The Origins of Mircea Eliade’s Transconscious and the Vicissitudes of the Religious Faculty
Matei Iagher
Numen May 31, 2023 DOI: 10.1163/15685276-20231699 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism |
| Keywords | History of religions German Religious studies Theosophy Section typography Intellectual history Theology |
| Key points | Argues that Eliade's "transconscious" concept is the inheritor of a long psychological tradition of the religious faculty, drawing on four intellectual strands: psychology of mysticism, occultism, interpretations of yoga, and contemporary philosophy and theology. |
Abstract
Abstract This article examines the genealogy of the concept of “transconscious,” a key notion in the work of Mircea Eliade. It argues that the “transconscious” is the inheritor of a long psychological tradition in the study of religion, namely that of the religious faculty. The first section looks at the religious faculty in the work of Max Müller and some of his German post-Kantian precursors, namely, Friedrich Jacobi and Jakob Fries. The subsequent sections examine the history of terms such as “super-conscious,” “supra-conscious,” and “trans-conscious” in turn-of-the-century philosophy and theology in the period before 1947. I argue that there are four intellectual strands that go into the making of Eliade’s “transconscious,” namely: (1) psychology of mysticism; (2) occultism; (3) interpretations of yoga; (4) contemporary philosophy and theology. The final section looks at Eliade’s uses of the “transconscious” and at his debate with C. G. Jung regarding religion and the mind.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mysticism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy | 1993 | Edited collection of essays | |
| Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mysticism and schizophrenia: A phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |