The Essential Mystics : Selections from the World's Great Wisdom Traditions

Why did I read this book? Because my professor told me to. That being said, it was interesting material presented in an engaging way.

if I know more about all of the wisdom traditions, it probably have helped me more to understand some of it

I have been reading a lot about mysticism over the past year or two. Living in Thailand, it's hard to avoid the Buddhist tradition of attaining Nirvana through meditation.But, surprisingly, that "old tradition" has been recently brought into question by the well-known Thai forest monk, Buddhadasa, who points out that in the original stories of the Buddha, many people broke through to Enlightenment simply through hearing the truth.In any case, it seems clear to me that there is a world-wide tradition of religious contemplation or meditation which may lead to an ecstatic union with God. Except for Buddhism, where it does NOT lead to any such thing, but to a rather undefined state called "Nirvana."From this presumed fact, the editor of this anthology makes a Great Leap --- and he's not the first one to do it --- and claims that this proves that all religions are the same.I would suggest that this anthology only demonstrates that, for a very small number of people, intense contemplation results in a feeling of ecstasy. Whether this is, in fact, a "union with God" is something that involves a leap of faith. It is reported, for example, that many epileptics have such religious experiences just before they fall into a fit.This is very far from demonstrating that all religions are the same.And here the editor fails, sometimes egregiously. His very brief introduction to Islamic mysticism manages to introduce a Muhammad who (somehow) was not a murderer and a brigand, and who did not marry a great number of wives, one of whom was under ten years old. The Muhammad in this book is a peaceful, profoundly religious man. To which I can only reply: read the Qur'an.The author's biases are also clearly on display in his introduction, where some decent scholarly summary suddenly gives way to preaching right out of Savanarola: if there is not a universal human religious revolution very soon, we will die from environmental disaster. (!) Putting aside the extremely unlikely revolution in religious consciousness, and the equally unlikely environmental disaster, this tirade has absolutely nothing to do with the texts selected by the editor.For example, Saint Francis' beautiful prayer which invokes the beauty of the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, etc. says nothing about the need for a grand "revolution" to protect them; it speaks only of adoring them.------- updated review --------The more time I spend with this book, the more I dislike it. Why?In the section on Buddhism, the editor frankly admits that he does not like some of the key tenets of Buddhism, and so he selectively edits the Buddhist passages based on his own jejune prejudices.The section on the Greeks, which is badly titled "The Way of Beauty" --- "The Way of The Good" would have been much better --- he includes some weird "Hymn to Gaia" which is attributed to a book written by contemporary feminists who imagine they are poets. PLEASE, could we limit the selections to things written by actual Greeks? Or do we see the editor again bending the Greek reality to suit his own jejune tastes, just as he bent the Buddhist reality to suit himself?I'm afraid this book is going in the trash.

This is a excellent presentation of mystic in the world's wisdom traditions. It is insightful and helpful in understanding mysticism. It is inspiring to those who wish to become more spiritual in their actions and thoughts. I highly recommend it to those on a spiritual path.

The ordered this through Amazon as new and not as used (if I remember correctly). This book condition was what really made me angry. The book looked as if it was photocopied, printed, and bonded cheaply into this book. The pages were too dark to read sometimes, and you could see the page folds printed on the book it self. I'm not sure how to really describe this, but ALL the pages in this book looked like when you take a page, scan it, photo copy it, fax it, and makes the page into that dark-gray hard-to-read sort of condition, and then proceeded to bind all the pages together by glue. I felt like I was reading a boot legged version of the original copy. I ended up buying the original copy in person because I could not enjoy the book that Amazon gave me in this horrendous condition. The thing was that I didn't even enjoy this book to the fullest. The book seemed to point out passages that I could have easily come to my own, and also made conclusions that were...easy to get to. I assumed this book was a selection of the mystical traditions, as well as an analysis, but it was more or so of a background of the mystical traditions and passages from them. I expected to learn something new from this, but I did not. Now I have two books that I do not really enjoy.

Andrew Harvey is my go-to author when it comes to mysticism. This book serves as an excellent overview of mystics from several faiths.

I have no doubt it’s a good book, but the printing quality is horrible. It looks like someone put a book on a printer and copied it. Very dark pages. Not sure what printing company uses this format. It’s terrible, it’s hard to read and distracting.

This is an adequate survey of some of the highlights of a variety of religious writings. Unfortunately, I was looking for information on the mystics, not the author's summary of what he thought was the important mystical texts. If you're looking for this type of info, you probably already have or know a lot of the material in this book. "Cliff Notes" for mystics just doesn't makesense to me!

This is a great easy to read primer on the mystical thinkers of the ages. I recommend this book to the spiritual seeker.