ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the potential of the idea of a communication model in thinking about communication and mystical experience. The Shannon-Weaver transactional model of communication which includes the notions of a sender, receiver, message, code, encoder, decoder, channel or medium and noise, is a clear example. Classical Thomism has charted the implications of being as communication in great detail. There is a difference between effective or productive causality, in which one entity brings about another materially, and the relation of knowing, which is one of sensation, recognition or intellection. M. Buber often uses the term “over against” to indicate that there is a space within which communication happens, and that therefore the going out of oneself to communicate with others has to be conceived as an essential extra, a freedom in being, without which, however, nothing could exist. Communication is a universal feature of being as such, given in intuition, infinitely open to exploration and creative development.
