부산대학교 도서관

Summary: Using this method, I compare mystic texts and experiential accounts in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism This comparison reveals a number of suggestive cross-cultural similarities. Mystics in these traditions commonly describe mystical experience as an encounter premised upon an "ontological resonance"---the notion that, at a fundamental level, the mystic and that which he takes to be of ultimate value share a basic similarity or linkage in metaphysical structure. This ontological resonance subverts or blurs the subject/object distinction central to modern Western epistemology. Mystics in these traditions also commonly describe experience as non-conceptual, non-linguistic, and direct or unmediated. Because these similarities transcend boundaries of context, they suggest that interpretation cannot be guided by the assumption that context delimits the possible forms of mystical experience, or ensures that different experiential accounts will not share important similarities.