Belief and Beyond: Religious Categorization of Reality

In this book, docent Ilkka Pyysiäinen attempts to show how religious doctrinal systems contain both a specific way of categorising reality and a way of calling this system of categorisation in question. This calling in question happens in so-called mysticisms. Some kind of mysticism that attempts to transcend the prevailing classificatory schemes, is to be found in all religions with a highly developed doctrinal system. In the book no particular religious doctrinal system is analysed, instead a general analysis of the notion of mysticism and of one especially important instance of religious categorisation, the category of the sacred, is presented.