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ISBN: HB: 9780300152364

Yale University Press

August 2015

208 pp.

21x14 cm

10 black&white illus.

HB:
£43,00
QTY:

Categories:

Kabbalah

A Neurocognitive Approach to Mystical Experiences

In this original study, Moshe Idel, an eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism and thought, and the cognitive neuroscientist and neurologist Shahar Arzy combine their considerable expertise to explore the mysteries of the Kabbalah from an entirely new perspective: that of the human brain. In lieu of the theological, sociological, and psychoanalytic approaches that have generally dominated the study of ecstatic mystical experiences, the authors endeavor to decode the brain mechanisms underlying these phenomena. Arzy and Idel analyze first-person descriptions to explore the Kabbalistic techniques employed by most prominent Jewish mystics to effect bodily reduplications, dissociations, and other phenomena, and compare them with recent neurological observations and modern-day laboratory experiments. The resultant study offers readers a scientific, more brain-based understanding of how ecstatic Kabbalists achieved their most precious mystical experiences. The study further demonstrates how these Kabbalists have long functioned as pioneering investigators of the human self.

About the Author

Moshe Idel is Max Cooper Professor in Jewish Thought in the Department of Jewish Thought at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and senior researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute.

Shahar Arzy is the director of the Computational Neuropsychiatry Lab at the Faculty of Medicine at Hebrew University and a senior neurologist at the Department of Neurology, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center.

Reviews

"In this thought-provoking book, the authors present compelling evidence that over hundreds of years, a group of Jewish mystics mastered techniques to probe and potentially unlock the secrets of human consciousness, mind and body, sense of self, and ecstatic experiences" – Steven C. Schachter, MD, Harvard Medical School, from the Foreword