The Horizon You Seek Is Already Here

Death can feel like a doorway into total uncertainty, especially when grief is fresh and your mind keeps searching for a clear picture of “where” your loved one is now. Take a different approach by leaning on Catholic theologian Karl Rahner and his claim that transcendence is not a special experience for a spiritual elite, but the basic shape of human consciousness. If you have ever felt pulled toward something infinite in the middle of ordinary life, Rahner would say you are already living that orientation, even before you can name it.

According to Rahner’s 'Vorgriff auf esse',  the idea that every act of knowing or loving happens against an unlimited horizon of being. From there, reframe Sheol and the intermediate state: not as a cosmic waiting room, but as a way to talk about whether the soul’s openness to the infinite is complete or still obscured. Rahner’s view of dying becomes less about relocation and more about fulfillment, the moment when the direction in which your life has been moving becomes definitive.

As we build a bridge to Tibetan Buddhism and the Bardo Thodol, where the instructions around recognizing the clear light and resisting fearful projections also treat after-death “realms” as something deeply tied to mind and the death-preparation during life.  Recognize the real differences without pretending they disappear: personal God versus emptiness, resurrection and the redemption of history versus rebirth or liberation, and Rahner’s enduring subject versus the no-self doctrine. 

If you’re navigating grief and searching for language that is honest, spacious, and practical, this conversation offers a way to trade afterlife maps for a deeper focus on consciousness, love, and the horizon we move toward.

Subscribe for new Friday releases, share this with someone who’s asking hard questions, and leave a review so more grieving listeners can find the circle of support. What part of this comparison lands for you, and what still feels unresolved?

Art, Artifacts, Fabric and Design:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/vasonaArts?ref=seller-platform-mcnav and  https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/candee-lucas and https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/vasonaarts

ELECTRONIC BOOKS:  1000 IMAGES OF JESUS  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SFH4Z6

Music and sound effects today by:   via Pixabay

Transcript

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Welcome And Purpose Of Solace

Candee 0:37

Welcome to Solace: Soul + Grief. I'm glad you're here. My name is Candee Lucas. I'm a Jesuit trained chaplain and spiritual director. I started this podcast nearly five years ago to create a resource for those who are traveling the path of grief, whether it be new and fresh or far down the road. Please feel free to review this catalog to find which areas are of most interest to you. Remember, you're always welcome in our circle of healing, love, and support.

Karl Rahner and Transcendence

Candee 1:30

The Jesuit Karl Rahner's concept of transcendence fits into this. Rahner's theology actually creates some surprising bridges between the Christian and Buddhist frameworks we've been discussing. Rahner was arguably the most influential Catholic theologian of the twentieth century. His project was essentially to reground Christian theology in human experience, drawing heavily on Heidegger's phenomenology and Kant's epistemology. Rather than starting from external doctrinal propositions, he wanted to show that Christian revelation isn't something alien dropped into human life from outside, but the fulfillment of something already structurally present in human consciousness. The core idea is called 'Vorgriff auf esse'. Rahner's central philosophical move is his concept of 'Vorgriff auf esse', roughly translated into the preapprehension of being. His argument is that every time the human mind knows anything particular-- this tree, this feeling, this concept, it can only do so against an unlimited, implicit horizon of being as such. You can only recognize something as finite if you alreadyhave some implicit orientation toward the infinite.

Death As Completion Not Relocation

Candee 3:05

This means that transcendence isn't something that occasionally happens to mystics. It is the basic structure of human consciousness itself. Every act of knowing and loving already reaches beyond itself, toward an infinite horizon that Rahner identifies with God. We are already oriented toward the divine, whether we name it that or not. How does this relate to Sheol and the intermediate state? Rahner reframes what is happening at death not as a soul entering some new place, such as Sheol or Purgatory, but as the soul becoming what it already was. In his essay on Christian Dying, he argues that death is the moment when the soul's transcendent orientation, which was always present but partial during life, becomes total and definitive. Rather than going to God, the soul at death finally arrives at the horizon it was already moving toward. This subtly reframes the intermediate state. Instead of a waiting room, it becomes the completion of a trajectory that was always already underway .

The Anonymous Christian And Salvation

Candee 4:45

In this reading Sheol might be understood as the condition of souls whose orientation toward the infinite horizon remains incomplete or obscured, not a place so much as a state of spiritual incompleteness. Rahner's most controversial and generative idea is the anonymous Christian, his argument that anyone who genuinely opens themselves to the transcendent horizon of being, even without explicit Christian faith, is already in some sense oriented toward the God revealed in Christ. Salvation isn't confined to explicit believers. This has direct implications for how you compare Sheol and the Bardo, because it means Rahner would likely say that the Buddhist practitioner navigating the Bardo, orienting the consciousness toward the clear light, resisting the pull of fearful projections, seeking liberation, is engaged in the same fundamental movement as the Christian soul moving toward God. They name it differently and frame it within very different metaphysical systems, but the underlying transcendent movement is the same. Rahner and the Bardo most closely converge when you understand that both see the death process as involving a fundamental act of orientation or recognition in the Bardo.

Shared Ground With The Bardo Thodol

Candee 6:20

Recognizing the clear light as one's own nature, or as in Rahner, the soul's transcendent orientation becoming explicit and total. Both concepts resist a purely spatial or geographical understanding of the afterlife. Rahner explicitly critiques naive pictures of heaven as a place up there, just as the Bardo Thodal insists the realms encountered after death are mind projections, not external locations. Both concepts emphasize that what happens at death is in some sense the fulfillment of what was already happening in life. Rahner's transcendence is always already active. The Bardo Thodal repeatedly states that liberation at death depends on spiritual preparation during life. Both concepts also have a strong experiential and phenomenological character. They're interested in the interior structure of consciousness, encountering ultimate reality, not just external theological propositions.

Where Christianity And Buddhism Split

Candee 7:55

But here is where they diverge. Rahner softens many of the hard contrasts between Christianity and Buddhism, but doesn't dissolve them. For Rahner, the transcendent horizon is personal. It is ultimately the God of Christian revelation, a Tao that the human eye moves toward. The Bardo's clear light is more ambiguous. In Tibetan Buddhism, it is ultimately sunyata or emptiness, which is not personal in any straightforward sense. Whether these are the same thing named differently or genuinely different metaphysical claims is a real question. Rahner also retains the resurrection of the body and the ultimate significance of history and matter. These are non-negotiable for him. Buddhism's framework of rebirth or liberation makes no similar commitment to the redemption of matter and history. And the no-self doctrine remains a genuine philosophical rupture. Rahner's entire anthropology is built on the human subject as a real, persistent locus of transcendence. Buddhism ultimately deconstructs that subject. Rahner can be generous toward Buddhism, but he can't fully absorb this without abandoning his own foundations.

A Possible Synthesis For Seekers

Candee 9:25

A synthesis of these concepts suggests itself. What Rahner offers in this conversation is a way of reading the Bardo not as a competing description of post-death geography, but as a different cultural and conceptual articulation of the same transcendent movement that Christian theology describes through the language of soul, God, and resurrection. The Bardo's instruction to recognize the clear light and not flee into fearful projections becomes, in Rahnerian terms, an instruction to allow the transcendent horizon of consciousness to become explicit rather than suppressing it through attachment and fear. The really fascinating implication is that both traditions may be pointing at something about the structure of consciousness itself, that it is always already oriented beyond itself, and that death is the moment when that orientation becomes unavoidable. Where they differ is in what they believe the horizon ultimately is, and whether the self that reaches it survives, dissolves, or was never quite what it thought it was.

New Episodes And Closing Blessing

Candee 11:07

That concludes another episode. A new one drops every Friday morning. You can always find us on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. Remember always to travel with God at your side. Be gentle with yourself and others. Vaya con Dios.