142 actas del ii congreso internacional de literatura mística of worldview, and the enhanced possibilities for self-actualization and interreligious and/or intercultural understanding and tolerance. With the exception of Solihu (2009c), the existing literature inclines to conform to the professed ‘common-sense’ method, which in reality is determined by ideological commitments. Martin (in Braun & McCutcheon, 2000, pp. 45-56), insists that such studies, in the absence of ‘comparison and reasoned generalizations’ are little more than a ‘common-sensical’ and propagandistic restatement of the author’s ideology and/or belief system and of little consequence to scientific research in spite of any appearances of compliance with the conventions of scholarship. In accordance with Martin, the reasoned and scientific generalizations in this study were then based upon (a) the abandonment of theological concerns regarding the veracity of ahistorical accounts of origins and/or any other religious speculation, (b) the acceptance of naturalistic theories based upon theoretical reductions, and (c) the identification of common cognitive psychological structures that provide a framework for distinguishing analogous religious constructs. 2.5 significant statements of information The analysis began with the process of ‘horizontalization’, in which significant statements were harvested from the authoritative and historical texts and then tabularized in order to identify the range of perspectives related to the phenomenon (Kolb, 1984, p. 68; Moustakas, 1994). The key quality of the statements of information, which were subjectively extrapolated from the texts by the researcher, is concreteness (Wertz, 2005). According to Van Mannen (1997): [p]henomenological understanding is distinctly existential, emotive, enactive, embodied, situational, and nontheoretic; a powerful phenomenological text thrives on a certain irrevocable tension between what is unique and what is shared, between particular and transcendent meaning, and between the reflective and the prereflective spheres of the lifeworld. (p. 345) The statements then represent significant data assertions,
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