Social Connections
Asynchronous Session
Shamanic Ritual Images: Comprehensive Enhancement of Emotions, Beliefs, and Conscious States View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hang Sun, Eunyoung Kim
Despite the current research attributing methods for altering consciousness to the control of participants' sympathetic nervous system, such as sleep restriction and drug control, researchers have found a significant correlation between participants' altered states of consciousness during rituals and the practice of religious image. Therefore, this study explores the role of shamanic ritual images, with a particular focus on their impact on participants' emotions, beliefs, and consciousness states. Specifically, researchers randomly assigned 30 participants into a practice group (Group A) and a control group (Group B) for ritual exercises and questionnaire surveys. The results indicate that in an environment resembling shamanic rituals, religious images positively elevate the consciousness states of participants in Group A, leading to a moderate level of self-dissolution experiences. After the ritual, participants in Group A, influenced by the religious images, exhibited significant changes in emotional states, accompanied by a substantial increase in supernatural belief levels. In contrast, the changes in Group B participants were not significant. These findings suggest that religious images can strengthen the independent environmental space within shamanic rituals, providing participants with a deeper sense of ritual involvement and prompting them to undergo religious experiences of altered consciousness in a sacred atmosphere.
Undue Reliance on Presumed Influence: Concerns about the Regulation of Spiritual and Cultural Influence
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Craig Allen
Undue influence has proven a troubling area of private English law for decades. More recently, Lord Briggs observed in the Privy Council decision of Nature Resorts Ltd v First Citizens Bank Ltd [2022] that the treatment of irrebuttable presumptions of influence raises “difficult questions.” This paper elaborates on this view of undue influence by considering the private law vitiating doctrine in the contexts of spiritual and cultural influence. It examines religious and spiritual influence cases, where presumptions of influence applied automatically. I identify an omission in temporal reasoning, subsequently questioning why gifts are not severed from presumptions where evidence contradicts that the defendant’s influence consistently motivated challenged gifts. The analysis provides a novel reason why the use of status-based presumptions of influence are often unjustifiable. I anticipate the counterclaim that adequate limits are imposed on when presumptions of undue influence are perfected by the requirement that a transaction ‘calls for an explanation.’ However, I discuss how this can offer little comfort for defendants in spiritual or cultural cases of undue influence since the requirement can prove unprincipled and it is generally applied without vigor by courts. The papers ends by proposing how these challenges could be dealt with by courts, largely through developing enhanced literacy on spiritual and cultural norms of the defendants in cases or through the use of cultural expertise from expert witnesses.
Ibn ‘Arabī’s Doctrine of Sainthood: A Paradigm of Integration in Multi-faith and Multicultural Societies
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bushra Subhan
The children of father Adam and mother Eve have a diverse relation with each other but need to know about the reality of this relationship as a single great family. Besides, it represents that religious diversity goes to one religious identity. The question arises which type of comparative study of religion is required to grasp such reality? In answering this question, the present study analyzes the Ibn ‘Arabi’s Doctrine of Sainthood. The study discusses his unique philosophy of unification of Prophethood, its understandability and acceptability in integration of society, whether society is isolated in single culture or multicultural with multi-faith aspects. The cultural differences are addressed through the Ibn Arabi’s idea of human unity which can play an important role in understanding the family structure and its integration of faith, values and education. Moreover, his spiritual sensibility can also approach rational investigation that integrates the different universal cosmological and cosmogonical studies. The present research objectives are as follows: What is self-realization and how can one grasp its procedure and the importance of cultural differences in the same species? The study is based upon Ibn’Arabi’s writings significantly regarding “Al Nubuwa wal Villaya” Seals of the Saints. We explain how to understand the intellectual meaning of social connectivity through the Heirs of the Prophets and their three Seals. This study is analytical in nature and based upon interpretative methodology.
