Transitional Space: An Opening of the Experiential Realm Beyond the Mind

Abstract

This article describes how Donald Winnicott’s radical existential psychoanalytic understanding of transitional awareness and transitional relatedness intertwines both our personal psychology and our innermost experience of our own existential ontology. This article also addresses the ontological coincidences of our contemporary Existential Phenomenological understanding and Tantric Dzogchen praxis of the 8th and 9th century CE. The paper shows how 8th and 9th century CE Dzogchen Tantric understanding illuminates existentialist thinking through the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl and later ontological phenomenologist such as Heidegger and Merleau- Ponty. The paper also unfolds how these two modalities of existential phenomenological psychotherapy and tantric praxis converge in the experiential process of self liberation. The work also describes how in the patriarchal spiritual world, an experience of Being that is easily accessible has become something belonging to a few «enlightened ones» in the form of a corporate product or brand. Some of the most hidden secrets of Tantra is herein presented.

Keywords

• Tantra
• rigpa
• awareness
• transitional awareness
• psychotherapy
• phenomenological
• existential
• epoche
• Dzogchen
• Winnicot
• Husserl
• Jung