Immanence

Immanence, in philosophy and theology, a term applied, in contradistinction to 'transcendence,' to the fact or condition of being entirely within something (from Latin immanere, 'to dwell in, remain'). Its most important use is for the theological conception of God as existing in and throughout the created world, as opposed, for example, to deism, which conceives him as separate from and above the universe. This concept has been expressed in a great variety of forms, including theism and pantheism.

In theologian’s language the quality of “otherness” that pervades visions of the Second Coming and its equivalents is called transcendence. Its opposite is immanence. One of the great quarrels in theology is whether God or the gods are transcendent — that is, outside nature and free of its limitations — or immanent — that is, part of nature and subject to its laws. Like most such divisions, this one admits of several kinds of middle ground, but the basic distinction is relevant. People who have mystical experiences — which are, after all, common among human beings — very often comment on a difference between the ordinary reality of their lives, and the non-ordinary reality that surges into their consciousness. Did the non-ordinary reality come from someone, something, or somewhere outside ordinary existence? Or was it right here, unnoticed, all the time? That’s the difference between transcendence and immanence.

Most religions that put a great deal of attention into eschatology also have a transcendent concept of the divine; the whole point of the eschaton is that ordinary reality dissolves into the wholly other. Most religions that have an immanent concept of the divine, in turn, either have no eschatology at all, or make the end of the world a recurring event in an endlessly repeated cycle of time. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with their transcendent god and richly detailed eschatologies, fall on one side of the divide. Religions such as Hinduism, with its universes that bud, blossom, and fall through infinite cycles of time, and Shinto, which has no eschatology at all, fall on the other. So does the Druid spirituality I practice, which recognizes the presence of spirit throughout the world of nature and sees spiritual awakening as something that comes to each soul in its own proper time.

TRANSCENDENCE - Being beyond the reach or apprehension of experience. Its opposite is immanence (Kant). A state of transcendence indicates that a cognitive system is not powerful enough (see theory of logical types) to cope with or represent the information present, e.g., the experience of paradox. (Krippendorff)