Ecstatic Confessions : The Heart of Mysticism

by Buber, Martin

• ISBN13: 9780815604228
• ISBN10: 081560422X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-09-01
• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr

Summary

Available for the first time in paperback, Ecstatic Confessions is Martin Buber's unique, personal gathering of the testimonies of mystics throughout the centuries expressing their encounters with the divine. It features the author's seminal introduction to mysticism, "Ecstasy and Confession," which probes the nature of what Buber terms the "most inward of all experiences.... God's highest gift."
Buber sifted through texts from oriental, pagan, Gnostic, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim sources down the centuries to cull those moving records that manage to convey some quality of an experience that is essentially beyond the power of words to capture. Ecstatic Confessions orchestrates these reports from the edge of human experience into a revealing look at the nature of the ecstatic experience itself and the tension arising from the mystic's compelling need to give witness to an event that can never truly be verbalized.

Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction
Foreword
Introduction by Martin Buber: Ecstasy and Confession	p. 1
India
Prince Dara Shekoh and the Ascetic Baba Lal	p. 12
Ramakrishna	p. 13
Bayezid Bistami	p. 17
Hussein al Halladj	p. 20
Ferid ed din Attar	p. 22
Jalal al-din Rumi	p. 27
Tevekkul-Beg	p. 29
The Sufis and Their Followers
Rabi'a	p. 31
Neoplatonism
Plotinus	p. 32
Gnosticism and Early Christian Heresy
Valentinus	p. 35
Sayings of Montanus and the Montanists	p. 35
Greek Monasticism
Symeon the New Theologian	p. 36
The Twelfth Century
Hildegard von Bingen	p. 43
Alpais of Cudot	p. 45
The Franciscans
Aegidius of Assisi	p. 48
The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries in Germany
Mechtild von Magdeburg	p. 51
Mechtild von Hackborn	p. 61
Gertrud von Helfta	p. 63
Heinrich Seuse	p. 65
Christina Ebner	p. 70
Margareta Ebner	p. 72
Adelheid Langmann	p. 74
The Song of Bareness	p. 76
From the German Sister-books	p. 77
The Fourteenth Century in the North
Birgitta von Schweden	p. 91
Julian of Norwich	p. 94
Mysticism in the Netherlands
Gerlach Peters	p. 96
The Italian Women
Angela di Foligno	p. 99
Catherine of Siena	p. 105
Catherine of Genoa	p. 107
Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi	p. 109
The Spanish Women
Teresa de Jesus	p. 112
Anna Garcias (Anna a San Bartolomeo)	p. 117
The Seventeenth Century in France
Armelle Nicolas	p. 118
Antoinette Bourignon	p. 121
Jeanne Marie Bouvieres de la Mothe Guyon	p. 121
Elie Marion	p. 124
The Seventeenth Century in Germany and the Netherlands
Jakob Bohme	p. 126
A Page	p. 126
Hans Engelbrecht	p. 127
Hemme Hayen	p. 129
The Nineteenth Century
Anna Katharina Emmerich	p. 135
Ancient India
From the Mahabharatam	p. 143
Chinese Mysticism
Sayings of Lao-tse and His Disciples	p. 145
Jewish Mysticism
From the Hasidism	p. 147
Ecclesiastical and Nonecclesiastical Mysticism of the Early Christian Period
From the Writings of Makarios the Egyptian	p. 151
From the Writings of Ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite	p. 151
From the Tract "Sister Katrei"	p. 153
Ascribed to Meister Eckhart	p. 153
Bibliography	p. 157
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.