Closing lecture

On May 12, 2003, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Library bearing his name, Professor Haas delivered this lecture at Pompeu Fabra University. The text appeared as the first chapter of Mystik im Kontext (Wilhelm Fink, 2004) and was published in the first issue of Philía. Revista de la Bibliotheca Mystica et Philosophica Alois M. Haas (2007), in its original version and in Spanish, translated by Robert Caner-Liese.

German-Spanish bilingual version

Why and for what end do we study mysticism?

Fundamental questions are challenging, as they demand equally fundamental answers. If I borrow the question posed by Friedrich Schiller in 1789 during his inaugural lecture as a professor at the University of Jena—“What is the meaning and purpose of studying universal history?” [*]—and adapt it, albeit slightly transformed, as the title of my brief statement on mysticism, I am aware that, in terms of content, we are entering a field as vast as the topic of universal history that Schiller addressed before enthusiastic students. Essentially, the subject is the religious culture of humanity as a whole, within which mysticism has always been significant and, seemingly, will continue to be so. In other words, when faced with a subject of such breadth, it is not a matter of establishing the foundation for a manageable field of scientific work, nor of defending what are often referred to as "orchid disciplines"—a term used to describe these small but select areas of scientific study. Rather, it is about opening a perspective on human existence. Mysticism is—this is my opinion—an aspect of human existence. An aspect that should not be excluded from the anthropological scope of rational thought, as has so often happened in philosophy and theology, which since the Enlightenment have adopted a critical orientation. On the contrary, mysticism is an aspect that should be observed and interpreted more intensely than is customary. I will attempt to justify this with anthropological and theological arguments.

I.

First, I will address the anthropological aspect, which, in my view, is decisive. In a book edited in 1999 by the Dutch philosopher of religion Hent de Vries [1], titled Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, and which has recently received academic endorsement from Stanley Cavell and Richard Rorty, some philosophical efforts are presented to establish a new foundation for religion. Among them are the attempts of Jean-Luc Marion [2] to reestablish a philosophia prima as well as my own modest attempt to legitimize mysticism, which I propose in my book Mystik als Aussage [3].My argument begins with the fundamental fact that in every human being's life, there are moments over which we have no control whatsoever and which therefore completely elude any possible human manipulation [4]. These moments are the beginning of life at birth and its end in death. Philosophers refer to “natality” [5] as a paradoxical gift through which a person is given to themselves—an event not always desired or praised by the individual involved. On the other hand, Christianity has always referred to “mortality” as an insurmountable moment of contingency and finitude [6], in which that gift is returned, with all the implications of a radical loss that utterly cancels out the factual and given structure of human life. The inability to control these two moments of life produces the effect of:

A religious thematization of an absolutely irrepressible existential experience [...], namely, the experience of our absolute dependence on existential conditions that existence itself cannot control. [7]

According to Hermann Lübbe, the human contingency manifested in birth and death is an “unavailability” of an “irrefutable impertinence,” whose consistency is so complete and impenetrable that it resists all enlightened and emancipatory efforts. In this regard, human beings must behave in accordance with the facts, that is, ultimately in a religious manner. The culture related to this behavior should be called religion [8], and vital religious practice should be described [9] as a “practice of mastering contingency” and as a “culture of behavior in relation to the unavailable.”

We could draw attention to the fundamental position of Hans Blumenberg, who, notably drawing on Schopenhauer, proposes a stubborn and rebellious centralization of the will concentrated in the self as a reprisal against contingency—a self-centered defiance that survives the world [10], and with it death, through the idea of a willful self. This is an enlightened inversion of the religious thought of contingency, whose character as futile consolation reveals its weakness.

Hans Urs von Balthasar outlined a differentiating aspect of the religious practice of mastering contingency, which, when compared with the negative connotations that often accompany it, proves to be incomparably superior due to its positive and enthusiastic nature. He inscribed it in the ontological difference between being and beings, which can be perceived as contingency and dependence. This refers to the difference

[...] between the rational and ethical mastery of worldly existence and the awareness of a potentiality that will never be dominated or achieved, the awareness of being admitted and introduced into the domain of being in its entirety. This awareness is anchored in the primordial experience of a call from outside the self, through which we come to participate in the worldly community of existence. [11]

Here again, the idea of human dependence is reinforced. However, by its consequent intensification of being understood as a “gift of being” (as opposed to the contrary existentialist emphasis on being as “thrown” and “absurd”), this idea acquires the semantics of a representation of fullness, liberating it from the mere functional consideration of a practice (of mastering contingency). Nevertheless, in the human contingency of birth and death, which I have only briefly sketched here, there undoubtedly persists an internal deficiency in the character of self-identity, as the ontological difference is insurmountable. However, the moment of donation that takes place within the difference is the decisive “mystical” (i.e., hidden) inciter of all human longing attempts to overcome the difference and move toward the effective unity that lies behind it.

Due to his contingent existence, the human being will never be able to affirm of himself what God said to Moses in the form of a self-conscious tautology: “Ego sum qui sum” (Ex 3:14). “Since we (humans) are also always what we are not, that is, what we were or what we will become” [12]. This means that the past and future of a human existence escape the categories of identity temporally grounded in the self, questioning and subjecting them to contingency. This begins with the aforementioned subjection of human life to the constant and insurmountable events of birth and death [13], and extends into the chain of biographically interpreted events to which space is given for manifestation within the framework of the mentioned factuality.

Both events, birth and death, possess an element of estrangement that acknowledges the insecurity of human self-identity. On the one hand, as Jean-Luc Marion has shown, death is given to me without my ever being able to know it, and on the other, birth, in a way, occurs without me or even temporally before I exist. Yet even the fundamental constellation of human identity with itself, never assured, can foster attitudes in which—through a fundamental vital longing—a unity of the self with itself and with the absolute, conceived as something insurmountable, is realized. This occurs in the following three forms: 1) in a regressive ecstasy; 2) in a progressive ecstasy; and 3) in a punctual ecstasy immanent to time.

The regressive form is the mystical return [14] to the “oceanic feeling” [15] that Freud describes, albeit inadequately and stigmatizingly, as an infantile regression to the maternal womb, thereby reducing its scope. For in fact, this encompasses all those philosophical and imaginative formations of the “longing for the origin” that Mircea Eliade has uncovered [16]. In a hermetic note from 1938, Freud himself glimpsed the possibility of a mystical instance beyond the self and the id when he wrote: “Mysticism—the obscure self-perception of the realm outside the self, of the id” [17].

Progressive representations, by contrast, refer to utopias or apocalyptic-eschatological fantasies of unity or return, that is, those that are historically fulfilled and that usually only adopt a mystical dimension marginally (the great exception is Thomas Müntzer, who managed to combine the eschatological perspective with mysticism). On the other hand, the third possibility, which focuses on the instant and its event-like potency, belongs to the mystical and religious inventory of all times, as the mystical process of liberation—psychologically realized as the deautomatization of the constraints of thinking and feeling [18] with which we perceive the world—often occurs in an eruptive manner.

Since within the constraints of given temporal courses, the possibility of a transition from the empirical self to the true self (the deep self) continually re-emerges in the form of an ecstatic and sudden abandonment of temporal conditions, the empirical self can gain access to a deep structure through a structurally given illumination and an inner liberation. This deep structure is no longer subject to temporal contingencies. With this, we arrive at mysticism, which moves from the anthropologically relevant finding of insurmountable contingency to the condition of possibility for a profound experience no longer subjected to temporal conditions. In this way, it guarantees the full self-identity desired and longed for: in Christianity, as the mystical experience of God’s thought of the self; in Buddhism, as the non-thought of the self in the universal Buddha-nature of selfhood, etc.

Thus, humanity finds itself at a crossroads where it transcends itself, advancing toward the dimension of what is ineffable and indefinable, and therefore, toward its mysterious character—either through a “wild mysticism” [19] that returns to the state of indecision characteristic of the “oceanic feeling,” or within the framework of theistic religious systems, moving forward to unity with God in death. This unity is prophesied, must be recovered, and should be defined as a rebirth. If we turn our attention more closely to all these human attempts to overcome, in one way or another ecstatically, the contingent, questionable, and unmanageable points of existence with all the force of their being—and if we try to understand them in a broader sense within the framework of the history of religions or, more specifically, from the perspective of the philosophy, psychology, or sociology of religions, system theory, or typologically or structurally—we then follow an impulse of anthropology that fundamentally motivates us toward such endeavors.

If we accept the analysis of human contingency, it seems, then, that the fundamental mystical gesture effectively considers the following determinations:

1. Mysticism—understood here as the fundamental tendency of human existence toward unity with the foundation from which and toward which life unfolds—affirms what is (contingency in birth and death).
2. And with this—and now speaking within the context of Christian belief (though other beliefs could be mentioned)—a specific singularity of human existence is revealed, according to which human beings
3. are not of the world
4. even though during their lives they exist in the world in the most intense way (see Jn 17:11, 14, 16).

The fundamental finitude of human existence outlined in this constellation refers to the history of how humans have lived their finitude in the face of that which transcends it. Alongside psychology, which allows us to measure the experiential dimension of this constellation, we must primarily turn to historical sciences, where we can trace an individual destiny within the field of socio-economic tensions. Alongside historical sciences, it is primarily philological sciences that make it possible to access, in a fundamental way, the linguistic nature of mystical texts: without them, the texts remain mute and insignificant. To this, we must add all relevant research in history that pertains to the spirituality and devotion of a particular branch of religion, as well as the ritual forces and those that enable the life and formation of a society. The field is vast, and we have by no means named it exhaustively. For the possibility of a semantically solid investigation of historically relevant data (that is, primarily texts) depends on making their context accessible, which must always be researched from a specific religion—or in the case of "wild mysticism"—from a particular social function. And with this, we have arrived at the science of religions and, in terms of content, to theology.

II.

Regarding our question, I would like to limit its theological dimension and that of the history of religions to Christianity. In doing so, I am aware that other religions may mention other central points of their creed and experience (for example, instead of the word, silence or rituals). In the case of Christianity, the importance of the word immediately comes into consideration. Creation, original sin, salvation history, and even the end of times, all are linked to the word. The structure of creation is linguistic, founded on the divine word, which spoken by God the Father, will remain ever-present as Jesus Christ. Original sin rests upon a linguistic contradiction of the created man. The fathers and prophets of Israel are promised the word of God as salvation and redemption from original sin. The Messiah, Jesus Christ, sent by God the Father and bearer of the Spirit, is presented in the incarnation as the perfect word of God directed to humanity. Even the return of the Anointed One at the end of times occurs as the verdict of the divine word [20]. All of this has consequences for the entirety of civilization and culture imbued with Christianity, and also for its conception of the communicative medium. The principle of understanding between all humans in a world is determined by this conception in which an interiority becomes audible through a word that is externalized and directed towards another interiority [21]. All conceivable inner worlds—especially imaginary ones—depend essentially on the possibility of externalization through the spoken word if they are to survive. But the word is given [22] in each individual case and is stronger than any individual subject using it when speaking. This is also an essential part of the finitude of human existence: no one invents language, it is learned in community with many others who already speak it before them. In this way, any communication within human groups—real or virtual, which we should explore in detail—ultimately develops through the spoken word. What interests me is the following: any religious interiority exists within this bond and is founded upon it.

Certainly, there are cultural evolutions that we must take into account. The orality of our time is not comparable to the original orality of human beings from ancient times. Today's world resounds with so much information: both in the form of language and images. God is seemingly dead or appears to have withdrawn into silence. There are no longer theophanies. The concept has secularized and refers to dense narrative moments. Nevertheless, the interiority that wants to realize itself with all its might survives amidst total informatization. In the face of such an assault, the mystical tradition insists on interiority (because without it, an articulable external world would not exist). Precisely for this reason, the voices of contemporary mystics are so deserving of appreciation: their texts present a form of communication that seems paradoxical but precisely because of this corresponds to the historical situation: the texts present "ways of speaking about silence" [23]. They establish a connection in our current context between the mode of thought of interiority, whose place is mystery and silence, and the powerful oral word [24]. That is, they reflect the fundamental human situation between the hidden and interior word and the exterior and spoken word, even where they have acquired the rigidity of the "text" and where they know that the "Living Word" is "buried" within its mediation. However, the texts have the reader as the Savior of this hidden presence; because the written word threatens them, it will be revitalized by them, it speaks to them of each tension between keeping the secret and its opening, in which the texts originate and that they do not want to abandon [25].

We can take as a starting point that "mystical texts" are characterized by having a clear and concrete intentional reference and by having as their goal a content whose contours can be described. Thus, I call mystical texts those in which one can thematize, and indeed has done so, that which since Neoplatonism has been called theoria, vision, or contemplation of God (in Latin, contemplatio) [26] and which has always arisen from an original fascination [27]; and if we now recall the well-known definitions, what we have said means that at the center of these texts is found a unio mystica [28] or cognitio Dei experimentalis [29] that unfolds in the soul in all its breadth, doing so in a diverse way and identified by different names. Its importance clearly lies in a union of the human being with God, which can acquire erotic or sexual connotations [30] and which, although occurring more or less in secret [31], demands to be exteriorized and communicated. Thus, alongside apophatic linguistic forms, we also find linguistic strategies of excess [32]—especially paradox and the rest of the locutiones emphaticae [33] that we can imagine—that are specifically decisive for the language of mysticism. All of this has always been recalled—accompanying the mystagogical texts—in the form of commentary, especially from the 16th century onwards, when mysticism began to properly become a science [34].

With these brief indications, perhaps the importance attributed to mysticism as a pinnacle of religious experience within Christianity is pointed out: both in Christianity and in other profane interpretations [35], it occupies the place of a "culminating point of the psychic life" [36] and, thus, acquires the status of an infinite theme in the general linguistic exchange among humans. This assertion is binding for anthropology and psychology, and, if true, pushes us toward a constantly renewed evaluation of our inner hierarchy of values. Moreover, the enormous interest many sciences show in mysticism rests on the presupposition that the psychic event of "mystical experience" [37] holds significant anthropological relevance, which compels further study from various perspectives, including the philosophical-metaphysical, psychological or psychotherapeutic, historical-sociological, literary and philological, medical-physiological, and those of the natural sciences, and, finally, even the mathematical viewpoint. Alongside other options that determine human positioning in the world, but without fixing it resignedly to finitude, the "mystical" solution acquires special importance, that is, the solution that refers to the mysterious dimension of existence with its "methods [38] of transgression" [39] transcendental, in the ancient sense of the word, and its ecstatic orientation. An importance, as mentioned, that exerts, or could exert, great fascination across the broadest scientific spectrum. Thus, it seems clear that mysticism is a religious phenomenon of the psychic life that could and should interest practically all human sciences. That aspect of the mystical phenomenon that is unsettling for the sciences is—using Rudolf Otto's unfortunate term—its "irrational moment," which does not mean "the crude and indistinct that has yet to be subjected to reason," but "that event which, due to its depth, escapes comprehensive interpretation" [40]. Christian mysticism concerns an experience of the divine presence [41] or union with God that can never produce the impression of something "absurd" or "irrational," but rather transcends the forces of reason after they have been applied to their own capacity. "Mystical" (mystikós) means, in fact, "mysterious, belonging to the mystery" [42]. Anyone who wishes to describe these experiences objectively within the context of human perceptual capacity must take into account their dialectical structure and also consider the simultaneity of the rational with the ability to transcend it as the driving force behind it. Only when reason has measured its capacities with all the effort of its conceptual demand can it finally glimpse its own boundary and the beyond of it in an intuitio mystica that surpasses reason.

However, precisely within the realm of Christian revelation, we find a moment free from all aporia and conceptual negativity that plays a decisive role: to the Word, which was in the beginning and became incarnate (John 1:1-14), belongs the quality of realizing all secular theosophical endeavors, as demonstrated by one of the greatest Christian historians of religion of all time, F. Max Müller:

When we find the Word — which was with God in the beginning and by which all things came into being — in Monogenês, postulated by Plato, developed by the Stoics and the Neoplatonists, both pagans and Jews and Christians, transmitted to the early Fathers of the Church, it seems that a connection and an electrical current emerge that seemingly links Plato with John and John with ourselves, while illuminating and giving life to some of the most difficult and obscure demands of the New Testament. [43]

Although the demand for such a position may currently be relativized, it persistently refers to the Christian obligation of revelation in the Word [44], the obligatory nature of which cannot be overemphasized, but, beyond all apophasis, must submit to the Dionysian interpretation kath'hyperochen ("in an exalted manner") [45]. The foundation of this primacy of the Word (even in the silence that is always a form of communication, as clearly expressed in a Pythagorean saying from the 1st century CE: kai tò siopân lógos, even silence is language) [46] is, therefore, that God speaks to the world, a gift and dedication that can be recognized in faith, which is exempt from all normalization and is "necessarily theo-logical, or rather, theo-pragmatic": "The action of God directed toward man, an action that interprets itself before men and for men (and thus with them and in them)" [47].

This primacy of God's dedication and gift to the world, which should by no means be reduced cosmologically or anthropologically, situates our anthropological considerations on a new plane. We can then add a note to the determination of human life understood as life in the world, but not of the world, according to which all being present in an absolute manner in the "factuality" of life is not, a priori, pure nature, but ultimately, in the light of faith, must be a gift and, with this, surpasses all dimensions of human possibilities for manipulation [48]. The fundamental constellation that arises from this, which according to the Christian understanding underpins, to a greater or lesser degree, all mysticism, is explained by Hans Urs von Balthasar with the following words:

There is no other path than that of grace, in the sense of a mysterious "participation in the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), an admission of the creature into the sphere of divine being in such a way that a personal relationship of exchange becomes possible, based on a way of thinking and being that is somehow common (con-naturalitas) [49].

With this determination, the Christian finds all the paths open to admit or enter into various experiences of presence and union with God. Among them is the following experience, which Saint John of the Cross describes as follows:

O lamps of fire!
in whose splendors
the deep caverns of feeling,
once obscure and blind,
now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely,
both warmth and light to their Beloved. [50]

And John's commentary on this:

[...] being here made one with Him, in a certain way she is God by participation; although not as perfectly as in the other life, it is as we said, like the shadow of God. And in this way, being through this substantial transformation the shadow of God, she does in God, by God, what He does in her, by Himself, in the way He does it, because the will of the two is one, and thus the operation of God and of her is one. Therefore, just as God is giving Himself with free and gracious will, so too, she, having the will all the more free and gracious the more united in God, is giving to God the same God in God, and is a true and complete gift of the soul to God. [51]

The in praesentia Dei stare of mysticism, which here is described in harmony with the broader Christian tradition, is theologically revealed as the entry of the loving human into a dynamic-ontological harmony with God, in which the theme of the personal union of two distinct beings is lived as a transformation of the personal life of the Trinitarian God. Here, Trinitarian theology should be applied and its efficacy unfolded, understood as a healing mystical mystery. Drawing closer to it — this is our modest conclusion! — is the vital goal of our dedication to Christian mysticism, a dedication that, in addition to being humanly grounded, we pursue as seriously as scientific seriousness demands.

***

Let us recapitulate in light of what we have just exposed: mysticism always carries out a grounding of human existence, both discursive as well as experimental-intuitive, thus representing, as a cultural phenomenon, the entirety of a life project to which it aspires, as it responds to humans with all the means of a vehement rhetoric. It attends to the deficient state of humanity with the intent of weighing the project of a journey wherein a completeness becomes visible beyond the limits of humankind, an immensity that is kath'hyperochén (in proportion to the incomprehensible nature of God Himself) [52]. Mysticism is an excess that presupposes the incarnation; mysticism implies the suppression of boundaries. Its theological teleology holds a sense of incarnation as the beatification of humanity. Mysticism concerns humans and responds to them by appealing to the divine word directed toward them, through both physical and spiritual faculties. Similarly, Schiller refers to humans when he acknowledges in multiplicity the destiny of the future man, whom he conceives as one who must form himself. Upon this destiny, he wished to build universal history as the appropriate instrument: "[...] all share the same fate, those who came into the world with the same calling — to form themselves as human beings — and to these people, history speaks" [53]. Only in the context of such humanity can hope for human redemption be realized, as it survives in mysticism. Not otherwise.

Tr. Robert Caner-Liese

Notes

[i] Schiller, Friedrich, Werke in drei Bänden, München, C. Hauser, 1966, vol. 2, pp. 9-33.

[1] De Vries, Hent, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, London, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, p. 124 and ff.

[2] Marion, Jean-Luc, Réduction et donation. Recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger et la phénoménologie, Paris, PUF, 1989; Étant donné. Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation, Paris, PUF, 1998; De surcroît, Paris, PUF, 2001. It would be fruitful to compare these investigations with the philosophical plan of Dieter Mersch, Was sich zeigt. Materialität, Präsenz, Ereignis, München, Fink, 2002.

[3] Haas, Alois M., Mystik als Aussage. Erfahrungs-, Denk- und Redeformen christlicher Mystik, Frankfurt am Main, 1997, p. 69 and ff.

[4] See Lubbe, Hermann, Religion nach der Aufklärung, Graz, 1986, p. 127 and ff. (argued from a sociological and functional perspective); Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Theodramatik II: Die Personen des Spiels. I Teil: Der Mensch in Gott, Einsiedeln, Johannes, 1967, p. 259 and ff.; Haas, Alois M., Gottleiden Gottlieben. Zur volkssprachlichen Mystik im Mittelalter, Frankfurt am Main, Insel, 1989, p. 343, n. 4.

[5] Sloterdijk, Peter, "Zur Welt kommen - Zur Sprache kommen," in Die Frankfurter Vorlesungen, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1988, p. 60 and ff.; Heinrichs, Hans-Jürgen, Die Sonne und der Tod. Dialogische Untersuchungen, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2001, p. 200 and ff.

[6] Based on the fundamental phrase of Thomas Aquinas for all created things: omne creatum est finitum (Sth III, 7, 11), Martin Heidegger will nuance it with the exceptionality of human existence: "Only the free being for death gives Dasein its complete purpose and casts existence into its finitude. Finitude, when assumed, withdraws existence from the infinite multiplicity of possibilities of well-being, ease, and flight from responsibilities that immediately present themselves, and leads Dasein to the simplicity of its Destiny [Schicksal]." (Heidegger, Martin, Sein und Zeit, 6. Aufl., Tübingen, 1949, § 74, p. 384; see also § 65, p. 330; Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [= GA 1, 3], Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 1991, § 38-40, pp. 214-226).

[7] Lobbe, Hermann, op. cit., p. 136.

[8] Ibid., p. 144.

[9] The medial consummation of the unavailability is shown in scriptural practices that, at most, were begun by the hand of man. See Keller, Hildegard Elisabeth, "Kolophon im Herzen. Von beschrifteten Mönchen am Rande der Paläographie," in Das Mittelalter 1 (2003).

[10] Blumenberg, Hans, Lebenszeit und Weltzeit, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1986, p. 75 and ff.

[11] Balthasar, Hans Urs von, "Bewegung zu Gott," in Spiritus Creator. Skizzen zur Theologie III, Einsiedeln, Johannes, 1967, pp. 13-50, here p. 16 (The underlining is mine).

[12] Hahn, Alois, Konstruktionen des Selbst, der Welt und der Geschichte. Aufsätze zur Kultursoziologie, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2000, p. 97.

[13] Marion, Jean-Luc, op. cit., 2001, pp. 46-52.

[14] Freud, Sigmund, "Das Unbehagen in der Kultur" in Studienausgabe vol. 9, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1974, pp. 197-205.

[15] Masson, J. Moussaieff, The Oceanic Feeling. The Origins of Religious Sentiment in Ancient India, Dordrecht and London, Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1980, p. 33 and ff. Undoubtedly, it was Romain Roland who coined the term.

[16] Eliade, Mircea, La nostalgie des origines, Paris, Gallimard, 1989.

[17] Freud, Sigmund, Gesamelte Werke, vol. 17, London, Imago, 1941, p. 152. Quoted by H. F. Ellenberger, Die Entdeckung des Unbewussten. Geschichte und Entwicklung der dynamischen Psychiatrie von den Anfängen bis zu Janet, Freud, Adler, Jung, Zürich, Diogenes, 1985, p. 742.

[18] Deikman, Arthur J., "Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience," in Woods, Richard, Understanding Mysticism, New York, 1980, pp. 240-260.

[19] Hulin, Michel, La mystique sauvage. Aux antipodes de l'esprit, Paris, PUF, 1993, who includes the unification of the mysticism of drugs as well as that of sexuality and poetry. At its core, this form of mysticism is identical, according to an ancient (Catholic) typology, to the "natural" mysticism defended today by many psychologists. See Maslow, Abraham H., Motivation und Persönlichkeit, Reinbek, Rowolt, 1989, p. 195 and ff.

[20] On this, see Scheffczyk, Leo, Von der Heilsmacht des Wortes. Grundzüge einer Theologie des Wortes, München, Hueber, 1966. - From this, one also deduces the significance, never too overrated in the Middle Ages, of the herald of the Logos himself, John, as a mystagogical representation of deification. See Hamburger, Jeffrey F., St. John the Divine. The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 2002.

[21] "It [the word] is a call of one interior through an exterior to another interior" (Ong, Walter J., S.J., The Presence of the Word. Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1967, p. 309).

[22] Max Picard emphasizes the aspect of the predetermination of the Word in the world of men, Der Mensch und das Wort, Erlenbach-Zürich, Rentsch, 1955, p. 11 and ff.

[23] Roloff, Volker, Reden und Schweigen. Zur Tradition und Gestaltung eines mittelalterlichen Themas in der französischen Literatur, Munich, Fink, 1973, pp. 7-9; Ruberg, Uwe, Beredtes Schweigen in lehrhafter und erzählender deutscher Literatur des Mittelalters. Mit kommentierter Erstedition spätmittelalterlicher Liedtexte über das Schweigen, Munich, Fink, 1978; Keller, Hildegard Elisabeth, "Vom beredeten Bekenntnis Verstummender. Kommunikationstheoretische und sprachtheologische Reflexionen zu menschlicher Sprachnot," in Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 126, 32 (2002), pp. 48-78.

[24] Tyrell, Hartmann, "Religiöse Kommunikation. Auge, Ohr und Medienvielfalt," in Schreiner, Klaus (ed.), Frömmigkeit im Mittelalter. Politisch-soziale Kontexte, visuelle Praxis, körperliche Ausdrucksformen in collaboration with Mare Müntz, Munich, Fink, 2002, pp. 41-93.

[25] See Keller, Hildegard Elisabeth, "Absonderungen. Mystische Texte als literarische Inszenierung von Geheimnis," in Haug, Walter and Schneider-Lastin, Wolfram (Eds.), Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang. Neu erschlossene Texte, neue methodische Ansätze, neue theoretische Konzepte. Kolloquium Kloster Fischingen, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 2000, pp. 195-221; "Rosen-Metamorphosen. Von unfesten Zeichen in der spätmittelalterlichen Mystik (Heinrich Seuse) und in der Rosenkranz-Ursprungslegende," in Frei, Urs Beat and Bühler, Fredy (Eds.), Der Rosenkranz. Kunst der Andacht, Bern, Benteli, 2003, pp. 34-53; "Das Medium und die Sinne. Performanz für Aug und Ohr in mittelalterlicher Literatur," in Eming, Jutta, Lehmann, Annette Jael, and Maassen, Irmgard (Eds.), Mediale Performanzen. Historische Konzepte und Perspektiven, Freiburg im Breisgau, Rombach, 2002 (Litterae 97), pp. 127-152.

[26] See the fascinating article "Contemplatio" in DSp. 2, Paris 1953, 1643-2193.

[27] Beck, Hans Georg, Theoria. Ein byzantinischer Traum, Munich, 1983 (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Kl., Sitzungsbereich. Jg. 1983, H. 7).

[28] See Haas, Alois M., "Unio mystica. Hinweise zur Geschichte eines Begriffs," in Erkennen und Erinnern in Kunst und Literatur. Kolloquium Reisensburg, 4-7 Januar 1996. In connection with W. Frühwald, edited by D. Peil, M. Schilling, and P. Strohschneider, Tübingen, 1998, pp. 1-17.

[29] See Haas, Alois M., "Was ist Mystik?", in Gott Leiden Gott Lieben. Zur volkssprachlichen Mystik im Mittelalter, Frankfurt am Main, 1989, pp. 37, 337, n. 71; 159, 283, 475, n. 150 and Mystik als Aussage. Erfahrungs-, Denk- und Redeformen christlicher Mystik, Frankfurt am Main, 1997, p. 33 and ff.

[30] This can especially be seen in the so-called feminine mysticism or mysticism of beguines. See Haas, Alois M., op. cit., 1997, pp. 270-281; Keller, Hildegard Elisabeth, My Secret is Mine. Studies on Religion and Eros in the German Middle Ages, Leuven, Peeters, 2000 (Studies in Spirituality, Suppl. 4) and ibid. "inluogen. Blicke in symbolische Räume an Beispielen aus der mystischen Literatur des 12. bis 14. Jahrhunderts," in Michel, Paul (ed.), Symbolik von Ort und Raum, Bern, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, Lang, 1997 (Schriften zur Symbolforschung, vol. 11), pp. 353-376; JAHRAUS, Oliver and ORT, Nina (Eds.), Beobachtungen des Unbeobachtbaren, Weilerswist, Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2000, especially FUCHS, Peter, "Vom Unbeobachtbaren," pp. 39-71.

[31] Stroumsa, Guy G., Hidden Wisdom. Esoteric Traditions and the Roots of Christian Mysticism, Leiden, Brill, 1996; Gruber, Bettina (ed.), Erfahrung und System. Mystik und Esoterik in der Literatur der Moderne, Opladen, Westdeutscher, 1997, especially the introduction, pp. 9-26. The topic of esoteric and exoteric aspects of mysticism could be addressed independently of the others. Also compare with Luhmann, Niklas; Fuchs, Peter, Reden und Schweigen, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1989. The texts by Martin Heidegger, Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), in Gesamtausgabe III, vol. 65, Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 1989, and Gerhard Nebel, Ereignis des Schönen (Stuttgart, 1953), provide reflections on the structure of the event of mystical experience. Compare with Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm, Mystik ohne Gott. Heideggers Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), in AMTHOR, Wiebke, BRITTNACHER, Hans R. and Hallacker, Anja (eds.), Profane Mystik? Andacht und Ekstase in Literatur und Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, Weidler, 2002, pp. 53-72.

[32] See especially the complete works of Georges Bataille edited by FINTER, H. and MAAG, G., Bataille lesen: Die Schrift und das Unmögliche, München, Fink, 1992; BATAILLE, Georges, Vorreden zur Überschreitung, edited by A. Hetzel and P. Wiechens, Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1999; Tracey Connor, Peter, Georges Bataille and the Mysticism of Sin, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Above all, see Certeau, Michel de, La fábula mística (siglos XVI-XVII). Epilogue by Carlo Ossola, Madrid, Siruela, 2006, p. 294.

[33] See Haas, Alois M., “Rhetorik und Mystik,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik edited by G. Ueding, vol. 7, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 2005. For the Eckhartian concept of locutio emphatica, see Haas, Alois M., op. cit., 1997, p. 124. See the corresponding passages of Meister Eckhart, Die lateinischen Werke, vol. 5, edited by L. Sturlese, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 2000, p. 341, 3 and ff. (locutio emphatica), p. 324, 6 (modo loquendi emphatico [utitur]) and p. 325, 1 (emphaticum).

[34] Certeau, Michel de, op. cit., 1982, p. 107 and ff.; compare with the work of the same author, Politica e mistica, Milano, 1975, p. 348 and ff.

[35] Hulin, Michel, La mystique sauvage. Aux antipodes de l'esprit, Paris, PUF, 1993: Bassler, Moritz and Chatelier, Hildegard (Eds.), Mystique, mysticisme et modernité en Allemagne autour de 1900, Strasbourg, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1998; Wiebke, Amthor; Brittnacher, Hans R.; Hallacker, Anja, Profane Mystik? Andacht und Ekstase in Literatur und Philosophie des 20 Jahrhunderts, Berlin, Weidler, 2002.

[36] Maritain, Jacques, “Distinguer pour unir ou Les degrés du savoir,” in Maritain, Jacques and Raissa, Oeuvres Complètes IV, Fribourg and Paris, Ed. Universitaire, 1983, p. 779 (“the highest point of the soul’s life”); Stufen des Wissens oder Durch Unterscheidung zur Einung, Mainz, undated, p. 392.

[37] By this, I understand here the absolute presence and unitive experience of both a "wild" religion (that is, cosmically oriented) and a mysticism rooted in and supported by a particular religion.

[38] By this, we mean a pre-Kantian position and, above all, pre-Husserlian!

[39] Marion, Jean-Luc, op. cit., 2001, pp. 155-195.

[40] Otto, Rudolf, Lo santo. Lo racional y lo irracional en la idea de Dios, Madrid, Alianza, 2001, p. 96 and ff. See also West-östliche Mystik. Vergleich und Unterscheidung zur Wesensdeutung, München, Beck, 1971, pp. 174-176. Long before Otto, similar distortions of mystical texts were admitted. See Haas, Alois Maria, Nietzsche zwischen Dionysos und Christus. Einblicke in einen Lebenskampf. (Edited and with a biographical essay by Hildegard Elisabeth Keller. With a Preface by Karl Pestalozzi and photographs by Franziska Messner-Rast), Wald, Drei-Punkt, 2003, pp. 15-23.

[41] McGinn, Bernard, Die Mystik im Abendland. Band 1: Ursprünge, Freiburg, Herder, 1994, p. 17 and ff.

[42] Bouyer, Louis, Mysterion. Du mystère à la mystique, Paris, O. E. I. L., 1986.

[43] Müller, F. Max, Theosophie oder Psychologische Religion. (Gifford-Vorlesungen Gehalten vor der Universität Glasgow im Jahre 1892), Leipzig, 1895, p. 515 and ff.

[44] On revelation as an event of speech, see Waldenfels, Hans, Offenbarung. Das zweite vatikanische Konzil auf den Hintergrund der neueren Theologie, München, Hueber, 1969, pp. 141-178, especially p. 166 and ff. (Wort und Tat).

[45] Areopagita, Dionysius, Letter IX, 1109C (see also Letter I, 1065A and The Names of God, Ch. VII, 2; 869A and ibid., VII, 3; 872A).

[46] Philostratus, Das Leben des Apollonios von Tyana, edited by V. Mumprecht, München, Artemis, 1983 (Sammlung Tusculum), p. 10 and ff.

[47] Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Glaubhaft ist nur Liebe, Einsiedeln, Johannes, 1985, p. 5. See also Waldenfels, Hans, op. cit., pp. 148-152.

[48] See Balthasar, Hans Urs von, op. cit., 1986, p. 33 and ff. (Difference between the two levels and their liquefaction in their united continuity).

[49] Ibid., p. 37.

[50] John of the Cross, “Llama de amor viva B”, in Obras Completas, edited by J. V. Rodríguez and F. R. Salvador, Madrid, 1992, p. 773.

[51] Ibid, 48, “Llama”, song 3, 78, p. 845.

[52] Areopagita, Dionysius, The Names of God, VII, 2; 869A; Letter IX, 3; 1109C.

[53] Schiller, Friedrich, op. cit. 1, 9.

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