The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition (Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures Book 18)

Annotation This volume examines mystical experiences as portrayed in various ways by "authors" such as philosophers, mystics, psychoanalysts, writers, and peasant women. These "mystical authors" have, throughout the ages, attempted to convey the unsayable through writings, paintings, or oral stories. The immediate experience of God is the primary source and ultimate goal of these mystical expressions. This experience is essentially ineffable, yet all mystical authors, either consciously or unconsciously, feel an urge to convey what they have undergone in the moments of rapture. At the same time they are in the role of intermediaries: the goal of their self-expression - either written, painted or oral - is to make others somehow understand or feel what they have experienced, and to lead others toward the spiritual goal of human life. This volume studies the mystical experiences and the way they have been described or portrayed in West-European culture, from Antiquity to the present, from an interdisciplinary perspective, and approaches the concept of "immediate experience" in various ways Front Matter....Pages i-xix Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Experiencing the Divine in Plato....Pages 3-13 Prayer as a drōmenon in the Hermetic Initiative Texts....Pages 15-22 Mystical Experience in Theurgical Practice....Pages 23-30 Gymnastics of the Mind: The Theory of gymnos nous in Maximus the Confessor....Pages 31-37 Ascending to the Third Heaven? A Missing Tradition of Latin Mysticism....Pages 39-61 The Experience of God in the Mystical Language of Meister Eckhart....Pages 63-74 Mediating the Immediate: Richard Rolle’s Mystical Experience in the Translations of his Self-Revelations....Pages 75-83 Front Matter....Pages 85-103 What Is the Purpose of Human Life? – Immediate Experience of God in Pico’s Works....Pages 105-119 Characters of Giordano Bruno’s Mysticism....Pages 121-121 The Experience of God in Pascal’s Religious Texts....Pages 123-141 Communicative Experience of God in Prayer....Pages 143-155 What (If Anything) Can Justify the Objective Truth of an Alleged Immediate Experience of God?....Pages 157-165 Pantheistic Ways of Immediate Experience of God: Spinoza and the Early Schelling....Pages 167-175 Front Matter....Pages 177-187 At the Sources of Simone Weil’s Mysticism....Pages 189-202 The Mystical After Auschwitz....Pages 203-203 “Ein Spiel der Worte, in dem das »Urwirkliche« atmet.” The Birth of the Mystical Word According to Carl Albrecht....Pages 205-214 A World in Which Everything Is “Here.” Northrop Frye’s Immanent Vision of the Divine....Pages 215-229 A Lonely Lutheran Mystic During Communism. The Spiritual Heritage of Bishop Lajos Ordass (1901–1978)....Pages 231-238 Front Matter....Pages 239-245 “It is the Mind That Hears it, Not the Ear...” Sounds, Lights, Visions in Peasant Mysticism....Pages 247-254 Experience of God, Reflected by Projective Drawings....Pages 203-203 Back Matter....Pages 255-261 ....Pages 263-269 This volume examines mystical experiences as portrayed in various ways by zauthorsy such as philosophers, mystics, psychoanalysts, writers, and peasant women. These zmystical authorsy have, throughout the ages, attempted to convey the unsayable through writings, paintings, or oral stories. The immediate experience of God is the primary source and ultimate goal of these mystical expressions. This experience is essentially ineffable, yet all mystical authors, either consciously or unconsciously, feel an urge to convey what they have undergone in the moments of rapture. At the same time they are in the role of intermediaries: the goal of their self-expression either written, painted or oral is to make others somehow understand or feel what they have experienced, and to lead others toward the spiritual goal of human life. This volume studies the mystical experiences and the way they have been described or portrayed in West-European culture, from Antiquity to the present, from an interdisciplinary perspective, and approaches the concept of zimmediate experiencey in various ways.