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The Transpersonal Consequences of Husserl's Phenomenological Method Fred J. Hanna Northern Illinois University

Abstract The phenomenological reduction and the writings of Husserl and Heidegger are considered in the context of transpersonal mystical experience. The author shows how the practice of the phenomenological reduction spontaneously delivered both Heidegger and Husserl into transpersonal realms. An experiential examination of their writing reveals the great similarities between their own ideas and those of classical transpersonal sources from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The way in which each utilized the phenomenological reduction is also explored. If Husserl's method does indeed have mystical potential then transpersonal psychology and phenomenology are not only related but may have much to offer each other as modes of inquiry. Although phenomenology and transpersonal psychology are generally quite different, Husserl's phenomenological reduction appears to have tremendous transpersonal potential. There is considerable evidence of this in the writings of two of phenomenology's most important figures: Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Their rigorous and sustained application of phenomenology led them directly into the transpersonal domain of mysticism and mystical experience. The purpose of this article is to suggest that the disciplines of phenomenology and


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The Humanistic Psychologist, 21, Spring 1993

transpersonal psychology may be able to exchange benefits gained from some mutual explorations. If there is indeed a common ground between transpersonal psychology and phenomenology, then Husserl's method could be utilized as a means of transpersonal inquiry. In so doing, transpersonal experiences might be better understood within the rigor of the phenomenological method. Likewise, when considered from a transpersonal perspective, some of Husserl's and Heidegger's more abstruse writings might take on a greater degree of clarity and context. Examining each from the perspective of the other may serve to enhance the understanding of both. The phenomenological reduction and its consequences are the focus of this article. These topics will be examined and compared to the literature in Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist mysticism. The present work is not so much a philosophical analysis as it is experiential. Several authors have already noted some significant philosophical similarities between Indian philosophy and phenomenological philosophy (see Mohanty, 1972; Spiegelberg, 1982; Zaner, 1970). The discussion is also limited to the work of Husserl and Heidegger. Before going into this analysis, however, it is necessary to briefly explore the transpersonal subject of mysticism. Transpersonalism and Mystical Experience Some philosophers and psychologists become disdainful and even contemptuous when an inquiry takes a mystical turn. This is unfortunate but understandable in view of the 'fringe' elements that transpersonalism and mysticism tend to accrue. Mysticism has nothing at all to do with popular uses of the term which place it in the company of the occult, astrology, numerology, or mystery. Mystical experience has been reported across a wide range of cultures for thousands of years and is among the most powerful and transformative types of experience known. It occurs spontaneously or deliberately, both within and completely outside of established traditions (Bharati, 1974). The intuitive insights of mystical experience have been documented extensively by scholars of anthropology, religion, psychology, and philosophy. To ignore such experience as inconsequential or to dismiss it as delusory is unfortunate indeed. Mysticism is characterized by a unique set of factors. The most important of these are: the attaining of intuitive knowledge or insight which reaches beyond habitual modes of perception and thought; the acquisition of certainty about the ultimate nature of reality, an absolute,


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or truth; a strong sense of unity and identity concerning both self and the world; the ineffability of the experience in that attempts to describe it often result in self-contradictory statements, and; it arrives at a level or stratum of experience beyond subject-object distinctions (Bharati, 1974; Happold 1967; Stace, 1960a, 1960b, Woods, 1980). Mystical themes typically include consciousness, being, unity, the absolute, ecstasy or bliss, ultimate reality, transcendence, truth, liberation, and selfknowledge. If the mystic happens to be religious, knowledge of God is usually the major theme of his or her account of the experience. In the paragraphs that follow, I will attempt to show how the relentless and dedicated application of the phenomenological reduction brought about many of these factors and themes in the experience of both Husserl and Heidegger. The Transpersonal Potential of the Phenomenological Reduction The motto of Husserl's phenomenology was, of course, to return "to the things themselves" and away from various and sundry philosophical theories, analyses, and/or judgments. Husserl specifically devised the phenomenological reduction to accomplish this goal. The reduction was intended to provide the philosopher with a way to see the world as it is in itself, as a kind of liberating or freeing of one's gaze (Husserl, 1907/1964, 1936/1970; also see Edie, 1987) from the prejudices of the natural attitude and everyday factual world. A key ingredient of Husserl's return "to the things themselves" is an intuitive way of knowing that spontaneously leads to fundamental insights concerning the nature of the self and the world. This intuition is based on what he called a kind of "seeing" as opposed to thinking. This "seeing" is the primary aspect of Husserl's (1907/1964) method. All other activities beyond this actual "seeing" are to be bracketed or suspended including "references which go beyond the 'seeing' and are entangled with the seeing, along with the entities which are supposedly given and thought along with the 'seeing,' and, finally, to bracket what is read into them through the accompanying reflections" (Husserl, 1907/1964, p. 50). This intuition is distinctly mystical. Husserl (1907/1964) clearly represented it as such in his suggestion that we "hark back to the speech of the mystics when they describe the intellectual seeing which is supposed not to be a discursive knowledge" (p. 50). Husserl's method allowed consciousness to be "pure," unsullied by thought or conjecture. In fact, Husserl (1907/1964) said the inclination toward thinking is in direct opposition to phenomenological seeing. To


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achieve proper understanding of phenomena, Husserl (1907/1964) recommended "as little interpretation as possible, but as pure an intuition as possible" (p. 50). Even Husserl's (1936/1970) later concept of the life-world, or lebensweit, was that of the prepredicative world prior to any kind of thought or thinking about it (Edie, 1987; Merleau-Ponty, 1962). It is clear that an aim of the phenomenological reduction was to penetrate to levels beyond the reach of ordinary or conventional modes of thought. From the Hindu Upanishads (see Nikhilananda, 1963) to the writings of zen Buddhism (see Cleary, 1978), it is routinely pointed out that thought and thinking are an impediment to successful meditation. Numerous mystics have reported that their insights were related to seeing things as they really are, freed from mundane views and perceptions. Zen teacher, Huang Po, prescribed that the student specifically learn to "halt the concept forming activities" of the mind (Blofeld, 1958, p. 63). In so doing, Huang Po said, one would likely have made a good beginning toward intuitive realization after years of practice. Husserl (1936/1970) also said that the proper execution of his method requires practice. He often stated that he himself was just a beginner in the phenomenological method. In phenomenological seeing, the phenomena of the so-called objective world are "'understood back into' the absolute sphere of being in which they ultimately and truly are" (Husserl, 1936/1970, p. 189). This is also parallels many mystical accounts. Husserl was convinced that his method provided both absolute knowledge and knowledge of the absolute. Puligandla (1970; also see Sinari, 1965) compared Husserl's method to the method of yoga as delineated by Patanjali, yoga's most influential figure. Puligandla noted several direct parallels between aspects of the reduction and the three stages of yogic meditation classified by Patanjali under the heading of samyama. It may be important to add that Patanjali (see Aranya, 1983; Feuerstein, 1989) never mentioned various yogic phenomena that is popular in "new age" literature such as the ckakra or kundalini. Patanjali's chief concerns seemed to be insight, liberation, and method. What of the transformative properties of phenomenology? Husserl (1936/1970) said that the practice of the phenomenological reduction "enriches" one's psychic life and causes "a complete personal transformation" which might be compared to a "religious conversion" (p. 137). He went on to say that this transformation represents the "greatest existential conversion that is expected of mankind" (p. 137). Similarly,


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in Cartesian Meditations, Husserl (1931/1977) said that the practice of phenomenology opens one to "a possible self-experience that can be perfected, and perhaps enriched, without limit" (p. 29). The mention of personal benefits of executing a method is extremely rare in philosophy but quite commonplace in the literature of mysticism. The transformation in question was quite likely due to the practice of a mystical technique bearing the title of the transcendental phenomenological reduction. This seems especially likely when one considers that consciousness — a key mystical topic — was Husserl 's primary focus and preoccupation. Mystics have long reported that the intuition that resulted from their practice has transformative power at the core level of the personality. Apparently, Husserl believed that his own practice and intuitive explorations had considerable transformative power as well. That the reduction requires one to be detached or disengaged (Husserl, 1931/1977; Zaner, 1970) represents yet another parallel with mystical approaches. For example, the awareness methods ofvipassana, or insight meditation, in Theravada Buddhism require that one become so detached that one is capable of noticing or attending to virtually any mental process. There is also a distinct resemblance here to the practice of nonattachment to phenomena, an essential aspect of the practice of both yoga (see Aranya, 1983; Jha, 1933) and zen (Price & Mou-Lam, 1969). In both traditions the presupposition is the same as that articulated by Husserl (1907/1964): "Every intellectual process and indeed every mental process whatever, while being enacted, can be made the object of apure 'seeing' and understanding" (p. 24, italics preserved). The charge is often made that Husserls method was incomplete. Some writers have even questioned the use of the reduction because of Husserl 's own acknowledgement of its lack of refinement and development. However, Husserl had developed it well enough to assert that if one does not understand the reduction then one does not understand transcendental phenomenology (Spiegelberg, 1982). Eugen Fink once said, with Husserl's complete endorsement, that it was impossible to describe the transcendental reduction to a person who has not performed it (Spiegelberg, 1982). In attempting to account for Husserl's claim for personality change caused by the reduction, Spiegelberg (1982) speculated that there were probably several steps of the transcendental reduction that were never described by Husserl in his writings. Although the transcendental reduction was evidently worked out quite well in Husserl's own intuitive understanding, his difficulty seemed


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to lie in how to go about giving an adequate account of this delicate operation. Husserl's dilemma was one of classical and ancient proportions. I have already pointed out various similarities between Husserl's phenomenology and the methods of yoga and zen. Although scores of books have been written on these techniques, giving an adequate account of their exact procedure so that virtually anyone can successfully apply them is extremely difficult. In view of this, it is little wonder that Husserl eventually admitted that giving an adequate and sufficient account of the reduction was the most difficult task in all of philosophy (Spiegelberg, 1982). Bharati (1974) observed that producing mystical experience can be a simple matter of skill. He added that a capacity for "psychoexperimentation" is a part of this skill. Could it be that Husserl 's success in carrying out the transcendental reduction in his own clearly psychoexperimental manner was evidence of his own aptitude for this kind of task? Could it be that Husserl naively assumed that the transcendental reduction would be as easy for everyone else as it was for him? It may well be that Husserl's method relies upon an innately intuitive understanding in order to be applied successfully. The net result is a "Catch-22" situation, whereby, if one is not already intuitive one cannot properly execute the method which provides further intuition. Instead of providing a method for everyone, Husserl may have provided a method that works only for those who are already possessed of some intuitive capacity. Transpersonal Elements of Husserl's Writing Husserl's analysis of consciousness is perhaps the most thorough of any such analysis ever accomplished in the Western world. Husserl (1913/1982) saw consciousness as the realm of absolute being and the source of all ontologies. For him, consciousness, as the ultimate source of experience, is what constitutes the world itself. The world of phenomena, he observed, is made up of a kind of "mental 'material'" (Husserl, 1936/1970, p. 112) that is given form and meaning and is objectified in the process of being constituted by consciousness. This is reminiscent of the Mahayana Buddhist school called Yogacara or Vijnanavada (see Murti, 1960; Willis, 1979). Also known as the "consciousness-only" school, its expounders held that consciousness alone is real and absolute while all objectivity and the world of phenomena are not. The idea of constitution is also to be found in Chinese zen (Cleary, 1978) which was heavily influenced by the Yogacara school. The Yogacara

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school, like transcendental phenomenology, held that objectivity itself is both constituted by, and a consequence of, pure consciousness. The Transcendental Ego and the True Self Husserl (1936/1970) variously described his investigations as "a reduction to the absolutely ultimate grounds" (p. 154) of consciousness itself. This involved "inquiring back into the ultimate source of all the formations of knowledge" (p. 97). A direct result of this inquiry is the discovery of the "true self" (Husserl, 1929/1975, p. 10). It seems clear that this true self — the ultimate ground and source of all knowledge — is pure consciousness or the transcendental ego (Spiegelberg, 1982). In the last paragraphs of Cartesian Meditations, Husserl (1931/1977) grandly stated that "the path leading to a knowledge absolutely grounded in the highest sense... is necessarily the path of universal self-knowledge" (p. 156). With a mystical echo, he said that one must first "lose the world by epoche, in order to regain it by a universal self-examination" (p. 157). He then quoted both the Oracle of Delphi — "Know thyself! " — and the mystic Saint Augustine — "Truth dwells in the inner man" — with the direct inference that his phenomenology allows a person to accomplish this kind of self-knowledge. Transcendental self-knowledge is a major mystical theme and the transcendental ego, the ultimate ground of the transcendental reduction, has been disclosed by mystical techniques for centuries. Husserl (1913/1931, 1913/1982) described the transcendental ego in a negative fashion quite reminiscent of the Upanishadic description of the "Self as transcendent of the ordinary ego. Apart from its acts of intentionality and constitution, Husserl (1913/1982) reported that the transcendental ego is "completely empty of essence-components, has no explicatable content, is undescribable in and for itself: it is pure Ego and nothing more" (p. 191). Furthermore, Husserl (1913/1931, 1913/1982) said that the pure ego is so transcendent that no reduction can grasp it. In this sense of being beyond the reduction, the transcendental ego is transcendent in the same sense as the witness consciousness of vedanta (Radhakrishnan, 1960) and the self oxpurusha in the philosophies of samkhya and yoga (Aranya, 1983; Bahadur, 1978). In further consonance with the samkhyayoga tradition, Husserl (1931/1977) wrote that: "Just as the reduced Ego is not a piece of the world, so, conversely, neither the world nor any worldly Object is a piece of my Ego" (p. 26). Husserl (1931/1977) flatly denied the ultimate existence of a psychological ego. He distinguished between the transcendental ego and

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the psychological ego, saying that the latter reduces to the former. The psychological ego can become an object of consciousness in the reduction while the transcendental ego cannot (Husserl, 1913/1982). The implication here is that the psychological ego is a construction lacking any ontological grounding at all. This unreality of the psychological ego as well as the need for it to be transcended are dominant themes in Eastern mystical traditions. Of Intersubjectivity and Certainty What makes Husserl especially subject to a mystical interpretation is what he said about the self once it was phenomenologically discovered. Not only is the transcendental ego disclosed at the level of transcendental consciousness but, paradoxically, the existence of other selves as well. Husserl termed this "transcendental intersubjectivity." In the Crisis, Husserl (1936/1970) said that "souls themselves are external to one another [only] in virtue of their embodiment" (p. 228). He further stated that "there is a sole psychic framework, a total framework of all souls, which are united not externally but internally... through the intentional interpénétration which is the communalization of their lives" (p. 255). On that same page Husserl said that "within the universal epoche... it becomes evident that there is no separation of mutual externality at all for souls in their own essential nature." These passages amount to an insightful vision of both unity and separateness among human beings. Contrary to popular belief, unity or "oneness with the universe" is not a universal characteristic of mystical literature. Theravada Buddhism takes no such position, and samkhya, the philosophy upon which yoga is based, allows for the existence of an infinite number of eternally separate beings (Bahadur, 1978). What Husserl accomplishes here is a dialectic (Edie, 1987) of unity and separateness, identity and difference, in which beings' individual core boundaries are "interpenetrated" and internally understood by each other through transcendental empathy (see Husserl, 1929/1975, 1931/1977; also see Elliston, 1977). What is remarkable is that Husserl manages to unify all beings and still maintain the primordiality of the transcendental ego. "The primal 'I,' the ego of my epoche" said Husserl (1936/1970), "can never lose its uniqueness and personal indeclinability" (p. 185). This apparent contradiction between the unity and separateness of beings dissolves when understood in a mystical sense. From a mystical perspective, it is entirely consistent that the transcendental ego is a center (see Husserl,


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1929/1975) in which is found "all" beings and things. Husserl (1936/1970) observed that transcendental intersubjectivity constitutes in itself both other egos and the individual ego "as 'one' transcendental T among others" (p. 184). Of course, Husserl is equally clear in stating that all this begins with the transcendental ego itself which itself constitutes transcendental intersubjectivity. All of this is tremendously confusing and Husserl took quite a bit of criticism for his lack of clarity on this important point. But experientially, it makes sublime sense. From a dialectical mystical perspective, Husserl's vision is born of an intuition that is too profound to be grasped by intellect and too powerful to be expressed in language. Both William James (1904/1977a, 1905/1977b, 1905/1977c) and Kant (1787/1929) correctly observed that pure intellect is incapable of serving as a tool for metaphysical inquiry. Similarly, Heidegger (1964/1972) avoided such problems by representing his brand of "thinking" as being beyond rationality and irrationality. What must be recalled is that Husserl (1913/1931) clearly and repeatedly stated that "transcendental phenomenology is not a theory" (p. 13). His philosophical dilemmas acquire an entirely new character when approached experientially, as he himself intended. Finally, Husserl's passion for both epistemological and ontological certainty or "apodicticity" pervaded his writings. He was convinced that through the epoche and the reduction he had discovered the means to attain certainty. Of course, many philosophers have doubted that this level of certainty could ever be accomplished (e.g., Kolakowski, 1987). But whether or not Husserl was successful is not the issue here at all. Bharati (1974), an anthropologist, pointed out that it is typical of those who undergo mystical experience to believe that they have found absolute truth, and of this truth they claim a great deal of certainty. Himself a mystic, Bharati noted that this claim is a common mistake on the part of mystics. However, the mystical experience is so powerful that this sense of certainty is strongly imprinted on the mystic. In all probability, Husserl's brush with mystical experience in the transcendental reduction provided this sense of certainty as well as his conviction that certainty is an attainable goal for phenomenology as a "presuppositionless science. " Heidegger's Use of the Phenomenological Method Heidegger was clearly not of Husserl's transcendental philosophical persuasion, much to Husserl's disappointment (Stapleton, 1983). Nevertheless, there is little doubt that Heidegger (1927/1962, 1963/1972) was


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also concerned with the return "to the things themselves." It is equally clear that Heidegger (1963/1972) practiced thephenomenological reduction which Husserl taught him in step-by-step training after 1919. Apparently, Heidegger learned it so well that in the early 1920's Husserl is reported to have said, "Phenomenology: that is I and Heidegger and no one else" (quoted in Gadamer, 1986, p. 143). Heidegger (1963/1972) related that at some point he had to choose between consciousness and Being as the fundamental principle of phenomenology. He chose Being, which was, nevertheless, "illumined by the phenomenological attitude" (p. 79). This path allowed a philosophical egress from the subject-object dilemma with which Husserl struggled so mightily. Like Husserl, Heidegger (1963/1972) referred to the phenomenological method as "phenomenological 'seeing'" (p. 78). This seeing was accompanied by what Heidegger (1927/1962, 1965) termedgelassenheitor "letting-be" (e.g., 1927/1962, 1965) or "releasement" (1959/1966). This concept is rich with mystical significance, as Caputo (1978) so astutely observed, and displays some parallels with Husserl's (1929/1975, 1931/1977) concept of the ego as a "disinterested spectator" of phenomena. Like Husserl, Heidegger (1964/1972) had little respect for theory, dismissing it as "a cybernetic function" that is "denied any ontological meaning" (p. 58). Heidegger (1929/1975a) also criticized the use of conventional or what he called "calculative thought" as being unable to disclose the hiddenness of the things themselves. Because of this, Heidegger (1964/1972) sought the end of conventional philosophy. He viewed phenomenology as the pathway to aletheia — "the unconcealedness of what — is present" (Heidegger, 1963/1972, p. 79). This was the path to certainty for Heidegger (1927/1962) and an echo of the mystical theme of a reality behind appearances such as that found in vedanta (see Radhakrishnan, 1960). The way to aletheia, Heidegger said, was through a new mode of thinking. This referred to an intuitive thinking found "outside of the distinction of rational and irrational" (Heidegger, 1964/1972, p. 72; also see Stambaugh, 1986). Although he objected to Husserl's "bracketing of being" (Spiegelberg, 1982; Stapleton, 1983), Heidegger seems to have been kindly disposed to bracketing as part of phenomenological seeing. For example, he once wrote that "everything that might interpose itself between the thing and us in apprehending and talking about it must be set aside. Only then do we yield ourselves to the undisguised presence of the thing" (Heidegger, 1935/1971, p. 25). Of course, bracketing is not an essential


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aspect of a mystical technique as it often occurs quite spontaneously through the process of intense contemplation. One might be tempted to ask, if Heidegger and Husserl utilized same method which presumably led to similar experience, why were their philosophies so different? Using the same method and undergoing similar experience by no means necessitates subscribing to the same philosophy. There are some remarkable personal and biographical factors involved in the process of formulating a philosophy (see Bartlett, 1986, 1989). For example, Husserl 's mode of inquiry was in penetrating to essences in the active sense of removing obstructions to "seeing." Heidegger's style, on the.other hand, was generally along more passive lines with an emphasis on allowing phenomena to disclose themselves. As both of these persons used essentially the same method, their different ways of characterizing their style of inquiry amounts to little more than metaphorical variation. Personality factors likely played a major role in how they represented these kinds of pursuits. Another major difference between Husserl and Heidegger was their choice of where to attribute ontological primordiality. Once again, their choices may have been due to personality and not experiential factors. Just as Husserl (1913/1982) saw consciousness as the "principle of all principles," Heidegger pointed to Being as primordial. By comparison, Shankara (Prabhavananda & Isherwood, 1947), a mystic and one of Indias greatest philosophers, held that both being and consciousness are — to use Heidegger's (1927/1962) term — equiprimordial. From Shankara's perspective, both philosophers were in the same experiential camp. Transpersonal Elements of Heidegger's Writing Both Husserl and Heidegger were interested in Asian philosophy. Husserl greatly admired the teachings of the Buddha (Spiegelberg, 1982). But Heidegger appeared to be far more interested in and fascinated by Eastern philosophies. He was intensely interested in the Taoist philosophy of Lao-Tzu (see Parkes, 1987). Indeed, there are many parallels in these two philosophies (Chang-yuan, 1975). There is also the well-known remark made by Heidegger soon after reading one of D. T. Suzuki's books on Zen. According to Barrett (1956), Heidegger is supposed to have remarked, "If I understand this man correctly, this is what I have been trying to say in all my writings" (p. xi). In addition, Caputo (1978) masterfully elucidates the many similarities in Heidegger's writings and


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those of the eminent Western mystic, Meister Eckhart (Fox, 1980; also see Poggeler, 1987). There are so many documented parallels between Heidegger's work and various mystical writings that there is little point in going into further detail here. However, it should be mentioned that the parallels of his concept of the "Nothing" in the 1929 essay "What is Metaphysics" (Heidegger, 1929/1975a) to the Mahayana Buddhist concept of the void or "sunyata" are both fascinating and stimulating (Sinari, 1974). Furthermore, Heidegger's (1965) essay "On the Essence of Truth" also demonstrates many typically mystical themes. Having explored the mystical elements in the method and writing of Husserl and Heidegger, the discussion now turns toward a deeper analysis of their transpersonal encounters. Deautomatization and the Phenomenological Method Deikman (1980) evolved the often cited notion of deautomatization to describe mystical experience. This consists of a complete disintegration of the "psychological structures that organize, limit, select, and interpret perceptual stimuli" (p. 247). This is a benign breakdown of automaticity to the point of a profound collapse of all personal paradigms, taking place in a manner far more radical and complete than the mere shifts described by Kuhn (1970). Deautomatization is intrinsic to the mystical experience and results in a personal transformation in both thought and perception. It may well be that Husserl's reduction brought about this deautomatization to some degree. In the fourth of his Cartesian Meditations, Husserl (1931/1977) investigated "passive" mental operations to the point of penetrating even into the patterns of perception that we acquire as infants. Cairns (in Zaner, 1970) suggested that such passive operations be translated as "automaticity." Husserl followed down and reduced these automatic processes to the transcendental ego and its acts. Langer (1989) noted that mindfulness, a major feature of Husserl's method, effectively undermines and defuses automaticity. In this mode, the transcendental reduction eventually brought about the deautomatization of both thought and perception to what Husserl (1913/1931) called pure consciousness or transcendental subjectivity, or "Absolute Being" (p. 14). In this realm, all is reduced to the transcendental ego, indescribable and empty of both characteristics and content. This is the realm of the true self or pure ego — wholly "itself and nothing further. "


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It is so primordial that "no reduction can get any grip on it" (Husserl, 1913/1931, p. 214). It would thus appear that Husserl experientially brought the self, the world, and life, to their ontological and epistemological core in a process of deautomatization. After, so dramatic an accomplishment it became necessary to put the world back together again in meaning and in form. Constitution was the title that he gave to the process of doing so. That Husserl reached such depths experientially, and not merely philosophically, explains why he held that the phenomenological attitude coupled with the epoche brought about a "complete personal transformation" (Husserl, 1936/1970, p. 137). Heidegger (1949/1975b) on the other hand, justifiably viewed pure consciousness and constitution as incapable of carrying the burden of ontological and epistemological primordiality. His deautomatization may have been recorded in the important essay, What is Metaphysics. Through phenomenological seeing and his own version of thinking, Heidegger ( 1929/1975a) reduced phenomena to pure Being and then to pure Nothing through a sustained transcendent meditation on the experience of dread. "This projection into Nothing on the basis of hidden dread is the overcoming of what-is-in-totality: Transcendence" (Heidegger, 1929/1975a, p. 254). Although a personal transformation is only inferred in this essay, it is nevertheless pervaded by and replete with mysticism in both character and content (Caputo, 1978). Conclusion In light of this discussion, there appears to be little doubt that Husserl's phenomenological method provided a pathway to transpersonal mystical experience for both himself and for Heidegger. That their philosophies were so different is not an issue at all. It cannot be overly stressed that mysticism is not limited to a single philosophy. There are great philosophical differences between, for example, Theravada Buddhism, samkhya, and vedanta yet all use a kind of yogic methodology to attain their insights (Worthington, 1982). It is through their methods, insights, and descriptions that the transcendental origin of their vision is recognized. The point is that mystical experience transcends thought processes so thoroughly that it is capable of supporting a range of often blatantly contradictory philosophical formulations (see Indra, 1970). Still, each mystical philosophy adds a piece of intellectual understanding to a dialectical whole.


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Alfred North Whitehead (1938) to some degree realized this and held that the challenge of philosophy was to rationalize mysticism and not to try to ignore it or explain it away. Whitehead (1938) went as far as to say that "philosophy is mystical" and is a "direct insight into depths as yet unspoken" (p. 237). It seems clear that both Husserl and Heidegger attained such depths through the use of Husserl's method, even though they "rationalized" their experience differently. What is essential is the intuitive understanding and insight that they achieved and how the power of their insight caused each of them to attempt to revolutionize philosophy. From an overarching perspective, Husserl's and Heidegger's differing philosophies complement each other remarkably well. Dialectically, their work forms a kind of gestalt in which seemingly opposing ontologies coalesce and combine to more fully illumine the great depths that each of them plumbed. Their work fits remarkably well into the time-honored mystical traditions. If there is any merit to the perspective presented here, both phenomenology and transpersonalism may mutually benefit from a selective study of the other. Transpersonalists may adopt a methodology that could give their field a new dimension of rigor and descriptive accuracy. Conversely, some phenomenologists may come to recognize and appreciate the merit in Husserl's transcendental turn. If so, some aspects of phenomenological inquiry might be enhanced by the use of appropriate mystical methods. Along the way, this may contribute to a rediscovery of the personal transformation that accompanies the transcendental return "to the things themselves." References Aranya H. (Trans.). (1983). Yoga philosophy of Patanjali. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Bahadur, K. P. (Trans.). (1978). The wisdom of saankhya. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers. Barrett, W. (1956). Zen for the West. In W. Barrett (Ed.) Zen Buddhism:

Selected writings of D. T. Suzuki (pp. vii-xx). Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Bartlett, S. J. (1986). Philosophy as ideology. Metaphilosophy, 17 (1), 1-13. Bartlett, S. J. (1989). Psychological underpinnings of philosophy. Metaphilosophy, 20 (3&4), 295-305. Bharati, A. (1974). The light at the center: The context and pretext of Modern Mysticism. Santa Barbara, CA: Ross-Erikson. Blofeld, J. (Trans.). (1958). The Zen teaching of Huang Po: On the transmission of the mind. New York: Grove Press.


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Fred J. Hanna received his Ph.D. in Counseling at the University of Toledo in 1992. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Counseling Faculty of the Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. He was formally trained in phenomenology and has published several articles on the application of the phenomenological method to the theory and practice of psychotherapy. He has also studied Eastern philosophy and psychology in both Asia and America. Address correspondence to: Fred Hanna, Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling, & Special Education; Northern Illinois University; DeKalb, IL 60115.