Photo by Amanda Viana
Alain Daniélou Foundation’s Forum 2018 proposes a step into the fundamental level of religious experience and its related practices. Fundamental religious experience is a process implying organic, psychic, relational and even environmental changes. As a transmitted pattern of experience, such religious practices survived in different undercurrents usually rejected or played down as “mystic”, “superstitious” or (worse) “demonic”. Today, with the increasing interest in intercultural studies world-wide as well as the growing awareness of the intrinsic diversity of the notion of “religion”, the question of “altered states of consciousness” begins to regain its terrain and be treated – perhaps for the first time – with a lesser amount of prejudices. Its reinsertion in a broader context of religious experience including ritual, sexuality, dance, psychotropic substances, trance and meditation is a desideratum to better understand the human experience.
