"This book attempts to penetrate the nature of that strange spiritual phenomenon which we call mysticism by comparing the two principal classic types of Eastern and Western mystical experience. By means of this comparison, and by explaining the individual features of one type by those of the other, the nature of mysticism itself becomes gradually more comprehensible." --From the Foreword
"This book attempts to penetrate the nature of that strange spiritual phenomenon which we call mysticism by comparing the two principal classic types of Eastern and Western mystical experience. By means of this comparison, and by explaining the individual features of one type by those of the other, the nature of mysticism itself becomes gradually more comprehensible." --From the Foreword
This book, first published in 1947, presents the then-new subject of sociology of religion in systematic and historical theology and in the science of religion, in political theory and the social sciences, in philosophy and psychology, in philology and anthropology. Its intention is to bridge the gulf between the study of religion and the social sciences, an exercise that draws strongly upon cultural anthropology.
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.
A Phenomenology of the Devout Life is the first part of a three-part work, A Philosophy of Christian Life. Rather than approaching Christianity through its doctrinal statements, as philosophers of religion have often done, the book starts by offering a phenomenological description of the devout life as that is set out in the teaching of Francois de Sales and related authors. This is because for most Christians practice and life-commitments are more fundamental than formal doctrinal beliefs. Although George Pattison will address the metaphysical truth-claims of Christianity in Part three, the guiding argument is that it is the Christian way of life that best reveals what these beliefs really are. As the work is a philosophical study, it does not presuppose the truth of Christianity but assumes only that there is a humanly accessible meaning to the intention to live a devout life, pleasing to God. This can be said to find expression in a certain view of selfhood that emphasizes the dimensions of feeling and will rather than intellect and that culminates in the experience of the annihilation of self. This is a model of selfhood deeply opposed to contemporary models that privilege autonomous agency and the devout life is therefore presented as offering a corrective to extreme versions of the contemporary view.
Mysticism is proving to be the chosen type of religion for future generations of believers in the West. As traditional institutional religion continues to decline, mystical thought is celebrated as a vital, subversive alternative. Evidence for this religious-cultural shift towards the mystical, the experiential, and indeed the creation-centered can be found in bookstores, most of which devote a large amount of shelf space to mystical themes and writers from the world religions. While this shift is not new, an increasing number of westerners are turning east because they find the fundamentally mystical thought of Asian religious traditions appealing. Furthermore, numerous westerners have actually become gurus and mystics within Eastern traditions. Mysticisms East and West examines the worldwide phenomenon of mystical experience across the world religions. In examining both Christian and non-Christian expressions of mysticism, this unique volume brings together a number of prominent evangelical scholars to analyze the central historical, cultural, and theological issues. Beginning in the East, these studies in mystical experience gradually move to the West and to Christian mysticism before concluding with a number of philosophically reflective essays examining the implications and nature of mysticism.
""This book attempts to penetrate the nature of that strange spiritual phenomenon which we call mysticism by comparing the two principal classic types of Eastern and Western mystical experience. By means of this comparison, and by explaining the individual features of one type by those of the other, the nature of mysticism itself becomes gradually more comprehensible."" --From the Foreword Dr. Rudolf Otto, who died in 1937, was one of the most distinguished German theologians of this century. Perhaps his best-known book was Das Heilige, which ran through ten editions in Germany before being published in an English translation in 1924 under the title The Idea of the Holy.
