ABSTRACT
The ingression of the mystical text, as the productive representation of another person's interiority of heart and mind, into our own interior space, constitutes a moment of intimate communication. In fact, it makes sense to preface a new analysis of mystical texts with a brief evocation of early twentieth century France, when medieval philosophy, modern philosophy and modern science first came together around questions of mystical 'presence'. Mystical knowledge then emerges as the unparalleled cognition of the reality of God. The mystic grasps the presence of God through direct intuition, but grasps God as non-objectifiable. As a form of intimate communication, surviving through tradition or the 'handing on' of stable texts across space and time, medieval mystical texts can be viewed as sustaining our distinctively human hyper-cooperation within the human niche. This chapter argues that mystical texts show the linguistic encoding of 'convergence'.
