The Human Being in Exposure to Mystery: Phenomenological Foundations of a Mystical Anthropology

Abstract

This article develops a phenomenological foundation of mystical anthropology through a dialogue between contemporary Spanish philosophy and the sixteenth-century Castilian mystical tradition. Taking Juan Martín Velasco, Miguel García-Baró, and Teresa of Ávila as its main interlocutors, it explores the anthropological structure of the encounter with Mystery as an essential possibility of human existence. The study identifies the human being as a subject in exposure to Mystery—an existence that receives itself through a transcendent call to truth and goodness. The analysis shows that the mystical attitude converges with the philosophical one in their shared openness to the real and their ethical orientation toward truth and the Good. Both reveal that the human being is constituted by relation, receptivity, and responsibility. This synthesis redefines mystical experience not as an exceptional event, but as the most lucid manifestation of the human condition, offering a renewed anthropology capable of addressing contemporary nihilism and spiritual disorientation, understood as the loss of ultimate meaning and the weakening of desire that characterize many contemporary forms of human experience.

1. Introduction

In recent decades, the phenomenological turn in the philosophy of religion has reopened the question of transcendence and the possibility of encountering Mystery as such.1 Yet what is at stake here is not merely the reappearance of a thematic object within philosophical discourse. If we attend more closely to the way human experience itself unfolds, we begin to notice that transcendence does not first appear as something we thematize, but as something that already addresses us, precedes us, and in a certain sense claims us. From Husserl’s original project to its later developments in French and Spanish phenomenology—including figures such as Michel Henry and Jean-Luc Marion—attention has increasingly shifted toward the limits of intentionality and toward forms of manifestation that resist objectification. What gradually comes into view is that consciousness does not stand first as sovereign origin of meaning, but finds itself already engaged in a relation that exceeds its own initiative (Husserl 1962; Janicaud et al. 2000; Marion 2002).

Within this horizon, religious and mystical experience has often been interpreted either as an exceptional rupture within ordinary consciousness or as a subjective intensification of affectivity. Both approaches tend to marginalize their anthropological significance by treating them as deviations from normal human life. By contrast, several contemporary phenomenologists have argued that such experiences disclose structural dimensions of human existence itself.

As Jean-Louis Chrétien has shown with particular clarity, the human subject is not originally a speaker who decides to speak, but one who discovers itself already addressed and summoned. Speech and action thus emerge less as pure initiatives than as responses. If this is so, then the question of religious or mystical experience can no longer be approached as the question of a special domain added to an otherwise self-sufficient human life. It must be approached, rather, as a question about the very structure of human existence itself (Chrétien 2004).

In the Spanish philosophical context, this line of inquiry finds a distinctive articulation in the work of Juan Martín Velasco and Miguel García-Baró. Velasco’s phenomenology of religion explicitly resists the reduction of religious experience to psychological states or symbolic projections. He argues that religious experience does not add a new object to the world but transforms the subject’s relation to reality as a whole. What is displaced here is not one particular content of experience, but the position of the subject itself as supposed origin and measure of meaning (Velasco 1995).

Miguel García-Baró radicalizes this insight by situating exposure to reality within an ethical phenomenology. In Of Pain, Truth, and the Good, he shows that truth and the Good do not appear as neutral objects of knowledge, but as dimensions that bind the subject from within experience itself. Human existence is marked by vulnerability and exposure, disclosed paradigmatically in pain, where autonomy gives way to receptivity and responsibility. In this context, the search for truth is inseparable from ethical courage and lucidity. As García-Baró writes: “Be steadfast in the search for truth; that is, seek truth unceasingly by relying on the light of virtue. Never, whatever the cost, submit the ideal to fear, but strive instead to illuminate the ideal with the full rigor of lucidity” (García-Baró 2006, p. 37). Reality thus manifests itself not as fully transparent, but as enigmatic—calling the subject to fidelity and discernment rather than mastery or coercion.

These phenomenological accounts resonate deeply with the sixteenth-century Castilian mystical tradition, particularly with Teresa of Ávila. Far from describing extraordinary or marginal experiences, Teresa articulates an understanding of interiority in which openness to Mystery becomes a sustainable form of life. In The Interior Castle, interiority is presented as an inhabited space where the human being learns to receive, discern, and respond to the presence of God without attempting to dominate or possess it. As Teresa writes: “It is clear that there is no need to enter, since one is already within; it would seem absurd to tell someone to enter a room when they are already inside.” (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 1M, 1, 5).

The aim of this study is to develop a phenomenological foundation of mystical anthropology by interpreting the human being as a subject in exposure to Mystery. By bringing into dialogue contemporary Spanish phenomenology and the Castilian mystical tradition, it seeks to show that this exposure does not designate an exceptional mystical state, but a fundamental orientation of human existence toward the infinite that precedes and surpasses it.

Building on key contributions to the phenomenology of religion (Levinas 1961; Velasco 1999; García-Baró 2006; Chrétien 2004), this work seeks to articulate the structural unity between philosophical and mystical experience. Its primary objective is to propose a renewed anthropology of transcendence capable of responding to contemporary forms of moral and spiritual nihilism, by showing that openness to Mystery belongs to the very core of what it means to be human.

Methodologically, this study adopts a phenomenological and comparative approach based on close textual analysis of philosophical and mystical sources. Rather than advancing a speculative construction or an empirical investigation, it seeks to describe and interpret experiential structures as they are articulated in the works of Juan Martín Velasco, Miguel García-Baró, and Teresa of Ávila. The analysis proceeds by identifying key phenomenological motifs in each author, articulating their anthropological implications, and synthesizing them within a shared framework oriented toward a phenomenological mystical anthropology.

On this basis, the following analysis develops the notion of “exposure to Mystery” as a guiding anthropological category. The term exposure is used deliberately rather than expressions such as “openness to transcendence”. While the latter may suggest a primarily intentional or dispositional attitude of the subject, exposure names a more originary and pathic condition: it does not designate a posture first adopted by the subject, but the way in which life finds itself already affected and already claimed prior to any initiative. Through a comparative reading of Velasco, García-Baró, and Teresa of Ávila, a shared structure of human existence comes into view—one in which receptivity, relation, and responsibility take precedence over self-possession or mastery. The subsequent sections articulate this structure from three complementary perspectives: the inversion of intentionality in Velasco, the ethical and enigmatic character of reality in García-Baró, and the habitability of interiority in Teresa of Ávila.

1.1. The Human Being as Openness to Mystery: Juan Martín Velasco and the Inversion of Intentionality

Juan Martín Velasco’s phenomenology of religion offers a decisive framework for interpreting religious experience as a structural dimension of human existence rather than as an exceptional or marginal phenomenon. Against approaches that either subsume religious experience into theological abstraction or reduce it to isolated psychological states, Velasco insists on a careful distinction between the fundamental religious attitude and the concrete forms of religious experience. In Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion, Velasco explicitly notes, “to this reduction of religious acts to the fundamental religious attitude there corresponds, in monotheism, a parallel reduction of the objective mediations of Mystery” (Velasco 2006, p. 340).

“Religious experience is the result of the lived actualization (vivenciación) by the religious subject of the fundamental religious attitude across the different faculties of the subject—reason, feeling, will, and desire—and across the different moments of life”.

(Velasco 2006, p. 175)

Religious experience, therefore, does not function as an alternative path that replaces the religious attitude, but rather as its existential deployment within the concrete conditions of human life. Precisely for this reason, while the religious attitude retains a certain unity, religious experience necessarily appears in a plurality of forms, shaped by the subject’s historical, cultural, and personal circumstancies.

This phenomenological clarification is decisive for the anthropological scope of Velasco’s proposal: religious experience is neither an abstract theological posture nor a merely episodic event, but rather the manner in which openness to transcendence becomes lived, embodied, and operative within the whole of subjectivity.

At the center of Velasco’s analysis lies a reconfiguration of intentionality. While classical phenomenology, following Husserl, emphasizes the active orientation of consciousness toward its objects, religious experience reveals a form of givenness in which the subject finds itself addressed prior to any thematic apprehension. Velasco characterizes this dynamic as an inversion of intentionality: consciousness no longer appears primarily as the origin of meaning, but as that which is constituted through an encounter that exceeds its own initiative (Velasco 1999, p. 385).

As Velasco writes, religious experience does not consist in an act of appropriation of meaning, but in a reception that radically transforms the subject’s relation to reality. This transformation corresponds to what he identifies as the central moment of religious experience, namely:

“The movement of transcendence, its radical displacement—in fact, one speaks of philosophical faith and moral theism to designate some of its forms—and the fact that religions themselves incorporate ethical experience and love of others as criteria for the authenticity of religious experience”.

(Velasco 1995, p. 66)

Read phenomenologically, this decentering does not negate subjectivity, but reconfigures it from within. Religious experience reveals a structural openness in which the subject is displaced from self-grounding and oriented toward transcendence precisely through ethical responsiveness and relation to the other. In this sense, Mystery does not appear as a new object of consciousness, but as an inobjective presence that cannot be thematized or grasped within ordinary intentional structures. The subject is therefore not constituted as a sovereign origin of meaning, but rather as a consciousness that finds itself summoned and displaced by what precedes it.2

This inversion does not imply the disappearance of intentionality, nor does it lead to an irrational or passive conception of subjectivity. Velasco carefully distinguishes religious exposure from emotional intensity and psychological states. The subject remains active and responsible, but its activity is reoriented by a givenness that precedes conceptual mastery. In this sense, religious experience reveals a deeper layer of subjectivity, one that remains operative precisely in its openness (Velasco 1999, p. 423).

This phenomenological structure of exposure anticipates a broader anthropological horizon that will be further developed through Miguel García-Baró’s ethical phenomenology and Teresa of Ávila’s experiential articulation of interiority.

Finally, Velasco’s notion of the inversion of intentionality finds a deeper resonance when read alongside the logic of love articulated within the mystical tradition. In its ultimate form, this inversion no longer concerns cognition alone, but the very structure of self-relation. As Velasco himself suggests, the love of God “is eccentric, just as faith is; through it we are drawn toward God, who is infinitely above ourselves, and we arrive at the most complete inversion of intentionality, loving ourselves on account of God” (Velasco 1999, p. 377).

1.2. Exposure, Truth, the Good, and the Enigmatic Character of Reality: Miguel García-Baró

Miguel García-Baró develops a phenomenological ethics in which exposure to reality is inseparable from truth and the Good. In On Pain, the Truth, and the Good, he argues that human existence is marked by a constitutive vulnerability that precedes autonomy and self-possession. Pain is not approached as a merely negative or accidental experience, but as a privileged phenomenological site in which the subject discovers itself affected by what it does not control. “Pain is an intentional event and an accident proper to a self; it is not something that happens to a thing, but something that takes place only within a self” (García-Baró 2006, p. 48). In pain, the subject encounters the limits of mastery and is exposed to a dimension of reality that cannot be neutralized or instrumentalized.

This exposure reveals reality itself as enigmatic in character. As Miguel García-Baró formulates it with particular clarity:

“The experience of God—the non-objectifying presence of Mystery at the center or summit of life—is not offered only as mystical nuptials in the depth of detachment and when beings are allowed simply to be; it is also given, and in a particularly striking way in an age such as our own, in the indirect and terrible form of contrast with the excess of evil”.

(García-Baró 2007, p. 28)

What truly matters in human experience does not appear as fully transparent or immediately intelligible. The author insists that decisive dimensions of reality manifest themselves precisely by resisting appropriation. “Absolute self-sufficiency is the endless horror of existence” (García-Baró 2006, p. 59). The enigma is not a lack of meaning to be overcome, but a mode of manifestation that calls the subject into attentiveness and responsibility. As he writes:

“We know that our life must be oriented toward an ultimate response to the enigma; this implies an expectation of increasing lucidity and a deepening of sensibility as we learn to live as faithfully as possible in relation to truth”.

(García-Baró 2006, p. 81)

This statement is crucial for understanding the ethical weight of García-Baró’s phenomenology. The enigma does not paralyze the subject, nor does it suspend meaning. On the contrary, it establishes a relation in which the subject is summoned to respond without being able to dominate what is given. Authentic experience occurs where the subject ceases to attempt to possess reality and remains faithful to what manifests itself without appropriating it. Meaning persists precisely because it cannot be exhausted by comprehension or possession. The enigma thus sustains responsibility rather than undermining it.

Enigma and Mystery as Phenomenological Distinctions

García-Baró carefully distinguishes between enigma and mystery, a distinction that proves essential for a phenomenological mystical anthropology. While enigma names the irreducible opacity of what manifests itself, mystery designates the depth of meaning that sustains this opacity without rendering it absurd or arbitrary. Mystery is not what remains hidden due to ignorance, but what gives itself precisely by exceeding the subject’s capacity.

This distinction acquires its full ethical weight in the account of truth and the Good. Truth is not neutral information, and the Good is not an external norm imposed upon the will. Both bind the subject from within experience itself. Obligation does not arise through violence or external imposition, but through the very mode in which truth and goodness present themselves as worthy of reception. In this sense, García-Baró understands the Good not as an abstract ideal, but as what comes toward the subject as the near Other—that which claims responsibility by proximity rather than by force. Ethical life thus emerges as a response to a presence that obliges, calling the subject into fidelity.

From this perspective, ethical responsibility does not arise from submission to an imperative, but from the patient acceptance of the enigma as the horizon of existence. The subject does not obey an external command; it learns to dwell within the inexhaustible questionability of its own life. Ethical life thus takes shape as fidelity to a reality that cannot be resolved or mastered, but whose depth sustains attentiveness, discernment, and desire. Responsibility emerges not from control, but from the capacity to inhabit openness to the hidden presence of the Absolute at the core of existence, allowing desire to orient life without closing it upon itself.

García-Baró deepens this account by examining aesthetic and mystical experience as paradigmatic modes of reception. In both cases, meaning is not produced by the subject but received through attentive openness. Manifestation interrupts appropriation and calls the subject into fidelity to what gives itself. Mystical life appears as the capacity to dwell within exposure, allowing interiority to be shaped by a trustworthy source that comes from alterity and yet constitutes the deepest self.

This convergence allows García-Baró to articulate a form of interiority that remains fully inhabitable. Exposure does not dissolve the self into passivity or heteronomy. Although his thought resonates with critiques of autonomous subjectivity, he preserves an irreducible interior space capable of discernment and responsibility. The subject is not annihilated by exposure; it is constituted through a responsiveness oriented toward truth and the Good (García-Baró 2006, pp. 107–29).

Taken together, the phenomenological ethics shows that exposure to Mystery is not a threat to freedom, but its deepest ground. By articulating enigma, mystery, truth, and the Good as dimensions of a reality that binds without coercion, he deepens the anthropological framework prepared by Juan Martín Velasco. This ethical phenomenology also anticipates Teresa of Ávila’s experiential articulation of interiority as a space where exposure can be inhabited as a form of life. “The deepest discovery of God usually takes place (…) when all meaning offered by the world fails.” (García-Baró 2007, p. 29).

1.3. Interiority as Habitable Place of Manifestation: Teresa of Ávila

Teresa of Ávila offers an experiential articulation of interiority that gives concrete form to the phenomenological structures identified in Juan Martín Velasco and Miguel García-Baró. In The Interior Castle, interiority is not conceived as introspective withdrawal or self-enclosure, but as a dynamic and inhabited space where the human being becomes capable of receiving and responding to Mystery. The metaphor of the castle already indicates that interiority is structured, traversed, and oriented toward transformation rather than possession. As Teresa writes:

“Let us consider that this castle, as I have said, has many dwelling places: some above, others below, others to the sides; and at the center and midpoint of them all lies the principal dwelling place, where matters of the greatest secrecy take place between God and the soul”.

(Teresa of Ávila 2015, 1M, 1, 3)

From the first moradas onward, Teresa insists that entrance into interiority is inseparable from self-knowledge and humility. As she writes, “However high you may be raised to the heavens, while we are on this earth there is nothing more important to us than humility” (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 1M, 2, 9). Self-knowledge does not produce transparency or mastery; it reveals vulnerability and dependence. This recognition does not close the subject upon itself, but opens it to a deeper truth concerning its relation to God. Interiority thus appears as exposure rather than control, a space in which the subject learns to remain receptive to what exceeds it. As Teresa further observes, “For it is no small sorrow and confusion that, through our own fault, we do not understand ourselves nor know who we are” (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 1M, 1, 2).

This passage underscores that interiority is not initially a place of possession but of discovery. As Teresa advises, one should “not confine it or constrain it; let it wander through these dwelling places, above, below, and to the sides… do not force it to remain for long in a single room” (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 1M, 2, 8). The subject does not dominate itself; rather, it encounters itself as given and called. Self-knowledge thus functions as an opening toward transcendence rather than as an exercise of autonomy. Interiority becomes the place where exposure to Mystery begins to be inhabited.

As the journey through the moradas progresses, Teresa describes a gradual displacement of initiative. Prayer is no longer primarily governed by effort or technique, but increasingly takes the form of reception. As she writes, the soul is no longer doing anything, but rather receiving. “And it is a disposition that enables one to listen, as is advised in certain books, encouraging them not to engage in discursive thinking, but rather to remain attentive to what the Lord is working within the soul” (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 4M, 3, 4). The transformation cannot therefore be produced by the will alone; it must be received as a gift that reorients desire and attention.

At the anthropological level, Teresa’s experience makes visible what it means for exposure to Mystery to become a sustainable form of life. Openness to Mystery does not generate fear or dissolution, but a new form of stability grounded in trust. The deeper the exposure, the more the subject becomes capable of dwelling within it. Interiority thus appears as the space where exposure and habitability converge, allowing openness to Mystery to be sustained throughout ordinary existence, as one progresses in the virtues (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 5M, 4, 8–9).

A decisive contribution of Teresa’s anthropology lies in her insistence on the habitability of exposure. Openness to Mystery does not dissolve the subject nor generate fear, but grounds a stable interior orientation capable of sustaining vulnerability. As Teresa affirms, even when many disturbances and “poisonous beasts” surround the soul, nothing can enter the innermost place so as to disturb its peace (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 1M, 1). Interiority thus appears as a space of breadth and dignity, capable of remaining open without collapse.

Teresa’s account of interiority can thus be read phenomenologically as the disclosure of a space that is neither enclosed nor exhausted by self-reflection, but structurally open to manifestation. Interiority is described as capacious rather than possessive, shaped by reception. In her own words: “For the things of the soul must always be considered with fullness, breadth, and greatness, since nothing confines it; for it is capable of much more than we can ever comprehend, and this sun that dwells in this palace communicates itself to all its parts” (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 1M, 2–8).

Teresa articulates this transformation through the language of desire. Here desire does not function as lack to be satisfied, but as the orientation that keeps the subject open without attempting to possess what is given. This orientation preserves interiority from both closure and dispersion. As Teresa notes in her description of the later moradas: “He knows better than we ourselves what is fitting for us and who loves Him in truth” (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 3M, 2, 9).

This passage captures the phenomenological structure of exposure as lived surrender without annihilation. The subject does not disappear; it is re-situated within a relation that exceeds mastery while remaining inhabitable. Desire sustains this relation by orienting the subject toward Mystery without fixing it as an object.

Throughout El Castillo Interior, prayer gradually becomes a disposition of life rather than a localized practice. The subject learns to remain oriented toward Mystery amid ordinary activities, suffering, and distraction. Exposure thus permeates the whole of existence rather than interrupting it episodically. Teresa’s account confirms that mystical experience does not suspend ordinary life; it transforms its orientation from within (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 7M, 2–4).

In this way, Teresa of Ávila offers an experiential confirmation of the phenomenological insight that mystery does not negate meaning, but deepens it by resisting appropriation. Interiority emerges as the lived space where exposure to Mystery becomes ethically and existentially sustainable. Her articulation completes the anthropological framework developed in the previous sections by showing how exposure, far from being a rupture, can be inhabited as a form of life. Interiority is not withdrawal or closure, but the place where fidelity to what appears can be sustained without reducing it to an object. Teresa expresses this shift from reflexive mastery to effective orientation with particular clarity when she states: “The important thing is not to think much, but to love much” (Teresa of Ávila 2015, 4M, 1, 7).

2. Conceptual Framework: The Reconfiguration of the Human Being

The analyses developed so far invite a shift in perspective. Rather than asking what distinguishes mystical experience from ordinary human life, we are now led to ask whether what is at stake in mysticism does not, in fact, concern the structure of human existence as such. If we take seriously the phenomenological descriptions offered by Velasco, García-Baró, and Teresa of Ávila, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain that exposure to Mystery is a marginal or exceptional phenomenon.

What gradually comes into view, instead, is a more radical possibility: that exposure names a fundamental anthropological configuration. It does not designate a particular psychological disposition or a religious attitude added to an otherwise complete subject. It designates, rather, the way in which human existence finds itself from the beginning situated in a relation that it does not initiate and cannot fully master.

From this perspective, exposure is not opposed to interiority, nor does it dissolve the inner space of the subject. On the contrary, it is the very condition under which interiority becomes inhabitable. Rather than being confined to exteriority, exposure concerns the very way in which the subject exists in relation to itself.

Miguel García-Baró’s philosophical anthropology unfolds the ethical weight of this displacement. Exposure is not merely a descriptive feature of experience; it entails an inescapable demand. The Good manifests itself as an exigency that binds the subject prior to reflection or choice (García-Baró 2006, pp. 107–29). Responsibility and compassion are not moral additions to an otherwise neutral subjectivity, but the concrete expressions of a life already claimed by truth and vulnerability.

Teresa of Ávila provides an experiential verification of this structure. In her writings, exposure does not remain a moment of rupture or ethical demand alone, but becomes inhabitable. Interiority appears as the space in which openness to Mystery can be sustained across the whole of life, oriented by desire rather than confined to particular acts or places. Mystical experience thus reveals the possibility of dwelling within exposure without reverting to self-possession or collapsing into passivity.

Taken together, these three perspectives disclose a unified anthropological configuration. Phenomenology reveals the structure of manifestation, ethics reveals its weight, and mystical experience reveals its habitability. The human being appears as neither sovereign nor dissolved, but as a subject capable of receiving itself, enduring exposure, and responding to the call of Mystery through a life shaped by responsibility and desire.

This synthetic result allows mystical anthropology to be understood as a rigorous philosophical proposal rather than a marginal discourse. By articulating exposure as structure, demand, and form of life, it becomes possible to account for the unity of experience, ethics, and interiority without reducing one to the other. Mystical anthropology thus offers a coherent framework for understanding human existence as fundamentally relational, receptive, and responsive.

One of the central contributions of this article lies in its account of subjectivity beyond both modern autonomy and postmodern dissolution. Contemporary philosophy often oscillates between a sovereign conception of the self, grounded in mastery and self-constitution, and a fragmented subjectivity deprived of coherence or orientation. The configuration articulated here offers a third possibility: a subject neither self-grounding nor erased, but constituted through exposure to Mystery and capable of sustaining that exposure as a form of life. This account preserves the depth of religious experience while maintaining philosophical intelligibility.

Within the field of the phenomenology of religion, this proposal also clarifies an unresolved tension. Phenomenological analyses have successfully described the limits of intentional mastery and the structure of manifestation, yet they often hesitate to address the ethical and existential consequences of such descriptions. The present study argues that exposure to Mystery cannot remain a merely descriptive category. It necessarily entails responsibility, vulnerability, and desire—not as external additions, but as intrinsic dimensions of the same anthropological structure.

At this point, the distinction between exposure and habitability becomes decisive. Exposure names an irreducible condition: the human being is wounded by truth and bound by the Good in a way that cannot be integrated, justified, or stabilized. Exposure, considered in itself, does not yet describe a form of life. Rather, it names the inescapable weight that any form of life must bear once self-sufficiency has been broken. It marks the point at which subjectivity can no longer ground itself nor retreat into neutrality.

Teresa of Ávila does not neutralize this exposure, nor does she resolve its tension. Her experiential articulation shows how such exposure can be endured and sustained without collapsing into fear, resignation, or self-assertion. Habitability does not overcome rupture; it assumes it. What emerges is not control over openness, but a way of remaining within it. In this sense, desire—rather than mastery or security—appears as the orienting force of human life, allowing existence to be shaped without being closed.

This distinction allows mystical anthropology to move beyond accounts that emphasize disruption without articulating a viable form of existence. Exposure alone risks being interpreted as paralysis or passivity; habitability, as articulated through Teresa’s experience, reveals the possibility of a life that remains open without being dissolved. The human being appears as capable of receiving itself, enduring vulnerability, and responding without reclaiming self-centrality.

In dialogue with ethical philosophies that emphasize responsibility prior to freedom, particularly Levinas’s displacement of autonomous subjectivity, the present account introduces a decisive inflection. While exposure entails an unavoidable ethical demand, it does not abolish interiority.3 Rather, interior life is transformed through exposure, becoming the space in which responsibility, compassion, and truth can be sustained. This preserves the radicality of ethical obligation while safeguarding the experiential depth essential to religious life.

Finally, the relevance of mystical anthropology becomes especially evident when considered against the backdrop of contemporary nihilism and spiritual disorientation. The erosion of shared meaning, the weakening of desire, and the instrumentalization of subjectivity characterize many current diagnoses of the human condition. By articulating human existence as receptive, relational, and responsive to Mystery, mystical anthropology offers a non-reductive account of meaning that neither escapes the world nor collapses into immanence. It affirms the possibility of a life oriented by desire and responsibility, sustained within exposure rather than protected from it.

2.1. Exposure as an Anthropological Configuration

If we follow the analyses developed so far, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain that exposure is merely a marginal feature of religious or mystical experience. What gradually comes into view, rather, is its role as a fundamental anthropological configuration. In the phenomenological accounts of Juan Martín Velasco, Miguel García-Baró, and Teresa of Ávila, exposure names the condition in which the human being finds itself addressed by a reality that precedes initiative, mastery, or self-possession.4

From a phenomenological perspective, exposure designates neither a psychological disposition nor a particular religious attitude added to an otherwise complete subject. Rather, it describes a structural situation: the human being exists as already affected, claimed, and oriented by what exceeds it. This condition precedes reflection and choice, shaping the horizon within which meaning, value, and responsibility become possible.

In Velasco’s phenomenology of religion, this structure appears through the inversion of intentionality. Religious experience does not originate meaning through intentional mastery but receives it through a form of givenness in which the subject finds itself addressed prior to thematic apprehension. Exposure thus characterizes a mode of manifestation in which subjectivity is constituted through reception rather than production.

García-Baró’s phenomenological ethics radicalizes this configuration by showing that truth and the Good do not appear as neutral objects but as dimensions that bind the subject from within experience itself. Exposure names the condition under which reality manifests itself as significant, demanding, and irreducible to appropriation.

Teresa of Ávila provides an experiential articulation of this same structure. In her account of interiority, exposure is not an abstract condition but a lived space that can be inhabited. Interiority emerges as the place where openness to Mystery is sustained without collapse, allowing human existence to remain oriented by reception.

Taken together, these perspectives allow exposure to be articulated as a coherent anthropological configuration. Exposure describes the human being as fundamentally relational, receptive, and responsible—a condition in which subjectivity is neither sovereign nor dissolved, but constituted through openness to what exceeds it.

2.2. Exposure, Freedom, and the Question of Heteronomy

Once exposure has been recognized as a constitutive anthropological condition, a decisive question inevitably arises. If human existence is not grounded in self-possession but in a prior relation that precedes initiative, how are we to understand freedom? At first glance, the very notion of exposure seems to threaten autonomy: does it not place the subject under something that comes before it, addresses it, and binds it?

Yet this first impression deserves to be examined more carefully. Phenomenological ethics shows that exposure is not only a structure of manifestation, but also the site where truth and the Good bind the subject from within experience itself, without violating freedom or reducing it to external constraint. What is at stake here is not the replacement of freedom by passivity, nor the submission of the subject to an external heteronomy. If we attend to the phenomenological descriptions developed so far, we are rather led to a different possibility: that exposure names a mode of existence in which freedom is not abolished, but reconfigured. The subject does not cease to act; it discovers itself acting from within a relation that it did not choose, but in which it nevertheless finds its most proper responsibility.5

Passivity would imply inertia or the absence of response. Exposure, by contrast, designates a mode of being addressed that calls the subject into responsiveness. As Juan Martín Velasco insists, religious experience does not annul human initiative, but situates it within a prior givenness that transforms its meaning (Velasco 1995, p. 40). The subject remains active and responsible, yet its activity is no longer grounded in self-originating mastery, but rather in reception.

This transformation presupposes what Velasco describes as a decentering of the subject: a displacement from the position of self-grounding center of reality as the condition for an encounter with genuine transcendence. In this sense, and drawing on Lacoste, the religious subject no longer appears primarily as an “intentional consciousness,” but as a summoned or called consciousness, constituted through responsiveness rather than initiative.

This distinction becomes clearer when exposure is understood as receptive agency. To be exposed is not to cease acting, but to act from within a relation that precedes self-constitution. Meaning is not produced ex nihilo; it is received as what claims the subject before deliberate choice. This receptive structure can also be illuminated through the notion of gift, which has played a central role in both anthropology and the philosophy of religion. What is received in exposure is not simply a neutral datum, but something given that precedes possession and cannot be reduced to appropriation. The human subject does not first constitute meaning and then receive it; rather, it receives itself through what is given. In this sense, exposure describes not a deficit of agency, but the original condition in which existence is experienced as gift before it can ever become project or mastery. García-Baró formulates this point by showing that decisive experiences—especially those marked by pain—do not suspend agency, but compel a response (García-Baró 2006).

Exposure must also be distinguished from ethical heteronomy. Heteronomy implies subjection to an external law imposed upon the will, whereas exposure describes a binding that arises from within experience itself. In García-Baró’s ethics, obligation does not derive from an external command, but from the mode in which truth and the Good present themselves as worthy of response (García-Baró 2006). The subject is not coerced; it is claimed.

This internal binding preserves interior freedom while transforming its ground. Freedom no longer appears as self-possession or autonomy detached from relation, but as the capacity to respond faithfully to what gives itself. Reference to the absolute does not suppress freedom, but grounds it by orienting it toward truth and the Good. Exposure thus reveals freedom as relational rather than sovereign.

Teresa of Ávila’s experiential account confirms this distinction at the level of lived interiority. Exposure to Mystery, as she describes it, does not dissolve the self into fear or resignation. On the contrary, interiority is deepened and stabilized through exposure. The subject learns to dwell within openness, allowing desire to orient existence. Exposure becomes habitable.

By distinguishing exposure from passivity and heteronomy, its anthropological significance becomes clearer. Exposure names a condition in which the human being is neither sovereign nor annihilated, but constituted through relation. It articulates a form of freedom grounded not in domination, but in responsiveness to what exceeds appropriation. “The experience of God is neither the experience of the power of what is real, nor that of exalted beauty”. Religious experience, understood in this way, cannot be separated from ethical transformation: it calls the subject into a mode of existence marked by attentiveness, discernment, and responsibility. “It is precisely because everything can be shattered […] that God comes to speak most forcefully from the depths” (García-Baró 2007, p. 29).

Understood in this way, exposure does not culminate in ethical demand alone, but opens the question of how such a condition can be lived, sustained, and inhabited over time. This transition—from exposure as binding to exposure as habitable—prepares the way for an analysis of interiority as the concrete space in which responsiveness to Mystery becomes a form of life.

2.3. Interiority as the Habitable Space of Exposure

At this point, another question naturally arises. If exposure names a constitutive way of being, does it not dissolve interiority altogether? Does it not leave the subject without any genuine inner space, entirely exposed to what comes from outside? At first sight, the very language of exposure seems to move in this direction, as if the subject were nothing but a surface of inscription for what exceeds it.

Yet this suspicion rests on a misunderstanding. If we follow the phenomenological analyses developed so far, we are led to a different possibility: that interiority does not disappear in exposure, but is precisely what takes shape within it. Interiority is not the opposite of exposure, nor its refuge. It is the very space in which exposure becomes inhabitable,6 where what addresses the subject can be received, borne, and responded to.

The unity becomes fully intelligible when exposure is shown to be habitable as interiority, a point that finds its experiential articulation in Teresa of Ávila.

The human condition is not expressed in a single mode, but through different registers and intensities. Exposure manifests itself philosophically, ethically, and mystically, yet the underlying structure remains the same. As Velasco repeatedly emphasizes, religious experience does not introduce a separate realm alongside ordinary life (Velasco 1995), but reconfigures the whole horizon of meaning in which human existence unfolds. What changes is not the structure of existence itself, but the clarity with which its openness to transcendence becomes manifest.

From a phenomenological perspective, this unity becomes intelligible when exposure is recognized as preceding the differentiation of faculties. Exposure is not first intellectual, then moral, and finally mystical; rather, it is the condition under which thinking, acting, and desiring become possible as human acts. It is in this sense that García-Baró’s suggestion can be properly understood: truth and the Good do not address isolated faculties, but the subject as a whole, binding intelligence, will, and affectivity within a single experiential demand.

This insight has important implications for the interpretation of mystical experience. Mysticism no longer appears as a rupture with ordinary human life, nor as a higher state opposed to ethical or rational existence. Instead, mystical experience emerges as a lucid manifestation of a structure already at work in all human experience. Teresa of Ávila’s descriptions in El Castillo Interior confirm this continuity by insisting that the deepest forms of prayer do not withdraw the subject from daily life, but transform its orientation from within.

The unity disclosed by exposure also clarifies the relation between interiority and world. Exposure is not confined to an inner realm opposed to external reality. On the contrary, interiority itself is constituted through relation to what exceeds the subject. Against interpreting interior life as self-enclosure, interiority is the space where responsibility toward reality becomes possible. The exposed subject does not withdraw from the world; it becomes capable of inhabiting it differently, oriented by truth and the Good.

By articulating exposure as the principle that unifies cognition, ethics, and mysticism, this study offers a phenomenological account of the human condition that resists both fragmentation and idealization. The human being appears neither as a self-sufficient agent nor as a dissolved subject, but as a being whose unity is grounded in responsiveness to Mystery. This responsiveness does not abolish freedom; it constitutes it, allowing freedom to emerge as fidelity to what gives itself. What is at stake is not a set of separate attitudes, but a single exposed mode of existence in which receiving and responding are inseparable.

3. Final Synthesis: Toward an Anthropology of Exposure

If we look back at the path we have followed, a certain shift in perspective becomes visible. What initially appeared as a question about mystical experience has gradually revealed itself as a question about the structure of human existence as such. The analyses of Velasco, García-Baró, and Teresa of Ávila have led us to recognize that exposure to Mystery does not designate a marginal or exceptional phenomenon, but names a fundamental way in which human existence finds itself from the outset situated in relation to what precedes and exceeds it.

From this perspective, the inversion of intentionality described by Velasco no longer appears as a technical modification within phenomenology, but as a displacement that concerns the very position of the subject. The subject no longer stands primarily as origin and measure of meaning, but discovers itself already engaged, already addressed, already claimed. What is at stake here is not the weakening of agency, but its reconfiguration: acting and responding no longer arise from self-possession, but from a relation that first gives them their sense and their weight.

García-Baró’s phenomenological ethics deepens and radicalizes this structure by revealing its intrinsic normative weight. In his analysis, truth and the Good do not appear as neutral objects, nor as external imperatives imposed upon the will. They bind the subject from within the way reality manifests itself, obliging and sustaining responsibility and freedom. Exposure thus becomes not only a phenomenological category but also an ethical one: the subject is constituted through being claimed by an enigmatic reality that demands response. In this way, the human condition can be described as one of receptive agency, where obligation does not destroy freedom but reveals its deepest ground.

Teresa of Ávila’s experiential articulation provides a decisive confirmation at the level of lived interiority. Her account in The Interior Castle shows that exposure to Mystery is not merely a moment of rupture or an ethical demand to be endured, but a form of existence that can be inhabited and sustained. Interiority emerges as the space where openness becomes stable without becoming closed, and where desire orients life toward God without reducing Mystery to possession. Teresa thereby illuminates an essential dimension often underdeveloped in phenomenological accounts: exposure is not only the breaking of self-sufficiency, but also the possibility of a durable life within openness. Here interiority should not be understood as a pre-given space that is subsequently inhabited, but as something that is generated in and through the very process of living and being affected. In this sense, what is at stake is not merely the habitability of a space, but a dynamic of inhabitation through which interiority itself comes into being.

Taken together, these three perspectives allow exposure to be articulated as a coherent anthropological configuration: a human existence constituted through a relational exposure that calls for response and fidelity. Exposure does not name passivity or ethical heteronomy, but the condition in which freedom, interiority, and ethical commitment emerge from responsiveness to the mysteries of life. This clarification is decisive for mystical anthropology, since it avoids interpreting mystical experience either as a private intensification of affectivity or as an extraordinary state detached from ordinary human life. Mystical experience appears instead as a lucid manifestation of a structure already operative in human existence as such.7

In the broader context of contemporary moral and spiritual nihilism, the anthropological significance of exposure becomes particularly salient. By resisting both reductive accounts of religion and idealized separations between the ordinary and the mystical, an anthropology of exposure offers a rigorous framework for understanding human existence as meaningfully oriented, without collapsing into self-sufficiency or despair. It affirms that the human being receives itself from beyond itself, yet remains capable of response, discernment, and responsibility. In this sense, mystical anthropology—phenomenologically grounded—does not retreat from philosophical clarity; it rather clarifies, with renewed conceptual rigor, what it means to be human in openness to Mystery and to the mysteries that occur each day, insofar as we remain attentive to them and animated by a profound desire to sustain the ideal of a life oriented toward Truth and Goodness.

What comes into view, then, is not a new doctrine of the human being, but a way of recognizing what is already silently at work in human existence. Mystical experience no longer appears as an exceptional phenomenon, but as a lucid manifestation of a structure always already operative. It names a life exposed to what precedes it and calls it to respond. From here, freedom and responsibility begin to take shape. Yet a further question remains open, and perhaps must remain so: if this is indeed the fundamental structure of human existence, what must occur for the other to be recognized as other—and as neighbor—in the concrete texture of everyday life?