Techniques of Spiritual Experience

West and East

Jean-Pierre Brach, Thierry Zarcone

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English

Sean Kingston Publishing
30 September 2025

Oriental religions; Religious life & practice; Social & cultural anthropology

This book is a unique attempt by historians, anthropologists and specialists of different religions and esoteric trends to investigate the mental and physical ‘techniques’ for obtaining an ‘experience’ of the Absolute or the Sacred. Cognitive techniques include prayers or litanies practised in different ways, through repetition (Sufi dhikr, Christian Hesychasm, yoga) or motion (Sufi dance), along with visualizations (in Kabbala, Sufism, Buddhism) or breathing exercises (in many trends), and in the invocation of names (Kabbala, Sufism). Such techniques may also be taught by spirits or immaterial entities (Daoism, shamanism). Physical techniques aim to establish the practical conditions for controlling the body and preventing it from becoming an obstacle on the ascetic path. They include body postures in yoga and, most particularly, seclusion, often performed in solitary places as in a forty-day retreat in Sufism or the famous three-year seclusion in a cave or hermitage in the case of Tibetan Buddhism. Mental/cognitive and physical techniques are obviously intimately associated, and this book underlines the similarities between their practice in most world religions, the main points in common being exercises based on repetition, breathing techniques and seclusion. In addition, some authors emphasize the fact that certain mystic trends, like Christian Hesychasm (‘prayer of Jesus’), Sufism and Kabbala have borrowed spiritual techniques from Buddhism, and especially from yoga, and that such transmissions of practices have also taken place between Sufism and Kabbala, and Buddhism and Daoism.

Edited by: Jean-Pierre Brach, Thierry Zarcone
Imprint: Sean Kingston Publishing
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 533g
ISBN: 9781912385560
ISBN 10: 1912385562
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 30 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education , A / AS level
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Contents Introduction Jean-Pierre Brach and Thierry Zarcone; I – EREMITISM AND THE SECLUDED BODY; Chapter 1 Tibetan yogic practice; Training the mindbody in a Tibetan hermitage Geoffrey Samuel; Chapter 2 A technique of spiritual realization: Retreat and seclusion (khalwa) in modern Sufi Islam Rachida Chih; Chapter 3 Techniques of spiritual experience in Christianity: Hesychast worship in the Eastern church Marie-Helene Congourdeau; II – DIAGRAMS AND VISUALIZATION; Chapter 4 From rituals to techniques in Jewish mysticism: Between ‘East’ and ‘West’ Moshe Idel; Chapter 5 Contemplative practices in Asian Sufism: Dhikr exercise, the subtle body and their diagramed representations Thierry Zarcone; III – PSYCHOSOMATIC TECHNIQUES; Chapter 6 Numinous disorder and self-transformation in Central Asian shamanism Patrick Garrone; Chapter 7 Spiritual techniques among late imperial Chinese literati Vincent Goossaert; IV – CORPOREITY; Chapter 8 An insuperable citadel? Corporeity and incorporeity in Indian Buddhism Cristina Scherrer-Schaub; Chapter 9 In between body and soul: The ‘subtle body’ as a spiritual technique in nineteenth-century occultism Jean-Pierre Brach; Chapter 10 The lotus mandala and Prince Sutasoma in Bali: A poet-priest’s techniques and experiences of the sacred Angela Hobart; Contributors; Index.

Editors: Jean-Pierre Brach is Directeur d’études, Ecole pratique des hautes études, Paris. Thierry Zarcone is Directeur de recherches, Centre National de la recherche Scientifique, Paris. Contributors: Rachida Chih; Marie-Helene Congourdeau; Patrick Garrone;Vincent Goossaert; Angela Hobart; Moshe Idel; Geoffrey Samuel; Cristina Scherrer-Schaub.