Abstract

This dissertation is concerned with the nondual mystics and their awareness of the "transparency" or intersection of Absolute and relative. It is concerned to provide a framework--both metaphysical and epistemological--able to account for the awareness of the Absolute as imminent throughout the relative world. The general thesis of this dissertation is that the current epistemological paradigms of sense and conceptual experience are inadequate to address the phenomenon of nondual mysticism. ;After an introductory overview of nondual mysticism and the role of language in mystical accounts, I turn in Part One to an examination of two current models for explaining mystical experience. In Chapter Two, I examine Jacques Maritain's neo-Thomist epistemology and theory of mysticism. In Chapter Three, I examine Steven Katz's neo-Kantian epistemology and his "constructionist" account of mysticism. Neither model, I argue, is able to account adequately for nonduality and nondual awareness. ;In Part Two, I examine two mystics in an effort to discover what they have to say regarding their own experiences. Chapter Four is a detailed look at Meister Eckhart. Chapter Five is an examination of Sankara. In both cases I focus on their understanding of the relation between Absolute and relative, and on their respective accounts of how this relationship is realized. ;In the final part of this dissertation I provide a framework able to account for nondual awareness based on insights offered by Meister Eckhart, Sankara and others. In Chapter Six I attempt to expand the use of the term "experience" in such a way that sense and conceptual experience, as well as nondual awareness, can be included. In Chapter Seven, I focus on the "conditions" preceding the nondual experience. These conditions are developed in terms of the twin dialectics of "shock" and "need" and "waiting" and "pure act of attention." I conclude with the insight that human thinking should be a kind of listening if it is to realize Reality itself