Book Overview
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. Ecstatic Confessions illuminates the intellectual development of its author even as it probes the almost insurmountable barrier between language and authentic mystical experience, which is, in essence, beyond the grasp of rational constructs.Customer Reviews
Rated 5 starsCommotion and unity
This is one of those rare anthologies that is worth its price more for the editor's introductory remarks than for the anthologized essays. Don't misunderstand me. Buber does a wonderful job of selecting mystical "ecstatic confessions" from the world's religious traditions. He includes passages from writers such as Rumi, Rabia, Symeon the New Theologian, Hildegard of Bingen, the Beguines, Julian of Norwich, and Catherine...
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Rated 5 starsEncounters with the Divine
Martin Buber gives us collected writings of well known and unknown mystics. First published in German in 1909 this wonderful work gives a good introduction for anyone who wants more knowledge and confirmation of the existence of the Divine in our finite lives. LK 11:9 "And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Other works that have passed the test of...
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