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.

Presents a concise history of mysticism in European philosophy Combines the viewpoints of philosophy, religious studies and psychology Offers insight into how an experience of God occurred with major authors

Autorentext
Miklós Vassányi holds a Doctoral Degree in Philosophy from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He has published a book on the history of the anima mundi theory with Springer. He is Head of the Department for General Humanities at the Karoli Gaspar University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Budapest.

Enik Sepsi holds a Doctoral Degree in Comparative Literature from Université Paris IV Sorbonne and in History of Hungarian Literature from ELTE University of Budapest. She has published and edited several books, in France and in Hungary alike, on the philosophy and theatre conception of Simone Weil. She is the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Head of the Institute for Arts Studies and General Humanities at the Karoli Gaspar University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Budapest.

Anikó Daróczi holds a Doctoral Degree in the History of Dutch Literature from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and a DoctoralDegree in History from ELTE University Budapest. She has published two books with Peeters (Leuven), and one with Atlas (Amsterdam) on Medieval Dutch Mysticism and Beguine Literature. She is Head of the Institute for German and Dutch Studies at the Karoli Gaspar University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, Budapest.

Inhalt
I. Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.- The Dromenon in the Hermetic Initiative Texts,Endre Hamvas.- Mystical Experience in the Theurgical Practice, Anna Judit Tóth.- Gymnastics of the Mind: The Theory of gymnos nous in Maximus the Confessor, Miklós Vassányi.- Ascending to the Third Heaven. Csaba Németh.- The Experience of God in the Mystical Language of Meister Eckhart, Ferenc Bányai.- Hugo van der Goes reading Johannes Tauler? A Literary Context for the Berlin Nativity, Geert Warnar.- Mediating the Immediate: Richard Rolle's Mystical Experience in the Translations of his Self-Revelations, Tamás Karáth.- Confined Meditation or Mediated Contemplation, Zsuzsanna Péri-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 Pico's Works, Monika Frazer-Imregh.- Figure del misticismo di Giordano Bruno, Antonio Dall'Igna.- Communicative Experience of God in Prayer, Martin Moors.- What (if Anything) can Justify the Objective Truth of an Alleged Immediate Experience of God? Théogène Havugimana.- III. Modern and Postmodern Times.- sources de la mystique de Simone Weil, Enik Sepsi.- The Mystical after Auschwitz, Balázs Mezei.- Ein Spiel der Worte, in dem das »Urwirkliche« atmet. The Birth of the Mystical Word According to Carl Albrecht, Anikó Daróczi.- A World in Which Everything is 'Here.' Northrop Frye's Immanent Vision of the Divine, Sára Tóth.- A Lonely Lutheran Mystic in Communist Hungary. The Spiritual Heritage of Bishop Lajos Ordass, Tibor Fabiny.- 'It is the Mind that Hears it, not the Ears An Anthropological Approach to Visions, Irén Lovász.- Experience of God, Reflected by Projective Drawings, Zsuzsanna Mirnics Judit Seres Zoltán Vass.