You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.

You have waltzed with great style,
My sweet, crushed angel,
To have ever neared God’s heart at all.

Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,
And even His best musicians are not always easy to hear.

So what,
If the music has stopped for a while.

So what,
If the price of admission to the Divine is out of reach tonight.

So what, my dear,
If you do not have the ante to gamble for Real Love.

The mind and the body are famous for holding the heart ransom, but Hafiz knows the Beloved’s eternal habits.

Have patience,
For He will not be able to resist your longing for long.

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One.

You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet,
O my sweet crushed angel.

-Hafiz

“The clear and firm structure of the I-You relationship, familiar to anyone with a candid heart and the courage to stake it, is not mystical. To understand it we must sometimes step out of our habits of thought, but not out of the primal norms that determines man’s thoughts about what is actual.” -Martin Buber

I have been engrossed in I and Thou for several weeks now. Rather than try and cram all of my favorite quotes from I and Thou into one post, I have decided to break it up into a few discussion points, hopefully more to follow.  Buber’s work, although vague at times, is based on a practical model for how mankind relates to both God and people. Oftentimes in reading the works of early Christian Mystics one can be left wondering if it is even possible to experience a deeply personal relationship with God without retreating into a cloistered environment. I personally believe that we can grow in relationship to God no matter what station we find ourselves in in life. Faith is a choice… Below is an introduction to some of Buber’s thoughts on the personhood of God, which speaks to that practical relationship. Ironically, what follows was postscript to his original work, but probably should have been stated upfront.

“How – people ask – can the eternal You be at the same time exclusive and inclusive? How is it possible for man’s You-relationship to God, which requires our unconditional turning toward God, without any distractions, nevertheless to embrace all other I-You relationships of this man and to bring them, as it were, to God?…

The designation of God as a person is indispensable for all who, like myself, do not mean a principle when they say “God,” although mystics like Eckhart occasionally equate “Being” with him, and who, like myself, do not mean an idea when they say “God,” although philosophers like Plato could at times take him for one – all who, like myself, mean by “God” him that, whatever else he may be in addition, enters into a direct relationship to us human beings through creative, revelatory, and redemptive acts, and thus makes it possible for us to enter in to a direct relationship to him. This ground and meaning of our existence establishes each time a mutuality of the kind that can obtain only between persons. The concept of personhood is, of course, utterly incapable of describing the nature of God: but it is permitted and necessary to say that God is also a person. If for once I were to translate what I mean into the language of a philosopher, Spinoza, I should have to say that of God’s infinitely many attributes we human beings know not two, as Spinoza thought, but three: in addition to spiritlikeness – the source of what we call spirit – and naturelikeness, exemplified by what we know as nature, also thirdly the attribute of personlikeness. From this last attribute I should then derive my own and all men’s being person, even as I should derive from the first two my own and all men’s being spirit and being nature. And only this third attribute, personlikeness, could then be said to be known directly in its quality as an attribute.

But now the contradiction appears, appealing to the familiar content of the concept of a person. A person, it says, is by definition an independent individual and yet also relativized by the plurality of other independent individuals; and this, of course, could not be said of God. This contradiction is met by the paradoxical designation of God as the absolute person, that is one that cannot be relativized. It is as the absolute person that God enters into the direct relationship to us. The contradiction must give way to this higher insight.

Now we may say that God carries his absoluteness into his relationship with man. Hence the man who turns toward him need not turn his back on any other I-You relationship: quite legitimately he brings them all to God and allows them to become transfigured “in the countenance of God.”

One should beware altogether of understanding the conversation with God – the conversation of which I had to speak in this book and in almost all of my later books – as something that occurs merely apart from or above the everyday. God’s address to man penetrates the events in all our lives and all the events in the world around us, everything biographical and everything historical, and turns it into instruction, into demands for you and me. Event upon event, situation upon situation is enables and empowered by the personal language to call upon the human person to endure and decide. Often we think that there is nothing to be heard as if we had not long ago plugged wax into our own ears.

The existence of mutuality between God and Man cannot be proved any more than the existence of God. Anyone who dares nevertheless to speak of it bears witness and invokes the witness of those whom he addresses – present or future witness.” – I and Thou – by: Martin Buber (pg 180-182)

Buber, a Jewish philosopher,  stops short of drawing any connections to Christianity. Nevertheless, I find Buber’s views intriguing, you guessed it, for the process, and in this case the relational approach between I-You that is seemingly developed from an aware point-of-view.

Pax Vobiscum
-C.M. Gregory

A Christian mystic’s journey can be one of the most rewarding and discouraging undertakings that an individual can pursue. Full of peaks and valleys, seduction and rejection, ecstasy and despair, marked by moments of brilliant lucidity and shadowed by whispers of madness. The first step on this journey is a BIG ONE! It’s like stepping onto the surface of the moon or better yet like being shipwrecked by a violent wind (Euraquilo). While I’m writing this blog post I have in mind as my audience all of those who visit ChristianMystics.com looking for direction and/or hope. I see it often in the forums through the questions that are being asked and the passionate stories that are communicated. I normally don’t offer advice and in this case I’m still not, but what I do offer is a simple reflection on hope for those who wash up on this site from time to time after a spiritual shipwreck.

My first brush with the “mystic anomaly” occurred shortly after I was baptized (30+ years ago). From my perspective, I had just completed what should have been the most spectacular life changing event imaginable. I was officially committed to Jesus and let me tell you I had big expectations. However, I was shockingly surprised when nothing had appeared to change. I was just a boy then, barely eleven, and the questions that occurred to me truly arose from a state of childlike faith. The problem I faced was that my experiences did not line up with my expectations. Naturally I sought out the expert advice of the pastor, deacons, Sunday school teachers and other pillars of my faith community in my search for resolution. They all testified of their amazing life changing experience, their joyous walk with God, and undoubtable experience of blessed assurance.

To make a long, very long story short I believed as they did, I drank from their trough and yet my thirst was not quenched. I could not find within myself anything that convinced me that my blessedness was assured. I had done, said, prayed, and believed every aspect of the religious doctrine pontificated to me from birth. Nevertheless at a time when I should be experiencing similar results to those who lead the way, I was not. As time passed I observed my friends, neighbors, and even complete strangers begin to testify of their very own joyous walk and blessed assurance after they too whole heartedly believed and confessed the church doctrine. To put it lightly, I truly began to believe I was the odd-man-out and somehow was completely missing the boat.

Let’s skip forward about twenty years. I never absolutely lost faith, but found it much easier to stop expecting a joyous walk and blessed assurance, especially since I had become convinced at a very early age that God did not have much interest in my soul. Of course this perception was not the best attitude in life to adapt. Ultimately I discovered I was running from accepting an extremely negative alternative. That is, I was unknowingly surmising that if I couldn’t experience blessed assurance, then my future was eternal damnation. No matter how hard I tried to solve the puzzle, in all honesty, I could not fervently testify to the selfsame results as those who bore witness and sought to spread the good news within my faith community.

As the years passed I discovered many ways to run from God, but never a place of rest. This God thing never went away. No matter what I found myself doing in life I could not get away from my broken religious heritage and inability to experience the tell-tale signs of personal salvation. Eventually I decided to stop running, turn and face my pursuer. That’s right. I decided to go toe to toe with “god!” In beginning my investigation into experientially relating to God I started out almost where I left off. However, this time I figured I would need a broader sampling of witnesses consequently I did not restrict my quest for the experience of blessed assurance to just one faith community. As time went on I had not merely explored multiple faith communities, but multiple religious variants and even considered God from the viewpoint of other traditions. This seemed a risky endeavor for a person with my Southern Baptist heritage to pursue, but I could not ignore my desire to experience God and besides that, I was pretty much a black sheep of the Baptist fold anyhow. I’ll continue this story in a minute…

Why Talk About Kuhnian Paradigms?

Paradigm is one of those words I had strongly avoided. For me the word itself was just another corporate buzz word tossed around by ill-informed decision makers in cheap suits who had very little understanding of what they were talking about, but that’s “a whole nother” can of monkeys. Putting aside my personal bias, others might object to having a Kuhnian paradigm discussion on the premise that science and religion don’t mix. And to those of you who have made that statement on this site in times past let me reassure you I agree to an extent. We’re not going to meet God in a quantum formula or “pour God into a test tube.” That said, I have chosen the word paradigm as defined in Thomas S. Kuhn’s work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions not because I want to put God in a test tube but rather to draw attention to the fact that religiosity is driven by innate desires whether the follower is consciously aware of their workings or not. In my opinion Kuhn has done a wonderful job of defining a process of discovery, its effects on objectivity, and has outlined a methodology that can be just as applicable in one’s spiritual journey as it is in scientific revolution.

What attracts me to Kuhn’s work is his methodology for exploring the idea that “science” or as I see it any specific “field of study” does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but arise through periodic revolutions. Kuhn describes these revelations as “paradigm shifts” by which the essence of inquiry within a particular field (scientific or otherwise) is abruptly transformed… For those who are interested in delving into the depths of Kuhn’s paradigm ideology I recommend getting his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions or downloading the audio version at: Audible.com.

What is a Paradigm
– As defined by Thomas Kuhn

In order to expedite my point I will be taking extreme creative liberty in paraphrasing some of Kuhn’s more specific ideas from F. Pajares outline of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as well as interweave in my own spiritual parallelisms and factoids. What follows is that condensed view of Kuhnian paradigm methodology…

Paradigm: (community held beliefs)
First off in defining “paradigm” the idea that Kuhn presents is that a community cannot practice its trade without some set of “received beliefs.”  In a nutshell these received beliefs form community standards of shared assumptions AKA paradigm. Some notable characteristics of a paradigm are:

• A paradigm transforms a group into a discipline and from this follows:
specialized groups – first principles – justifications of concepts – scholarly articles – discussion groups on the internet.
• A paradigm guides the whole group’s research and it is a criterion that most clearly proclaims a field or community.
• Paradigms help communities to bound their discipline in that they help define:
areas of relevance – establish meaning – create avenues of inquiry –  formulate questions –  offer methods by which to examine questions.
• Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute. But more successful does not mean completely successful!

Normal Science: (paradigm based puzzle solving)
Initially, a paradigm offers the promise of success. Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise. This is achieved by extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays a particularly revealing, increasing the match between those facts and the paradigm’s predictions, and further articulation of the paradigm itself. In this area of what Kuhn describes as normal science devotees of the paradigm are practicing puzzle solving. The process involves: consulting experts – considering historical ties – determination of significant facts – matching facts with theory – articulation of theory.

In this puzzle solving mindset followers of the paradigm undertake empirical work to: articulate the paradigm theory itself — resolve residual ambiguities — refine and permit solution of problems to which the theory had previously only drawn attention. This articulation includes: determination of universal constants — development of quantitative laws — and selection of ways to apply the paradigm to a related area of interest.

A striking feature of doing normal science i.e. puzzle solving is that the goal is to discover what is known in advance. This type of activity should produce new information and a more precise paradigm, but if the puzzle solving being practiced is so ridged and paradigmatic communities so devote, how can paradigm change take place?

Anomalies: (a novelty of fact that creates tension)
Novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. The process of paradigm change is closely tied to the nature of perceptual (conceptual) change in an individual. Discovery begins with the awareness of anomaly, the recognition that nature has violated the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science (paradigm based puzzle solving). This creates a phenomenon for which a paradigm has not readied the seeker. After perceiving an anomaly within the paradigm the investigator i.e. seeker can ignore, deny, or explore the anomaly.

In other words, a process of discovery begins based on the awareness of the anomaly. Upon exploring the anomaly paradigm change is complete when the anomalous becomes the expected. Consequently, anomaly appears only against the background provided by the paradigm.

What happens when anomaly awareness produces new theories that the existing paradigm fails to resolve? Hmm? Here is where Mr. Kuhn uses a word that really starts to peak my interest. CRISIS

*Anomalies are counter instances within a paradigm that create tension and give rise to crisis.

Crisis: (paradigm failure mode)
Observed discrepancies between theory and fact—this is the “core of the crisis.” The emergence of a new theory is generated by the persistent failure of the puzzles of normal science to be solved as they should. Failure of existing rules is the prelude to a search for new ones. The awareness and acknowledgment that a crisis exists loosens theoretical stereotypes and provides the incremental data necessary for a fundamental paradigm shift. Crisis is always implicit in research because every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle can be seen, from another viewpoint, as a counter instance and thus as a source of crisis.

In typical response to crises individuals generally do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis. They may lose faith and consider alternatives, but they generally do not treat anomalies as counter instances of expected outcomes. They devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory in order to eliminate any apparent conflict. Some, unable to tolerate the crisis (and thus unable to live in a world out of joint), leave the practice altogether.

All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research. As this process develops more attention is devoted to it. Proponents express explicit discontent and competing articulations of the paradigm proliferate. Scholars view a resolution as the subject matter of their discipline. To this end, they first isolate the anomaly more precisely and give it structure. Push the rules of normal science harder than ever to see, in the area of difficulty, just where and how far they can be made to work. Finally they seek for ways of magnifying the breakdown and generate speculative theories. They may even turn to philosophical analysis and debate over fundamentals as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field.

All crises close in one of three ways.
I. Normal science proves able to handle the crisis-provoking problem and all returns to “normal.”
II. The problem resists and is labeled, but it is perceived as resulting from the field’s failure to possess the necessary tools with which to solve it, and so investigators set it aside for a future generation with more developed tools.
III. A new candidate for paradigm emerges, and a battle over its acceptance ensues.

How do new paradigms finally emerge?  Some emerge all at once, sometimes in the middle of the night, in the mind of a man deeply immersed in crisis. What then is a paradigm shift?

Revolution: (paradigm shift)
Kuhn dedicates five chapters to comparing a paradigm shift to the process of revolution. Or as Kuhn puts it, a revolution is a noncumulative developmental episode in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one.

During revolutions, revolutionaries see new and different things when looking with familiar means in places they have looked before. Familiar objects are seen in a different light and joined by unfamiliar ones as well. They view the world of their research-engagement differently. See new things when looking at old objects. In a sense, after a revolution, individuals are responding to a different world.

Why does a shift in view occur? Because of a change in the relation between the individual’s manipulations and the paradigm or between the manipulations and their concrete results in this, the existing paradigm fails to fit. It is hard to make nature fit a paradigm…

CM Gets Back on His High Horse

As you can see the method that Thomas Kuhn utilizes in explaining his theory of scientific revolution can be applied to many fields of study. A fact that Mr. Kuhn himself later points out in a postscript that is added to his revised version of the original essay. Okay then, now I can get back to the point of my little story.  I speak from experience when I say “the first step on this journey is a BIG ONE!” The mystic anomaly is a very seductive mistress. She bellows her Siren song and lures weary travelers who have journeyed far on traditions’ oceans. In hunger and thirst they are willing to risk the end of all to reach her shores, for they hope she cries to them from dry land.

Poetic polishing aside, the point is when a person shifts from a dogmatic, religious paradigm to a blatantly differing view such as that offered through the eyes of a mystic, this new reality can feel like a very unwelcoming place. When a soul actually is awakened, becomes aware, or sees how their very ideas of “self” and “god” influence, or dare I say dictates their reality and then chooses to discard both in pursuit of God, that soul has taken the first step on a mystic’s journey. One might discover that they have leapt from the proverbial mountain. During the long fall one prays for a soft-landing, a quick end, or rescue, anything but plunging faster into fathomless darkness.

In Kuhnian terms this broken state, the hopeless fall, is simply crisis mode brought about by an anomaly awareness that caused a traditional paradigm to fail. If a soul can only remember it was they who took a step, and then the whole of perception changed – perhaps they’ll learn to flap their wings.

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” – Hebrews 10:31
Yet, its fear that gives men wings.

A Mystic Paradigm – Explored

I was going to stop with that last statement as I feel that my point was made and perhaps the meaning will find the soul who needs to hear it. However, while writing this I received a very genuine email from a longtime forum member, which got me thinking about the next level. My focus now shifts with a different audience in mind, those who frequent ChristianMystics.com and have already developed a taste for the mystic Kool-Aid. Let’s explore the idea of “A Mystic Paradigm.”

From my point of view defining a mystic paradigm is like trying to place a firm one handed grasp on a giant squid. It’s a very dynamic topic with long and slippery arms wriggling loose no matter how firmly you try to grasp it. I realize I’m way too personally invested to step back and take a thousand-foot-view on the topic, but I would like to share some interesting thousand-foot-viewpoints highlighted from a lecture summary by Professor Luke Timothy Johnson (course # 6130). Although the lecture is a bit too academic to quote exactly, I will once again take creative liberty in paraphrasing parts of the lecture summary for the purpose of introducing a semi-objective exploration of the possibility that a mystic paradigm, at least from a Kuhnian perspective might exist.

Whether you consider yourself a mystic, contemplative, seeker, complete lunatic, all or none of the above – hope remains. Don’t presume that you must wear a label to see through the mystic’s eyes. Personally, I’m confident that when I arrive at my final station in life I will remain bound to the Christian paradigm and most likely that of the Christian Mystic, even though mysticism is not limited to Christianity. Anyone who has read the works of early and/or contemporary mystics will have most likely discovered that there is a language being used that crosses traditional boundaries. This phenomenon makes me wonder if a mystic paradigm exists or if it’s solely a matter of individual perception within a religious paradigm.

After all what would a mystic be without a concept or awareness of God, Ultimate Reality, Holy One, Other, etc… What would the point of prayer be if there was no hope of gain, no hope of beholding the Beloved? In The Ladder of Divine Ascent John Climacus puts it this way:

“The monk has body made holy, a tongue purified, a mind enlightened. Asleep or awake, the monk is a soul pained by the constant remembrance of death. Withdraw from the world is willing hatred of all that is materially prized, a denial of nature for the sake of what is above nature. All of this is done by those who willingly turn from the things of this life, either for the sake of the coming kingdom, or because of the number of their sins, or on an account of their love of God. Without such objectives the denial of the world would make no sense.” – John Climacus

It could be easily argued that when we are discussing a mystic paradigm we are in effect talking about the heart of a saint. After all, most western traditions have saints and all saints are recognized by how their relationship with God has transformed them into holy men/women. That is to say, individuals who are set apart from societal norms and joined to God or at a minimum distinguished by their heart for God regardless of accomplishment or mankind’s recognition. Mysticism is not primarily a matter of great individuals, great ideas, and great writing. It is mostly a matter of countless anonymous believers practicing prayer as the most important dimension of their lives.

Mystic ideology is prolific in many Eastern religions although I won’t have to stray into pantheistic paradigms to discover enough evidence for exploring the idea of a mystic paradigm. Take for example the big three monotheistic religions of the West Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Even the most superficial of observations into the mystical revolutions contained within each reveals the wriggling arms of mysticism.

Within the mystical veins for Christianity, Judaism, and Islam there is sufficient diversity to beg the question of the existence of “A Mystical Paradigm.” For example, song and dances are important elements of mysticism in both Judaism and Islam, but have no counterpart in Christianity. We can read of the mystical writings of ecstatic’s or non-ecstatic’s. Some mystics have visions other make no mention of visions, but only emphasize their steadfast devotion to God. We see some mystics who emphasize knowledge like Meister Eckhart and other who emphasize love and affections like On Loving God by: Bernard of Clairvaux. Some practice prayer of recollection some abandonment, and yet others like the Hesychastic Mystics focus on The Jesus Prayer.

The flip side of their diversity would be the amazing similarities that mystics share despite their varying traditional belief systems. Mysticism seems to thrive within a community that transmits tradition, enables modeling and imitation, and provides common rituals. Mysticism in the West involves remarkably close interpretation of sacred texts wither that be the Holy Bible, Zohar, or Quran. There is a notable scholarly dimension to mystics represented by a very close reading of sacred text and demonstrated by intense speculation on the meaning. That is to say, mystics practice normal science within a traditional religious paradigm.

The Mystic Anomaly

So what about that semi-objective thousand-foot-view I was alluding to earlier, what can be said of mystics that crosses traditional paradigmatic boundaries?

I. “The mystics are convinced that the empirical world, the world of sense, the world of interconnected secondary causes, a world that natural science can so splendidly describe and categorize, well they tell us that the empirical world is not self-sufficient or self-explanatory. The empirical world does not account for what most needs accounting namely its existence. That it is at all. It is that there is rather than not that calls the mystic to ask the question “isn’t there something more” is there not a transcendent world of spirit that might be accessible through knowledge and love. Surely this world should be seen as an effect of some cause, isn’t there some way of seeking the cause itself?”

II. “This world is not enough; in fact this world may be a distraction, a “veil” from what is most real. The spiritual realm is more real, truer, and more valuable than the transient realm of ordinary existence. In the same way that the cause is greater than the effect, what is points to what transcends the isness of all else and supports it.”

III. “The only authentic human vocation, the only worthwhile goal of being human is to reach that which is Most Real, Most True, Most Good through a process of personal transformation or sanctification, that is becoming more like that which is sought. So for the mystic the only genuine human vocation is to become a saint and therefore the only true human tragedy is to fail to become a saint. To not engage reality at this level, for the mystic, is truly to be out-of-touch! The mystic is convinced that there is some dimension of the human person some element within humans that enables such a transformation that at some level “touches the divine.” The spirit, the soul, the image of God, a spark of light, grace. This gift from The Source can be realized through human response so that one can move from the gift to the Giver. This process is one in which the mystic is convinced that realizing God is realizing the authentic self. There is an authentic self-realization because humans were created to be this kind of self. Self-realization is not a simple acceptance of what one is, but rather to be hungry and thirsty for the self that is intended in the Source Itself.”

IV. “Finally the mystic is convinced that prayer is not simple an optional activity it is the essential activity. That prayer is simply not what people say in public when they go to church and make prostrations or sing hymns or read scriptures together. Prayer is the movement of the human mind and the human heart towards what is Most Real and the mystic insist that these higher forms of prayer are a real form of knowledge. They come into contact with what is Most Real, through the cloud of unknowing. Mystics like Pseudo Dionysius insist that although one cannot grasp, one can touch, and although one cannot define that Source, one can reach it.”

V. “The highest state of this mystic quest is not that one is distracted from God’s creation, but rather that one is in most real contact with God’s creation because now one is not mistaken creation for the creator and one is perceiving creation precisely from God’s perspective, as creation. So the highest point of mysticism is not Fanaa (passing away) it is not annihilation of the egoic self, it is the return to what is ordinary. That is why the greatest saint is at once the most fully human, not the most complicated, but the simplest, the most “in touch” with what is real in life.”

Summary

If you’ve read to this point consider yourself fortunate it’s almost ending. I realize that I went a little long in writing this post, but it has been awhile since I’ve had a chance to vent. I know that there is still much to explore on this topic, many puzzles left to solve, and plenty of wriggling arms that I didn’t even mention this go around. I hope by now it’s easy to see the correlation between my own quest for experiential awareness and the Kuhnian methodology for objectifying the process. I’m willing to step out on limb and say that I’m not alone in my somewhat convoluted expectations. My hope is that others might be able to shorten their visit to the dwelling place of shifting paradigms by stepping back, even outside of their personal expectations, and regain a bit of Kuhnian objectivity. In any case, I get that the idea of shifting religious paradigms based on the mystic anomaly is far different than the actual experience of it. Keep in mind though, egoic annihilation is only one aspect of the mystical anomaly and we must allow God to rebuild the house if our transformation in Christ is to be complete.

“if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” – 2 Corinthians 5:17

By now you may have concluded that I’m the type of person who appreciates systematic approaches. True and I have also grown to appreciate the irony that the study of mysticism is a look into systems within systems, yet in practice mysticism aims to unravel those very systems that give rise to its existence. My stance is that an individual “mystical” paradigm shift can and apparently does take place within a religious tradition, however mysticism in and of itself is not a Kuhnian paradigm. Mysticism is an anomaly that creates the essential tension between the dogmatic exoteric legalese and superficial morality of reformist religions. Religions that seek to change the external world around them. The anomaly of mysticism gives rise to crisis for those who seek esoteric transformation and ultimately can lead to the hybridization of a traditional view. In other words “The Christian Mystic Paradigm,” which in my opinion has many wriggling parts no matter how one attempts to grasp it, and apparently it has taken me over 4500 words just to make that statement!

Pax Vobiscum
-C.M. Gregory

“Spirituality is a matter of perception, not proof.” - Peter Marshall

I see that my blog has become a bit dusty and in need of an update. Other than the obvious excuse of being “too busy,”  I must acknowledge that the works of Christ concerning my spiritual development have been utterly outpacing my public communication abilities lately…

Other than being alive and well, I am excited to announce that I’ll be sharing a new and inspired series on the topic of “Mystic Paradigm,” as time permits. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I can confirm that it will be “earth moving” for those who consider its premise.

Anyway, my whole point of this post is to add a copy of the subsequent quote to my blog for future reference…

The following is an excerpt from a sermon by Peter Marshall. The sermons starts playing about 11 minutes (online version) into the movie A Man Called Peter. He says it best…

“There are men and women in the world today who say that God orders their lives, guides them in making decisions, provides for their needs, answers their prayers, in ways which are often strange and unexpected. That is the testimony of my own experience, and there are many here who could make the same statement; but, if you, yourself, have not had the experience in your life, don’t be too quick to jump to the conclusion that we who say these things are daft, mad. In that mood, many of us approach spiritual things. We come, like Thomas, not doubting, but dogmatically refusing to believe unless we see, as if we could pour God into a test tube, as if intangibles had to become tangible in order to prove that they were intangible. There are certain things that must be approached in faith, things that are matters of perception, not of proof.

“‘Beauty’ is one of them.

“How can you prove that anything is beautiful? Could you demonstrate to me, by logic, or reason, or by intellect, that the Fifth Symphony, or the Moonlight Sonata, was sheer beauty?

“Can you prove, by any method of intellect, why a sunset is beautiful?

“Describe to me, scientifically, the haunting, wistful fragrance of a bunch of violets.

“Yet, you come here professing the faith which, for more than nineteen centuries, has borne witness to spiritual realities, and you ask if one can prove that God exists. You ask me to prove it! How could my tiny mind prove God? What kind of a God could my little mind prove? You might as well ask the bird to prove the air in which it flies, or the minnow to prove the sea in which it swims.

“Let me ask you to prove that you exist. I’d be interested in hearing you try.

“There are mysteries all around us, stirring, wonderful, inexplicable.

“Take, for example, the strange phenomenon of falling in love.

“Have you ever asked the question, ‘How will I know when I fall in love?’ I have. I’ve asked it of blondes and brunettes, of redheads and of bald heads, of people everywhere, and the strange thing is I’ve always received the same answer, namely, ‘Don’t worry, brother, you’ll know.’

“Love, like beauty, like the haunting, wistful fragrance of violets, is a matter of perception and experience, not of proof. The great things by which we really live are not proven by logic, but by life; and, as that is true of love and beauty, so it is true of finding God and learning how close He stands to us.”

- Peter Marshall, A Man Called Peter. (movie excerpt)

Pax Vobiscum
-C.M. Gregory

On Christian Doctrine by St. Augustine is available at:  Amazon – Audible.com – Online

Strange sometimes how books seem to find us. I discovered On Christian Doctrine by St. Augustine last year about the same time I began to rewrite this site. At first, I thought what a great idea it would be to share the following Augustinian excerpts as my initial post. In hindsight, I’m glad I hesitated. If I had attempted to explore this topic even a few short months ago it would have served as nothing more than a soapbox justification of my own peculiar bias. Mind-blowing what a few months of refining and testing can achieve…

On Christian Doctrine by St. Augustine addresses a variety of topics, however I was particularly drawn to his thoughts on profane source. It’s been said that Christians are the only group that arranges their firing squad in a circle. Heretic, cultist, I’ve been called that and worse, oddly enough by fellow Christians and for what, seeing truth where it lay. I began to wonder – how does a Christian “justify” insights gained from profane sources?

Spiritual insight seemingly gained from sources other than sacred scripture has been shunned as a slippery path into idolatry, heresy, the demonic, etc. Can it be possible that one can learn truth from profane sources or even other religious traditions in the service of Christ? Going on to discover those same truths have been hidden in the Holy Bible all along? The following thoughts of St. Augustine helped me put down the questioning, it was Love that did the rest…

CHAP. 18.–No Help Is To Be Despised, Even Though It Come From A Profane Source.

“… let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master; and while he recognizes and acknowledges the truth, even in their religious literature, let him reject the figments of superstition, and let him grieve over and avoid men who, “when they knew God, glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.”

CHAP. 40.–Whatever Has Been Rightly Said By The Heathen, We Must Appropriate To Our Uses.

“Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said aught that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it. For, as the Egyptians had not only the idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments, which the same people when going out of Egypt appropriated to themselves, designing them for a better use, not doing this on their own authority, but by the command of God, the Egyptians themselves, in their ignorance, providing them with things which they themselves were not making a good use of;(1) in the same way all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely and unlawfully prostituting to the worship of devils. These, therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men, ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. Their garments, also,–that is, human institutions such as are adapted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life,–we must take and turn to a Christian use.

And what else have many good and faithful men among our brethren done? Do we not see with what a quantity of gold and silver and garments Cyprian, that most persuasive teacher and most blessed martyr, was loaded when he came out of Egypt? How much Lactantius brought with him? And Victorinus, and Optatus, and Hilary, not to speak of living men! How much Greeks out of number have borrowed! And prior to all these, that most faithful servant of God, Moses, had done the same thing; for of him it is written that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.(2) And to none of all these would heathen superstition (especially in those times when, kicking against the yoke of Christ, it was persecuting the Christians) have ever furnished branches of knowledge it held useful, if it had suspected they were about to turn them to the use of worshipping the One God, and thereby overturning the vain worship of idols. But they gave their gold and their silver and their garments to the people of God as they were going out of Egypt, not knowing how the things they gave would be turned to the service of Christ. For what was done at the time of the exodus was no doubt a type prefiguring what happens now. And this I say without prejudice to any other interpretation that may be as good, or better.”

CHAP. 42.–Sacred Scripture Compared With Profane Authors.

“…so poor is all the useful knowledge which is gathered from the books of the heathen when compared with the knowledge of Holy Scripture, For whatever man may have learnt from other sources, if it is hurtful, it is there condemned; if it is useful, it is therein contained. And while every man may find there all that he has learnt of useful elsewhere, he will find there in much greater abundance things that are to be found nowhere else, but can be learnt only in the wonderful sublimity and wonderful simplicity of the Scriptures.”

CHAP. 5.–It Is A Wretched Slavery Which Takes The Figurative Expressions Of Scripture In A Literal Sense.

“… And nothing is more fittingly called the death of the soul than when that in it which raises it above the brutes, the intelligence namely, is put in subjection to the flesh by a blind adherence to the letter. For he who follows the letter takes figurative words as if they were proper, and does not carry out what is indicated by a proper word into its secondary signification; but, if he hears of the Sabbath, for example, thinks of nothing but the one day out of seven which recurs in constant succession; and when he hears of a sacrifice, does not carry his thoughts beyond the customary offerings of victims from the flock, and of the fruits of the earth. Now it is surely a miserable slavery of the soul to take signs for things, and to be unable to lift the eye of the mind above what is corporeal and created, that it may drink in eternal light.”

Why Fight Fire with Fire

We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, not to go about crowning either with thorny doctrines. I find it reassuring that at some point in the history of Christianity others saw the importance of reconciling the stigmas of perception with the ultimate source of truth. I have taken to heart the words of St. Augustine “let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master.”

Yes, ultimately Love wins out. I no longer grasp the need to fight fire with fire, i.e. “justify.” It is easy enough to sway a black and white mind into the gray, but the spirits journey beyond the misty gray veil is a calling not a combat… I find truth is its own justification and reassurance in knowing that once a person is surrendered in Christ, the Scriptures will open as treasure chest, nature a book, and the profane will shed its cloak.

The Spirit Sword – C.M. Gregory

Pierce a belief and it will bleed questions.
A legion of screaming warriors
fear, fear, they cry – violently attacking.
Divided in rank, they turn on themselves
see now the stronghold has fallen.

What weapon so mighty
the Spirit Sword?

Pax Vobiscum
-C.M. Gregory

“All the greatest and most important problems in life are fundamentally insoluble… They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This “outgrowing” proves on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the horizon and through this broadening of outlook, the insoluble lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.” – Carl Jung

 

Mystical experience, what exactly does it mean, more specifically, what exactly does it mean to you? Some weeks back I posted that question in the forum. I was curious to find out what others considered the phrase “mystical experience” to mean based on their own mystical experiences. I was hoping for a sincere “gloves off” discussion about mystical experience. Now, after checking my expectations at the door, I’m questioning how anyone other than the person who has had a mystical experience can truly relate to what is essentially a personal understanding.

There seem to be as many variations on what exactly a mystical experience is as there are people who communicate them, and why shouldn’t there be? What compels a person to leave the safe harbor of fundamental dogmatism and voyage into the unknown? Perhaps even the motivations and desires of the initiate are as subjective as the experiences that assist their journey. That said, what remains of an individual’s witness to the transforming power of Jesus that can be considered communally beneficial and doesn’t rely on abstraction?

God Logic Explained

Before I share my view of this transforming process I suppose it would be beneficial to briefly explain my former religious attitude. For lack of a better phrase I have selected “God logic” as the expression that conveys the religious state of mind that I found myself dwelling in for years.

The subtle guise of God logic is at work in minds of the religious in many forms.  In prayer for example, when one prays, waits a few seconds, then begins to rationalize the answer to one’s own prayer by constructing a logical course of action based on scripture references. Add to that some feeling of relief or peace caused by the understanding that it’s in God’s hands now because I have prayed.

In God Logic we have the perfect religious recipe, the authority of scripture applied rationally in the fullness of understanding and individually confirmed by emotion… God becomes property of the soul, neatly and logically compartmentalized, conveniently accessible in time of need, want, or whenever socially necessary.

When a person makes use of God logic they have a very well defined image of God, who He is, and how He operates.  His “Will” is discovered by transposing moral precepts from biblical narrative into one’s life via self directed rational discourse. Ultimately God logic is self righteousness in disguise, a form of religious pretense without genuine humility in the presence of God. Often times the practitioner is paraded blindly though life unaware that there is any problem whatsoever in their “spiritual walk,” even when sin dominates their thoughts and life. You see, when a person learns to rationalize the written word of God they will also rationalize sin in the same manner.

When one summits the high and mighty peak of God logic the only certainty to come is a deep, swift fall into an experience of sin that will forever shatter the religious soul in merciless ways. Overcoming the religious peaks and valleys of God logic can awaken ones spirit in ways not yet conceived of by those who are entangled in its snare.

“The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” — Albert Einstein

 

Mystical Experience as Process

We humans seem to have an innate desire for certainty when it comes to apprehending our personal standing with God. This desire for certainty is the driving force behind a multiplicity of religious practices, doctrinal beliefs, and all shades of mystical experience. What purpose does mystical experience serve if it does not, at a minimum, fulfill the void of uncertainty?

The demise of God logic can be a drawn out process! Subtle questions arise, slowly at first leading you to wonder if the beliefs that you value are correct. As the process unfolds soon you are questioning everything that you thought you knew about God, self, life, etc… at last coming to a place of absolute self humility that has truly permeated the essence of being.

In hindsight, it appears as though something new was being formed through a process of unlearning. An awareness that watches all that arises within. This deep-seated awareness allows the intellect to guard the heart from being passionately dominated by whatever blows past. From the vantage point of continuing watchfulness, patterns emerge as varying states of consciousness are realized. Motives, reasoning, the wandering mind, emotions and alike become subject to the authority of discernment and responsible at every stirring to will.

I experience the mystical as a natural consequence of obedience to the teachings of Christ. By applying the concepts of faith, repentance, humility, love to the very essences of my being, I find that life is becoming more mystical every day. I choose to walk by faith, avoiding pretense and treasuring truth. God, the Father of spirits who inhabits eternity and regards mankind with love cannot be confined by the shadows of mental constructs no matter how logical they may appear.

Whether or not individual experience of a living faith in God is considered mystical is subjective. Certainty in that life altering transformation based on faith in Jesus has occurred outside of one’s own cognitive abilities is unmistakable, if not mystical. Although I’m not the same person I was when I started this journey it is evident that I am not complete. There are still questions that compel me deeper into the Kingdom of God.

Rolling in the Deep

In The Interior Castle, St Teresa uses a metaphor of passing through the chambers of an inner castle to express her mystical experience. Her metaphor is still one of my favorites because it is simple and scalable, representing a process that can only be expressed by experience and from a vantage point deep within.

St. Teresa of Avila describes her experience in mansion five as having the faculties suspended. When I experience a suspension of faculties in prayer what remains is an awareness of the first intuitions that bring to life those very same faculties. The physical senses still function although they are usually the first to fade from view as prayer deepens. The reasoning mind, imagination and other higher faculties of the soul are still completely intact, but there is an ever increasing distance between their function and the content that stimulates their activity.

In a mansion five state of consciousness ‘freedom’ is a word barley broad enough to convey the experience, peace that passes understanding is the sentiment. To proceed deeper would be to draw closer to the source of intuition rather than gazing upon the intuitions directly. I wonder what’s beyond the wall of first intuitions?

Pax Vobiscum
-C.M. Gregory

“I sit at my table and wage war on myself
It seems like it’s all, it’s all for nothing”

-R.E.M. (World Leader Pretend)

Brief Intro

When I originally penned this I hadn’t intended on sharing it publically. I often write down things that consume my thoughts for no other reason than to put them in writing and off of my mind. The topic of “Wandering Mind” is a pensive selection from my journal. In summary, this post is best viewed as self probing psychobabble with no mystical value. What follows, I offer as prologue to the topic of mystical experience, which I hope to finally address in my next blog entry…

Wondering Why War with Wandering Will

Today was busily spent number crunching and reporting. Perhaps it’s the monotony of this type of work that sets my mind adrift so easily, but I suspect it was the lyrical melodies playing on KXT. As World Leader Pretend was played, the siren song set my mind adrift. When I was back to my senses I realized I was still progressing on the spreadsheet that had held my attention all morning. Although I hadn’t stopped entering numbers, my awareness of the act was completely suppressed. Being spirited away in a dreamlike state, my mind produced its own structure of thought seemingly contrary to my will. The results of this momentary distraction were surprisingly beneficial. It became apparent that during my wanderings, without effort, the answer to the root cause of my recent struggles with procrastination had occurred to me, even though I hadn’t spent any time thinking about the issue of procrastination this week.

Could it be that a wandering mind is not always a bad thing? What is it about that distinct state of mind that causes me to instantly shun it as counterproductive? Procrastination is just as off-putting yet it was during a state of wandering mind that I discovered a more effective way to prevent procrastination.

Upon reflection, I quickly realized that what I most despise about the state of my wandering mind is that it’s completely opposite of what I have determined to be superior. That being a self directed and focused assent in rational thought, which serves so well in the arena of business and the world at large. How could the mind, not directed by the will, be productive? Are my wandering thoughts directed by forces contrary to my will, other spirits?

To assume that the wandering mind is not driven by will is to err. I perceive the will, not active but present, is asserting itself more directly in the wandering mind than in the rational mind. The content of the wandering mind appears to be the semi-conscious musings of my own will. By slipping out of the depths of subconsciousness, suppressing the rational mind, and revealing its conclusions, the will has acted, and in a manner apparently superior to that of the rational mind.

I imagine the process of a wandering state of mind like that of a row boat gliding across water. In that brief instance between oar strokes when the boat glides effortlessly across vast depths, the process of wandering is in effect. It appears to me, usually in hindsight, that I have just traveled some distance from a place of awareness and without consent of will.    In reality, the boat has motion but not of itself. The boat’s movement is caused by the force of the oars, and the oars by that of the oarsman.

Conclusion

However inconvenient and unruly a wandering mind may be it is innate and somewhat beneficial. I suspect that a wandering mind is somehow more closely attached to the springhead of inspiration than direct will and rationality, but can it be directed? As the song goes…

“I have been given the freedom to do as I see fit
it’s high time I’ve razed the walls that I’ve constructed”

Pax Vobiscum
-C.M. Gregory

“We no longer want merely to believe; we want to know. Belief demands the acceptance of truths which we do not fully comprehend. But things we do not fully comprehend are repugnant to the individual element in us, which wants to experience everything in the depths of its inner being. The only knowledge which satisfies us is one which is subject to no external standards but springs from the inner life of the personality…One must be able to confront an idea and experience it; otherwise one will fall into its bondage.”

 – Rudolf Steiner

Life of the Soul

No definition of soul would be complete without spirit. In all honestly, spirit has been one of the more difficult words for me to experientially grasp, primarily due to its many uses and the theological “beliefs” that I have held from my earliest remembrance.

Spirit is a synergistic word intended to express the sum of mankind’s intellectual composition and is characteristically responsible for motion in the soul leading to action in the body.

People often use the word soul and spirit interchangeable to label the immortal part or essence of personhood that exist beyond death. Some go as far as to devise incredibly complex philosophical arguments in attempts to demonstrate the indestructible nature of human essence. For me, it is enough to know by faith, not philosophy, that something of my personhood is accountable beyond death. Therefore I will concede the immortal aspect of spirit/soul without dwelling on it for now.

What I find most interesting about the word spirit is how many confusing and contrary doctrines have crept into modern day Christendom based on the ambiguity of the word and cultivated by a mortal desire to have a one-size-fits-all explanation for everything. The fact remains, that spirit cannot be treated so carelessly as to mold the word into any specific doctrine without watering down its meaning. Keep in mind that spirit is the sum total of many distinct parts of the human intellect, yet the word, used loosely, can be applied in a variety of ways without ever revealing its complete meaning, much less its experiential truth.

“The spirit of man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all his innermost parts.”
- Proverbs 20:27 

A Thinking Thing 

Rene Descartes writes the following in Meditation II on First Philosophy. “But what, then, am I? A thinking thing, it has been said. But what is a thinking thing? It is a thing that doubts, understands, [conceives], affirms, denies, wills, refuses; that imagines also, and perceives. Assuredly it is not little, if all these properties belong to my nature. But why should they not belong to it? Am I not that very being who now doubts of almost everything; who, for all that, understands and conceives certain things; who affirms one alone as true, and denies the others; who desires to know more of them, and does not wish to be deceived; who imagines many things, sometimes even despite his will; and is likewise percipient of many, as if through the medium of the senses. Is there nothing of all this as true as that I am, even although I should be always dreaming, and although he who gave me being employed all his ingenuity to deceive me? Is there also any one of these attributes that can be properly distinguished from my thought, or that can be said to be separate from myself? For it is of itself so evident that it is I who doubt, I who understand, and I who desire, that it is here unnecessary to add anything by way of rendering it more clear. And I am as certainly the same being who imagines; for although it may be (as I before supposed) that nothing I imagine is true, still the power of imagination does not cease really to exist in me and to form part of my thought. In fine, I am the same being who perceives, that is, who apprehends certain objects as by the organs of sense, since, in truth, I see light, hear a noise, and feel heat. But it will be said that these presentations are false, and that I am dreaming. Let it be so. At all events it is certain that I seem to see light, hear a noise, and feel heat; this cannot be false, and this is what in me is properly called perceiving (sentire), which is nothing else than thinking.” – Rene Descartes

This Something is Thinking (Rudolf Steiner, on Freiheit)

“This percept (observation) of self would remain merely one among many other percepts, if something did not arise from the midst of this percept of self which proves capable of connecting all percepts with one another and, therefore, the sum of all other percepts with the percept of our own self. This something which emerges is no longer merely percept; neither is it, like percepts, simply given. It is produced by our activity. To begin with, it appears to be bound up with what we perceive as our own self. In its inner significance, however, it transcends the self. To the separate percepts it adds ideally determined elements, which, however, are related to one another, and are rooted in a totality. What is obtained by perception of self is ideally determined by this something in the same way as are all other percepts, and is placed as subject, or “I”, over against the objects. This something is thinking, and the ideally determined elements are the concepts and ideas… 

One only avoids the confusion into which one falls through the critical attitude based on this naïve standpoint, if one notices that, inside everything we can experience by means of perceiving, be it within ourselves or outside in the world, there is something which cannot suffer the fate of having a mental picture interpose itself between the process and the person observing it. This something is thinking…

We might very easily be led to such a view by the observation that, in contrast to dreaming, there is indeed the waking state in which we have the opportunity of seeing through our dreams and referring them to the real relations of things, but that there is no state of the self which is related similarly to our waking conscious life. Whoever takes this view fails to see that there is, in fact, something which is related to mere perceiving in the way that our waking experience is related to our dreaming. This something is thinking…

For Steiner, the spirit is experienced directly in the act of intuitive thinking. The human spirit is that part of us that thinks, but the spiritual world is not limited to the personal field of the individual human being; it opens out to embrace the eternal truths of existence” Spiritual activity “is thus more than mental activity, although it starts at a level we would call mental; it leads the human being, aware of himself as a spirit, into the ultimate experience of truth.”

– Rudolf Steiner (The Philosophy of Freedom)

At this point, I had intended on interlacing my understanding with select scriptures that I had, in times past, found perplexing and now view as awe inspiring. Realizing now, I would not be adding anything significant or publically useful and more than likely would detract from the truth of scripture by sharing my “insights”, I have resolved to refrain. Truth is its own best spokesman and speaks loudest when discovered individually! I will instead share specific scriptures that only truly opened up for me after I had achieved an experiential, that is to say “mystical” understanding of (soul, heart, spirit).

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
 – Genesis 2:7

“And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
 – Matthew 22:37

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
– John 4:24

“but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
– Isaiah 40:31

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
– Isaiah 57:15

 “’Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
– John 7:38

 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”
  – 2 Corinthians 3:17

  Pax Vobiscum
-C.M. Gregory

“The heart rules over the whole human organism, and when grace takes possession of the pastures of the heart, it reigns over all a man’s thoughts and members. For the intellect and all the thoughts of the soul are located there.”

 – St. Makarios the Great (Philokalia)

Matters of the Heart

This post contains notes from selected writings intended to help clarify scriptural use of the word heart as it relates to soul. Honestly I’m “chomping at the bit” to jump straight into the mystical functionality of these three post “On The Soul”, but a little patience on my part is required. In the meantime, my hope is that others will be blessed by having a more comprehensive use of the word soul added to their understanding, as have I.

The following is quoted from:  Rev. J. B Heard (The Tripirtite Nature of Man)

“The relation between body and soul, and spirit, is implied rather than asserted in Scripture. We are not told in the language of the schools that reason is the governing principle, and sense the subject, or that the will as the middle point between the two is bound to follow reason, and to resist the motions of appetite. The scholastic method is not the scriptural, but the two are not therefore opposed. It is possible to draw out a right theory of the relation of the animal to the spiritual and rational nature in man, from the teaching of Scripture, and to throw it into a scheme like that of Aristotle, if desirable…

The first point to be ascertained is the connection which Scripture points out between soul and body. What light does the physiology of the Bible throw upon its psychology?

Aristotle clung to the opinion that the brain is a mere excrescence of the spinal marrow, adapted by its usual coldness and moisture to allay the fire at the heart. This was the reigning opinion until the Alexandrian physicians, Erasistratus and Herophilus, by dissecting the bodies of criminals given for examination in the medical schools, overturned the old theory that the heart was the seat of the soul. But language does not advance with the advance of scientific ideas. To this day the heart is popularly supposed to be the centre of feeling, though not of thought. We speak of a large heart and a feeling heart, of the heart bleeding, and so on. The head and the heart are indeed contrasted to this day, as if the one were the seat of intelligence, the other of feeling. By and bye we shall give up the absurdity of “bleeding hearts” with ts accompanying jingle of “cupid’s darts,” but our language at present is in the transition state, and although the transfer of the capital of Mansoul from the middle of the body to the crown is not complete, it is at least going on. We know that it is an accommodation to prejudice to speak of the heart as in any sense the organ of perception and feeling…

As the heart, then, and not the brain was supposed to be the centre of thought and feeling, we find in Scripture expressions used of the heart which we should apply now to the head. Not only do we read of a broken and a contrite heart, of a clean heart, of an honest and a good heart, an evil and a hard heart, a gross and a fat heart, expressions in which the heart is spoken of as the seat of the moral affections: it is also spoken of as the seat of the intellectual acts as well. God opens a man’s eyes, not as we should say to pour knowledge into his head, but into his heart. Solomon is given wisdom and largeness of heart, the disciples are fools and slow of heart. When we should speak of sluggish brains, the Hebrews spoke of a slow heart, when we should speak of a man taking a thing into his head, they spoke of laying it to heart. It is needless to multiply instances of this, which any English reader can do for himself, but it is worthy of notice that while there are hundreds of passages in which the heart is said to be the seat of certain internal and mental acts of thought and feeling, we have not been able to find a single instance of the head being more than the summit of the body in the external sense only.” In Scripture the head is thus contrasted with the feet, but not with the heart. From the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, the whole body is diseased, according to Isaiah, but the fountain of the disease is in the heart, from whence, as our Lord teaches, proceed evil thoughts, &c. Blessings rest, it is true, upon the head of the just, but this is because the blessings come down from above, and fall first on the head. It is like the anointing oil which descends from the head even to the skirts of Aaron’s clothing. The head is the summit of man’s external and bodily form, but it is not the capital or seat of empire. Nothing goes into the head and nothing comes out of it. The inference so obvious to us, that as the chief senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, are all clustered round the brain, and in close communication with it, the brain and not the heart must be the centre of thought, does not seem to have occurred to the ancients. Misled by a false analogy between warmth and intelligence, they assumed that the cold white and grey matter of the brain could not be the instrument of thought, and they therefore placed the seat of the soul, and the centre of the nervous system at the fountain-head of the blood, for the blood was the life, and where the life was warmest, there the seat of the soul Undoubtedly must be…

To sum all up, as the physiology of the Bible is that of the age when it was written, in all these passages in which psychology touches upon physiology, we find that those organs of the body are spoken of as the organs of thought and feeling which are directly sympathetic with thought and feeling. The heart, the liver, and the diaphragm are organs so sympathetic with our emotions that it requires more knowledge of anatomy than the ancients possessed, not to go a step farther, and to make them the very centres from which these affections flow…

The Hebrews probably, inclined to the opinion that the soul was diffused through the body, and that the whole body was an organ of intelligence, and was not localised in some one organ, as modern physiologists too much incline to think…

It is dangerous to shew man how much he resembles the beasts, without at the same time pointing out to him his own greatness. It is also dangerous to shew him his greatness without pointing out his baseness. It is more dangerous still to leave him in ignorance of both. But it is greatly for his advantage to have both set before him.” In these words of Pascal we have the true rationale of the relation of the lower to the higher nature in man. Scripture assumes this throughout. Man is treated all through as being made for a little while lower than the angels, and clothed with a body of flesh, in order that, by a discipline of the will, the flesh might be subdued to the spirit, so that by and bye he may be admitted to a higher state of being, equal with the angels, and clothed upon with a body which is from heaven.”

 -Rev. J. B Heard (The Tripirtite Nature of Man)

“Our heart is therefore, the shrine of the intelligence and the chief intellectual organ of the body, When, therefore, we strive to scrutinize and to amend our intelligence through rigorous watchfulness, how could we do this if we did not collect our intellect, outwardly dispersed through the senses, and bring it back within ourselves – back to the heart itself, the shrine of the thoughts? It is for this reason that St. Makarios – rightly called blessed – directly after what he says above, adds: “So it is there that we must look to see whether grace has inscribed the laws of the Spirit.” Where? In the ruling organ, in the throne of grace, where the intellect and all the thoughts of the soul reside, that is to say, in the heart, Do you see, then, how greatly necessary it is for those who have chosen a life of self-attentiveness and stillness to bring their intellect back and to enclose it within their body, and particularly within that innermost body within the body that we call heart?”

– Gregory Palamas (Philokalia)

  Pax Vobiscum
-C.M. Gregory

 “We are carried over the sea by a ship, not by the wake of a ship. So too, what we are, is to be sought in the invisible depths of our own being, not in our outward reflection of our own acts. We must find our real selves not in the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon the beings around us, but in our own soul which is the principle of all our acts.”

- Thomas Merton (No Man is an Island)

 

 In modern-day Christendom scriptural words are frequently used as building blocks for doctrine, but rarely discovered for their experiential value. Having been in church from birth, soul for me was a given. Founded in the doctrinal viewpoint that I was raised to rely on, soul was simply another word for individual. Soul was lumped in with other “spiritualized” words such as heart, spirit, and relegated to parts of being a human that were hardly distinguishable from the whole. In the process of breaking free from the dark chains of fundamentalism I begin to discover that words such as soul, heart, spirit were rich in meaning and experiencing their truth would open up a whole new kingdom within.

 What is Soul?

Soul is a condition of being, more accurately it is the essence of being “what it is for it to be what it was.” The word (soul) is a parenthetical wrapper containing multiple parts or faculties. As a visual thinker, it helps to imagine soul like the windmill in the picture above, individual sails representing its faculties.

As for a methodology of understanding soul I have selected Aristotle’s De Anima chiefly because his word usage closely parallels that of the New Testament writers. If you are not familiar with Aristotelian philosophy, take a minute and refer to the links below explaining the terminology. They will assist in transitioning an otherwise bookish recite into a more coherent and practical discourse.

What It Is For It To Be What It Was

In *De Anima Aristotle applies hylomorphism based on relational contraries presented using potentiality and actuality combined with a myriad of examples to demonstrate his formula for soul. Aristotle’s formula is not only relevant to the human soul but that of animals as well.

From De Anima:
“It has then been stated in general what the soul is; for it is the substance, that corresponding to the principle of a thing. And this is “what it is for it to be what it was” for a body of such a kind. Compare the following; if an instrument, e.g. an axe. Were a natural body, then its substance would be what it is to be an axe, and this would be its soul; if this were removed it would no longer be an axe, except homonymously. But as it is it is an axe; for it is not of this kind of body that the soul is “what it is for it to be what it was”  and the principle but of a certain kind of natural body having within itself a source of movement and rest.” (412 ¹⁰)
“Those who say, then, that the soul is a place of forms speak well, except that it is not the whole soul but that which can think, and it is not actually but potentially the forms.” (429 ¹⁸)

When viewed in the reductive manner that Aristotle lays out the soul forms a hierarchal structure of (nutrition, perception, thought, and movement). The hierarchy is derived from Aristotle’s formula “what it is for it to be what it was” and based on the principle that living things have life.

Nutrition:  Being the foundation i.e. the primary form of soul, the nutritive faculty. “Since there are three things, that which is fed, that with which it is fed, and that which feeds, that which feeds is the primary soul, that which is fed is the body which has this (primary soul), and that with which it is fed is the food.” (416 ²⁰)

Perception/Sense Perception:  “That which can perceive all things” The general and unified faculty of perception of which the individual senses are mere manifestations i.e.  sight, hearing, smell , taste, touch (413b ^1,4)

 Thought/Intellect: “In respect to the part of the soul by which the soul both knows and understands” (429 ¹⁰) “and I speak of as intellect that by which the soul thinks and supposes” (429 ¹⁸). “Intellect is a potentiality for being such things without their matter.” (429 ²⁹) Here Aristotle identifies intellect with pure thought, contemplative knowledge being constructed as an exercise of pure thought. “Not the things themselves; for it is not the stone which is in the soul, but its form. Hence the soul is as the hand is; for the hand is a tool of tools, and the intellect is a form of forms and sense a form of objects of perception.” (431 ²⁴) The intellect functions to judge essences via reason.

Movement/Desire: “That which produces movement will be one in kind, the faculty of desire as such – and the first of all the object of desire (for this produces movement without being moved, by being thought of or imagined).” (433 ⁵) It is noted that the object of the desire, the end, is what we start from in calculating means to it, and we work back until we come to something which is immediately relevant and is therefore the starting-point for action. Desire is the generic notion; wishing covers the rational desires; and wanting irrational ones.

–Imagination– “Imagination is that in virtue in which we say that an image occurs to us” (427 ²⁷) Aristotle views imagination as a sort of residual faculty, a sub-faculty working in concert with the fully developed capacities of perception and thought. “To the thinking soul images serve as sense perceptions” (431 ⁸)

Why Does Soul Matter?

There are many scriptures that reference the word soul, while I was writing this article Luke 10:27 dominated my thoughts. “…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

Being intimately aware of one’s own soul and the sources of its movement is fundamental to the mystical journey. To experience soul is to enter into mansion one, as Teresa of Avila imagined in her writings on The Interior Castle. Soul is the castle through which budding mystics will pass into more interior chambers.

I will be continuing with discovering the heart of soul in my next installment , unfortunately Aristotle has a scheduling conflict and will not be able to join us, standing in will be the Early Desert Fathers.

 Pax Vobiscum
-C.M. Gregory

*Note: De Anima is intricately dependant on Aristotle’s examples and philosophical language. I really couldn’t do the work justice in my short summary, but if anyone is interested in completely absorbing this topic I would recommend reading De Anima a couple of times, this particular version is my favorite in so much as it includes corresponding translator notes for each page.