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Article: Self-Transcendence
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- Encyclopedia of Science and Religion
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Self-Transcendence
Self-transcendence is a determining feature of all mystical experience. In the context of theistic mysticism, the self is to be transcended since it is considered to block the mystic from the divine influx, and to be a barrier to the goal of union with the divine. "No-one hears [God's] word and doctrine unless he has abandoned self," wrote the medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (Kelly p. 220). And, according to the Hasidic master Dov Baer of Mezritch, "One must think of oneself as nothing and forget oneself totally. . . . If one thinks of oneself as something, . . . then God cannot clothe Himself in him, for God is infinite" (Matt p. 86). In the nontheistic ...