Proceedings of the 6th World Conference on Education and Teaching
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Religious Spirituality and Healthcare: Mystical Experience as Complementary Therapy for Stress & Depression
Dr. Abdulrahman Hussein Obeid
ABSTRACT:
Inevitably, the mystical experience was a path to belief by finding an end to all philosophical skepticism through spiritual practice, at the same time this experience was a psychological solution to the anxiety associated with doubt and depression. Many theologians ended their religious experience with isolation and mystical practices, and that isolation helped them get rid of indulging in lusts and fluctuations between philosophical tendencies. Perhaps St. Augustine is a typical example of that suffering. Contemporary psychologists prefer new techniques in treatment rather than resorting to spiritual practices, but some of them have found yoga a good way to overcome depression and psychological stress, especially since the mystical experience originally calls for psychological and nervous discipline and requires a long time for practitioners to understand its facts. In all cases, psychologists consider the personal lives of depressed patients as peculiarities that should be avoided. Indeed, what the psychologists avoided is a question of ethics in the Sufi orders: is it possible to benefit from mystical experience without achieving transition from evil behavior to righteous behavior? Imam Ghazali (505 H) makes striving and spiritual exercise a way to achieve that transition smoothly, consequently, relationship between achieving transition and the mystical experience is an interactive relationship, one does not succeed without the other. By answering this question, depressed patients, most probably, will find music, Yoga and superficial meditation easier and comfortable choice comparing with mystical experience and this is a great challenge for the Sufi experience in their attempt to circulate their contribution. This paper is dealing with some Quranic instructions that adapted by Sufism as a means of liberation from physical stress and reaching a state of mental and spiritual serenity.
keywords: Healthcare. Mystical Experience. Depression. Sufism. Quranic instructions