Mystical Recognition: Gnoseology and Philosophical Relevance of the ’’mystical Relation’’

Mystical Recognition relies on the insights of Albrecht’s earlier study Psychology of Mystical Consciousness, which are applied here to the critical analysis of a representative corpus of mystical texts-about 100 testimonies of numerous Christian and non-Christian mystics across cultural and historical traditions. Mystical Recognition aims at exploring the ’ontic fundament’ by which the psychological phenomena and responses are elicited in a mystical event. While conceding that an individual mystical experience is largely imbued with the beliefs and suppositions that a mystic holds prior to a mystical experience, Albrecht insists that a genuine mystical experience will always impart some impact and cognitive insight that cannot reasonably be accounted for from the subject’s prior knowledge or the subjective domain of his/her consciousness. Any genuine mystical event is caused by an ’impact’ imposed from beyond the confines of the individual self and thus the manifestation of a living ’mystical relation’ between the experiencer and the ’All-encompassing. The discovery that the ’mystical relation’ is an existential facticity and, as such, an ’ultimate phenomenon’ (i.e. a phenomenon that ’is’-like ’life, ’ ’spirit, ’ or ’love’-but which cannot be rationally explained or traced to a known source) is a unique pioneering achievement and provides a new epistemological foundation for the understanding of the spiritual nature of man. In the final chapter, Albrecht juxtaposes his findings of his analyses of the corpus of mystical records and of several original accounts of mystical experience (including his own) critically to the conception of human ’Dasein’ as outlined by Heidegger’s and Binswanger’s ’hermeneutics of Dasein, ’ resulting in the claim that man is endowed with the capacity of ’openness’ which enables him/her to perceive and respond to phenomena of ’transcendental Reality’ ’arriving’ in his/her consciousness.

Franz K. Woehrer was associate professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria until his retirement in 2015. He studied English, psychology and philosophy at the University of Vienna (MA 1977, PhD 1982). In 2013 he edited (jointly with John Bak, University of Lorraine) British Literature and Spirituality: Theoretical Approaches and Transdisciplinary Readings. The project of translating Albrecht’s works in an annotated English edition has been accomplished first with the publication of Psychology of Mystical Consciousness in 2019. Carl Albrecht (1902-1965), was a German medical doctor, psychotherapist, and mystic. He developed an innovative method of meditation (based on ’Autogenic Training’), which allowed practitioners to speak while immersed in meditative states (notably the serene state termed ’Versunkenheit’). In decades of research, Albrecht recorded hundreds of spontaneous utterances of his clients (and several of his own) and subjected the recordings to meticulous psychological scrutiny. Albrecht died prematurely of a heart-attack in 1965, aged 62.