GENERAL INTRODUCTION

F. K. Woehrer

“Die Seele des Menschen ist erwählt, Durchgangsraum zu sein für den Eintritt des Geheimnisses in die Welt”

[“The soul of man has been chosen to be the passageway for the entrance of the Mystery into the world.”]

Carl ALBRECHT (Letter of 19 June 1964)

The very first question the critical reader of the English translation of Carl Albrecht’sPsychologie des Mystischen Bewußtseins (1951) is likely to ask him/herself is whether a study first published sixty-seven years ago can still be relevant for research in this field, considering the fact that the empirical investigations into the nature of human consciousness, on which the book relies, were carried out even before 1951. This critical objection would seem to be persuasive, and is hardly invalidated by the fact that the book was reprinted in 1976 and in 1990. So the scholarly reader of the early 21st century might be inclined to dismiss the study beforehand as outdated. Any serious expert in the study of mysticism and spirituality will surely respond with grave reservations at a study based on empirical data collected several decades ago, and be convinced that the insights into the nature of mystical consciousness provided by it have meanwhile been superseded by the myriad of scientific and scholarly studies published since the 1950s.8 So the stock response that is likely to be provoked by the English edition of Albrecht’s study in academe of the English-speaking world might be phrased in such dismissive terms as: ‘an empirical psychological study of this kind can surely be rendered obsolete by recent behaviourist and other scientific enquiries undertaken particularly in the areas of neuroscience and neurotheology.’9 The answer to the first question is emphatically “yes” – Albrecht’s study i