Existenz is the cypher for transcendence.

Existenz is the cypher for transcendence.[^35] These ‘cyphers’ appear in art, religion and in specific aspects of lived human existence (especially our ‘limit situations’), and, while somehow pointing towards transcendence, also withhold knowledge of the transcendent, and indeed they confirm the impossibility of such knowledge.

As consciousness comes to recognise its own limits it takes on an attitude of foundering or ‘failing’ ( Scheitern ), an experience of insufficiency before the transcendent. More specifically, it is my historicity that makes me aware of transcendence: Only through historicity do I become aware of the authentic being of transcendence –and only through transcendence does our ephemeral existence acquire historical substance.[^36] My very contingent existing is itself a cypher of transcendence.

Paradoxically, and it is not clear to me what this means, Jaspers maintains that there is only one transcendence even though there are many existences. The experience of absolute reality is that it is one and that it contains no possibility. Existenz is not a self-contained unity.

If there is unity it only is in transcendence.[^37] Moreover, ‘transcendence is not a matter of proof, but one of witness’.[^38] For Jaspers, the perennial task is communication , but the transcendent does not communicate directly with humans. Transcendence is ineffable and incommunicable. It can however somehow be experienced or lived through.

Jasper further says that ‘the paradox of transcendence is that it can only be grasped historically but cannot be adequately conceived as being itself historical.’[^39] Paradoxically, given its incommunicability, Jaspers defines transcendence is defined in relational terms: ‘There is transcendence only by virtue of the reality of my unconditionality’.[^40] There is no transcendence except for existence: ‘ Existenz is either in relation to transcendence or not at all’.[^41] ‘I am existentially myself in the act of apprehending transcendence.’[^42] I experience myself as given to myself not by myself but by something other, by transcendence.[^43] Jaspers maintains that the ‘place of transcendence is neither in this world or beyond, but it is the boundary - the boundary at which I confront transcendence whenever I am my true self.’[^44] Jaspers has the view that my sense of being-in-myself is shattered by the experience of transcendence.