Mesmerism and Spiritual Healing Practices
Some researchers note that "many phenomena of animal magnetism emerged in a very similar form in a fair variety of appreciably different cultural and geographical settings, from New York to Calcutta and from Shetlands to Brazil. An obvious inference is that some at least of the phenomena are not the direct or indirect products of culturally determined belief, but rather reflect features of man's psychological" and physiological "constitution, which function independently, not perhaps of all his belief-system, but of his belief as to his own constitution."" Today scholars believe Mesmerism to share a concept of life force or energy with such Asian practices such as reiki and qigong. The practical and theoretical positions of such practices are on whole substantially different from those of mesmerism.
Read more about this topic: Animal Magnetism
Famous quotes containing the words spiritual, healing and/or practices:
“Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it—an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious tracking down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)