Author: Bettina Baumer
Translator(s)/Editor: Bettina Baumer
Publisher: D K Printworld
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 365
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8124600961
Description
If mysticism is hard to define, what is it then? Or, why have mystics often spoken about what they have realized-notwithstanding the unspeakability of a spiritual experience? And, yet more significantly, how can a meeting point of different religious traditions be discovered at the mystical level? Focussing on these and other related questions, eminent scholars from varying religious traditions here explore the nature of mystical experience in two of the world’s major traditions: Hinduism and Christianity.
Neither a comparative study of religious traditions, nor an attempt to develop an overall mystical theology, the book sets out a spiritual dialogue between Shaiva and Christian mysticism: a dialogue wherein the participants articulate worldviews of the mystical traditions of Shaiva Siddhanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Meister Eckhart, Hadewijch, Julian of Norwich, St. Ignatius Loyola, and of the Eastern Christianity. And, without taking any a priori intellectual position, each author here evolves his/her own tradition-specific perspective on mysticism-letting the comparisons, if any, to surface in the dialogue itself.
A spiritual dialogue, like the one this multi-author work embodies, holds a key to an insightful understanding between different people, cultures and faiths - more specially in today’s world riven, as it is, by fundamentalist forces and endless religious conflicts. The book will be a valuable acquisition for the scholars and spiritually interested readers alike.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1. What is Mysticism?
2. Source of all Bliss : Mysticism of Shaiva and an Insight into its Samnyasa Tradition
3. The Mysticism of Jesus the Christ
4. Divine Recognition: Pratyabhijna
5. On Letting God Be God : Meister Eckhart and the Lure of the Desrt
6. Shambhavopaya : The Divine Way in Kashmir Shaivism
7. Unknowing and Personalism : In the Theological Tradition of the Christian East
8. Shaktipata: Grace in Kashmir Shaivism
9. Hadewijch of Antwerp and Hadewijch II: Mysticism of Being in the Thirteenth Century in Belgium
10. Enclosed in God: The Joyful Surprise of One-Ing : The Experience of Julian of Norwich
11. The Active Mysticism of St Ignatius Loyola
12. Aesthetics of Mysticism or Mysticism of Aesthetics? : The Approach; of Kashmir Shaivism
APPENDIX
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS