The Innate Capacity

This is a sequel to Forman's well-received collection The Problme of Pure Consciousness (OUP, 1990). The scholars in this book put forward a hypothesis about the cause of mystical, or 'pure consciousness' experiences. All of them agree that mysticism is the result of an innate human capacity, rather than a learned, socially conditioned constructive process. The contributors look at mystical experience as it is manifested in a variety of religious and cultural settings, including Hindu Yoga, Buddhism, Sufism, and medieval Christianity.