The Resurrected Emergent Self - An Enactive Lens on the Goals of Classical and Contemporary Abrahamic Contemplative Paths

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) has long been shaped by evolutionary models rooted in a computational understanding of the mind. However, as cognitive science has moved beyond such frameworks since the late 1990s, CSR has largely remained tied to them. In contrast, the cognitive scientific study of meditation (CSM) initially emerged from a non-cognitivist perspective, particularly embodied and enactive cognition. Yet, this approach has been predominantly applied to Buddhist contemplative practices, often framed as a universal or scientific approach to the mind. Despite calls for a broader, cross-cultural exploration of contemplative traditions through contemporary cognitive science, little research has extended enactive approaches to non-Buddhist traditions.

This paper seeks to expand the scope of contemplative cognitive science by employing an enactive approach to understanding the goals of both classical and contemporary Abrahamic contemplative traditions. Following Thompson (2020) and MacKenzie (2016), this paper argues that that for many influential Jewish, Christian, and Islamic accounts, the goals of the contemplative path can be fruitfully understood as transformations of the "emergent self" —a self that can be deconstructed in many ways but is ultimately meant to be reconstructed in ways that afford a skillful dynamical coupling with one’s world. Rather than leading to a complete dissolution of selfhood, these traditions describe transformation as a dynamic process in which selfhood is reshaped and reoriented (aka resurrected) toward an attunement with divine reality in creation and spontaneous ethical action.

The classical Sufi path presented in the writings of Ibn Arabi evinces a nuanced view of selfhood and its relationship to divine realization. His conception of ubudiyya (servitude) as the highest goal of the Sufi path is not merely an act of submission but a transformation in how one perceives and moves through the world. The Akbarian tradition emphasizes the crucial transition from fana (annihilation of the self) to baqa (subsistence in God), where the self, after being deconstructed, is reconstituted in a new form of servitude. This shift is not simply about the loss of personal agency but the emergence of a self that is fully attuned to divine reality, acting spontaneously in accordance with it. In this view, which is represented in some Turkish (and other) Sufi traditions to this day, the highest form of spiritual realization is not a final state of dissolution but an ongoing process of prophetic embodiment, where selfhood is reconstructed in a relational and ethical mode of being in the world.

Meister Eckhart’s doctrine of indistinct union challenges traditional dualistic notions of divine-human separation. Rather than a temporary ecstatic experience, Eckhart envisions union with God as a shift in awareness that leads to spontaneous, purposeless action. Contemporary contemplative traditions, such as certain schools of Centering Prayer, echo these insights, describing the culmination of the path as a restructuring of perception that integrates divine presence within everyday activities. This aligns with the enactive idea that wisdom manifests as fluid, embodied responsiveness rather than as the mere possession of esoteric knowledge. Again, the self is transformed—not erased—emerging in a more refined and relational form.

Hasidic contemplative traditions, particularly those developed in and out of the Habad dynasty, articulate models of spiritual transformation that involves the nullification of different senses of self. Recent analyses of these traditions, such as Wolfson (2009), highlights that this process is not a mere erasure of selfhood but a paradoxical annihilation of annihilation that gives rise to a new ontological stance. It is a movement beyond negation, where selfhood is dissolved only to be reconstructed in a manner that aligns with divine immanence. In contemporary Hasidic traditions and interpretations of this path we similarly find that the shift from bittul ha-yesh (nullification of ego) to bittul b’metziut (nullification of existence) does not obliterate distinction but integrates it into a deeper realization of nonduality, where the veil of existence is both preserved and seen through simultaneously. This process fosters a mode of perception wherein differentiation is maintained but the self, the body and the world are seen as suffused with divine presence.

The enactive approach to cognitive science enables a rich understanding of these traditions by emphasizing cognition as an active, embodied engagement with the world. It shifts focus from static contemplative states to the ways in which contemplative practice reshapes perception and action through a deconstruction and reconstruction of various self-processes that collectively constitute the emergent self. While some of the most radical authors and contemplatives from these traditions acknowledge an ultimate deconstruction of selfhood in the process of divine union or theosis, their ultimate contemplative goals are realized through a process of reconstruction—one that orients the emergent self toward deeper relationality, attunement with the divine, and ethical action realized as a dynamical coupling of resurrected self and world.

MacKenzie, Matthew. 2010. “Enacting the Self: Buddhist and Enactivist Approaches to the Emergence of the Self.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (1): 75–99. 

Thompson, Evan. 2020. Why I Am Not a Buddhist. New Haven London: Yale University Press.

Wolfson, Elliot R. 2009. Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson. New York: Columbia University Press.