When reflecting on these five idiographs, relating them to each other and against the background of previous research and theoretical horizons presented in the introduction, what meaning can be appropriated from them? If, as stated in the section on methodology, essences are ‘the web of ideal possibilities and relationships that constitute a particular domain of experience’, then what metanarrative can be woven from the discernible web of empirical-conceptual configurations? That is the question I will address in this final chapter by tracing and connecting three deep threads running through and interlacing the particular domain of Life-Changing Reading Experiences.

The process of a transformative reading experience, from its inception prior to the act of reading until its ultimate integration into the self-narrative of the reader, crystallises around certain phenomena. It is not a case of self-help reading, in which the reader has identified a problem, and then looks for an apt source that will provide a solution. Instead, what transpires is that, over and beyond the initial motivation for picking up the book – whether it was by obligation or serendipity, through titillation, after recommendation or by association with a pleasurable state – at some point it turns into an I– -Thou encounter; at some point these readers unreservedly give themselves over to, and surrender to, the experience, and become fully involved, body, heart and mind. Furthermore, in this evolving and deepening devotional transaction, these readers are deeply moved. The experience of a panoply of feelings that traditionally have straddled aesthetic and religious domains – such as wonder, awe, tenderness, jubilation and faith – come into full awareness. When this happens, the expanded affect-consciousness allows for an altered sense of self in which the crisis can be resolved. Thus, in being moved new movement is created: that which was stuck is loosened, that which was frozen melts, that which was in the dark is brought into light and so on. Such transformations of the subject's sense of self does not mean that life becomes easier or free from suffering, but rather that, as the muddled, restrictive, unclear or shallow self-experience is given greater depth, clarity, connectedness and openness, a renewed vitality and sense of direction becomes available to the subject.