Mysticism as a method

readings based on Michel Henry’s material phenomenology

Abstract

Diving into the depths of our immanence, we turn to the help of an author who is a major influence on Michel Henry’s thought: Master Eckhart or Eckhart von Hochheim, commonly known as Meister Eckhart, a German theologian, philosopher and mystic of the order of Dominican friars (Order of Preachers). Belonging to the so-called Rhine mysticism (Rhine River in Germany), he proposed a Gnostic reading of Christianity that cost him a trial for heresy by Pope John XXII. From this point of view, Christ would coincide with us (God and my background coincide). Our itinerary proposes to follow the path of mysticism as access to immanence or the “fund” of our soul and Eckhart seems to invite us to consider being, in its essence, as something invisible and ineffable, a critique of traditional rational knowledge that would be nothing more than a showing, a “seeing”. The more one looks for God, the less one finds because perception causes a distance between subject and object, even more, knowledge through perception becomes an obstacle because objective knowledge conceals the true knowledge that is the knowledge of God. The Henryan idea of Absolute Life shows that our union with God is only possible because there is a “common ground’ – a padding – and this common ground is Life, not in an abstract sense, but as the self-proof that each one of us makes of it, that is, of himself or herself.