Phenomenology and Mysticism - The Verticality of Religious Experience

Exploring the first person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Ruzbihan Baqli Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism and suggests that contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience.