The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition

Zusatztext

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.

Autorenportrait

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. Eniko 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.

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