ABSTRACT

This book explores that most decisive and profound of all religious dramas, the seizure of man by divinity. Such ecstatic encounters are by no means uniformly encouraged in all religions. Yet it is difficult to find a religion which has not, at some stage in its history, inspired in the breasts of at least certain of its followers those transports of mystical exaltation in which man’s whole being seems to fuse in a glorious communion with the divinity. Transcendental experiences of this kind, typically conceived of as states of ‘possession’, have given the mystic a unique claim to direct experiential knowledge of the divine and, where this is acknowledged by others, the authority to act as a privileged channel of communication between man and the supernatural. The accessory phenomena associated with such experiences, particularly the ‘speaking with tongues’, prophesying, clairvoyance, and transmission of messages from the dead, and other mystical gifts, have naturally attracted the attention not only of the devout but also of sceptics. For many people, in fact, such phenomena seem to provide persuasive evidence for the existence of a world transcending that of ordinary everyday experience.