Science
AoL East and West - A Study of the Art of Living Foundation - Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen [+]
University of Tromsø.
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen is currently a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Tromsø. Her research interests include new religious movements (especially Indian-oriented movements) and the New Age, religion and gender, and religion and nature. She has published a number of articles (including on Art of Living) and book reviews in international academic journals, and has several articles forthcoming. Additionally she is co-editor of the forthcoming Nordic New Religions (Brill),
Milda Ališauskienė [+]
Vytautas Magnus University
Dr Milda Ališauskienė is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. She has published more than thirty social scientific research articles on religion in contemporary Lithuania and the Baltic States and contributed to collective monographs and studies on the social exclusion of minority religions and Lithuania’s secularization process.
James R. Lewis [+]
Wuhan University
James R. Lewis is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University. He is well-published in the field of new religious movements. His publications and edited volumes include The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, Controversial New Religions (with Jesper Petersen), Scientology, Children of Jesus and Mary (with Nicholas Levine), and, most recently, Violence and New Religious Movements.
Description
This chapter deals with several views of the conflation of science and religion, both in research literature and in AoL. We will first address the concepts of Vedic science and the Knowledge Sutras in AoL, and then go on to present some of the Art of Living practitioners’ perspectives on SKY. We will include a short note on science and legitimation, and then analyze scientific, physical/ psychological or spiritual type of support as well as scientific support at point of ‘conversion’ for AoL respondents.