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.

Excerpt: In our classical view, control is of a controlled (thing) by a controller. Often there is an implication that the controlled is more powerful than the controller, so that there is amplification. Usually control is towards some goal – a set of conditions, possibly progressive, to be attained – although we probably all know some control freak for whom the goal (or rather, the purpose) is just to control. The controller is seen, in this understanding, as causing the controlled to behave in particular ways. In the Cybernetics of Cybernetics, we modify this understanding of control. In effect, we ask Juvenal’s question: “But who will guard the guardians? ” and we expect an answer! Thus, we ask what it is that controls the controller. For, in a model (and it is a model) that is based on control, in which control has the position of primacy, this is not a question that can be long left unasked: to do so would be a matter of both inconsistency and laziness, and would show a lack of diligence and rigour- indicating a mammoth disregard for our subject. The general answer is, of course, obvious. The controller is controlled, itself, by that which the controller controls (the controlled). Immediately, the relativity of the roles of controller and controlled become apparent: what we have, traditionally, thought of as the controlled can equally be seen as the controller (controlling) – it just depends on where we are looking from. There is terminological confusion, but it diminishes if we remember that controller and controlled are both roles that we (the even-present observer, but that will have to wait for another column) ascribe.

In our society, where interest in Buddhist meditation is expanding enormously, numerous scientific studies are now conducted on the neurophysiological effects of meditation practices and on the neural correlates of meditative states. However, very few studies have been conducted on the experience associated with contemplative practice: what it is like to meditate – from moment to moment, at different stages of practice – remains almost invisible in contemporary contemplative science. Recently, ‘micro-phenomenological’ interview methods have been developed to help us become aware of lived experience and describe it with rigour and precision. The present article presents the results of a pilot project1 aimed at applying these methods to the description of meditative experience. The first part of the article describes these methods and their adjustment for the investigation of meditative experience. The second part provides microphenomenological descriptions of two processes of which meditation practice enables the practitioner to become aware: the process of losing contact with the current situation and generation of virtual ones in ‘mind-wandering’ episodes, and the process of emergence of a thought. The third part of the article highlights the interest such descriptions may have for practitioners and for teachers of meditation, defines the status of these results, and outlines directions for further research.