Jakob Boehme (1575-1624) was one of those remarkable teachers, like Meister Eckhart, who pushed language to its limits to describe an experience that happens above and beyond rational thought. He was a Bohemian shoemaker who, in response to the overwhelming visionary experiences he began to undergo as a teenager, wrote a series of theosophical treatises that explored the relationship between the One and the many, existence and nonexistence, the inner process of divine emanation toward self-consciousness, the relationship of good and evil, and the personal and cosmic urge toward reintegration. Some hear in him resonances with alchemy, kabbalah, and Platonism. His influence is seen in the Quakers, the German Romantics, Pietism, various American utopian experiments, and in the European mystics who came after him. The great scholar of mysticism Evelyn Underhill called him "one of the most astonishing cases in history of a natural genius for the transcendent."
Michael Birkel and Jeff Bach's translation liberates Boehme into modern English. Previous editions have tended toward the academic, or have been couched in intentionally archaic language reminiscent of the King James Bible. This collection includes five essential texts, among them "Life Beyond the Senses," Boehme's explanation of the relationship between God and the soul.

2010 Reprint of 1963 edition. Selected and with an introduction and notes by A.W. Tozer. The purpose of this book is to bring together in one convenient volume some of the best devotional verse the English language affords, and thus to make available to present day Christians a rich spiritual heritage which the greater number of them for various reasons do not now enjoy. Includes works by Isaac Watts, Oliver Wendell Holmes, F.W. Faber, Milman, Shirley, Wesley, Rossetti, Gerhardt, Pollock, Tate, Brady, Tersteegen, Ware, Nicolai, Bonar and others. Tozer served 44 years of ministry, associated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a Protestant evangelical denomination; 33 of those years were served as a pastor in a number of churches. He is the author of dozens of books, two of which, The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy, are considered classics. His books impress on the reader the possibility and necessity for a deeper relationship with God.

Maria of Agreda's exceptional attributes spread from her cloistered convent in seventeenth-century Agreda (Spain) to the court in Madrid and beyond. Without leaving her village, the abbess impacted the kingdom, her church, and the New World. Based upon her transcendent visionary experiences, Sor Maria chronicled the life of Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth, in Mystical City of God, a work the Spanish Inquisition temporarily condemned. In America, reports emerged that she had miraculously appeared to Jumano Native Americans - a feat corroborated by witnesses in Spain, Texas, and New Mexico, where she is known as the legendary ""Lady in Blue."" Today Sor Maria is lauded in Spain as one of the most influential women in its history and in the United States as an inspiring pioneer. Fedewa's biography of this spirited abbess integrates voluminous autobiographical, historical, and literary sources published by and about Maria of Agreda.

Heaven and hell are from the human race. All who have ever been born men from the beginning of creation, and are deceased, are either in heaven or in hell. The Last Judgment must be where all are together; therefore in the spiritual world, and not on the earth. The Last Judgment exists when the end of the church is; and the end of the church is when there is no faith, because there is no charity. All the things which are predicted in the Apocalypse are at this day fulfilled. The Last Judgment has been accomplished. Babylon and its destruction. The former heaven and its abolition. The state of the world and of the church hereafter. The subject of the Last Judgment is continued, principally that it may be known what the state of the world and the church was before the Last Judgment, and what the state of the world and the church has become since; also, how the Last Judgment was accomplished upon the Reformed.

The pearlers we meet in this book were early monks of Syria, Mesopotamia (Iraq), and Persia (Iran), They saw themselves as pearl-divers and pearl-merchants searching, through asceticism and prayer, for the precious pearls of mystical experience. Their quest led them into the wilderness, to a state of silent solitude in remote caves and hermitages. Working from Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum and the Vatican Library, and from the Greek monastery of Saint Catherine in the wilderness of Sinai and the Coptic monastery of the Syrians (Der es-Suriani) in the Egyptian desert, Brian E. Colless has produced a volume which draws modern readers into this little known world.

St. John of the Cross was considered to be one of the greatest Spanish poets. Collected here are twenty of his amazing poems including The Dark Night, A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ, Love's Living Flame, By the Waters of Babylon, and many others.

Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900), one of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, was the founder of a tradition of Russian spirituality that brought together philosophy, mysticism, and theology with a powerful social message. A Platonist and a gnostic visionary, as well as a close friend of Dostoevsky, Solovyov was also a prophet who was granted three visions of Sophia, Divine Wisdom. A poet and a profoundly Christian metaphysicist, his works include The Justification of the Good; War, Progress, and the End of History; and The Meaning of Love. This unique, timely book - the first in-depth, full-length portrait of Soloviev as a mystic to appear in English - is the rich fruit of Dr. Allen's lifelong interest in the cultural and spiritual achievements, the mysticism, and the esoteric work of the Russian people during Tsarist times leading up to the twentieth century.

If you're open to hearing God even when you're sleeping, your dreams can be a rich source of revelation and insight.

One man's dream saves his family from what could have been a deadly fire.

A fifty-two-year-old woman finally understands a dream she's been having since she was thirteen.

A policeman's dream warns a friend of a dangerous encounter with a suspect.

Church elders have the same dream about a change in the church's leadership.

A strange and frightening dream warns a mother of a potentially dangerous relationship in her son's life.

A dream confirms an East Indian man's decision to become a Christian.

As you read the details of these and other dreams that Dr. Greg Cynaumon describes you will find that they and the circumstances that surrounded them were more than conincidental. You will be convinced that God, who is concerned and involved in the lives of individuals, has somehting to say through dreams. And you won't want to miss His messages.

Dr. Cynaumon examines dreams from a perspective that is both scientific and biblical. He explores dream interpretation, explains some common dream symbols, and answers questions about dreams and their occurrences in Scripture. He also corrects several popular myths about dreams.

If you desire to unravel one of life's great mysteries but are wary of secular approaches to this subject, then you'll want to explore with Dr. Cynaumon how God still speaks through dreams.

The Ascent of Mount Carmel is the third major work of St. John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic and major figure in the Catholic Reformation in the 16th century. This book is a systematic treatment of the ascetical life in pursuit of mystical union with Christ and is considered to be the introductory work on mystical theology. This books begins with an allegorical poem and the rest is a detailed explanation and interpretation of the poem.

Jacob Boehme was born in 1575. He received little if any formal education and was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Goerlitz in Saxony. From an early age he seems to have been devoted to the study of the Bible as well as to have had a growing, inner, sense of the reality of God. Walking one day in the fields, when he was twenty-five years old, the mystery of creation was suddenly opened to him, of which he later said that "in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years at the university . . . and thereupon I turned my heart to praise God for it." As experiences of this kind came more frequently, he puzzled much as to why such knowledge should be given to him, of all men, who sought only the love of God and was quite unlearned in the ordinary sense. Some ten years later he began to record what he received, as a help to his own memory, and thus was born The Aurora, his first book, finished in 1612. From then on he found both friends and enemies of his work. Due to persecution in his hometown, Boehme later settled in Dresden, where he died in 1624. Mysterium Magnum, written by Boehme the year before he died and at a time when his powers of expression had developed to their full, is perhaps central to his work in some thirty-one or thirty-two original volumes. Taking the general form of an interpretation of Genesis, it far outstrips such apparent confines, touching among other matters upon the meaning of the New Testament and, from the first sentence, leading to the heart of the universal experience of all mystics: When we consider the visible world with its essence, and consider the life of the creatures, then we find therein the likeness of the invisible, spiritual world, which is hidden in the visible world as the soul in the body; and we see thereby that the hidden God is nigh unto all and through all, and yet wholly hidden to the visible essence. Among those who have acknowledged the spiritual stature of Boehme are Hegel, William Law, St. Martin (le Philosophe Inconnu), Dean Inge, and Nicolas Berdyaev.

While women's contribution to spirituality has often been overlooked or minimized in the past, there is a vital and growing interest in it today. "Medieval Women Mystics" presents essential writings of 4 women of the 13th and 14th centuries. This is essential reading for anyone interested in medieval and/or women's spirituality, church history, as well as persons associated with the religious orders represented by these mystics (Benedictines, Franciscans, and Brigettines).

Jacob Boehme was born in 1575. He received little if any formal education and was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Goerlitz in Saxony. From an early age he seems to have been devoted to the study of the Bible as well as to have had a growing, inner, sense of the reality of God. Walking one day in the fields, when he was twenty-five years old, the mystery of creation was suddenly opened to him, of which he later said that "in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years at the university . . . and thereupon I turned my heart to praise God for it." As experiences of this kind came more frequently, he puzzled much as to why such knowledge should be given to him, of all men, who sought only the love of God and was quite unlearned in the ordinary sense. Some ten years later he began to record what he received, as a help to his own memory, and thus was born The Aurora, his first book, finished in 1612. From then on he found both friends and enemies of his work. Due to persecution in his hometown, Boehme later settled in Dresden, where he died in 1624. Mysterium Magnum, written by Boehme the year before he died and at a time when his powers of expression had developed to their full, is perhaps central to his work in some thirty-one or thirty-two original volumes. Taking the general form of an interpretation of Genesis, it far outstrips such apparent confines, touching among other matters upon the meaning of the New Testament and, from the first sentence, leading to the heart of the universal experience of all mystics: When we consider the visible world with its essence, and consider the life of the creatures, then we find therein the likeness of the invisible, spiritual world, which is hidden in the visible world as the soul in the body; and we see thereby that the hidden God is nigh unto all and through all, and yet wholly hidden to the visible essence. Among those who have acknowledged the spiritual stature of Boehme are Hegel, William Law, St. Martin (le Philosophe Inconnu), Dean Inge, and Nicolas Berdyaev.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Strange rumors reached the ears of the people of Jerusalem and the surrounding country. It was reported that a new prophet had appeared in the valley of the lower Jordan, and in the wilderness of Northern Judea, preaching startling doctrines. His teachings resembled those of the prophets of old, and his cry of "Repent Repent ye for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," awakened strange memories of the ancient teachers of the race, and caused the common people to gaze wonderingly at each other, and the ruling classes to frown and look serious, when the name of the new prophet was mentioned. The man whom the common people called a prophet, and whom the exalted ones styled an impostor, was known as John the Baptist, and dwelt in the wilderness away from the accustomed haunts of men. He was clad in the rude garments of the roaming ascetics, his rough robe of camel's skin being held around his form by a coarse girdle of leather.

Wendy Farley (WJK author of Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary Theodicy 1990]) has written a unique manuscript that considers human life from the perspectives of the wounding and healing of desire. Desire as that which longs for connection, home, beauty. We yearn for these things but in so doing attach ourselves to things unworthy of our longing. We are in bondage to those things that ultimately prevent humans from flourishing or fulfilling their desires. Contemplation, prayer, and love are ways one can be freed from bondage and find the fulfillment of our desires in God. We are then opened up to the world and drawn into struggles for justice and well being for all people. This is a passionate, moving account that draws strongly on Christian meditative and mystical spiritual traditions - sources that are not often tapped in traditional Christian theology.

Integrating the wisdom of Christian tradition and recent psychological findings on effective decision-making, this book presents a view of Christian discernment that honors the body-spirit unity of the person and the broad and mysterious ways we can be led by the spirit of God in our life-choices. Going beyond discernment skills and concrete practices, this book presents a coherent theoretical understanding of discernment that grounds the many spiritual practices used by Christians today. By providing a broad and inclusive understanding of the multiple ways God can provide guidance to individuals, this book helps individuals to honor the unique and idiosyncratic way that they receive divine guidance, as well as provides guidelines that guard against possible self-deception and personal blind-spots. While including anecdotal accounts and practical elements or Christian discernment, this book provides a conceptual understanding of discernment that will be helpful for those training to be professional ministers, pastors, priests, religious counselors, and spiritual directors. It is unique in applying Christian tradition and contemporary psychological insights to the process of discernment.

THE MYSTICAL JOURNEY FROM JESUS TO CHRIST Discover the ancient Egyptian origins of Christianity before the Catholic Church and learn the mystical teachings given by Jesus to assist all humanity in becoming Christlike. Discover the secret meaning of the Gospels that were discovered in Egypt. Also discover how and why so many Christian churches came into being. Discover that the Bible still holds the keys to mystical realization even though its original writings were changed by the church. Discover how to practice the original teachings of Christianity which leads to the Kingdom of Heaven.

The fourth volume in the universally-acclaimed The Presence of God series, "The Harvest of Mysticism" is a tour-de-force study of medieval German mysticism from Thomas Aquinas and his master, Albert the Great to Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, and including Jan van Ruusbroeck, Meister Eckhart, and John Tauler.

This book investigates the problem of esoteric traditions in early Christianity, their origin and their transformation in Patristic hermeneutics, in the West as well as in the East. It argues that these traditions eventually formed the basis of nascent Christian mysticism in Late Antiquity. These esoteric traditions do not reflect the influence of Greek Mystery religions, as has often been claimed, but rather seem to stem from the Jewish background of Christianity. They were adopted by various Gnostic teachings, a fact which helps explaining their eventual disappearance from Patristic literature. The eleven chapters study each a different aspect of the problem, including the questions of Gnostic and Manichaean esotericism. This book will be of interest to all students of religious history in Late Antiquity. Revised and extended paperback edition. Originally published in 1996. Please click here for details.

Contained within this volume is the first part of "Abandonment to Divine Providence" by Jean-Pierre De Caussade, a treatise on the practice of total abandonment to Divine Providence, or in other words, completely giving yourself over to God's will. A spiritual classic, "Abandonment to Divine Providence" will delight readers of all faiths as they discover the spiritual guidance that this volume has to offer.

This book is the outgrowth of a seminar in mysticism recently conducted at Yale University. There is an element of mysticism in all religion, and the aim of the seminar was to study its various aspects in the religious experience and teachings of those in whom it was conspicuous. Contents: Mysticism of: Hebrew Prophets, Jesus, Augustine, Dante, Meister Eckhart, St. Theresa, George Fox, Wordsworth; Mysticism in India and in Islam; Mystical Experience of St. Paul.

A biographical introduction to the spiritual psychic and his most influential readings discusses how he regarded himself as a healer and Christian mystic, introducing his major contributions to today's popular spiritual practices that draw on both eastern and western traditions. Original. 15,000 fir

Drawing from both her published writings and her private journals, this compilation presents a candid look at the extraordinary journey of Evelyn Underhill. For the many readers who have been moved by the writings of Evelyn Underhill, and for those who are merely intrigued by mysticism or captivated by a good memoir, this book presents a vivid and deeply personal rendering of a life that was, both intellectually and spiritually, radiant.

St. Francis de Sales' classic guide to the Christian life using allegories of plants and flowers, illustrated with contemporary woodcuts of the plants and flowers themselves.

Moffitt (art history, New Mexico State U.) sets out to explain artist Duchamp's (1887-1968) career as a whole, by sequentially deciphering and interpreting his works as a more or less coherent series of illustrations largely arising from the traditional, though now culturally marginalized, philosoph