Certain mystics provocatively respond to the challenges which evil poses to their religious beliefs. This book develops the structure of the mystical response to evil together, drawing upon the work of Eckhart, Boehme, Dostoevsky, Sankara, Ghose and Underhill.

Herbert McCabe was one of the most original and creative theologians of recent years. Continuum has published numerous volumes of unpublished typescripts left behind by him following his untimely death in 2001. This book is the sixth to appear. McCabe was deeply immersed in the philosophical theology of St Thomas Aquinas and was responsible in part for the notable revival of interest in the thought of Aquinas in our time. Here he tackles the problem of evil by focusing and commenting on what Aquinas said about it. What should we mean by words such as 'good', 'bad', 'being', 'cause', 'creation', and 'God'? These are McCabe's main questions. In seeking to answer them he demonstrates why it cannot be shown that evil disproves God's existence. He also explains how we can rightly think of evil in a world made by God. McCabe's approach to God and evil is refreshingly unconventional given much that has been said about it of late. Yet it is also very traditional. It will interest and inform anyone seriously interested in the topic.

From the world's foremost authority on Christian mysticism, the definitive story of Christianity's greatest mystic, Meister Eckhart, his insights into God, his relation to the tradition, and how he learned from the women religious of his day.

The best-selling author of The Wisdom Jesus and The Meaning of Mary Magdalene demystifies the popular Christian meditation method rooted in contemplative prayer Centering Prayer is the path to a wonderful and radical new way of seeing the world. It is not, as is sometimes thought, simply an act of devotional piety, nor is it simply a Christianized form of other meditation methods. Cynthia Bourgeault here cuts through the misconceptions to show that Centering Prayer is in fact a pioneering development within the Christian contemplative tradition. She provides a practical, complete course in the practice and then goes deeper to analyze what actually happens in Centering Prayer: the mind effectively switches to a new operating system that makes possible the perception of nonduality. With this understanding in place, she then takes us on a journey through one of the sources of the practice, the Christian contemplative classic The Cloud of Unknowing, revealing it to be among the earliest Christian explorations of the phenomenology of consciousness. Cynthia Bourgeault’s illumination of the Centering Prayer path provides compelling evidence of how important the practice has become in the half-century since it first arose among American Trappist monks, and of its maturation and refinement over the ensuing years of sincere study and practice. It will resonate with beginners on the Centering Prayer path as well as with seasoned practitioners.

In Why Evil Matters, Alex Tsakiris unravels our misunderstanding about evil and how it robs us of the chance to explore the depths of our spirituality. In a down to earth and sometimes brutally honest way, Why Evil Matters examines how evil is brushed aside by our science-centric culture and how new developments in consciousness research might point to a more meaningful understanding of who we are. Filled with interviews and analysis with some of the world's most respected thinkers: "Maybe we've jumped the gun... consciousness looks like it might be much more meaningful."" Dr. Dean Radin "Yes, hell exists... it's created by mental constructs of various kinds." David Sunfellow "if you keep them distracted, addicted, and superficial, they'll buy, and that's all we really give a damn about." Dr. Richard Grego "In our culture we ask, how did evil come into the world? In Gnosticism you start with, how did good come into the world? Miguel Conner

Few twenty-first century academics take seriously mysticism's claim that we have direct knowledge of a higher or more “inner” reality or God. But Philosophical Mysticism argues that such leading philosophers of earlier epochs as Plato, G. W. F. Hegel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alfred North Whitehead were, in fact, all philosophical mystics. This book discusses major versions of philosophical mysticism beginning with Plato. It shows how the framework of mysticism's higher or more inner reality allows nature, freedom, science, ethics, the arts, and a rational religion-in-the-making to work together rather than conflicting with one another. This is how philosophical mysticism understands the relationships of fact to value, rationality to ethics, and the rest. And this is why Plato's notion of ascent or turning inward to a higher or more inner reality has strongly attracted such major figures in philosophy, religion, and literature as Aristotle, Plotinus, St Augustine, Dante Alighieri, Immanuel Kant, Hegel, William Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein. Wallace's Philosophical Mysticism brings this central strand of western philosophy and culture into focus in a way unique in recent scholarship.

An inspired gathering of religious writings that reveals the "divine reality" common to all faiths, collected by Aldous Huxley "The Perennial Philosophy," Aldous Huxley writes, "may be found among the traditional lore of peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions." With great wit and stunning intellect—drawing on a diverse array of faiths, including Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christian mysticism, and Islam—Huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains how they are united by a common human yearning to experience the divine. The Perennial Philosophy includes selections from Meister Eckhart, Rumi, and Lao Tzu, as well as the Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Diamond Sutra, and Upanishads, among many others.

A closely argued book about what the negative tradition in Western theology involves.

In this new work, Albert LaChance presents a complete reframing of Christianity as an experiential rather than dogmatic approach to the presence of Christ. It emphasizes the idea of Christ as the source and sustainer of the cosmos, the Earth, the life community, and global culture. As such, it takes a "unitive" approach, with Christianity understood as being in mystical union with global culture, and with the ecological realities of the Earth. In the author's view, Christianity thus joins hands with Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism in a unitive oneness with all that is. Consisting of twenty-eight short chapters, The Modern Christian Mystic focuses on the presence of God permeating and organizing the beginning of existence, in the form of consciousness giving birth to energy, and then the material reality of the universe. The author argues that just as St. Augustine introduced the "pagan" Plato to Christianity, and a millennium later St. Thomas Aquinas revitalized his faith with the "pagan" philosophy of Aristotle, so in the modern age the "non-theism" of Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism holds the key to a revivified mystical practice. The Modern Christian Mystic posits a nurturing new world based on commonality rather than conflict in the world of spirit.