Context: For many people, religion and/or spiritual experiences are an important part of their daily lives - shaping their thinking and actions. Studying these experiences relies on qualitative religious studies (RS) research that engages respondents on a deeply personal level. Problem: Researchers are unable to provide an apolitical, value-free approach to research. There lacks a rigorous methodological approach to qualitative RS research that addresses this epistemological obstacle. This is particularly relevant when studying a cohort with radically different beliefs from the researcher. Method: Researcher coupling is presented as a topic that defines the researcher and her participants as a systemic entity. By demonstrating how the researcher’s worldview is tied to her research, an argument for personalised and relational observer-dependent research is presented. Five reflexive questions are proposed as a starting point for personalised research to demonstrate the relational and intersubjective nature of this activity. Results: By linking the researcher to her research and changing the goal of research from independent and objective research to one that is relational and contextual, the scholar can report on her research in an ethical and socially just manner by linking her worldview to her research. Implications: The traditional research activity is redefined as one that should embrace the scholar’s worldview instead of attempting to hide it. The scientific ideals of independence and objectivity are replaced by interdependence and hence a proposal is made for personalised research that embraces the intersubjective nature of this activity. This proposal is meant to alleviate some of the epistemological weaknesses in RS. This paradigm shift promotes rigour as a qualifier for methodology including changes to how research is categorised. Constructivist content: Margaret Mead’s ideas of observer dependence in anthropological research and how the observer constructs her research findings are discussed. The circularity that exists in this relational context is analysed according to Bradford Keeney’s ideas on recursion and resultant future behavioural correction. Ranulph Glanville’s ideas of intersubjectivity and his concept of “in the between” are used as a foundation for the researcher-participant relationship. Ross Ashby’s notion of experimenter coupling is used as a basis for researcher coupling.

Key words: Epistemology, ethics, personalised and relational research, religious studies, rigour, research methodology, worldview.

Abstract: Ultimate truths and dogma form part of many religions, which poses epistemological challenges to researchers who have differing beliefs yet wish to study these religions. I have argued that conceptual bridging is a prerequisite in meeting this challenge as religious studies scholars should have a deep knowledge base of a variety of belief systems to assist in conceptualising the believers’ world. Scholars, however, need to be comfortable hearing the truths of others, which at times may be contrary to their own worldviews.

Open peer commentary on the article “A Proposal for Personalised and Relational Qualitative Religious Studies Methodology” by Philip Baron. Abstract: Philip Baron’s proposals for personalized qualitative research, although not entirely novel, are worth considering. He fails, however, in clarifying their relation to the overall aims of scientific research.

Open peer commentary on the article “A Proposal for Personalised and Relational Qualitative Religious Studies Methodology” by Philip Baron. Abstract: Baron outlines the need and advantages of a second-order approach to religious studies. Values and mutual respect can be assumed in research but may be in short supply in social and political domains. This presents a challenge for educators and for society.

Although the subject matter of religious studies is essentially phenomenal (e.g., conscious acts, attitudes, intentions, worldviews), the analysis of the basic datum, consciousness itself, remains of necessity incomplete because of the discipline’s restriction to the phenomenal envelope. Philosophical and psychological analysis contributed to our understanding of consciousness, but, lacking access to the neurological engine-room of consciousness, their explanatory power is compromised as well. Neuroscience, on the other hand, has moved beyond the behaviorist denial of consciousnessand recent research indicates that the evolutionary developmentof the brain’s representational capacity may well account for its ability to generate consciousness. These advances provide an opportunity to marry objectiveexplanation with phenomenological descriptions of the view from the inside, creating a powerful new analytic tool: Neuro-phenomenology. Comprised of an exaggerated differentiation between conscious state and informational content, and constituting an important phenomenological category within many Hindu and Buddhist programs, lucid consciousness makes an ideal subject with which to assess the analytic power of Neurophenomenology.

Open peer commentary on the article “A Proposal for Personalised and Relational Qualitative Religious Studies Methodology” by Philip Baron. Abstract: If I accept that (second-order) cybernetics provides a way of thinking about studies of religion and religious behavior, with religious studies researcher-scholars accounting for their own world views and biases, then expressing explicitly what I, as a consumer of the results, would like to get from those studies (reflecting my world view) must be taken as desirable. After I offer such an expression, I generate three questions on the relevance of cybernetics to the conduct of these studies. The pursuit of these questions could then contribute to the insights on society and social transformation that I want from religious studies.