From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry-as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism-and suggests that contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Vertical Givenness in Human Experience
1. The Religious and Mystical Shape of Experience
2. St. Teresa of Avila and Mysticism of Prayer
3. Rabbi Dov Baer and Mysticism of Ecstasy
4. R¿zbih¿n Baql¿ and Mysticism of Unveiling
5. Matters of Evidence in Religious Experience
6. Epiphany and Withdrawal
7. On Individuation
8. Idolatry
Epilogue: On the De-Limitation of the Religious and the Moral
Glossary of Main Hebrew and Arabic Terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Anthony J. Steinbock is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is author of Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl and editor-in-chief of Continental Philosophy Review.