By Anthony J. Steinbock
Exploring the first-person narratives of 3 figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions -- St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Ruzbihan Baqli -- Anthony J. Steinbock presents a whole phenomenology of mysticism established within the Abrahamic spiritual traditions. He relates a large variety of non secular studies, or verticality, to philosophical difficulties of facts, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical event, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique when it comes to idolatry -- as delight, secularism, and fundamentalism -- and means that modern understandings of human event needs to come from a fuller, extra open view of non secular event.
Read Online or Download Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) PDF
Best mysticism books
The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility, and Mystery
David Cooper explores and defends the view truth self sufficient of human views is inevitably indescribable, a "mystery. " different perspectives are proven to be hubristic. Humanists, for whom "man is the degree" of truth, exaggerate our means to dwell with no the experience of an self sustaining degree.
"Henry Corbin's works are the simplest advisor to the visionary culture. .. . Corbin, like Scholem and Jonas, is remembered as a student of genius. He was once uniquely outfitted not just to get better Iranian Sufism for the West, but additionally to shield the crucial Western traditions of esoteric spirituality. "--From the advent via Harold BloomIbn 'Arabi (1165-1240) used to be one of many nice mystics of all time.
Teachings of the Hindu Mystics
This anthology collects the main lyrical, passionate, illuminating writings of the Hindu mystical culture. Andrew Harvey, the preferred religious student and author, has chosen excerpts from historical and modern assets, together with extracts from the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and different classical Hindu texts; the phrases of such venerable religious lecturers as Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi; and the devotional poetry of Mirabai, Ramprasad, and so on.
- Satanism, Magic and Mysticism in Fin-de-siècle France (Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic)
- Revelations of Divine Love (Penguin Classics)
- Shamanic Christianity: The Direct Experience of Mystical Communion
- Not in his image : gnostic vision, sacred ecology, and the future of belief
- Beyond Birth and Death
- Journey through Womanhood: Meditations from Our Collective Soul
Additional info for Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion)
Sample text
Yes and No. Yes, to the extent that epiphany is happening all the time. ”30 The effort required is one of “bracketing” one’s self in order to liberate the vertical dimension in the things themselves and in ourselves; the effort is one of disposing oneself (or dis-posing the self, as mentioned in the Introduction to this work) so that we can perhaps be struck in ways similar to the ways in which the mystics themselves are struck. This disposition of the self, however, is not merely an intellectual exercise, for such a divestment of self is lived through, for example, as humble service, which may entail what the 31 Phenomenology and Mysticism mystics refer to as poverty, obedience, and so forth.
Is it correct to say that the mystics gave descriptions of experiences that could in some way be susceptible to a philosophical enterprise? Let us recall in the first place that phenomenology was never just a descriptive, but also a normative enterprise, and that the sense of phenomenological description was to point us further to the radical bases of our lives. 17 We are perhaps also familiar with Husserl’s conviction that the phenomenological philosopher is to be understood as nothing less than the functionary of humanity.
We find that the more we invest ourselves in our selves and in things, and the more successful we become in this style of involvement, the less we are able to dispose ourselves to modes of vertical givenness. Vertical relations get reversed. We live in idolatry in such a profound manner that we do not even experience it as idolatry; it becomes the “natural” element of our experience, the way our own smells and odors become the background and basis for detecting any other smells or odors. ” Each sphere of vertical experience is susceptible to its own kind of idolatry.