Experiences of Presence | Ann Taves
Event Type:
- Discussion, Presentation
- (Online)
Program:
- Process Explorations
Theme:
- Building Alternative Futures
Featuring:
- Ann Taves
Organizers:
- Center for Process Studies
When people claim to have experienced the presence of a dead loved one, a deity, or other spiritual entity, the way they knew the presence was there can vary widely, regardless of who they thought was present. Some say that they just knew the presence was there. Others say they saw, heard, or felt the touch of the presence. Others explain that the entity signaled its presence by arousing unusual feelings or by causing unusual things to happen. As part of a research team that attempted to understand such experiences scientifically, Ann Taves and a collaborator developed a typology of presence experiences designed to enable researchers to distinguish the different types of experiences that they wanted to explain. In this talk, Taves will explain the typology using experiences drawn from her research to illustrate and discuss how considering experiences as events can help us to understand the factors that interact to produce experiences of known presences.
Featuring
Ann Taves
Ann Taves is a historian by training with long-standing interests in theory and method as they relate to the historical, comparative, and scientific study of non-ordinary experiences. Her work has focused on the way that cognitive and socio-cultural processes interact to produce experiences that are variously conceptualized—as religious, mystical, esoteric, magical, or pathological—and at times lead to the formation of new social movements each with their own distinctive practices. She is the author of several books, including Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James (Princeton, 1999), Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things (Princeton, 2009), and Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths (Princeton, 2016). In the past ten years, she has published numerous articles related to nonordinary experiences in psychological and religious studies journals. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011) and past president of the American Academy of Religion (2010).
RSVP for this Event
Free Online Event
Disclaimer: This event is open to the public and will be recorded. If you choose to enable your camera or participate in any discussions, your voice and likeness will be recorded, and may be posted on the Center for Process Studies websites and social media, or included in CPS materials and/or publications for noncommercial purposes. If you do not want your voice or likeness to be shared in any public venues, please send an email to optout@ctr4process.org.
