Transcendent experience or the transcendence of experience? An analysis of transcendent realization in Shankara, Ibn Arabi and Meister Eckhart

Abstract

This research aims at investigating the nature, meaning and implications of 'transcendent realization', that which is held to be the summit of spiritual realization by three renowned and highly influential mystics; Shankara. from the Hindu tradition, Ibn Arabi, from the Islamic tradition and Meister Eckhart, from the Christian tradition. The central methodological principle of the analysis is interntionalityl the opening chapter situates and discusses this principle in relation to the phenomenological method, while also highlighting the importance of the concept of transcendence for the contemporary discussion in comparative mysticism between the 'contextualist' school of Steven Katz and the 'Pure Consciousness' school of Robert Forman. Three chapters follow, dealing in turn with each of the three mystics, analyzing in some depth their respective pronouncements on transcendence; this theme is explored in both doctrinal and realizational terms: what transcendence means objectively, and how it is assimilated, realized or attained subjectively, with what pre-conditions and with what ramifications. The penultimate chapter brings together those features of transcendence shared in common bu the three mystics; differences as well as similarities are analyzed here. The final chapter consists in a critique of recent scholarly approaches to mysticism. In the light of the conclusions presented in this thesis, the reductive aspect of these approaches - their failure to take into account fully the nature and implications of trascendence with regard to mystical experience - is clearly discerned. The central conclusion of the thesis is that transcendent realization consists in the realization of identity with the Absolute, an identity which strictly transcends the individual, and by that very token transcends all possible 'experience' defined in relation to the individual; it also necessarily transcends all contextual factors that presuppose the individual as the ground of their mediating influence. The realization of this transcendent identity is incommunicable as regards its intrinsic nature but can be extrinsically described as the realization of the unique and undifferentiable Essence of 'Being-Consciousness-Bliss'.