The Origins of Mircea Eliade’s Transconscious and the Vicissitudes of the Religious Faculty

Abstract

This article examines the genealogy of the concept of “transconscious,” a key notion in the work of Mircea Eliade. It argues that the “transconscious” is the inheritor of a long psychological tradition in the study of religion, namely that of the religious faculty. The first section looks at the religious faculty in the work of Max Müller and some of his German post-Kantian precursors, namely, Friedrich Jacobi and Jakob Fries. The subsequent sections examine the history of terms such as “super-conscious,” “supra-conscious,” and “trans-conscious” in turn-of-the-century philosophy and theology in the period before 1947. I argue that there are four intellectual strands that go into the making of Eliade’s “transconscious,” namely: (1) psychology of mysticism; (2) occultism; (3) interpretations of yoga; (4) contemporary philosophy and theology. The final section looks at Eliade’s uses of the “transconscious” and at his debate with C. G. Jung regarding religion and the mind.