam — and Sufi sm in particular, the asking person used to express his utmost surprise saying “Th en you must know that the Sufi sm has nothing to do with the Islam!” [362, pg.5].
It is in the same way that one can fi nd rather skeptical the opinions about traditional religions made by followers of esoteric systems. Th us, for example, M. Eckhart wrote: “I defi nitely declare that as long as you do things for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, for the sake of God or your own everlasting beatitude, that is for the sake of some external notion, you are defi nitely wrong <…> For the one looking for God in any way — he catches the image, while the hidden God behind this image escapes from him” [91].
20 Andrey G. Safronov. PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM ARCHAIC TO OUR DAYS
Yet one should mention that despite the fact that esoteric systems are concealed, they perform peculiar infl uence upon other forms of spiritual life, starting from rational reasoning and philosophy and up to art [208, pg. 95] (such types of infl uences were studied in details in other works of V. Rozin as well [208, 213]).
Th erefore, in present work we determine esoteric systems as an independent object of study.
1.1.4. Approaches to Religion Study
Let us make a brief overview of methodological approaches to investigation of religion and its elements that can be also applied in our research study of religious psychopractices. Historically there are several such approached distinguished.
Th e theologic approach — the religion is considered as a phenomenon of metaphysical reality. Th e essence of theological (doctrinal) concept of religion comes to self-manifestation of God in the world and the connection between it and the man. In compliance with this concept the existence of God and\or other supernatural creatures is postulated. Th e principal drawback of this approach is its “Christian-centered” nature that is obviously stipulated by its origin, thus making it practical y inappropriate for the study of majority of religious phenomena beyond traditional Christianity.
In its main ideas the philosophic-theologic concept of religion does not go far from the theological one, but thissubject-matter is veiled under some more complicated terminology and more complicated argumentation. Th e notion of God is substituted by the notion of the Transcendental, the Absolute, the Absolute idea, the Universal will etc.
Th ese notions can be fi l ed in by pantheistic and deistic contents, but in any case it is the spiritual principle that is declared as the reason of the world existence and evolution, as wel as the reason of religion existence. Despite the ideological solidarity of these religion concepts there is some diff erence between them. While theological concept mainly appeals to the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Tradition, the philosophic-theological one tends to use contemporary notions about religion and grounds itself upon human knowledge on every other stage of its evolution; it is less dogmatic and more innovation-adoptive.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PRACTICES IN MYSTIC TRADITIONS: FROM A