In this book, Louis Roy takes account of the fact that, in the last fifty years, numerous people in the secularized West have responded yes to surveys that asked,
Are you aware of having had an experience during which you felt in the presence of a dimension or a reality very different from ordinary human life?
Are such experiences mere illusions? Some thinkers, like Feuerbach and Freud, believed so. Are such experiences encounters with God? Karl Barth, a great Protestant theologian, did not think much of their worth. On this issue, psychologists and theologians are divided. Roy argues that those experiences are valid, that they possess a real potential, and that they can open their recipients to a genuine wisdom. He reports on eight narratives, spells out their constitutive elements, classifies them into four categories–aesthetic, ontological, ethical, and interpersonal–and suggests criteria to assess their concrete authenticity. Thus, this book will appeal to educated readers interested in spirituality, philosophy of religion, psychology, literature, theology, and pastoral ministry.