Mística na tradição ocidental em Lima Vaz

This Work aims at reflecting on mystics, within the Western tradition, departing Lima Vaz’ thought, in order to try identifying the function that rested reserved to Mystic Experience, in the Modern Society, Society that, as It purposes Itself destroying the Sacred one up the World, has put aside Religion as a factor of legitimation regarding to public sphere. Its purpose is recovering some historical-philosophical aspects regarding to Christian Tradition in order to understanding better the level regarding to crisis of meaning of this Society can be linked to the progressive lack concerning the originary relation of the Human Being with the Transcendence Itself since that this lacking subverted the constitutive nucleus of its own identity as an open. We may assume that this Reflection of ours will be turned on contributing for reflecting of the Christian Mystics et its contribution for the dialogue with the plurality of the actual ways of spiritualities, in front of crisis concerning the contemporaneity.

A probe inside the poetic form of mysticism of Slovak Romantic Messianists

The Slovak Romantic Messianism is perceived by us as a phenomenon growing from a specific current epochal situation relating to a relatively rich tradition, which existed in the Slovak cultural context already in previous historical periods. By considering the characteristic features of production, its existence was often relativised. Nevertheless, it represents an important testimony of a concrete epoch. Its artistic implementation (perhaps today more than in the past) is being well appreciated, thanks to its interesting form and to its expressive and narrative strength or value. By focusing our attention on its expressive and thematic means, it is possible to prove that the authors tried to mediate a mystical experience to the readers. As mystagogues, they introduced and initiated the readers to the mysteries of God’s plans aiming at transformation of this world. In this sense, through their literary production, they invoked and prayed God to give them a chance to live a direct mystic experience in the reality. By pursuing this purpose, they filled their poetry with curious archaisms and neologisms (the so-called self-creation of language). They gave way to a speculative etymologism and poetical forms. Generally, they were syncretically stylying poetical shapes. And they often exploited experiments or complex strophic structures.

A Controversial Orthodoxy : Al-Ghazali’s Revival of the Religious Sciences

As part of NTT JTSR’s series on Key Texts, the present article discusses the magnum opus of the medieval Muslim scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Iyā Ulūm al-Dīn (Revival of the Religious Sciences): its genre, the main aspects of the critique it generated and its relevance to contemporary Muslim debates. This work is still celebrated in Muslim traditionalism as a masterpiece on Islamic spiritual sublimity and self-purification, based on scriptural-traditional references and the mystic experience of the author. The Iyā inspired many authors with commentaries, annotations, epitomes and explanations. Yet it stirred no less critique among religious scholars and conservative currents as a work indulging religious novelties as well as spreading inauthentic traditions and unorthodox practices among Muslims. The controversy about this work reflects an intra-Islamic antagonism towards the notion of orthodoxy, and what it entails for the Muslim faith and praxis.

Mystic Language and Symbols: Unity of Being and Pakistani Women Fiction Writers

This article explores the concept of unity of being in fiction by Pakistani women writers. The usage of mystic language and depiction of mystical and Sūfi symbols in literature can be traced back to ancient texts. However, it has been deemed alien for women to be Sūfis and have mystic experience, apart from a few exceptions. Indulging in formulating mystical symbols and using mystic language by women has not been perceived as too womanly. The main reason for this is the fact that women’s world-view has been restricted and thus deemed limited. Complete works of fiction by Pakistani women writers writing in Urdu have been explored for this research. There are two steps in sample selection i.e. women fiction writers and their fiction. Women writers are selected on the basis of set criteria. Selection of text is done through theoretical sampling. Women fiction writers have used mystic symbols meaningfully at innumerable places in their works. By the study of these works, it can be concluded that women writers have indulged in using mystical language and symbols and have done it in a crafty manner, though retaining the traditional usage of these symbols and metaphors.

Rūmī’s Verse at the Crossroads of Language and Music

This article demonstrates how Rūmī has made use of the Iranian musical system and Persian classical prosody, two separate semiotic systems with overlapping forms and aesthetic principles, in order to create a hybrid semiotic system in his poetry. His poetic feat can be observed through a comparative analysis of the linguistic and musical components of his poems in the Divān-e Shams-e Tabrizi, used extensively in the sacred tradition of samāʿ as well as in Iranian musical performances. This essay shows how the systematic use of rhythm and music in versification reaches new heights in Rumi’s ghazals, where the combination of language and music gives birth to a transcendental mode of expression devised with the aim of expressing the ineffable Ultimate Truth. Rumi employed this unique sign system to communicate a mystical message that cannot be conveyed using ordinary language. His unparalleled means of expression, in direct relation with the mystic experience of wajd, is used to incarnate what Sufis call maʿnā (the archetypal meaning). These archetypal ideas cannot be understood through dialectic means of the intellect but can only be taken in by the heart of the mystic in a state of ecstasy.

INFLUENCE OF IGNATYAN SPIRITUALITY ON THE FORMATION OF THE PIERRE TEILLARD DE CHARDIN’S CONCEPT OF SYNTHESIS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The study provides an analysis of some factors that are often overlooked by Russian researchers, which however had significant influence on the evolution of the concept of synthesizing science and religion in the works of Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Evidence of the significance of such factors can be found in his essays, personal notes and letters. First of all, the Chardin’s writings should be considered in the light of Ignatian spirituality, which guided the novice to search for new knowledge. Secondly, the idea of synthesizing scientific and religious insights in his writings can be adequately evaluated by taking into consideration the position of the Catholic church that was fighting against modernist theories of those times. Thirdly, the significance and the role of Spiritual Exercises by Ignatius of Loyola that influenced the mystic experience of the Catholic theologist should be taken into account. The above factors had considerable impact on Chardin’s theology, which has become one of the essential examples of the 20th century dialogue between science and religion.

“El entendimiento con el qual me conoscan”: Intellectual Mysticism in the Visión Deleitable

Visión deleytable is a fictional tale based in the Aristotelian philosophical and Neoplatonic mystical beliefs of the Judeo-Arabic tradition of medieval Iberia. This fifteenth-century work of imaginative fiction, a “best-seller” among Iberian readers, tells of the ascent of the active intellect to the celestial spheres and an experience of God. In this narrative, knowledge of the Latin trivium and quadrivium are combined with that of the Arabo-Andalusi philosophic traditions. Particularly noteworthy is the author, De la Torre’s extensive use of Maimonides’ work, the Guide of the Perplexed, as a source for the wisdom revealed in the Visión deleytable. While Maimonides’ position on the mystic experience is debated by contemporary scholars, in the present study I explore how the concept of intellectual mysticism, applied to the Neoplatonic/Aristotelian model of the intellect’s conjunction with the divine as found in Maimonides’ work, also describes the goal toward which the protagonist (and reader) of the Visión deleytable strive. As such, the Visión deleytable reveals how this notion of human-divine union (most notably in the concept of the “prophet-angel”) from the Judeo-Andalusi tradition, transmitted in Arabic and Hebrew, was translated into Spanish and adopted into the Catholic and converso frameworks of the Visión deleytable in fifteenth-century Iberia.

A Search for Redemption and Mystical Union: An Analysis of O’Connor’s “Greenleaf” and “The Lame Shall Enter First”

Flannery O’Connor is one of the modern spiritual writers and is identified with labels like Catholic writer, Hillbilly Thomist, Southern novelist, grotesque stylist etc. She deserves another equally convincing label–O’Connor the Mystic–her claim to be considered a mystic being based on the many instances of the description of mystic experience and the operation of grace in her motifs. Flannery O’Connor highlights her religious outlook of God in a nontraditional manner and allows others to obtain grace through her literature. Though faith underpins all of her work, she does not use it in a didactic manner as a medium to preach. Her short stories can be viewed as a search for redemption in Christ. These stories are quests which involve the hero’s recognition of his vocation and end in his eventual ordination. There is an initial rebellion against belief, a crisis in faith, and a resolution in a ‘moment of grace’ in her stories. For O’Connor, the very act of writing was itself a redemptive process. Though O’Connor’s works follow the features of Eastern as well as Western mysticism, the present study concentrates on the Christian mystical elements in O’Connor’s “Greenleaf” and “The Lame Shall Enter First” as O’Connor was a Catholic writer.

Description of mystic experience in Russian religious philosophy of the 19th-20th centuries

The article presents the factors influencing the description of mystic experience in the works of Russian religious philosophers of the 19th-20th centuries: V.S. Solovyev, P.A. Florenskiy, S.N. Bulgakov, N.O. Losskiy, I.A. Ilyin, S.L. Frank, V.V. Zenkovskiy. The authors cite several western and contemporary domestic scholars, who research different aspects of mystic experience. Analysis and generalization of works of Russian religious thinkers allows the authors to identify the peculiar features of mystic experience in Russian religious philosophy of the 19th-20th centuries and list its objects. The article gives examples of acquiring mystic experience described in the works of Russian religious philosophers of XIX-XX centuries. The authors come to a conclusion that doctrine of deification or theosis is recognized in Russian religious philosophy of the 19th-20th centuries as the main mystic teaching of Eastern Christianity. General ideas of deification peculiar to Russian religious thinkers are also stated and conditions necessary to acquire this mystic experience are named in the article.

Hesse, Hermann (1877–1962)

Hermann Hesse was born in Calw (Germany) in a pietistic missionary family. To his devout parents, ‘the I’, as a subject next to God, had no rights. This conviction not only lead to several personal crises in Hesse’s life but also inspired his central theme: the defense of the individual and its intellectual freedom, independent of any cause. Destined to become a Protestant theologian, Hesse became a seminarist at the Protestant convent school Maulbronn in 1891, from which he fled shortly after. A suicide attempt followed in 1892. Some years later, Hesse was trained as a bookseller in Tübingen (1895–1898). Although Hesse had started his career as a lyricist in the neo-romantic tradition by then (Romantische Lieder, 1898) and considered poetry to be his central literary medium, his novels and stories were the foundation of his success. His novels can be characterized as biographies of the soul, reflecting the protagonist’s subjectivist development and self-discovery. Hesse’s breakthrough came with Peter Camenzind (1904), which already dealt with his main topics: the uncompromising personality development, criticism of modern civilization and the education system, the mystic experience of nature and a return to the simple, authentic life – echoing Nietzsche’s philosophy of life.