Designates the “place” beyond all place, beyond being (the ontological).
In this Beyond-Being or surontological domain, being and non-being are no longer contradictory.

In religious language, one may say that “upstream” of the One called God, who named Himself “He Who Is” (origin and source of all being, of all that is ontological), there stands the Deity or Gottheit (Meister Eckhart), an Hypertheos or superessential Trinity (Pseudo-Dionysius), of whom God is the affirmation sui causa.

More precisely

The surontological is not a higher level of being but its absolute beyond: the principial Reality in which the opposition between being and non-being is dissolved in an Unity prior to all determination.

This “place” is not a state of being nor a category of ontology: it refers to that which grounds being without being itself “being.”
One could say that it is the Principle from which being proceeds — yet which cannot be called being, although it is not non-being.

It thus refers to the superessential (hyperousios) dimension, which ancient and medieval traditions name Deity, beyond God-as-Being.
This Deity is unconditioned, nameless, apophatic, accessible only by the negative way: one can say what it is not, but never what it is.

Thus:
— the ontological pertains to being and its determinations;
— the surontological pertains to the Principle beyond being.

The relation between these two planes is one of emanation or procession: being-as-being proceeds from the Beyond-Being, which is neither being nor non-being, but beyond both.

Here, non-being does not signify privation but transcendence — beyond all defined existence.
The surontological lies at the heart of apophatic metaphysics, where the Principle is said to be without name, without attribute, without determination, yet not nonexistent: it is more real than being.

Further reading

  • Plato, Parmenides — surpassing ontological determination.
  • Plotinus, Enneads V–VI — the One beyond Being and Intellect.
  • Proclus, Platonic Theology — hierarchy One / Being / Life / Intellect and hyper-ontological Principle.
  • Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names; Mystical Theology — hyperousios, superessential Trinity, apophatic dialectic.
  • Meister Eckhart, Sermons — Gottheit (Deity) beyond God.
  • Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia — coincidence of opposites (being / non-being).
  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.12 — limits of intellection of the divine essence.
  • Śaṅkara, Upanishad Commentaries — Parabrahman beyond being → neti neti.
  • Jean Borella, The Sense of the Supernatural — surpassing ontology in the supernatural Principle.
  • Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone — articulation ontological / surontological.