Merton’s Unity of Action and Contemplation in Transpersonal Perspective

This paper introduces a transpersonal psychological understanding of mystical consciousness by comparing contemplative approaches across Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, and Christianity. Drawing on Thomas Merton's interreligious thinking and Evelyn Underhill's mystical contemplation, it applies post-Jungian theories of the 'Spectrum of Human Consciousness' to the scholarly field of mysticism. The author suggests how Merton might have used transpersonal models to articulate his writings on 'pure consciousness'. The paper concludes by posing a contemplative question: whether the ancient sculpture of the Sleeping Hermaphrodite serves as an art-theological symbol for the soul's inner repose in God's Unity, where action flows as a manifestation of contemplative solitude.

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Abstract

Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, with specific emphasis on the post-Jungian transpersonal psychological theories on the ‘Spectrum of Human Consciousness’, this paper introduces a transpersonal psychological thread of understanding of ‘Mystical Consciousness’ through an interreligious field of comparative religious approaches to action, contemplation and non-action. This paper draws on Merton’s interreligious contemplative thinking in relation to three major world religious mystical traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and mystical Islam/Sufism and elucidates comparative insights with the Christian mystical–contemplative tradition, akin to the ‘mystical contemplation’ of Evelyn Underhill. This paper introduces and applies the transpersonal perspective to the scholarly field of mysticism. The reader is invited to consider how Merton may have responded or written about interreligious contemplative depth mysticism in terms of his own writings on ‘pure consciousness’, had he had the benefit of the language of the transpersonal models of consciousness. Finally, the reader is left with a contemplative question at the ‘heart’ of mysticism—does the ancient sculpture of the Sleeping Hermaphrodite helpfully represent an art–theological symbolic analogy for the inner repose of an illumined soul, one with God’s Unity, in whose awakened consciousness through depth mystical contemplation, action occurs as an extended manifestation, a total gestalt of contemplative solitudinous action?