This article discusses Faḍlallāh al-Ḥurūfī’s relations with political and religious circles in detail from his early youth when he left Astarabad, until execution at the behest of Mīrānshāh, Timur’s son, 796/1394. The common opinion why was executed is considered to be either superstitious ideas or pursuit some messianic, thus power-related, goals. We tried find clues confute such stereotypical...

In the past few decades the West has witnessed an explosion of interest among psychologists, theologians, scientists, and philosophers alike in what Huxley (1970) has called philosophia perennis,the 'perennial philosophy', a universal doctrine as to the nature of man and reality lying at the very heart of every major metaphysical tradition, whether that of the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Amerind...

In the Esalen Institute Transformation Project we are developing an archive of scientific studies concerned with exceptional psychophysical capacities that appear in sport, contemplative practice, the performing arts and other disciplines. In a related and recent study of sport participants, a colleague, Rhea White, and I (Murphy & White, 1978) collected several thousand incidents of altered me...

From the beginning of the Islamic era, Muslim societies have experienced periods of renewal (tajdid). Since the eighteenth century, Muslim societies across the world have been subject to a prolonged and increasingly deeply felt process of renewal. This has been expressed in different ways in different contexts. Amongst political elites with immediate concerns to answer the challenges of the Wes...