Ecomysticism

by Von Essen, Carl

• ISBN13: 9781591431183
• ISBN10: 1591431182
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-10-19
• Publisher: Bear & Co

Summary

Ecomysticism shows how the spiritual transcendence of a majestic moment in nature--like other mystical experiences--can heal the Nature Deficit Disorder of our psyches and bodies. Indeed, only through a renewal of humanity's spiritual connection to nature can we effect true environmental healing.

Author Biography

Carl von Essen, M.D., studied medicine in California and Sweden. He has practiced and taught in the United States, India, and Switzerland and served with the World Health Organization in Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. The author of The Revenge of the Fishgod: Angling Adventures around the World and Memory Is a Dwelling Place, he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction


Part One
Heritage and Experience

1    The Beginnings of Nature and Spirit
Chaos - Gaia - Eros

2    The Hunter
An Angler’s Trance - The Alert Man - The Archer and the Inner Game

3    The Explorer
Himalayan Epiphany - Inner Exploration - Topophilia - The Despotic Eye and Goethe’s Phantasie - Solitude

4    The Warrior and the Athlete
War as a Mystical Experience - Transcendental Athletics - Mountains and the Ecstasy of Danger

5    The Poet and the Artist
Poetry and Nature - Sublimity and Delightful Horror - Wordsworth as a Nature Mystic - Henry David Thoreau - Ted Hughes - Paleolithic Legacy - Homage to the Rock

6    The Healer
A Universal Art of Nature - Encounter with a Traditional Healer - Wisdom and Healing - The Healer’s Trance

Part Two
Theory and Perspective

7    The Mystic Ladder
Climbing the Mountain - Ineffability - Noetic Quality - Transiency - Passivity - Modern Concepts - Freud and the Oceanic Feeling - Einstein’s Ambivalence - Proust and
the Petit Madeleine - Spiritual Experience in Childhood - Creativity

8    Wider Than the Sky: The Psychobiology of M ystical Experience
Mystical Models - Chemical or Spiritual? - Altered States of Consciousness - Photism - Ohm’s Law Analogy - Neurotheology - Pathological States - Drugs and Mystical Experience

Part Three
Ecocrisis and Spiritual Necessity

9    Ecocrisis
The Human Impact - Philosophic Reason - Nature’s Revenge

10    The Future Rests with Us
Finding the Road - Urbanization: Blessing or Curse? - Bringing Nature Home - Needed: The Moral Equivalent of War


Notes

Bibliography

Index