The great mystics refer to a particular experience of God that transformed his life. Theirs is an experimental knowledge, not speculative; nondeductive, but immediately; a personal union with God in which the subject intensely perceives the divine presence of intellectual, emotional and procreative way. This action of God is so to the roots of his being that subverts the exercise of its normal functions and can lead to feelings of extreme happiness or extreme pain and love.
 
Christianity has always referred to the word of the prophets and the story of Jesus, not some extraordinary experience. In the sixteenth century, in a sense, and in the twentieth century, in another, it appeared however the concept of experience as equally essential to faith and therefore, the mystique has experienced a renaissance. This book asks whether Jesus was a mystic and how unites Christianity obedience to the word of God and man's experience. By studying the place of mysticism in the history of the West and its rediscovery in the twentieth century, it analyzes the different forms of mystical experience and the relationship between mysticism and philosophy.