| Abstract: | We live in an age where major and minor structured and unstructured cults are mushrooming, most of them aiming at achieving an ecstatic or religious experience. Rather than objective inquiry, reaction to them is often passionate, unreasoning, even vituperous to an extent that seems out of proportion to their relative size of clientele. On the basis of anthropological fieldwork with Apostolic congregations in the U.S.A., Mexico and Yucatán, and as a teacher of a specific technique for achieving religious ecstatic experiences in workshops, I propose to examine some of the cultural and psychological reasons for this abrogation of objectivity. |
