Dr. Marianne Rankin – Is Altruism a Principal Fruit of Spiritual Experience? An Exploration of the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre Archive

Marianne’s recent PhD research, supported by the Alister Hardy Trust (AHT), was based on the Religious Experience Research Centre Archive of over six thousand accounts of individual spiritual experiences. Marianne explored the ‘fruits’ of Religious and Spiritual Experiences in terms of inner transformation, changes in religious and spiritual attitude and outward behaviour. This led on to a consideration of whether underlying the variety of transformative effects, there was a turn from self-centredness to altruism. Marianne will give an indication of the methods and outcome of her research.

MARIANNE RANKIN lived in the Far East for almost twenty years, working as an interpreter and translator in German, English and French, and as a free-lance writer. On her return to UK she took an MSc at Oxford University in the Study of Religion. She has written on hospice, illustrated a book on Zen and is the author of An Introduction to Religious and Spiritual Experience (Bloomsbury, 2008). She was Chair of the former Alister Hardy Society and for eleven years AHT Director of Communications.