Prof. June McDaniel to deliver Howard Lecture on "Contemplative Psychology: Some Eastern and Western Understandings of the Mind and Spirit"

This lecture compares ideas of religious and mystical experience in Eastern and Western understandings of the self.  We shall examine models of how the self is constructed, and how visionary experience works.  It explores the question:  How do people perceive God in Western psychology and Indian philosophy?

Dr. June McDaniel is Professor Emerita in the field of History of Religions, in the Dept. of Religious Studies at the College of Charleston, in the USA. She is the author of three books on India, a co-edited volume on mysticism, a co-edited volume on Hindu religious experience, a book on current views of mystical ecstasy in the field of Religious Studies, and many articles. Her MTS was in Theological Studies from Emory University, on visionary experience, and her PhD was in History of Religions from the University of Chicago, exploring religious ecstasy in West Bengal, India. She spent several years in India on grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies and as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar. She also did research in Indonesia on a Collaborative International Research Grant from the American Academy of Religion, as well as on shorter research trips. She was chair of the Mysticism Group of the American Academy of Religion for twenty years, on and off, and co-founder of the AAR Anthropology of Religion Group. She is was recently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies at Oxford University in England.