Paths to Transcendence According to Shankara, Ibn Arabi, and Meister Eckhart

Description

Paths to Transcendence According to Shankara Ibn Arabi and Meister Eckhart The aim of this book is to contribute to the elucidation of an important but much neglected theme in comparative religion and mysticism: that of transcendence. The book intends to shed light on the meaning of transcendence both in itself and as the summit of spiritual realization, taking as starting point what three of the world’s greatest mystics have said or written on this subject. Shankara, Ibn Arabi and Meister Eckhart, each of an inmense importance within their respective traditions, have been chosen for this study inasmuch as both the conceptual and experiential aspects of transcendence figure prominently in their articulated writings and discourses; each one has, moreover, expressed himself in a manner that is at once authoritative bearing witness to his personal realization and detailed, thus allowing for extensive analytical treatment of these aspects of transcendence.

Paths to Transcendence has the merit of gathering, in the same volume, the deepest thinking of the most intellectual and spiritual elite of three great traditions and civilizations: Shankara for Hinduism, Ibn Arabi for Islam, and Meister Eckhart for Christianity. It provides detailed analysis and lucid examination of the misinterpretations which frequently occur nowadays about these spiritual authorities.

Here is a major landmark in comparative metaphysics. The universality of spiritual realization through knowledge is rendered apparent with a rare combination of analytic rigor and depth of synthesis. This book demonstrates that spiritual intuition can inform and innervate academic discourse without compromising its conceptual demands.