Ecstatic Confessions - (Martin Buber Library) by Martin Buber (Paperback)

About the Book

Beginning with Buber's seminal essay on mysticism, this book offers texts down the centuries from oriental, pagan, Gnostic, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim sources. It aims to convey some quality of an experience that is essentially beyond the power of words to capture.

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

Available for the first time in paperback, 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.

About the Author

Martin Buber has gained worldwide acclaim for his translations and expositions of various mythic and mystical traditions. His works include On the Bible: Eighteen Studies and The Prophetic Faith.

Paul Mendes-Flohr is an authority on modern Jewish thought, especially the work of Martin Buber.