The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition [Hardcover]

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.I. Late Antiquity and? the Middle Ages.- The Dromenon in the Hermetic Initiative Texts,Endre Hamvas.- Mystical Experience in the Theurgical Practice, Anna Judit T?th.- Gymnastics of the Mind: The Theory of gymnos nous in Maximus the Confessor, Mikl?s Vass?nyi.- Ascending to the Third Heaven. Csaba N?meth.- The Experience of God in the Mystical Language of Meister Eckhart, Ferenc B?nyai.- Hugo van der Goes reading Johannes Tauler? A Literary Context for the Berlin Nativity, Geert Warnar.- Mediating the Immediate: Richard Rolles Mystical Experience in the Translations of his Self-Revelations, Tam?s Kar?th.- Confined Meditation or Mediated Contemplation, Zsuzsanna P?ri-Nagy.- Gott, er war zu verwegen. Der Held als Medium der Gotteserfahrung im Tristanstoff des 12. Jahrhunderts, Petra Rosswaag.- II.?Early Modernity.- What is the Purpose of Human Life? Immediate Experience of God in Picos WorkslÓ.