There comes to all souls, at least once in life, a severe test. It is known as the Dark Night of the Soul. It is when we are beleaguered by darkness: spiritual and mental and where no hope seems to be near and everything we try to do is thwarted. It is where the soul is forced to persist and enter into the glorious Golden Dawn of Illumination and kinship with God, or relax into the dull slumber of a mediocre physical existence. You cannot avoid it. If this test hasn't already come in your life-it will. How you deal with it is as important as life itself. This book, written by a high initiate, St. John, will be your counsel and guide.

This work aims to recover the mystical heart of Christianity, confirming that there is a direct tradition of spiritual practices that the main stream Church has managed to ignore and suppress. The author's quest for higher knowledge takes him on a journey to Maine, New York, London, Cyprus and Greece. His revelation of a vital living mystical practice based in ancient Christian thought, is a major step in linking the most esoteric traditions of the East to the largely hidden esoteric traditions of the West. The book has a wide cultural significance, revealing a Western Christian spirituality that includes space for mystical practice that is too often assumed to be the exclusive domain of eastern religions.

In this book, the author takes the reader on a contemplative and theological journey into the angelic wisdom at the heart of the symbol of the cherubim. He uses as the guide for the journey, the 12th-century theologian Richard of St Victor and his treatise, De arca mystica.

If you need to understand consumer markets in the Middle East then look no further than this comprehensive guide. Consumer Middle East 2003 is resource of clearly presented, comparable consumer market size data. Providing volume and value statistics for over 330 product sectors (1996-2001) in 10 countries of the Middle East, it aims to be a one-stop shop for understanding consumer trends. Combine this with full coverage of socio-economic parameters and you have a comprehensive research tool giving you the opportunity to create a detailed picture of this market.

The rich mystical tradition of the Near and Middle East is the fascinating subject of this wide-ranging study by Dr Margaret Smith, a renowned writer in this field. Her book explores the relationship between the rise and development of a mystical element in Islam - which we know as Sufism - and the mysticism that was already to be found within the Christian Church of the Near and Middle East, at the time when Arab power was establishing itself and the faith of Islam was in the process of development and formulation. In this earliest period of Islamic mysticism, the contacts between Christianity and Islam were at their closest. Here Dr Smith presents the mystics' teachings and allows their own writings to speak for them, offering an illuminating comparison between the early mystical doctrines of two great religious traditions, and celebrating their shared devotion and inspiration.

This is a selection from the writings of the 12th century Benedictine mystic, who wrote books on prayer, theology, poetry, music, natural history, the human body, health as well as one play. It includes commentary which places Hildegard's work in its social and historical context and the new translations bring it all vividly to life.

A scholarly and masterful exploration of the meaning and importance of 'mystery' and 'mysticism' to the Christian revelation, offering a fuller understanding of Christian spirituality down the ages and a firmer grasp of what it means to be a Christian.>

This is a companion volume to Petroff's anthology Medieval Women's Visionary Literature (OUP 1986), which collected texts written by and for medieval women mystics. This volume collects her own essays in which she applies a variety of literary approaches to this remarkably diverse body of texts.

The mystics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, writes Karen Armstrong, like "the astronauts of our own day.  They broke into a new religion, blazed a new trail to God and to the depths of the self, a trail far from the beaten pilgrimage paths of Chaucer and Langland."  Mysticism is a spiritual mystery shared in some form by all faiths; it has a supernatural quality that extends beyond the given boundaries of religious creed and may be experienced by any lay person.  The thrilling intensity of a mystical experience, as represented in this volume by the writings of four mystics of the Middle Ages, can inspire other spiritual seekers with its insight into the limitless wonder of both human and divine experience. Dissatisfied by the strictures of dogma and a religion that failed to quench the human thirst for knowledge of a mystical order, these four mystics--Richard Rolle of Hampole, Walter Hilton, Dame Julian of Norwich, and the unknown author of The Cloud Of Unknowing --communicate an intense and passionate experience of faith rare in any time.  Because of their unique beliefs and spiritual strength, their knowledge and writings have proved timeless, and in this beautiful volume show contemporary seekers important new insights into the nature of divine love.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

William Law was a kind and gentle soul who clearly perceived the mystic oneness of all existences. His writings should be read by any mystic. "What is a good Book? A good Religious Book is one full of such truths and Spiritual information will lead us to see and know who, and what and where we are; that God is our All, and that all is misery but a heart and life devoted to him. The best Book is undeniably that which will turn to us that inward one, which, with noon day clearness, shows us the strength of sin, the power of every evil temper, the secret workings of our hearts, the weakness of all our virtues; and to the Teacher, whose instructions consist in an inward birth of Divine Light and Goodness.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

John Sanford opens a new door to the Gospel of John and discovers a treasure-house of psychological wisdom. The Fourth Gospel is the most mystic of all the gospels. And Mystical Christianity sheds light on its myriad meanings. It is a book that John Sanford was meant to write.

This work presents an outline of Christian perfection from the point at which the soul first seeks to rise from the earth and soar upward towards union with God. As a poet St John of the Cross was able, in the realm of mysticism, to push the frontiers of human xpression beyond any other writer.

If the western world knows anything about Zen Buddhism, it is down to the efforts of one remarkable man, D.T. Suzuki. The twenty-seven-year-old Japanese scholar first visited the west in 1897, and over the course of the next seventy years became the world's leading authority on Zen. His radical and penetrating insights earned him many disciples, from Carl Jung to Allen Ginsberg, from Thomas Merton to John Cage. In Mysticism Christian and Buddhist Suzuki compares the teachings of the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart with the spiritual wisdom of Shin and Zen Buddhism. By juxtaposing cultures that seem to be radically opposed, Suzuki raises one of the fundamental questions of human experience: at the limits of our understanding is there an experience that is universal to all humanity? Mysticism Christian and Buddhist is a book that challenges and inspires; it will benefit readers of all religions who seek to understand something of the nature of spiritual life.

In this collection of 25 essays, travel writer Mike Tidwell gets marooned on a desert island, travels the Silk Road with nomadic shepherds and hitchhikes on Cajun shrimp boats through Louisiana's bayou country. What makes Tidwell's writing different is his ability to draw out those he meets - a Bombay prostitute, a Hanoi barber and a real-life Tarzan in the Amazon rain forest.

Volume 3 of Boris Mouravieff's Gnosis contains ancient keys to a tradition of Christian esotericism that was necessarily hermetized 1800 years ago and has since remained unpublished, surviving to the present only in unwritten form.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Partial Contents: Absolute Being; Adam; Nature and Method of Attainment; Consciousness; Cause and Effect; Christ in You; Contemplation; Cyclic Law; After-Death States; Evolution; Eternity; Emanation; Free Will; Fate; God and Godhead; Good and Evil; The Ancient Gnosis; Heaven and Hell; Intellect; Intuition; Initiation; The Infinite; Knowledge; Love; Logos or Word; Mind; Matter and Substance; Materialism; Manifestation; Mysticism and Mind; Myths; Nature; Personality; Planetary Spheres; Reason; Reality; Religion; Reincarnation; Self-Knowledge; The One Self; Soul, Nature; Soul and Cosmos; Sin; Space; Time and Space; Doctrine of the Trinity; Mystical Union; The Mystical Virgin; Visions; Nature of Will in God and Man; Wisdom in Man.

Introduction by Evelyn Underhill. "Jacob Boehme, who reveals to us in this book some of the secrets of his inner life, was among the most original of the great Christian mystics. With a natural genius for the things of the spirit, he also exhibited many of the characteristics of the psychic, the seer, and the metaphysician; and his influence on philosophy has been at least as great as his influence on religious mysticism.

Being the Story of Mysticism through the ages told in the biographies of representative seers and saints with excerpts from their writings and sayings. Contents: The Golden Age and the Mystic Poet Lao-Tse; The Buddha, the Great Light, and the Bliss of Nirvana; The Age of Reason in Greece: Pythagoras and Plato; The Tardy Flowering of Greek Mysticism: Plotinus; Christian Mysticism, from the Founders to St. Bernard; The Medieval Flowering: Eckhart and the Friends of God; Fra Angelico, the Saintly Painter and Tool of God; Jacob Boehme, the Shoemaker-Illuminate of the Reformation; Brother Lawrence, the Lay Monk Who Attained Unclouded Vision; A Mystic in the Age of Enlightened Skepticism: William Blake.

Contents: Essays on the Life of the Soul in God. A collection of thirty-two Essays in Three Parts. Lamps of Quest: The Path of Reality: An Ex-parte Statement; Oblation and Service; Consecrations of Life and Thought; The Higher Understanding; The Sense of the Infinite; Life and Doctrine; A Study in Contrast; The Higher Aspect; Spiritism and the Mystic Quest; Official Churches and Spiritism; The Path of the Mysteries. Lamps of Life: Of Crowned Masters; The Dionysian Heritage; The Everlasting Gospel; The Message of Eckehart; Ruysbroeck's Journey in the Divine Distance; A bride of Christ; Voices from Carmel; Post-Reformation Mystics; Molinos and the Quietists; Later Witnesses to the Life of Life; In the Shadow of Revolution; A Modern Daughter of Desire; . Lamps on Heights: Mystical Realization; Faith and Vision; The Path of Contemplation; The World to Come and the World of the Holy One; Grounds of Unity in Grace and Nature; The Poet's Glass of Vision; A Study in Christian Pantheism; The Grades of Love; The Inward Holy of Holies.

Jacob Behmen (Boehme), the greatest of the mystics, and the father of German philosophy. Whyte gives a brief account of the life and writings of Behmen. An excellent primer for the student of Jacob Behmen. Contents: Autobiographic; The Aurora; Persecution of Behmen by Gregory Richter; Behmen's Depth; His Style; The Three Principles; The Threefold Life of Man; The Fourth Questions; A Treatise of the Incarnation of the Son of God; Signatura Rerum; The Way to Christ; A Treatise of the Four Complexions; His Apologies; Upon Election; Theoscopia, or Divine Vision; Holy Week; As a Theologian; His Doctrine of God; Eternal Nature in Behmen; The Heart of Man; The Wrath of God; Sin; Love; His Death.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.