While a number of anthologies have drawn together reports of rather specific kinds of transcendent experiences, taken from autobiographical accounts, sacred scriptures and spiritual traditions, few have gone beyond this descriptive task. Yet these accounts can and should provide the basis of a serious, disciplined study. Seeking to redress this balance, this Reader brings together contributions from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives, both empirical and theoretical. Collecting together high quality material on the scholarly and scientific study of spiritual and religious experience from difficult-to-access journal articles and extracts from books published by scholars from the UK, North America and elsewhere the Reader will provide a vital resource to enable students to explore the topic in depth for themselves, in the company of a range of professional scholars and researchers.
