THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

BOOK III

THE SPIRIT OF CONTEMPLATION

R. E. Puhek

Preface

THE SPIRIT OF CONTEMPLATION

“What I tell you in the dark, you must speak in the light.”

Matthew 10:27

“…there is nothing hidden that will not be seen, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.”

Luke, 18:17

“You must become as little children.”

Among the most beautiful words of Jesus are those that say before we can enter under the Rule of Heaven we must become like children. Like all rich symbols, the image of adults becoming like children evokes layers and layers of meanings. One of them is that we must become small. Childhood in an adult demands the lowering of status that is the sign of humility. We become like children when we identify ourselves with none of the levels of status we acquire as adults, including the status of being an adult.

Becoming like a child also implies becoming dependent or losing our independence. Any sense of independence we have is an illusion. All material independence is relative. We may be momentarily “independent” financially. This “independence” we can easily lose, and, however long it lasts, it never lasts forever. Once we face the truth of the illusion of material independence, the collapse of the illusion of spiritual independence follows.

Spiritual independence is the illusion that the energy or spirit that sustains all our actions and so our very lives belongs to us. If we finally see that the things that appeared to excite our spirits are only relative goods, goods relative to an absolute good, then we also see that our energy is relative to these goods and these goods are relative to, or dependent on, the absolute. We ourselves are spiritual dependents of this absolute.

Finally, becoming like children means attaining as adults the purity of mind natural to the innocent infant. This is the hardest of all the childlike qualities to reach. Our minds are filled with words, thoughts, and reasoning processes. All of them we must silence before we can become like children and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This is why the final stage, just before the fulfillment of the contemplative life, is one of inner stillness, total detachment, emptiness, nothingness and affliction, a void, a dark night. It is also why we need so long a period of meditation to prepare the way. Meditation must clear out every obstacle, empty us, and straighten each curve of the mind that has been twisted by the “straight” lines of logic.

The need for this childlike purification makes the process of moving to integrative knowledge so very hard for intellectuals. Their minds are full of terms that they have been told again and again in their training are the key to expanding their understanding and improving their lives. These words represent the ideas that contain the knowledge that is the foundation of every profession. Years of labor erode great canyons of deep reasoning that twist around to bypass the boulders of life. Intellectuals take great pride in, and identify strongly with, how well they develop and use their powers of critical reasoning. It is, therefore, not only their training that they must overcome but also the identification of themselves with it. They must transcend their very ego. The path upward through meditation is truly like the death of who we think we are, and it is the most profound death to intellectuals who most identify not with purity of mind but with intricacy of thought.

Above all, the whole purpose of thinking must be reversed. All worldly learning seeks to build up: to multiply and revise words, to construct theories, to take possession of powerful tools in formulas that allow us to rule the world. Spiritual education inverts this. Where spiritual education uses words, it is only to oppose them with other words and end in deadlock. Where it uses symbolic logic, it is to repudiate it and show how it gets nowhere. Instead of gaining a sense of power over the world, it ends in confusion and weakness before the world. In short, it looks like the utter failure of the intellect as it is organized and known in outer learning.

Nowhere is the dilemma of the intellectuals so stupendously revealed as in their attempts to develop a theology. “Theology” is, literally, “discourse (logos) on God (Theos).” Theology is exactly the subject where discourse must be of a kind diametrically opposed to that of modern “logos” as pursued endlessly in “fields” like “biology,” “physiology,” “psychology,” or any other “-logy.” Discourse on “Theos” must be one of emptying the mind of words, theories, and “proofs.” It must be one of mortifying the mind. The closer we get to understanding the Source of life, the closer we come to experiencing the death of our human science. It is hard to imagine anything more absurd than rational “proofs” for the existence of God. We can be certain those who rest their “faith” in God on rational proofs have no faith in God at all but only in their own, subjective, human powers of reason.

Even more catastrophic, if that is conceivable, is the situation where we base our whole sense of God and Heaven on “feelings.” Reliance on emotions is as unstable, unpredictable, and as regularly violent as are emotions themselves. They are the antithesis of the eternal. To be full of feelings for “God” is to leave no room at all for God. Absolute disintegration of the human soul is the fate of those who combine these two false faiths. Moreover, scientists who have faith in reason and proofs as far as dealing with the world is concerned and who have faith in their feeling of immense mystery they call the “universe” or “God” are living disasters.

All parts of this trilogy, The Science of Life, need to be approached with a double awareness. The method it uses is, on the one hand, a verbal, reflective discourse that appeals to the intellect. It is, on the other hand, not only different from the prevailing method of using the intellect but also directly opposed to it. The Science of Life does not accumulate words and theories as the key to understanding. A reader will not benefit from it by exercising a “critical mind” toward it and its logic as the reading progresses. It is designed itself to be a criticism of ordinary life and ordinary patterns of thought. These prevailing patterns cannot penetrate its gaze. It is designed to lead them to confusion. It is a criticism of criticism and so must stand outside criticism. Readers must seek to boost up their powers of comprehension by stretching them to contain apparent inconsistencies and contradictions in the writing instead of critically choosing sides where there are contradictions and seeking to “prove” or “disprove” one side or the other. This takes a special spirit of passive seeking. We must listen in this spirit from the start to benefit spiritually from any reading.

What I have recorded in this text are not logical conclusions nor are they mere empirical observations. They are sightings. It is as if in the beginning I saw something far off in the distance, and, without my moving closer, it becomes clearer and clearer. It is in front of me, and I see it face to face, but is at a distance and only gradually does it become more distinct. I have had a very strong sense over the years that the goal is not to reach a point of absolute clarity but instead that I will keep progressing indefinitely. Consequently, none of what I say here is other than a snapshot frozen moment of a movement. I ask the reader neither to accept nor reject what is written but to join me in the process of seeking to see better.

Purity of Intent

When writing of so high subjects, ones you can reach only by theology, your intention must be pure. Purity of intention is hard find, though, and the traps and snares that deceive the seeker are numerous and complex. The two major elements of intention are purpose and motive. Of these, purity of purpose is the easier to attain. My purpose here is to explore and express knowledge of the single standard of good that alone can bring integration to life. The proper name for this ultimate good is God. This endeavor, however, demands the greatest humility since accurate knowledge of this subject is impossible as long as we still dwell in this world and since every expression of whatever truth we might approach is flawed. No language can contain truth, though it may point to it. Truth is found not in letters but in spirit.

Purity of motive is still more elusive. Motive refers to why we pursue a purpose. It is what moves us to act. Who but God can know ultimately what motives we have. God is the final source of all life and so of all our motives, but rarely if ever do we receive the divine inspiration in purity. We can glibly say “Thy Kingdom come” and “Thy will be done” over and over with as much sincerity as we can muster, yet who knows the divine kingdom and the divine will other than the Divine. Who knows, therefore, when they have departed from and replaced the purity of motive in representing the Divine that is the source and original of all our motives.

Clearly, motive is not divine if it focusses on accumulating wealth. Then what moves us is obviously sullied by a worldly concept. Wealth, however, can take more forms than mere money. The wealth of fame or the wealth of having a fine reputation for wisdom and holiness or even the wealth of self-satisfaction in our knowledge–all are more seductive demonic motives than cash. Even the desire for a reward that is not earthly but heavenly is still a great distortion of the divine motive. It is a motive still conditioned by human definitions of good; it is not the Good itself.

All these considerations would paralyze me as they would anyone taking up this subject were it not for two things. The first is that all the writing I have ever done has been under a command. I write not because I choose to do so but because I am ordered to do so. The strange thing is that I do not know ahead of time what it is that I am supposed to write. On the best of occasions, an inspiring subject comes to me, and the writing flows from it. On other occasions–definitely inferior–my words are more directed, though the original inspiration is no less exterior to me. It is within me but beyond me. Still more strange is that I have never been commanded to seek publication for what I have written, but merely to write it. On the other hand, no command has forbidden publication when opportunities for it have fallen into my lap. The writing I am inspired to do is meant to be read, but by whom and under what form is a complete mystery.

The second thing involves my own incapacity to judge. No human can judge anyone’s purity of intention including their own. It would be equally arrogant to deny purity as to affirm it. This denial would also be based on human definitions and natural knowledge. Thus, I must act by faith, recognizing the possibility of unseen impurity and yet trusting in God to expose it where it exists. It is certain that the paralysis that can come from doubt is ungodly. God exposes sin to us only in the fruits of our acts. Divine judgment follows upon our actions. Action and experience are the path to correction and betterment. Moreover, even products generated by impure intent God can appropriate and use for divine purposes. God may bring to the reader a purity of spirit and wisdom lacking in the writer.

Introduction to Contemplation

After Meditation

Meditation is the negative phase of the movement in integrative knowledge. It is called negative because under it the intellect is absorbed in a process that allows the understanding step by step to see through the faulty knowledge of the senses. In meditation, discourse (Logos) reveals the contradictions within what the soul through the senses has seen and valued. Everything that we can see and reason about dwells in the realm of “becoming.” It is constantly changing, whether we perceive the changes or not, and it is moving to death or dissolution, just as in the flesh we ourselves are. Everything we see is passing away, everything we see as good we also see as bad. To see only the good or only the bad in visible and rational things is to be deceived. Both are illusions and illusion is the essence of evil. In meditation, the light flowing from the good above, the God we cannot yet see, illuminates the contradictions in all things and reveals especially the death in life and the life in death.

This process of disillusionment is unpleasant. It is like a burning flame that turns the soul into a black cinder deadening the soul. The soul thus withdraws increasingly its energy from the world and the flesh. The soul there dries out and seems to be drying up. This detachment is not the detachment of the “ego”from the world; it is the disappearance of the ego, the annihilation of the flesh. Only when this process is complete and the soul is purified of all illusion through detachment from the visible is the Virgin within prepared to flare up in love for the Good. Until then, only fleeting moments of comfort and glory come to the soul. The soul can sustain itself only in faith. Its faith is in God who is present to the soul as the standard of Good that destroys illusions of good but has not yet granted the gift of vision of the true good. Remaining in faith, the soul plays an active role both in uncovering through reason the contradictions in all things and in reflecting on them. Reflecting turns the heart/will away from them in life. Finally, when even memory, formerly firmly embedded in our very way of perceiving, is detached from all the “goods” we thought we knew years ago so our hope is directed entirely beyond things, we are ready to enter the spirit of contemplation.

Once reason accomplishes its destructive work, the understanding grows silent in faith. It has seen through both all the things of the world and its own flesh. Nothing it has known stimulates love in the will. Nothing prompts it to search again into these things. Everywhere it looks, it sees death, whether in the past or in the future. It feels entirely bereft of spirit. Now it is the heart itself that leads the way. The will does not cease to love, but it loses all the former objects of its love. Thus purified, love calls in faith and hope and its call is heard. The Good itself responds. The Spirit of God descends to the purified spirit of love.

Now the soul finds the world bathed in a new light. With joy it returns to all in the world it had lost by misunderstanding and all in the earth responds by turning to it. Now it sees the actual goodness of life. It sees this only after it has lost the false impression of what is in the world. Now begins the real life of the soul. What was lost is regained, but purified and in the spirit. The flesh is resurrected and the world redeemed–all in the spirit of contemplation.

The earlier meditative phase of transformation is marked by diversity. Each person suffers from a different form of affliction. Since the process here is purification and each has been affected with a different disease, each experiences the affliction of purification according to that disease. As each falsely loved differently, each suffers differently the loss of the loved. Guidance and counsel at this stage are hard to find and harder to accept when found. Others, even those who have progressed farther, all-too-often look at their own path of perfection as the only form. They easily offer faulty advice–advice based on their own problems and advice that is, consequently, either too harsh or too soft for others. They do not grasp the nature of what another is being purified from. Thus, where one person may have fallen under the illusions of sexual love and lust, another may have been unaffected by that particular demon. One may have been enchanted by the loveliness of nature, the woods, the sky, while another is utterly unmoved by nature. A few who are very privileged may been afflicted all their lives and so suffered from a sense of abnormality, alienation, and the emptiness of things. These are very lucky since the purification process was working in them from the beginning. The disease they are vulnerable to is the error of thinking that what alleviates their suffering of alienation is a cure instead of a fall into greater sickness. They were suffering affliction from the beginning because of the “cure” not the disease that seemed to cause the affliction. These can fall by virtue of their resisting the presence of the Good that reveals the contradictions in the goods they want to cling too. Blinding themselves to the standard of Good alleviates only the pain that accompanies affliction, not the affliction, and freedom from pain creates the illusion of cure. They had the privilege of suffering from their life-long engagement in the jihad of Islam, the inner holy war; not knowing this, they withdraw from the spiritual combat into the false peace of sleep.

Once the mediative state ends, however, all who pass through their diverse afflictions and over into the spirit of contemplation are united. The many paths converge on the one mountain top. Among them is a true community of “saints,” a veritable kingdom of Heaven on earth. United in the love of the Good, these understand each other fully, though each one may not understand fully how the others arrived at the culmination and close of meditation. This community may or may not express itself externally by physical closeness in the world or in the flesh. Regardless of its external form, it encompasses all who live or have ever lived. All are united in the spirit of contemplation.

In writing this third book of the Science of Life, I am most concerned about two things. The first is my own pride in trying to articulate anything about this wholly concealed state. The second is that those who read it but are either unprepared to enter it or have malign motives might be damaged. There is, however, some protection from this danger. The non-empirical and non-rational nature of knowledge at this level requires use of the language of symbol and myth. This language has the virtue of revealing knowledge only to those whose understanding is prepared to receive it and of concealing it from the unprepared. On the other hand, as with all symbolic language, it is possible for the unprepared or malicious to treat the symbols as if they were facts and so lose truth.

The danger is the same as for those who get involved in “religions.” For example, some who are unready for “salvation” believe after reading about it in the Christian Bible that they are saved when they are not. They dwell in false and sinful pride Similarly, some can read of the spirit of contemplation and fall under the dangerous illusion that they have arrived at the stage of contemplation and efforts at meditative discourse are no longer necessary. Thus, through an illusion of being at the heights, they fall back farther than they were before, back to a pre-meditative life.

The Church and the Treasure

Much of what these discourses on the spirit of contemplation use to advance understanding are fragments of ancient “religious” tales and parables. What we regard in the West as “churches”–particularly the Christian churches–are remnants of human organizations originally designed to carry a spiritual treasure into the world. These treasure-laden churches faced and face a very serious problem in doing this. Their true function is to bring the treasure to the people who are living in the world. The problem they face arises because the world and the people caught up in the illusion that the world is ultimately real do not and cannot yet recognize the spiritual treasure the churches are carrying and, when shown it, react with hostility because it threatens them with the loss of what they falsely believe is their treasure. The heavenly and true treasure confronts the earthly and illusory treasure and reveals its falseness. Thus, the church has to protect the treasure and, paradoxically, partly conceal it from the very people who are intended to be its beneficiaries. The church’s task is how to both conceal and reveal at the same time.

There is, however, a further complication. It is that the people of the world who do welcome the spiritual treasure may do so only because they misunderstand it. Because they misunderstand it, they would misuse, abuse, and destroy it. For example, they might well think of spiritual treasure as a way of increasing their energy in pursuing goods of the world. They might translate the spiritual message of casting bread upon the waters into material terms. Then they fail to see that the bread to be cast is their spirit and the gain is a more Holy spirit within. Instead, they think that merely by giving away material wealth to the churches, they will get more material wealth back. Thus, the churches had to be warned not to cast their “pearls” before “swine.” The swine, seeing the pearls, misunderstand and either trample them into the mud or eat them. In eating them, they use them to feed the flesh instead of the soul. In either case, however, the pearls are wasted and their benefits lost.

As a consequence of these dangers, churches grow overly cautious. Too many of the custodians of the treasure lock it in chests for which only they have the key. When these custodians go out into the world to attract and bring the people their to the treasure, they show not the treasure itself but only the treasure chest. The lovely chest, made beautiful by the greatest artists of all time, by itself disturbs and frightens no one in the world because it is only the promise and hope of a treasure and not the challenging treasure itself. Thus attracted, the people of the world can embrace and be embraced by the church. The custodians then can prepare the people of the world so they can eventually appreciate the treasure itself and benefit from it. Then the custodians can finally take out their key and open the chest.

Something very bad has happened, however, and it creates the ultimate danger of losing the treasure entirely. Some of those entrusted with the keys to the treasure chest stop opening the chest partly out of fear the effect on the people of what they will see and partly out of the desire to continue reveling in their own power as keepers of the key. Some of them over the centuries even themselves lost an understanding of the treasure. They studied and understood only the chest. They no longer knew how to prepare people of the world to receive the treasure. They forgot about the key that hung charmingly about their necks. They still carried the treasure locked away in the chest they displayed, but now they themselves were terrified lest anyone find a way to open it. Their terror was both of the mysterious contents and also of the way it would displace them and remove them from their treasured positions of worldy power and privilege.

The dangerous thing these discourses on the spirit of contemplation may be doing is unlocking the chest and displaying the treasure. The risk is very great but today the need is very great. The world is dying from the lack of what has remained locked in the treasure chest. We who are hungry cannot wait for the custodians of the chest to open it for us. We must begin to feed ourselves. Carefully and cautiously because of the danger, we proceed….

PART I

UNDERSTANDING THE SPIRIT OF CONTEMPLATION

“As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.”

John 17:18

Chapter 1

Three Steps to Transfiguration

Three Stages of Virtue

There are three phases in spiritual growth. The first is guided by faith; the second, by hope, and the third, by love. The biggest challenge to the spirit is the transformation from one phase to the next. Abraham is, in Kirkegaard’s words, “the father of faith.” Moses, his successor, dwells in this faith, and it inspires him to bring the people of Israel out of Egypt, into the desert, and to the Law. Both Moses, who brings the law of the Father to Israel, and the prophets of Israel, particularly Elijah, are inspired by hope. Neither reaches the Promised Land in the flesh. In the Promised Land, Christ is the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham to be a blessing to all nations (Genesis 12:2 and Galatians 3:14); he reveals the way of love as the path to final union with God.

The transition between three specific books of the Hebrew Bible express the final two movements of development from the faith of Abraham to the hope of Moses and Elijah and from that hope of Moses and Elijah to the love of Christ. They are the book of Proverbs, the book of Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Fittingly, these three books are traditionally placed together and in the proper order. Before we enter even the first of these two movements of change, however, we must have already entered successfully the first phase and adopted the faith of Abraham.

Abraham was faithful and accepted the Lord’s promise that he would have a child in his old age. It was through this child that Abraham would be a blessing to all nations. Abraham’s faith, however, had to be tested. The promise that he would be blessed in his seed, Isaac, and so be a blessing to all nations he had to understand in an inner, not an outer way. Faith is the turning of the intellect from the visible facts of the outer world to spiritual truths in the inner world. Abraham could easily have interpreted the promise as if it would be fulfilled according to the flesh and the visible world. He could have thought his factual children would redeem the world and so the promise fulfilled in time and place. If he did so, however, he would not have faith, let alone become the father of faith.

This is why Abraham had to be tested. His temptation is supreme. God orders him not only to kill his only true and free-born son, Isaac, but also, since this son carries the physical seed of the promise, to destroy in the process the fulfillment of the promise. Only when Abraham accepts God’s will and acts to follow it in faith and without hesitation does God allow him to sacrifice an animal in lieu of his son. Abraham’s readiness proves his faith. He followed the will of God and a promise made in the spirit to the loss of the world and the flesh. He did not doubt that God’s promise would be fulfilled even if his son were dead. That God allows him to keep Isaac and enjoy rewards in the material world is only secondary. It does indicate, however, that faith causes us to lose nothing real but only our illusions about reality. Our faith is our acceptance of the Good that is spiritual and descends from God; we must hold the Good always higher than any goods we can see in the world.

The book of Proverbs instructs the soul on proper behavior. At least parts of it are ascribed to Solomon, the fountain of wisdom. Wisdom is most clearly a quality of soul that comes through the understanding, and the highest virtue of the understanding that fulfills wisdom is faith. Proverbs draws on the faith of Abraham but expresses it in earthly terms and uses it to prescribe proper behavior on earth. It sets forth the duties and obligations proper to a faithful follower of God’s Law. It sets up regulations and commands concerning the proper way of acting in relations with things and people. In this way, it constrains the flesh/ego well and rules it according to the spirit. Those guided by the proverbs act not out of love but from the outer expression of faith. They do their duty to God in the world according to the insights of Abraham. Those following the upward path to enlightenment start here. They constrain the desires of the flesh and their actions in the world to conform in faith to the promise of Abraham. In the guidance he provided, Abraham becomes a blessing to all generations of his people.

Moses and Elijah are the true successors of Abraham. Guided by the memory of Abraham’s faith, they represent the work of faith in the world when that faith is informed by hope. Hope, a quality of our memories, overcomes the past, present, and future by moving both backward and forward to reach the above and beyond time and find the driving force behind time. Moses’ Law is established looking backward to the faith of Abraham. However, it also looks forward to the promised land, and it lays the foundation of the material world in God. It is set up for a people on the move who cannot yet see where they are going but are leaving behind the goods they have known. Elijah, not a lawgiver but a prophet, provides spiritual correctives for those living under the Law so that, in thinking they are righteous, they do not violate the true Law in the name of the law as they know it and so either stagnate or fall back. Like Moses, the prophets look back to the faith of Abraham and to the actual nature of the promise of the future.

It is the inspiration of faith and hope that guides and sustains the people of Israel in their journey to their final destination. The people in the vast desert of transformation do not experience God. The desert is dry and barren. Their souls thirst and hunger. They dream of the flesh and the world of Egypt they left. Their faith and hope falters. This happens to all those who embark on a journey to God. God, however, lightens their burden occasionally but only a little–just as much as will sustain their souls with food and drink in this desert of dryness. It is enough to allow them to overcome their doubts and carry on in faith and hope.

During this journey in the desert, the turning away from the flesh and the world in faith must alter in form. The Law alone is not enough. This alteration takes place through the spiritual knowledge represented by the prophets and expressed in Ecclesiastes. Here the spirit of wisdom itself teaches the intellect to rest not on the discipline of the passions under the Law nor on the hope of the future reward of the promised land but on wisdom itself. Thus, in this second phase of spiritual development, we not only follow the Law and practice self-control but also seek enlightenment. We learn the emptiness and vanity of all visible things. Ecclesiastes would be infinitely discouraging were it not leading the soul out of the desert. It shows that the true desert of spiritual emptiness is the luxury of Egypt and the forty years wandering in dryness after leaving Egypt disillusioned of its goods is only the period of detachment from their memory. In the desert, the loss of Egypt we had accepted only reluctantly and in affliction, we finally and fully welcomed inwardly with joy. Only then is the soul pure enough to accept the guidance of love. Neither Moses, the Lawgiver, nor Elijah, the prophet, make it to the promised land until they are brought there by Christ.

Finally, the Song of Songs prefigures the completion of the promise. The promise God gave to Abraham is fulfilled in Christ. Before the coming of Christ, Hebrew scholars could not understand the meaning of this book of the Bible. They often interpreted it as either merely an expression of the holy quality of perfect human love between a man and a woman or as the relationship between God and the people of Israel. The same error was to plague Christian scholars even after the coming of Christ. They, too, often saw in the Song an expression of marital love or the love of Christ for the His church.

Christ, however, reveals the meaning of the Song and, in turn, His meaning is revealed by the Song. This song of Solomon expresses the second coming of Christ, not in the flesh but upon the clouds of Heaven. The “bride” in the Song, who is shown to have always been a virgin once the encrustation of illusion are removed in the desert and is purified in memory by hope, now can respond to the love of God and the descent of the Holy Spirit within. She accepts the direct touch of the Holy Spirit and so delivers the second birth of Christ this time within the soul. Thus, she helps accomplish the saving of the flesh and the redemption of the world. This final phase or movement on the upward path takes place on the wings of love. Here love itself turns from the flesh and the world to Heaven and God. The bonds of the senses are loosed, and the affliction they had caused because of the loss to the spirit of the loved world is gone.

As the great teacher Paul says, faith is essential, hope is necessary, but the greatest, the crowning virtue of all is love. It is love alone that allows a union with God. Christ summarizes perfectly the three-fold path to God in the figure of the rich man (Mark 10:17-31) who, first, observed the Law from childhood (in line with Proverbs), but, second, now must sell all his possessions and achieve detachment through the power of wisdom (in line with Ecclesiastes) and, third, only then follow Christ (in line with the Song of Songs). We follow Abraham into faith. We follow Moses and Elijah into hope. We follow Christ into love.

Transfiguration

In the transfiguration of Christ we can find a great boost in our efforts at spiritual growth through meditation. Jesus takes Peter, James, and his brother John up a “high mountain.” James and John are sons of Zebedee. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus dubs them “sons of thunder.” (Mark 3:7) Their mother tries to get Jesus to promote them above the other disciples by asking him to place one on his left and one on his right when he reaches his kingdom; Jesus does not refuse but says such honor is not for him to give but it is up to the Father. (Matthew 20:20-23) Nevertheless, along with Peter they are honored by being brought to the mountain to witness Jesus’ divine glory; these also will be the only three disciples Jesus allows to witness intimately his power on earth, the miracle of rasing a child from the dead. (Mark 5:37) At any rate, Jesus moves apart from them on the mountaintop and appears with Moses and Elijah on each side. Moses and Elijah, who on their own could never reach the land of the promise, now reach it through Jesus. A luminous cloud, signifying light to the inner eye but darkness to the outer, engulfs them and God’s voice declares that Jesus is his Son.

Moses, as we have seen represents the Law of hope that God handed down from the cloud upon the mountain. While the universal Father gave the Law to all his children to guide them though the desert of transformation, because the communication was in written form, Moses’ Law works only for a chosen few. This channel from God to humans is narrow. It is for only one culture or people who are marked with the fleshy sign of male circumcision. Any person can join them and enter life under the Law, but to do so they must adopt the Hebrew social form.

Moses’ Law, nevertheless, creates a social environment, a cradle of life, where those few who will lead from the Father to the Son are born. These are the prophets represented on the mountain of transfiguration by the person of Elijah. It is only in Christ that Elijah and Moses can enter the land of promise. Prophets, seized by the Spirit, condemned the chosen people’s failures to live up to faith through the established Law. But they looked forward as well as backward. Their inspiration from Above foretold the coming of the savior, the Christ. The way, they said, must be prepared for this coming. Elijah is the purest of all the prophets, and it was foretold that he would return before the arrival of the savior.

Jesus appears as the third of the triad on the top of the high mountain of faith and hope. He is, of course, the long-awaited promise of love, now appearing at the appointed time in the appointed place. This is the order of the descent of God to humanity. Moses and Jesus’ disciples can only hear God as Father and so are children of faith. But Jesus’s disciples can also see God as Christ and so are brothers of love.

Once Christ has arrive in the flesh and departed, the order for the growth of the Kingdom of God and preparation for the arrival of the second coming is reversed. Once Christ is incarnate and then raised to Heaven, then He stands as the doorway, the Gateway, the final and only direct portal to Heaven. Christ is on the Heavenly side of the gate; Peter stands outside on the earthly side. He is the earthly gate keeper and holder of its keys. He holds the keys to Heaven’s door but only its earthly side. Peter is the least of the Apostles in the Heavenly sense. He is the first among them, however, in the earthly sense. Peter represents the starting point from the earth in the ascent to the Father. Peter is the Moses of Christ’s Church on earth, James its Elijah, and his brother John, its Christ. This is the order Christ left according to the gospels when He founded his Church. Peter is the stone tablet, the gatekeeper, the new defender of faith under the law as Moses was the heir of Abraham, the father of faith. James, in his letter, not only speaks like a prophet who sustains hope in the face of challenges but also even appeals directly to the authority of Elijah at its very end. Finally, the epistle of John represents Christ’s law of love.

Thus, through this earthly church of Peter, the faith of Abraham, and the faith and hope under the Law of Moses and prophecies of the saints, Christ sends the Holy Spirit upon those souls who follow him in love. The spirit overshadows the virginal love purified in each such soul. To this virgin is born the inward Christ. The inward Christ born in us returns us to direct contact with the Father even as we still live in the flesh and in the world. Thus, the Father, who once was our Father as distant origin known only as a cloudy darkness to our human light, is now our intimate parent present within through Christ and energized by His Spirit.

The Father is the Alpha and the Omega: the one who was in each from the beginning and will come to each at the end of time when the soul enters the realm of eternal things. He was there behind the form of the natural order of things at the start. The disruption of this order by Adam and Eve, wrought out of their desire to live by their own light instead of by divine light, broke the connection between them and God. From then on, through the promise of Abraham and his faith, Moses and his Law, and Elijah and his prophecies of hope, down to Christ, who is the new Adam and Eve, we have struggled with the conflict between the order of the world and the order of the Father. What we found naturally in ourselves stood against the Father. The flesh/ego fought with the spirit. Through Christ’s second coming, the Father is found no longer outside and distant to the flesh or ego but within and internal to, while still above, the soul. Thus, the primal rupture within is healed. We find our origin not outside ourselves in sky, sea, air, earth, nor in their modern equivalent of chemicals and genes. Instead, we find it eternally within. Now we live from our re-discovered true selves and the true Self is Christ united through the Spirit to the Father. The Kingdom of Heaven, the rule of the Divine, we were told is within we now find there for ourselves.

The Journey in Faith

So far in this discussion of the three phases of spiritual transformation we have focussed on what sustains us or guides us on the way. Our upward movement in each phase is supported and protected primarily by one of the three virtues. Each phase in the journey, of course, involves development in all three of them because each of them is a quality of one of the soul’s faculties, and it is the soul as a whole that is being elevated. The three, along with many others, are like facets of a cut diamond, bringing grace and beauty to the whole soul so each refracts against all the others. Therefore, it is important to understand that we can characterize each part not only by the most significant guiding virtue peculiar to it but also by developments within any one of the virtues. To see this, let us concentrate on faith, the virtue of the understanding.

The first level of development in faith is represented by the Law, by our ability to hear, and by our willingness to obey. It places us in the realm of simple morality. The book of Proverbs tells us how to act to live well. If we are people of faith at this level, we understand the message as coming from God, and we obey. We do not see the goodness in the act itself. We do not understand the value of the rule we follow, but we sense it as divinely inspired. For this reason, those who undertake integrative studies start in seminars where they listen to discourse about what they should do and hear the rules involved in doing it. They sense a goodness in these rules; they do not follow them blindly, but neither do they accept their guidance in the full light of understanding. No rule is ultimately adequate for a moral life since there will always be situations in life where following the rule would bring badness instead of goodness. This is why we must eventually understand the spiritual basis of the rule.

We talk of the third phase of spiritual development as one where you see the Good and not merely hear its voice and obey. To see at the higher and refined plane, however, requires a bright inner light. Hearing does not require access to the light but seeing does. Moreover, the light that illuminates the face of God we cannot receive without a proper receptacle or container. Only with such a container can our understanding grasp for creative and practical use the knowledge of the Good.

This “container,” this veritable room within, this bridal chamber where the virgin in the soul unites with the Divine, is “the concept.” In order to receive the light and not merely bathe in it without comprehending it, we need to develop an adequate conceptual envelop to hold it in. It is not just a matter of acquiring another concept of the same kind as we had before. Instead, to hold the greater light that alone illuminates the Good at higher levels we must discover a new kind of concept.

Having this new kind of concept depends on developing our capacity to conceptualize in a different way. All the concepts we had before were of a kind tied to our senes and so are bound into the realm of changing, partial, and relative goods instead of affording us access to the unchaninging, timeless, and whole Good. “Chair,” “table,” “apple,” “face”– all have visual referents or elements. This is proper for knowledge of these kinds of things for purposes of using them. It is not appropriate, however, for knowledge of the Good nor of the good they bring to us.

The meditative or second phase of spiritual development proceeds for the most part by virtue of our eliminating from our concepts of good all elements of the senses. This also, of course, involves the detachment of our love from the visible “goods” we saw in life. This is why this phase is so hard. It involves not merely cleansing our understanding but also purifying our lives in a way that at first feels like a loss of everything good so our spirits fall and we enter an abyss of pure emptiness and dread.

Once the cleansing progresses beyond a certain point, however, the concepts begin to carry more light. We then experience a spiritual sweetness. This moment in meditation is not without its dangers because any of us can mistake such slight progress for arrival at the final destination of fully adequate concepts. If we make such a mistake, then later when the new light now present in our concept of good reveals the mud of the senses still clinging to the goods we live by, we will be overwhelmed by pain, disillusionment, and possibly despair. So dramatic is this that those who progress far can convince themselves they have not progressed at all and believe that all their efforts have been wasted.

This is exactly why during the phase of meditation hope is the primary guide. The understanding developed in faith is raised only to fall, is built up only to be torn down, is crystallized in beauty only to be shattered. It is not the faith of understading that sustains us through this phase and delivers us safe to the contemplative life but only hope. If we persist, the crowning glory in contemplation that love brings will be ours.

Chapter 2

The Element of Water

The Four Elements

Of the elementals of earthly spirit (the four elements: earth, wind, water, and fire), all are important spiritually, but in Christianity water is the most basic. This is because “water” has the power of purifying the world and the flesh (or “ego”), the two fundamental aspects of natural life that are products of our human definitions and perceptions. The world is made up of things that are created when it and they are named (“America,” “government,” “house,” “tree,” “brick,” etc.). Naming separates experience into things. Our flesh is created when we divide subject from object and accept names that reflect and establish ourselves as subjects, others as objects, and the relationship between subject and object. Names for the relationship and names we use to identify ourselves in the relationship and of the relationship include “man,” “woman,” “bricklayer,” etc.). All these things are, therefore, only relatively real. Thus the world and the flesh are systems of definitions for the relationships among things. The definition constitutes them as real for us and ourselves as real for them.

It is the meaning of anything that makes it a spiritual power. Water is important not because of its physical nature but because its physical function has an spiritual meaning. As an elemental spirit, water dissolves definitions. When you enter the waters of Baptism, sinfulness itself (not just a specific sin) is washed away. This is due not primarily to the simple cleansing power of water that would be illustrated physically when we wash our hands. What is important is that water dissolves the worldly and fleshy names that create the illusion of separation and that water also unites things that were separated by definitions. Thus, it returns us to a primordial state of being and consciousness before we separated ourselves into distinct, defined, and relative things. It transforms our being because it transforms our knowing. In the end, the influence of being and knowing is reciprocal and any change in the one changes the other. Water suppresses the social (the worldly) displacements of spirit and returns us to the most innocent state. In religious terms, only this return prepares us to hear the voice of the creator God.

Naaman, an outsider to Israel in the Hebrew Bible (2 Kings 5), is cured of his leprosy by immersing himself in a river. Not just any river will do, only the Jordan river. Leprosy is a physical disease, but, spiritually, Leprosy means a rupture in social relationship. The leper is defined as unclean and may have no contact with others. Were leprosy merely a medical condition instead of a great symbol of sin, those cured would not need to go to the priest of God to verify their health and gain readmission to the community. It is not that those who had the physical disease of leprosy were considered to have it by virtue of a curse from God; no, leprosy is a spiritual condition of being separated because of flaws in the flesh (not the “body” but the “ego”) from the people of god. The physical disease of the body is only a figure for the spiritual disease of the flesh. Its spiritual meaning is often misunderstood today because today the physical condition is treated differently from how it used to be and because we have lost our spiritual sensitivities. A rupture in the flesh and in the world (not the “earth”) among god’s people comes about only because of a separation between the leper and God. The Jordan river and no other worked because the Jordan alone provided spiritual reconciliation and spiritual re-integration, not merely physical re-connection. It dissolved in its liquidity not the physical encrustations on the skin that separate the individual from others but encrustations on the spirit that separated the individual from God. If social ostracism was involved at all, it was only because the community was a divine community and so a rupture in relations with the community followed from a rupture in relationship with God.

Angels, Demons, and the Flood

The oldest and most memorable image of the function of water in the Hebrew Bible is the story of the great flood. What is hardly remembered in it, however, is the specific circumstance that led God to send the flood to purify and elevate the human race. That circumstance the Bible explores immediately before the tale of Noah.

Genesis describes a situation where the sons of God were so attracted to the daughters of men that they had intercourse with them.(Genesis 6:2-4) As a result the daughters of men gave birth to what ancient first and second century writers, such as St. Justin Martyr in his “Second Apology,” called demons.

The “sons of God” are God’s angels sent to guide humans back toward God as they live. Angels are not material but spiritual beings. The story of their union with mortals means that these angelic sons of God succumbed not to the woman (the Virgin) that God had made but to the offspring of the earthly union between men and women. Thus, the spirit or energy that belonged only to God by right entered into an illicit union with the product of merely human design. The result were idols who were made powerful by virtue of the divine angelic energy or spirit thy acquired through the unholy union.

It was this union between the heavenly spirits and the earthly products that made it possible for humans to become greatly evil–so evil, in fact, that the Bible claims it accounted for why God now decided their wickedness had become so great that He regretted creating humans and decided to wipe them from the face of the earth by means of a great flood of earthly purification. The one thing that saves the human race according to the story is that God suddenly saw one good man named Noah whom he preserved from the flood’s destruction. The flood separates the spirit of God from the product of unholy fornication and sets all in their proper order.

Great wickedness is impossible without the spirits of God who, once stolen, can inflate beyond all natural value the ideas, images, and objects humans manufacture. This story of the fallen angels is a clear description of the spiritual displacements that happen in all of us and are the essence of all great sin. It also shows, however, why great sinners are so close to God in the spirit and why a sudden shift of focus from the created to the Creator can turn a great sinner into a great saint. The cleansing repentance is the whole significance of Baptism.

Baptism

Baptism replaces for the Christians the Circumcision of the Hebrews and other Semitic peoples. Circumcision is itself, of course, only an outer sign of an inner change. It, too, is a great symbol, one loaded with meaning and ordained by God for all of Israel, though Herodotus tells us the Egyptians invented circumcision for both men and women and that other nations learned it from them. Both Circumcision and Baptism are images of the purification of the flesh. In the Hebrew practice foreskin of the male is removed and the sensitive creative organ makes direct contact with God’s creation. This indicates the removal of the “fleshy” covering that operates in all acts of sense-perception. The fleshy covering is like the human perceptions that see only by means of humanly-created concepts and only through the filters of self-interest the ego establishes. To the extent that we look in this way, we are blind to things of the spirit. When we see material things and see from the perspective of the flesh, we are looking in a way that will not work for spiritual things. We can not see the spiritual in this way nor reason effectively about spiritual matters if we rely on the fruits of these material perceptions.

The cleansing power of Baptism that allows us to know God and see the things of God comes on two levels in Christianity. There is first, the Baptism of John, the predecessor of Jesus. John’s Baptism is the Baptism of repentance. It is the Baptism of turning away from trusting in the goodness of things of the flesh and the world. The waters of the flood purify the earth uniting all on earth that human sin had rent apart. The miracle of the flood accomplishes this blessing in two ways: both by the waters from God that cover the world and dissolve the illusions and by the unifying presence of God in Noah’s ark of the Covenant. This Baptism can be attained under the Law of Moses. John the Baptist is the return of Elijah, the prophet who cleanses by calling the people back to faith and hope in the promise under the Law. Responding to the call, the Baptized find their flesh and their world cleansed.

Jesus, however, brings a new Baptism. It is marked, first, by what happens when he undergoes John’s Baptism. The Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove. John’s Baptism is the one we accomplish by our actions: we enter the water and submit. Jesus’ Baptism, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit cleanses us more deeply. It purifies not merely the flesh and the world but also our spirits that precede them, are their foundation, and so are more basic than they are. It is our final cleansing. It happens not when we return to God but when God descends to us.

To indicate the difference between the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and that of John, the gospels identify it not with the element of water but of fire. Among the elementals, the earth turns to water and the wind turns to fire. Water cleans the earth, our flesh; fire cleanses the wind, our spirit. The Baptism of water turns us away, or detaches us, from the world and the flesh; the Baptism of Christ and fire turns us toward or attracts us to Heaven. Water prepares the flesh for the Holy Spirit; fire is the descent of the Holy Spirit that purifies our access to the spirit the Father breathed into each of us that gave us our life in the beginning.

We can see the process of transformation wrought by the waters of Baptism illustrated in the gospel of John. (John 9:1-41) Jesus comes upon a blind man, takes earth and spit, covers his eyes with the mud it makes and then tells the blind man to wash his eyes in a pool. Jesus does not accuse the man of sin. The man realizes he cannot see spiritual and divine things and understands that consequently he has no guidance from above for conducting his life on earth. Admitting this and asking for Divine help, he is healed, and the ability to see finally comes to him. By contrast, those who think they see and think they are living by God’s will but are not Jesus identifies as the real sinners. Through Christ, those who know they do not see come to see; their seeing reveals the blindness of those who think they see but do not. This dual action of water shown in the tale of Christ that elevates the weak and suffering and exposes the hidden sin of the strong and arrogant, is prefigured in Exodus There the waters of the Red Sea that save the Hebrews fleeing from Egypt, destroy the power of Pharaoh’s worldly army.

The first step in the healing of the blind involves the healing of the eye. This is the awakening of the being. We, like the man Jesus cures, must awaken from sleep and from the hypnotic state of illusion. (Ephesians 5: 8-14) This is first accomplished by exposing the “eye” (the soul) to the element of earth. Remember that the “flesh” (ego) and the “world” are different from the “body” and the “earth.” The world and the flesh are what we humans create by defining them relative to our desires. Jesus’ first act is to bring the eye or awareness to the mud of the earth. It was out of mud originally that the world and the flesh were created. It is what they actually are and so “covering” the eye with mud actually cleanses it from the illusions of the world and flesh that human concepts create.

The second step is to remove even the earth from the eye. The eye, after all, would seem to have even less chance of seeing clearly with mud covering it than it did before. Only faith lets it accept treatment at the hands of God whose actions must appear to bring only more darkness This second treatment is the cleansing in the pool. The eye has already been given the capacity for vision. It has been freed from the illusion of the world and the flesh. In itself it is healthy. However, it still cannot see spiritually. It is still of the muddied earth of the senses. It must sink beneath the waters into the abyss of nothingness. Only then comes the ability to see. The transformation in the story is verified by the man’s ability to identify Christ as a prophet sent by God only after he returns from the pool.

Jesus cleanses the spiritual eye (the soul) with the mud, enables it to see by removing the mud in the water, and gives it knowledge when it turns afterwards to gaze at him. We move from “sight” into blindness and then from blindness into sight. We move from worldly light into earthly darkness and then from this darkness into spiritual light. The spiritual light that comes to the sighted spiritual eye brings light to all of the body and all of the earth because the body and the earth live through the soul. They are dying when the soul is darkened and sees in the brightest light possible only the flesh and the world; they spring to life once the soul regains its spiritual sight and its spiritual light.

The Baptism that for Christianity renders the Circumcision obsolete is not the Baptism of John, the Baptism of the flesh in water, but the Baptism of Christ, the Baptism of the spirit in the fire of God. Moses was purified enough when he removed the fleshy sandals from his feet before the burning bush to see this fire and to stand in the presence of God; the followers of Jesus were more purified since the fire of refinement descended into their souls and took up a dwelling place there.

Chapter 3

Faith and The Waters of Contemplation

Water is an image endless in meanings. Some of these are special to the life of contemplation. Three of the forms water takes that have extraordinary special significance for the contemplative life are tears, rain, and the waters of the abysmal lake.

Rain is significant for those nearing the stage of contemplation because it illustrates what will remain the same as they enter the higher levels of spiritual development. Rain represents the events and inevitable challenges and earthly suffering that those living the contemplative life share with those living an ordinary life in the world. When it reaches the point of perfection, the life of contemplation is life fully in the world. Nothing visible necessarily distinguishes outwardly the soul that is inwardly united with God and living in God’s light.

Meditation, the earlier phase of transformation into full integrity is the act of withdrawal from the world mentally. Therefore there are many ways to practice it and each demands a pattern of behavior that is distinct from the others. You may become ascetic and control your intake of food. You probably read strange and esoteric books including holy scriptures and mystical writings. You physically withdraw to a quiet place that makes access to the meditative state easier. In only a few cases will your behavior draw much more than small notice and, only occasionally, mild reproof. Today’s liberal climate is tolerant and allows for experimentation. Our age not only does not discourage but positively encourages us to diet, “to work on our spiritual life” by reading esoteric texts (the more foreign the better), and to practice “meditation” especially if it is an alien sort imported from a mysterious Eastern religion and accompanied by ethereal music. While all of these as most people practice them today are of the flesh and ego, their popularity provides protective anonymity for those who have a serious and higher purpose.

When we pass beyond the stage of meditation, however, most of these marks of withdrawal vanish. You may live what from the outside appears to be a normal, if slightly eccentric, life. You just act from a different motive. For you the image of rain is now significant. “The rain falls on all alike.” (Matthew 5:45) The unhappy events that affect the lives of every mortal who lives on earth and arrive like floods from the sky come as often or as seldom to the contemplative soul as they do to anyone else. They include everything from physical disease through emotional stress to social degradation. Contemplation does not stop the rain from wetting the flesh. It only prevents it from penetrating through the flesh into the soul.

The image of tears plays a role in the life of contemplation too. In the contemplative state, tears, however, have a meaning different and opposite from what they did before. Before, tears were a sign of sorrow and usually associated with the loss of something you identified with. The tears that flowed when you lost a toy or some thing of the world felt painful. Now, however, tears are gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are more natural and more like the physical tears that come when the eye gets a speck of dirt or a grain of pollen in it and that flow to cleanse it. They feel unpleasant, but are helpful. In the state of contemplation, when you have already lost and given up every “thing,” then tears are comforting. You have no comforts in the world; in the world you find no things or people who can compensate for your affliction. Tears are all you have. They come from the Spirit, the Comforter.

By far the most significant of the waters of contemplation are, however, the waters of the abyss absolute, the great lake that has an unfathomable depth. This “lake” is what the understanding, the faculty of soul that we also call “the intellect,” confronts in its spiritual quest for growth in faith. The image of these waters is so significant partly because it can illustrate the dramatic difference between meditation and contemplation.

The Christian Bible relates a story of Jesus and his disciples that involves this abysmal lake. (Matthew 14:22-33) He leaves the crowds and goes up to the top of a mountain alone to pray. In this state of prayer, he is entering into the highest union with the Father. Before the first light of dawn, the winds pick up and start tossing about the boat carrying his disciples. The disciples see Jesus coming toward them walking on the water. Awed, Peter asks Jesus to command him to come to Him. Jesus complies and issues the command. Peter starts walking on the waters, suddenly fears the waves, begins to sink, and appeals to Jesus to save him. Jesus reaches out with his hand and does so.

As with all of the great parables of Jesus, this one has multiple meanings, and each meaning is encrusted with layer after layer. Here we will use it initially to distinguish between meditation and contemplation. Meditation is represented in the disciples of Jesus while he still walked the earth. It involves a process of detaching ourselves from the world and so allowing ourselves to sink into the abyss of Nothingness. Paradoxically, this acceptance of the loss of everything holds us up. We can master the abyss and not be swallowed by it only through faith. Faith, however, has three levels. The lowest is represented by the boat of the Law: it can sustain us once we give up being guided by the senses, the flesh, and the world. However, its power to do so eventually erodes because the Law is articulated in the passing form of language that yields to time. The Law is God but God represented in indistinct and mediated form. The second level of faith is more directly rooted in God Himself. This is the kind of faith that develops through meditation and sustains us. It lets us begin to see the direct offspring of God, the only begotten Son of God, and trust Him.

This second level of faith Peter and the rest of the disciples have attained to the highest degree. Paradoxically, Jesus singles out Peter, the paragon of faith, and criticizes him for a lack of faith. The only people he praises for having great faith are other than his disciples. For example, he praises a Canaanite woman who asks for a crumb from his table. She asks him to take away a demon afflicting her daughter, and her complete trust that he can do so Jesus notes as a mark of exceptional faith. (Matthew 15:21-28) When Jesus accuses Peter of having too little faith, moreover, it is under a special circumstance: after he almost sank beneath the waters as he walks out to Jesus over them. In fact, the story shows that Peter has nearly absolute faith in Jesus. He asks Jesus to command him to walk on the water too, and, when Jesus issues the command, he goes toward Jesus. When he starts sinking, like the Canaanite woman, he calls out in faith to Jesus to save him, and Jesus does so. Why then does Jesus criticize Peter for a lack of faith but praise the woman for having great faith?

It is because while Peter does have great faith, having declared at one point to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” (Matthew 16:13-20) his faith is too little to carry him over to faith’s third and highest level. His faith so far is still of the kind the woman has, and his is actually greater than hers. Peter, however, is being called to a higher level of faith. The faith that Peter already has is faith based on hearing the Word. This Word in his case is not the written word, which is the Law the people of Israel hear, but the living Word, Christ Himself in the flesh of Jesus. The living Word is the Diving Logos. “Logos” means “discourse.” It is different from the Greek word “nomos.” “Nomos” refers to “names.” Since humanly created names are the basis of how we organize our knowledge of the world and, therefore, of the organization of the world, it is also the basis of crystallizing the organizing activity and establishing an “order.” “Nomos” becomes human and so turns into the dead word that kills by rigid and unyielding organization and draws all into this death. Logos is not only lively in itself but also life-energizing. It brings about changes in life and preserves the spirit in the face of changes that happen mechanically in the world and disturb the surface of the spiritual lake with waves. Christ, the Logos of discourse, frees the “nomos” from its rigidities and so fulfills it. Just as those still in the state of faith following “nomos” see Logos as the death of “nomos” and so the end of all order instead of its fulfillment, so too those only in the state of faith called “Logos” see death instead of transfiguration in the third and final phase of faith. Peter still follows the Logos that relies on active reason. He hears Jesus speak his command, but he does not yet see. His faith extends only as far as his hearing. When his seeing contradicts what he has heard (the rough waters he sees) though he has heard Christ’s command and believes it, he yields to his eyes and fears.

Contemplation, the third phase of faith, is union with God in the Holy Spirit through Christ. Peter has moved as far as faith in Christ could take him. He has not yet, however, received the Holy Spirit and entered into marriage with the Divine through the virginal element within. That Simon Peter can recognize Jesus as the Son of the living God means that he holds in his hand the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is not in his hands but only the keys to it. The Kingdom is “at hand” (Matthew 4:17). The right hand, once it develops in secret from the left, receives the keys. One key is Christ himself the other is the Holy Spirit. The right hand of the soul, like Peter, holds one end of the key or Christ. The other end of Christ the Key is already inserted into the doorway of Heaven. The right hand has great responsibility now for the use of the key. If it fails to open the door, souls remain bound to the earth.

Peter, along with the other disciples have been cleansed; the virginal element within their souls is pure and ready for union. They hold the key who is Christ, but they are still unable to turn it in the lock, let alone use it in conjunction with the other key, the Holy Spirit. Their problem, as it had been for Moses standing in front of the burning bush (Exodus 3:4-5), is with their “feet.” Their problem has to do with where their lives touch the earth. This touch happens in their actions. They hold the key in their right hands. This means they have spiritual understanding. They can move from the earth to the Christ key, but they lose the Christ key when they act. Then their understanding falls. Therefore, Christ before the last supper of union and communion must wash their feet. (John 13:2-17) Only then can they walk upon the waters. The life of contemplation is lived not withdrawn from the world but engaged in the world. Only those who are both pure in the virginal element within and who have also been rendered pure in this walking in the world because of the presence of the Holy Spirit who links them in love to God attain this high state.

To enter this outwardly exalted state, we must inwardly achieve absolute humility. We can be assured of this humility only because the exalted state is one of suffering to every element of ego or flesh that remains within us. It is very dangerous to aspire to this state. The state cannot be known or understood until we start entering it. We enter it not by our will and guided by our knowledge but only by the will and knowledge of God. Thus, as the Song of Songs repeats, it is very risky to stir up this love in our will before its time. (Song of Songs 2:7; 3:5; 8:4) What might well happen through premature love is that we, as the flesh/ego, on our own try to practice the life of contemplation. This life, however, can come only as a gift. For someone to hear that they must eventually separate themselves from meditation may lead them into the temptation of abandoning meditation when they still need it. Peter finds this out. He is not ready to walk on water. His understanding is not yet developed in faith to the highest level. He aspires to what he is incapable of doing. Nevertheless, he is saved because he returns in humility and calls not upon the human but upon the divine name of Jesus to save him. He will grow and become better prepared in faith through hope and love. Then he will succeed in walking on the waters of the Abyss. Then he will safely hold the keys to the Kingdom and safely use them turning them in the double lock and opening the doors of that Kingdom to all humanity.

Chapter 4

Souls and Meditation or Contemplation

Elements and Faculties of Soul

Plato’s image of the soul bound in chains at the bottom of a deep cave facing only the flickering shadows on the wall projected by fire behind, whose light filters through cut-out models of real things dragged along a ledge is one that has haunted imaginations for over two thousand years. When combined with his notions of three distinct powers or functions within the soul–reason, the spirited part, and the appetites or passions–and of how, through developing them, the soul can raise itself up to knowledge of the Good and so live the best life imaginable, we receive a nearly perfect picture both of meditation and of how meditation is transformed into contemplation.

The three elements of the soul that Plato identifies are not its entire content. The three are what guide the soul in its knowledge and activities in the world. In itself, the soul is always and only seeking contact with the Good. The appetites present one aspect of what will bring it goods in life from its involvement with the world. Like the spirited part and reason, the appetites activate the soul to understand, seek and acquire in the world what will fulfill it. Integrated and operating at their highest level, however, the three can bring the soul wisdom, courage, temperance, and, the crowning virtue of all, justice. It then reaches its greatest fulfillment in this life.

The faculties of the soul that these three elements rest on are: understanding, will, and memory. The image of the whole soul enchained and locked in gazing upon the shadowy wall of the cave illustrates a basic problem. It is that all these faculties and so all three functions of reason, spirited part, and appetites depend on and can get bound down in and chained by the senses. The soul acts upon information it uncovers about the good by means of its power of sensing. Each act of sensation, however, is an act of knowledge that involves prejudice. When the eye perceives, it does not perceive what is there but only what is there filtered through the screen of a pre-conceived idea. This idea of a good–pizza, for example–is a product of past sensations. We perceive a pizza and that it is good on the basis of past sensations our minds have organized into images and concepts and have attributed value to. While each sensed good always has an element of good in it, each is always only partial or limited, and the good in it is likely to be misunderstood or misplaced. For example, the “good” is never in the pizza or from the pizza but in and from the relationship between the pizza and your “being” (the condition of your mouth, taste buds, stomach, intestines, blood vessels, cells, and so on). A change in any one of the aspects of your being can render the “thing” called pizza “bad” without changing the condition of the pizza one bit. In life, good is always “relative,” but because of current confusion between the term “relative” and “relativism,” it is better to think of the good as relational or as existing as real only in the relationship between things.

The action Plato recommends for elevating the understanding of the soul to a purer knowledge of the good that transcends things and so is not knowledge of the senses is an activity of reason. It is a method the soul can use to detach itself from being ruled by the illusory senses. This method of reason relies on discourse (“logos”). It is essentially a meditative method. You take some idea of a thing you think is good or some rule in life you think is right and in line with the good, and you search your memory for actual or hypothetical situations where it would not apply until you find one. Someone else, a Socrates, for example may guide you to see the situation that disproves the rule and may even compel you to face it. The moment you discover that your rule is not reliable, your soul is freed from its servitude to the faulty idea rooted in the limited information about life your senses have given you. You might find, for instance, that truth is not always served by honesty. However, this does not mean you completely reject honesty but only that you have found flaws in your idea of it. Instead you need to go further to find a higher idea of the good you had called “honesty” to give you more permanent guidance and to let you understand just how much one concept has of the good in contrast with another. Only then can you distinguish between honesty that represents truth and honesty that does not.

While the initial step in the reasoning process breaks the chains that bind the intellect down and wrenches the soul’s attention away from the familiar shadows of the senses and toward the fire and cut-outs that project the shadows, this turning is still also reassuring since by it we see the brighter light of the fire and the security of the cut-out models. The greater problem comes afterward when we climb upward to escape the cave and reach the sun and the actual world outside and find ourselves having to leave the realm of light entirely and enter the darkness with not even shadows to guide us in our ascent. The cave exit is so far in the distance that when we turn our back on the fire we see no light entering the depths of the cave itself from the world outside. There is a tiny bright spot marking the direction of escape, the cave exit, but it is as tiny as a star and feels as far and as impossible to attain. The star is the star of hope. There is a form of hope that sustained us as we turned from the shadows; it is strengthened by the memory of the source of courage in the original turning and the reward of greater truth that action brought. We travel to this star also inspired by love of God. We move up the sides of the cave not seeing anything and so guided by faith, an understanding of the Good we cannot see. This part of the journey to the Good is the transition from the meditative to contemplative state. Here reason and discourse (logos) have come to an end. They have detached the soul from all goods that it knows by the senses. They have nothing more to work with. They experience only blindness and darkness in the realm they enter. They must become utterly passive. The soul continues to climb, reaches the opening and exits the cave, and it is bathed in the sunlight, if its ascent was too fast, it is temporarily blinded by the brilliance. Before it could not see because it was not in the light. Now it is in the light but cannot see since it has temporarily lost the power of vision.

The soul is drawn upward by understanding but not by reason, not by the spirited part (the spirit is in poverty, it is impoverished by the soul’s inability to see the Good), and not by the passions or appetites. What replaces the fruits of reason, spirited part, and appetite to the intellect is the quality of understanding called “faith.” The memory is directed no longer by recollection of “things” past but by the invisible darkness of hope. The will is energized not by its attraction to other people or things but by love of what is not seen, the God that is unnameable and so invisible to the senses.

Fear of the gloom of the upper cave and the temporary blindness outside the cave (the loss of the lesser light the eye and fire once gave and the temporary loss of the ability to see by exposure to the dazzling sun) is the great danger. This fear can kill faith, hope, and love. It can paralyze the understanding, the memory, and the will. Were it not for a gift from above, a grace from the Sun itself, no one would survive the climb. The flesh or ego recoils from the darkness and blindness, and the world whispers warnings of catastrophe ahead. The spirit within that is always from God can turn demonic and become a fallen angel fighting against God. The soul had long misplaced spirit; it removed it from the its natural connection with God and embedded it in the world. Even the brightest heavenly spirit grows cold when darkly covered with the mud of earthly displacement. Then it stirs in passion to fight against its freedom and for the imprisoning world it is losing as it starts growing.

The entire ground of its fear is a lie and deception. The fear stirred by the flesh, the world, and the darkened spirit–the fear that only death awaits the soul that enters the abyss of blindness–is false. There is no way to move from the dread of death to the courage to live except by the star above. The tiny star, the rent in the film of darkness, is the only knowledge we have of the standard of good, the only one that reaches us in the world, the flesh, and the spirit. It is this standard alone that can guide the soul from the death of life to the life after darkness and death. If a blindness comes when we escape the cave because we moved too fast out of it, then our faith, hope, and love rest on nothing but must remain in a completely pure state.

Flesh and Inner Possession

A striking point of confusion we run into in our attempts to understand and describe the evils of the flesh and the world concerns identifying exactly what is bad about them. When we speak of the flesh or the world as being evil, it sounds as if what is there is in itself evil. This is not so. The evil consists in our unrepentant misreading the actual reality and actual value of what is there.

The evil is not in the thing but in how we falsify our relation with it. We say, “Here is my hand; look at my house.” We are asserting a relationship of possession. The illusion and so the evil is in the belief that we possess these things. The root of the illusion and the evil in this false idea of relationship is the nature of the “me” that claims possession. The English word “possession” is rooted in the Latin word for “power.” When we possess something, we have power over it. In ordinary social organization, it is convenient to refer to possession or property. The “me” that possesses is a socially created person. It is created by distinction from “others.” It may even be openly created by explicit civil law when society needs to identify possession for the sake of enforcing order. Then government might designate even a business corporation as a “person” under the law.

Obviously, in the actual relation of ownership, each side is continually changing despite the impression that the “ownership” is permanent. Ultimately, each not only changes but passes away. Thus, possession is always partial, temporary, and passing whether or not we notice it. The hand that holds may be cut off; the house that is held, swept away by floods. So possession disappears.

The real problem, however, is in identifying who is the “me” that possesses. To the degree that the one who asserts possession is coming from a “me” that is social–it is the visible role or series of social roles the soul identifies with–to that extent, the hand and the house become evil. The illusion that constitutes the “evil” is not in their reality as in the kind of possession asserted and believed in.

Let us continue using the metaphor of power or possession and apply it more directly and inwardly. Truly, we do not possess even ourselves. Instead, the “me,” the possessor, is possessed by, or under the power of, God. The “me” needs to recognize this and understand that the “me” is dominated and directed by what it understands to be good. If our understanding is inadequate, then we have a false idea of good or of god. Then we have a false god, and we are idolaters. Only when we have a reliable, trustworthy, or “true” knowledge of the Good, are we free from idolatry and its punishing consequences.

When possession is under dispute in society, the only legitimate and ultimately workable basis of our property claims against other people is that our relationship serves a truer god than theirs. Only in this sense can one person’s legitimate claim against another’s legitimate be just and the other’s unjust. Socially speaking, this is not as simple as it sounds because both sides will assert the justice of their claims. Then the community must intervene and determine whose claim is more just. A property claim is still more complicated because one or the other or both sides may use claims of divine right to conceal the injustice of their egoistic possession.

Nevertheless, those who seek spiritual growth to find through it the unifying and peace-giving ruler within need the awareness that “they” possess nothing but instead they are possessed by the divine. At the lower level, they can see this when they realize the transient quality of the material things they possess and of the physical “me” that possesses them. At the higher level, they have knowledge of the true God and are constantly guarded in their ego and social relations by this God. When they find others who disagree and take action against their attempts to represent the Divine in life, they must trust that this is a test. Since they may be wrong, it tests their humility. Also, should they lose out materially to the other even where justice is on their side because of the other’s greater physical and social power, they may have to give the material possession back to the material world they got it from and, by not clinging obstinately to it, avoid losing touch with God. They would be in danger of breaking their contact with God because an intense and unyielding battle in the world to preserve their possessions would demand an investment of spirit that belongs only to God.

The world and its power can deprive us only of our material possessions and our life in relation to them. This is illustrated in the life and death of Jesus. The world and its power cannot deprive God of anything. If we are truly united with God, we keep what is valuable in every material loss we suffer. Indeed, material risk and loss is a way we draw closer to God. Our enemies can only help us in this endeavor.

The Threefold Presence of God

When the soul travels in faith, hope, and love, it finds the One. It finds God. So high is God above the soul, however, that the soul can know the One only by three masks or “persons.” We, therefore, properly have three names for God, one for each dimension of our direct but limited relationship. The One itself is nameless and unnameable. “Name” is the word that designates a relation (or “form”). We have no perfect direct relationship with God and so for us God has no one name. Our imperfect relationship with God is three-fold because of our limited nature. Therefore, God has three names.

We relate to God as our Origin or Creator. In this relationship we recognize at least that our origin is from elsewhere than earth. All our motivation, our sense of good, comes originally from this source. Our souls have a heavenly home and an origin in the One who dwells there. “Creator” is not the best name for this dimension of our relationship because it conjures up the image of physical manufacture, and that is an obvious mis-impression. The proper name for this relationship is “Father.”

We also have a spiritual relationship with God and so a name for God as spirit. Our spirit or energy constantly flows from above and leads us to the good on the earth. The soul is inspired not by the flesh and the world but by a Good we do not see. Properly used, it energizes us in life, but we keep losing this spirit by falling under the illusion that it is enkindled by the good things we see in life instead of being given to us from God. We are to pass through these things to the Good itself. The enlightened soul, by contrast, understands its spirit is not just from Good but also for Good. It knows this even when it realizes it cannot fully know the Good that is the Alpha and Omega of its spirit.

Finally, and last discovered in time is our relationship to God as Son of the Father and so a Brother. The highly developed soul gains within itself an actual presence of God. (Galatians 2:19-21) This Presence, while in the Soul, is itself Divine, and the soul experiences it as a guide and judge and ruler of the flesh and of its existence in the world. Following this Presence, we are led to fuller and richer life, and, through this elevated life of the flesh, the world is preserved or saved. The soul does not know the fullness of God directly but clearly knows aspects of God’s Presence within. Once the Son is born in us, the birth brings with it the highest contact with the Father and highest understanding of the Holy Spirit possible in life.

The soul that knows any one of the three, however, the Father or the Spirit or the Son, naturally knows all three. In praying to any one of them, the soul addresses all. The three are bound in an indivisible Unity because they actually are not distinct but are three ways we touch the One. Whoever sees the Son and Brother sees the Father and Origin and the Spirit that loves Him. To reject the Son or the Spirit is to reject the Father. We need not all use the same terminology since terminology is of human, not divine, origin, but we must recognize all three forms of contact. We cannot have a true religion (or reliable method of returning to God) unless we are willing to recognize the Divinity of the Son and Spirit as well as the Father. This is why so many religions start in true faith by recognizing the One, the absolute unity of the Trinity but fall when they exclude any of the other “Persons,” “forms,” or “relations” who make it up. It does not take as high a development of faith to believe God is either many or one as it does to believe that God is both absolutely one and yet eternally three.

Chapter 5

Heart, Will, and Prayer

The ancients used the world “heart” where we would use the word “will.” Thus, the heart is one of the three faculties (along with the understanding or intellect and the memory) the whole soul is endowed with. The understanding and the memory influence the heart and the heart influences them. However, it is the heart that is decisive in setting the direction of our lives. Where the heart is there the flesh will be. Each of these faculties play a role in prayer. The connection among the three is important to understand because how they are connected has a great impact on prayer.

Prayer is a movement toward the ruler or standard of spiritual guidance in the universe, the Good itself or God. Prayer both raises up our spirit and calls on the Spirit of God to descend to us. Many methods bring us to, or at least draw us near, this contact. One commonly practiced prayer is to turn the “understanding” to the level of higher things. We may do this by considering the nature of beauty and truth instead of merely enjoying how beautiful things look or learning about ideas; we also do this by listening to an unfactual story (myth) of God or of the life and death of Christ or Buddha. Another method of prayer is to empty the mind of its prejudices concerning the good. Through either of these, we strive to reach the brightest light we can endure.

The light we find, however, may be too bright when we look or we may avoid looking since the glare hurts our eyes. This means our spirits would be stimulated intensely, but we would grasp no good in life. Thus, we would be either dazzled in the attempts to elevate our understanding or, alternately, deceived in the attempt to turn away so as not to hear the Spirit of God. The dazzling effect may leave us terror stricken so out of fear we remain blind to any good; inflated by a higher content, our spirits are now deflated because of the lack of vision of the good in life, and, despite our original effort and energy, we now feel dead. On the other hand, if we turn away from the bright light to avoid being dazzled, we may deceive ourselves that what we see in the shadows of our senses on earth is God. The understanding we get and the voice we are able to hear may not be divine at all. On the contrary, it may demonic. We are particularly vulnerable to this inversion when we are in the midst of the humility of prayer where we are seeking enlightenment because then we are not in a position to be critical. We simply receive the divine spirit or energy and are safe in our ecstasy until we try to move out from pure spirit to life. Our spirit can be so entranced that we try to remain in spirit and turn to previous spiritualization. Returning to life, however, we fail to distinguish between the Divine and the demonic. The flash of light we see, brighter than what our spirit saw before but dimmer than the dazzling light of God, may be Lucifer who carries God’s light to the earth and conceals it behind sensuous goods. Whether the light feels like an “insight” or looks like a “vision of God,” we are prone to err.

A second aspect of prayer or of the effort to seek God is less an attempt to immediately contact the divine than the struggle to detach our spirit from all that is not God: the senses, the flesh, and the world. If anything, this aspect of prayer is even more liable to errors. One such error is to confuse achievements of self-control and activities of self flagellation with spiritual growth in knowledge of the good. We end in thinking that chocolate, fine clothes, and the other ordinary pleasures of life are bad, and, since they are, we feel good that we can renounce them. Our resignation is another form of anti-life spiritualization. These ordinary pleasures are never bad in themselves. They are harmless as long as we keep them in their proper place. In our faulty method, we create a false enemy called “pleasure” and then develop the illusion that we have aligned ourselves with, and attached ourselves to, God by beating down this “demon.”

Sin or illusion is never far from either of these aspects of prayer or meditation. One very common sin is the illusion of pride. It attaches itself to spiritualism, to demonized worldly gods, or to asceticism. We feel we, by our own efforts, have accomplished something great and have raised ourselves above others. This is truly a deep illusion and the mother of many more. It is in fact the essential sin that stands in the way of further progress because what must happen before we advance further is to suspend all actions and desires to act that remain in our hands or under the control of the ego/flesh.

These two dimensions of prayer and meditation that we might practice in may different ways, raising the understanding or mortifying the pleasurable passions, involve two faculties of the soul: intellect and will. Both aspects depend on the interaction of intellect and will and, in the process, are vulnerable to those weaknesses that are characteristic of their operations.

The essential weakness of the intellect is its need to rely on artificial ideas or images. These are the very content of the intellect and the basis of all its activities. It must use them to operate. Thus, when an “elevating” idea arises in the intellect, the soul can suddenly grow inflated with pride in it. Any concept, that of “justice,” for example, must be couched in verbal terms. To work, the intellect uses its power of reason that relies on verbal definitions of justice or injustice. For example: “It is unjust to steal.” When the intellect approves of this idea, the soul may force itself to stop stealing, but, inflated and proud of its insight, it also wants to kill anyone who steals either physically by execution or spiritually by its arrogance and sense of superiority.

The way for the soul to avoid falling into lies is for the intellect not to focus on seeking divine insights or illuminations and capturing them in words but on watching out for ideas and images that come freely. It should then occupy itself with judging them and discriminating between the true and the false in understanding instead of letting itself be swept up into spiritual ecstasies and verbal illusions. Judgment and discrimination are its natural functions. Attached to a concept of justice and using this concept as the standard for judgment and for making discriminations, however, these functions are corrupted. Then they judge all concepts different from the accepted one as wrong and discriminate against them. Swept up in its own conceits, the intellect enslaves the heart or will.

On the other hand, when the intellect occupies itself with judging definitions instead of manufacturing them and does so to the point where all definitions evaporate, it frees the heart. The heart or will then follows the power of love. No longer tied down to spiritual exercises where the mind dominates and disciplines it, the will is freed in this for its natural flight. The heart is free from all illusions of the good the intellect had generated and so it flies to God. This movement the ancients called the “prayer of the heart.” In love, the heart submits to God. We grow obedient in life to the will of God. Our own will is united in love to God’s will. The will, however, may deceive itself and believe it is too pure for life in the world; it longs only to enjoy the vision of God. The soul must find the good in this life illuminated by God’s light.

To some of those who remain in life outside this union, the genuinely obedient soul appears willful because it refuses to submit to the demands of society and the world. It refuses to bow before what an organization sees as good. From the standpoint of the established order and organization, such a person is selfish and potentially a sociopath. Consequently, they seek to force the free spirit to submit to their rules and order. To other people, however, the obedient soul looks excessively humble. From the standpoint of those who consider themselves “individualists,” for example, assertions against worldly self-interests and in favor of submitting the “self” to a higher good appear as weaknesses. The inner humility of those obedient to God wounds the pride of those who use social organizations to benefit themselves. Consequently, they are tempted to ignore or insult those who successfully practice the prayer of the heart.

The prayerful get assaulted from both sides. Insulted by rapacious individualists and threatened by conformists, they have no where in the world to hide. At some point they can no longer avoid a confrontation. They must face on the battleground of the world the critics who tempt them to abandon God. (Matthew 15:19-21)

Human concepts and definitions in themselves are never bad. While they are naturally limited, partial, and not fully true, they are not destructive. They are useful guides in the world. Only when they reach the heart, absorb spirit, and grow confused with pure Spirit do they become harmful. Energized in the spirit, they turn into dark passions. The device that generates this change–that connects the inferior thought to the heart–is the medium of the flesh or ego.

It is perfectly fine for the intellect to perform its natural function and make a judgment of bad and good in the world. Let us say, for instance, your neighbor takes some of your land. You judge it to be theft, an act that is bad. So far, you yourself have not fallen. However, when you take your judgment one step farther and say your neighbor has wronged you or, what is the same thing, say your neighbor has violated your rights, then you bring your thoughts into the danger zone. This is because you have introduced your own flesh or ego into the calculations. You have made a possession of the transcendent principle of justice or right by the claim of “rights.” Once you do so, your heart will begin to respond to this judgment of being wronged and will do so to the extent that your ego (what you identify yourself with) is involved. The ego, whatever state it is in, will place the heart’s love and energy falsely. The less mature the ego, the ego that is strongest and most attached to the objects of the senses, the more energy it will absorb in wrongful thoughts (self-pity, indignation, anger) and eventually in wrongful action (curses, retaliation, and revenge).

Forgiveness avoids this disaster. Your neighbor did something wrong. You may need to act to point out and correct the wrong. However, you must not take personal offense. Instead, you can treat your neighbor’s act for what it is to you: a test of your faith. It is an occasion for you to turn from your flesh and the world and toward your true Self. In this way, your heart stays pure in its love of God alone and your love of your neighbor. Your neighbor may be the enemy of your flesh but also the helper of your Self. Understanding this is the meaning of forgiveness. It shows how far the forgiving person can go in advancing in living union with the Good. Forever, it elevates the soul and leads to peace with others.

The quality any of us can acquire that enables us to participate in this kind of forgiveness is the poverty of spirit that blesses those who attain it. (Matthew 5:3) When thoughts of good and bad no longer attach themselves to the flesh (the ego or identity) when right remains right and is not twisted into “my rights,” then the flesh is impoverished of, or poor in, spirit. The will is now free to follow love. The heart, liberated from the illusions that drain its energy soars on high. The flesh, obedient to the elevated will, acts with goodness and mercy in the world.

It is not easy for us to walk in the spirit of justice when the flesh suffers from a wrong. This is so not just because forgiveness requires an inner illumination above the flesh and the senses, but also because justice demands that we do not hide from the world but still act in it and deal with the genuinely unjust acts of others, particularly when the others are an organized group who are acting under and enforcing the law. We must seek out and take a stand against these injustices. Every such necessary involvement in the world sets out innumerable snares for the ego that is acting. It can get snagged by any one of them. The snare is not always so obvious as anger toward the neighbor; even the struggle by itself can carry us away and infect us with an ego-desire to do well and succeed in bringing justice to the world. Withdrawing from the world may help us avoid running into these challenges, but there is a form of spiritualism that leads to the illusion that we have achieved strength and development when we have not. Those who do remain faithful in the world, because of the vulnerability of the intellect, need a degree of humility and watchfulness that is nearly superhuman if the heart is to remain pure and undefiled by it.

PART II

ENTERING THE SPIRIT OF CONTEMPLATION

According to the grace of God given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building upon it. But each one must be careful how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is there, namely, Jesus Christ…. Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

1 Corinthians: 10-16

Chapter 6

The Second Coming

The search for integrative knowledge can advance far by using the symbols and myths associated with traditional religion. This is particularly so when the search reaches the higher stages of developed understanding. To know the unifying Good more completely, we need to abandon tools of perception and methods of reasoning that are appropriate only for the outer world but not for the inner. Leaving them behind, we take up the tools and methods of myth. It is necessary, however, to understand the ancient stories we call “myths” as they were written and not as they have been understood and interpreted by ordinary mentality.

Early Christians distinguished between the first and second comings of Christ. They believed the second coming was imminent. Much confusion, however, arose later when their successors no longer grasped the higher and inner meaning of the stories of Jesus. The confusion still occurs when the natural human mind tries to understand them because these stories we can grasp the higher meaning only supernaturally. Understanding the birth of Christ in particular requires a form of thought that is beyond the natural. This is because this birth is a convergence between time and eternity, between earth and Heaven. The natural mind, however, can see only one side of this convergence: the birth of Christ in time. It, therefore, can understand only the birth of the historical Jesus until it itself is born again with Christ into eternity. Until then, it can grasp the meaning of the second coming only in faith.

To those Christians who themselves are still limited to natural understanding, it is the crucifixion and resurrection that are the most significant events in Christianity. This is because only in the resurrection of Christ after His crucifixion is His Divinity revealed. Until the resurrection, even the Apostles knew of His Divinity only in faith. It was a faith that often faltered especially in the case of Peter, that pillar of faith, who doubts and denies Christ repeatedly.

Christians strong in faith but still bound to an earthly understanding celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire upon the Apostles as the second greatest event in the Christ story after his death and resurrection. Jesus crucified reveals His Divinity not only in the resurrection where He appears to His disciples but also in His departure to Heaven when he can send from Heaven the Spirit to abide with them. This event is either one where the Spirit inspires the faithful souls Divinely or, as is the case with Paul, eventually touches the soul and stimulates the second coming of Christ within. As Paul says, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:19-20)

The descent of the Holy Spirit and Christ’s taking up residence within Paul sound echoes of the promise Christ makes to return. His return is not to be “in the flesh” so it is not known to the senses but instead “on the clouds of Heaven.” The earthly soul knows Heaven only as clouding of its natural sunlight; the transformed soul sees in the clouds the clarity and brilliance of Heaven and Christ who dwells there. This inner awakening is the return and the second coming. The second coming is entirely inward, though it has outer consequences, but how it comes about is an inner parallel of the outer birth of Jesus in Bethlehem to the Virgin Mary.

God does not dwell in time but in eternity. The promises God makes are fulfilled in history and time, but we cannot await them in time. Our problem as human beings is that when we first hear the promise of the second coming of Christ, we can only conceive of it as being made in a past and fulfilled in a future. Because we hear it happened in time, we think it is to be fulfilled in time. But no one can know, expect, or predict the second coming because it is not made in time. (Mark 13:32-37; Matthew 24:36) As we lose time when our consciousness shifts from the natural that is embedded in time to the supernatural that has access to eternity, the fulfillment of the promise of the second coming begins. Christ appears as the just judge and ruler of the universe. This appearance is inner. If we stay awake to the eternal, our lives are taken over by Christ’s rule.

The whole process of awakening to the eternal and living in its light is celebrated and detailed in church rituals–Baptism, Communion, Confirmation. Inwardly, the decisive story in the Christian Bible is not the death and resurrection of Christ or even the descent of the Holy Spirit but the birth of Jesus. In outer terms and in terms of the “first” or “historical” coming, the birth of Jesus precedes his death. This is only logical. In inner terms and in terms of the second coming, the birth of Christ follows the death and resurrection of Jesus. In the first birth, the mother of Jesus is the bearer of Jesus; in the second birth, the mother of Christ is the Virgin Mary Magdalene. This paradox expresses the ineffable mystery that only the meta-logic essential to integrative knowledge has access to. The first coming is not only the story of the arrival of Christ in time but also a figure of His recurrence in eternity or His second coming. From an historical point of view and as proof for Christ’s Divinity and so the foundation of the faith of Christians, the resurrection is most important. From a mystical point of view, however, the nativity of Christ is more significant. This is because the birth of Jesus described historically presents inwardly the exact process we need to go through if Christ is to come a second time. Christ is born in us just as Jesus is born in Bethlehem.

The chosen “people” to whom the Son of God is born inwardly in the second coming is the collection of elements within the soul that respond to the promise of God to Abraham. They grow in faith, hope, and love. Originating in Abraham, they fled the sensuous flesh of Egypt, crossed the desert, and reached the gateway of the land of promise. When they are ready, in the fullness of time but not in time, the Savior is born unexpectedly to the neglected Virgin within.

As with all the language of religion, these stories of Christs’s coming and second coming are profoundly paradoxical. Their meaning is both open and concealed, obvious and hidden. The paradoxical nature of the teachings tempts the natural human mind to two fatal errors. In the case of stories of the first and second comings of Christ, both mistakes, while opposite, arise from considering the meaning of the stories only in time and not as an intersection between time and the timeless.

One mistake is to see the story of Jesus as only the story of another person. It does not matter whether the natural mind in its perceptions and reasoning identifies Jesus as only a physical individual or also as a Divine one. As long as it regards Christ as other, it is fatally mistaken. This is because then it can see the first and second comings of Christ as happening only in history: it believes the first happened in the past and the second will happen in the future. It cannot understand that the second coming has both already happened in the past and is yet to happen in the future because this coming is beyond time as well as within time. This double condition, the prosaic mind conceives of as a logical contradiction and so rejects it. It does not realize that the historical/eternal character of the second coming is a paradox designed to drive the mind to levels of understanding higher than the natural.

The second error is more insidious. Here the natural mind recognizes that the second coming of Christ is a spiritual rebirth. It accepts the notion that Christ is born within to take possession of the soul, but it prematurely believes this inner birth has already happened to it. It claims that it has been “born again” in Christ. It falls into the deadly error of assuming that merely calling upon Christ as its Savior is being saved and is having Christ as an inner possession. It elevates a figment of its own imagination and makes it divine. It erects a deadly idolatry. This imbecilic arrogance of spirit is a true anti-Christ and leads the deluded not only to paroxysms of pride but also to launch disastrous demonic assaults on those who are truly inspired by God.

The worst of all conditions is a combination of the two errors. Here the natural soul regards Christ as only historical. It affirms that Christ came once. Then it claims that by merely recognizing the historical Jesus as Christ or the Savior it is redeemed and saved by Christ dwelling within. Thus, the person’s unredeemed ego identifies itself as Christ. Finally, the natural soul looks to the second coming of Christ, where its salvation will be made manifest and accomplished, as something that will happen in the future and something that will be physical, an Armageddon on earth. Here it forgets that the second coming is “on the clouds of Heaven” and instead affirms that the second coming is on the clouds of the earth in the sky. It foresees the second coming in material terms and translates into material terms the spiritual language that describes both the raising up of the soul and the destruction of the world that precedes the second coming.

It should be clear how all three of these disastrous human interpretations of the arrival of the Good or of God are not only not paths to integrative knowledge but also the road to disintegration. All of them both fragment the soul and divide the human race; they bring discord and destruction within and without. They breed misery and hate instead of joy and love. They stimulate passion instead of compassion. They stand as a warning to all who would undertake integrative studies with less than pure intentions.

Chapter 7

The Two Deaths

Few words reflect more of the core of Christianity than the word “death.” “Death” is also central to Buddhism and vital to escaping what Buddhism calls the cycle of reincarnation. Because it is embedded in sacred stories, the word has multiple meanings and multiple levels of meaning. All of them are different from ordinary usage at least in one vital way: they are inner.

In both Buddhism and Christianity, death is the path to life. It is not this striking paradox concerning death that alone interests us here. Instead, it is the hidden meaning of death that we need to see. This hidden meaning is expressed in the paradoxical notion that in life there is death but death brings life. (John 12:24-26; Luke 9:23-24; Romans 6:1-23; 1 Corinthians 15:42-44) Because the statement is an absolute contradiction if understood in purely outer terms, it is obvious that its intended meaning is inner and does not refer to physical life and death. If the first part of the statement on death, “In living, we die,” had stood alone, we might interpret it physically. In the outer sense, that life ends in death is an undeniable fact. It goes without saying, and, if said, would not mark the speaker as particularly wise. What makes the statement impressive and memorable and what forces the hearer to abandon physical interpretations of it and to come to its inner meaning is the paradox that follows: “in dying we are born to eternal life.” The death that ends life not only brings life but also life that is eternal. If it had claimed merely that “death brings life,” then it would have remained translatable in physical terms and, as such an absurd contradiction. However, it claims death as the path not to life but to eternal life. It thereby challenges the mind to exceed its original level and discover the meaning of “eternal life.” A change apparently happening in time where the life we understand goes on coincides with the timeless where a quality of life we do not yet know could go on. The paradox astonishes and provokes the prosaic mind. If it is to understand the paradox and to avoid turning it into superstition, it must rise above the physical meanings of “life” and “death.”

This paradox is vital to Christianity. It places in opposition to the ordinary life of the senses the super-sensuous life of the spirit, and it can awaken those asleep in the world. However, our focus here is on the meanings of death that are wholly inner and refer not merely to the surrender of sensuous attachments that are the basis of outer life in order to awaken the inner. Our concern is with the two inner meanings of dying and the two inner meanings of living. There are two deaths and two lives. Both pairs we can understand only in an inward sense. The task here is to explore the two inner meanings of death.

The first of these is the death of the soul. Sin is death to the soul. Death is not a punishment for sinning. Death is in the act of sinning. The more you live in a sinful state the closer you are to death. Death in its first inner sense, therefore, is not an absolute end to the soul. It refers instead to a dying process. Here the soul is less and less alive when the person acts in the world and less and less in control of the flesh. Through the actions of Adam and Eve sin entered the world. The elements of the soul turned from dwelling in the unfathomable goodness of God to following the goodness they could perceive with their own minds and senses. All humans inherit this sin, but we do not inherit it biologically. We inherit it because it automatically comes to us as we grow from infancy into childhood. This growth takes place in the world and in the flesh (ego) through our introduction to language and so to the realm of outer “things.” If in the environment of our childhood we also are introduced into inner meanings, spiritual things, and to knowledge that is not of the senses through the religious language of symbol and myth, then we can be saved from this sin. We can return gradually to God. We still commit sins, but our souls remain alive and present in life and so witness the sin. The mistakes we make we correct prodded by the consequent pangs of conscience.

The soul that is dying in sin suffers. The sinner is unhappy. Unhappiness may lead sinners, both those who have had and those who have not had a religious education, into the second inner death. Just as God gives life, the breath of spirit, to the soul and just as separation from God brings it the first inner death, so God’s return brings fresh life. But the living soul is suffering because, while living in the flesh and the world, it wrongs God. It finds itself in affliction only because of the life-giving presence of God. The affliction is a corrective. However, either through neglect or ignorance, the sinner may refuse to accept the correction and turn from the sin because abandoning the sin entails the loss of who they think they are and so they feel the life-giving as if it were a death-dealing. .

In this state of unhappiness, an escape route appears, an alternative to repentance. It is for the flesh to sever itself from the soul. Gogol, the great Russian writer, used the expression “Dead Souls” as the title of his most famous novel. Even we today have in our popular culture, films and stories of “the undead.” The undead in these stories occasionally take the form of vampires and zombies. The ordinary factual and historical mind can grasp the idea that there is a life principle (soul) that separates from the flesh at the moment of physical death. It can imagine the flesh operating without the guidance of its own soul. The idea of a soulless flesh has an inner meaning even to those who do not understand it and falsely think that the tales of the undead that entrance them are only fantasy. The image of the physically undead represents symbolically people who are factually alive but whose lives are completely out of touch with their souls. They are dead. “Let the dead bury the dead,” Christ tells an aspiring disciple. (Matthew 8:21-22) He is indicating that the disciple should not waste his energy appealing to those who live alienated from their own souls and so from the natural standard of good and bad within. These cannot hear the voice of God nor the voice of those who speak in the name of God.

The soul at odds with God is in pain. The pain is purgatorial. It exists to cleanse the soul from the impulses and consequences of its act of violating God’s good. The death of the flesh alleviates the suffering by worsening the disease: it separates the ego/flesh from the suffering soul. This death or separation acts as a painkiller. However, it comes with a devastating “side-effect.” The soulless flesh now loses is bearings; it has no guide. However, it must live according to some standard. This standard “the world” provides. Thus, we tend to find dead flesh most often among the ranks of successful managers in organizations. The organization replaces their soul in establishing the goods they serve in their lives. Abandoning their own souls, they install the good of the organization and its rules as their god. The lower bureaucrats follow the “rules” of the organization; the higher follow the “good” of the organization. Both are soulless while serving a god. They are the inversion of sainthood. In the case of saints, the ego is transfigured by God; in their case, the ego surrenders to the world.

Neither the dead who submit themselves to serve the organization’s “rules” nor the dead who submit themselves to serve the world’s “good” is bothered any longer the way they would be had their flesh still adhered to the soul. Their transgressions against God they perform cheerfully, willingly, and even energetically. As long as the can avoid the physical fact of death–the loss of their social function that comes inevitably with age–they remain in ignorant bliss. Therefore, outwardly (physically and emotionally) they appear as people at peace with themselves. There is no outward sign of the dreaded upheaval of conscience that so torments souls who are awake. The dead in the flesh are asleep to their souls. They live like sleepwalkers. When we fall asleep in the factual sense, we may dream we are awake. So do those dead to their souls. They think they are not only awake but more awake than the awake. Only others who are truly alive and truly awake know the difference and also know that the soulless are asleep and dead. When we are physically asleep, we may be confused and believe we are awake, but when we are really awake we never believe we are asleep.

Those whose flesh is dead, moreover, only appear not to suffer the pain their souls are in. Their flesh, detached from the soul and unfulfilled, begins to hunger and burn. If this hunger does not drive the flesh in its attempts to satisfy itself by consuming the world beyond all bounds to its own ultimate destruction, its endless engorgement may spread destruction and social disease all over the world it lives in. It breeds crime, the madness of civil war, and fascism. It can bring down whole civilizations. Thus, the dead flesh does not suffer consciously and directly the pains in its eclipsed soul but suffers from them in the flesh/ego. The soul dwells concealed in its eternal Hell and the flesh dwells in its own hell of mad and violent enthusiasms, desires, or passions.

There is always hope. Repentance remains an undying possibility. The flesh can turn back to the soul by the grace of God. However, the agony involved in doing so makes it incredibly hard to do. The farther the flesh falls into its hell, the more it longs for a way out. It thirsts insatiably even for a mere drop of water. (Luke 16:24) The only way out, however, is to return to its soul through God for guidance in life. But when it does so, it gets overwhelmed by the suffering there for having violated God. If it can endure the purgatorial suffering and accept that in this repentance there is God’s forgiveness, then it experiences great joy along with great sorrow. It participates in heaven’s greater joy in one repentant soul than in a hundred who have always lived righteously. (John 15:7-10) But it faces a new dilemma. It must live in the flesh and the world following God’s will, but it does not know how. It never educated itself to God’s path in the world. It must begin to find its way guided only by the suffering its unintentional mistakes caused. Positively, it has merely its old worldly standards to go by. It does not yet have wisdom or the light of God. Thus, it can grow only in a “negative” way: through trial and error. The flesh’s very act of repentance was made possible only by the endless mercy and grace of God. Overwhelmed with gratitude for God’s forgiveness and bathed in God’s love, the repentant soul bathes also in its love for God. This love can sustain it in faith and hope through the trials that come.

The two levels of inner death are, therefore, the death of the soul, which is its break with God, and the death of the flesh, which is its subsequent break with the soul. The two levels of a return from death to life are, first, a return of the flesh to the soul and, second the return of the soul to God.

Sin is called mortal or deadly not because it produces the death of the soul. The soul cannot totally separate itself from God even through the worst sin because the soul cannot act even in sin without God. God is the source of all life and of all holiness. Even where the soul is lost to the holiness of God, it remains bound to God in its very acts or its very life. The soul is immortal. It can suffer a dying or an alienation from God. Alienation, however, is still a relationship to God that combines connection and disconnection. It can at any time overcome any alienation and attain, through God, eternal life. Sin is called mortal or “deadly” only when it involves the death of the flesh. The death of the flesh is the separation of the flesh from the soul. This separation can be complete but must not be thought of in physical terms; in physical terms the flesh cannot exist without the soul. In inner terms the flesh can be totally cut off from any guidance toward holiness and good in life. This means in the mortally sinful person conscience is absent and repentance can only come as a gift from above.

The resurrection of the flesh is flesh’s return to the soul and the soul’s return to God. The flesh cannot return to the soul without the grace of God. This return is like death to the old ego that was lost to the soul in the world. It must now abandon all that gave it the appearance of life. This means primarily all the intense energy of alienated suffering that stimulated it. In Christ’s terms it must “sell” everything it has. (Mark 8:34; 10:21) This surrender is, of course, represented in the figure of Christ. He abandons the whole world in the flesh and is abandoned in the flesh by the whole world and everything in it without exception; he suffers agony because of this. However, through the suffering he rises, ascends, and redeems the world.

The soul awakening to God’s love can disassociate itself from the world and unite with the flesh. If it does so, however, the flesh gets split into a spiritual flesh and a worldly flesh. Two persons then dwell in one soul. This is “spiritualism” and it can take either material or immaterial form. The material form of spiritualism appears when the soul relies on physical things such as a church building and music for its elevation. The immaterial form comes when it relies on magical and superstitious fantasies about its own powers, life after physical death, and heaven. A great sinner who prays in church every week or even daily but does not give up the sinning is not guilty of ordinary hypocrisy but is suffering from a shattered being, from a disassociated flesh and a disintegrating soul. This is the best example of how a person “dead” in soul and flesh can continue to exist on earth and appear to be alive in both.

The return to God that happens only through God’s love and grace must start with the soul and its repentance because God always and only acts through the soul. God’s love, which is eternal, constant, and unchanging, is felt only in the soul. However, either the flesh must respond and yield or the soul must take control and discipline the flesh. It is only then that the new flesh can grow. The total withdrawing of the soul from the old flesh is what Christ accomplished on the cross.

Moreover, the flesh is still tainted by its former connection with the fallen soul. The continuing sense of “good” embedded in its habits from the flesh and in its immediate physical and emotional responses remain a residue of the fallen soul of the past. The soul seeking rebirth, like Christ, needs to cast off the burden of the fallen flesh. This casting off is the true and good death. However, the flesh resists giving up its habitual sense of good and its natural fear of dying. Thus, four elements are involved in the struggle. Two of them are in the soul. It is torn between the higher and the lower good as in the case of the opposition between love and sex. The other two are within the flesh for its life. Here the flesh is faced with the opposition between its allegiance to the reformed soul and its adherence to the world. We face three levels of struggle for life beyond death: first, between the soul and the flesh, second, within the flesh between the new and higher spiritual flesh and the old and lower worldly flesh and, third, within the soul between the higher and the lower spirit.

Chapter 8

The Virgin, Psyche, and Secrecy

From ancient Greece the lovely myth of Psyche and Eros descends to us. Known only from the work of Apuleius, the tale describes a virgin so pure and beautiful that mortal men adore her only from afar and would not dream of approaching her let alone of marrying her. Aphrodite herself, the goddess of love and beauty envies the young woman. She orders her son Eros to punish Psyche by making her fall in love with a despicable man. An augury instructs Psyche’s people to take her to the top of a high crag. There she is carried off to a beautiful woods and a wonderful castle where every night in the dark a man comes to her bed. It is Eros himself who has fallen in love with her but must conceal it from both Psyche and his mother. Her joy with him is full, but she never sees his face or form. He warns her that if she ever did, the child she was going to bear him would become merely human. Otherwise, it would be divine. Tempted by her envious sisters while on a visit to them, she decides to ignore his warning. During the night back with Eros in her bed in the castle, she lights a lamp and sees the incredibly beautiful form of Eros lying next to her. A drop of oil falls from the lamp onto Eros and awakens him. He catches her violating the rule. Her new knowledge has serious consequences including particularly the torments the vengeful Aphrodite makes her endure. After Eros departs once Psyche has seen him, the child Psyche bears is indeed human–a daughter named Volupta or “pleasure.”

This wonderful story holds a treasure of meanings. One important and yet overlooked problem in it is the identity of Psyche. This is a problem because over the centuries “Psyche,” which is the Greek name for the soul, stood for many different things including the prevailing modern serious distortion of the Greek that uses the term “psyche” as equivalent to”mind.” There is another problem; the Greeks themselves used the term in two different ways. For the later Greeks (after 500 B.C.E.), the name “psyche” or “soul” stood for the whole inner self. This also was how subsequent Christians used it. They regarded “psyche” as the word that designated the immortal soul. Earlier Greeks, however, those likely to be living when the roots of the ancient myths were developing around the time of Homer, divided the inner self between an immortal and mortal element. “Psyche” referred only to the immortal. At any rate, here we return to the meaning closer to the most ancient usage and identify the Psyche of the story not with the whole soul of the later Greeks and Christians but only with its Virginally pure element. It is only this element that is so pure that no one–inwardly none of the elements of the soul that are active in the world–wants to marry her. All of these earth-bound “men” admire her and are entranced and energized by her but cannot endure uniting with her because of her purity.

This element of the soul, abandoned by all on earth never finds a lover there; never does she find a home among her sisters. She is the discarded stone that becomes the cornerstone (Mark 12:10) and the envy of dark angels like the earthly Aphrodite. Instead, she finds the principle of love itself attracted to her. If she stays with love and follows love in darkness, she will reach God and give birth to a divine child. If, however, she is tempted to look and see, to use her senses to know, who she is dwelling with, she will lose both him and the divine promise. She does see something marvelous when she looks but what she sees with her eye–what she can see with the physical eye that is limited and of only earthly understanding–is not what is there. She is tempted to look not only to satisfy her curiosity but also so she can explain who her beloved is to her inferior and more earth-bound sisters. Any explanation that they could understand would not only fall short of the truth but also itself constitute a loss to her of what she knew in the dark.

She received Eros only in a beautiful woods, a wonderful castle, and a fantastically decorated room. Her bridal chamber was prepared in the larger house of the whole soul. She saw all these marvels but was blind to the essential source of the beauty, love itself. The darkness was not so much an outer lack of light but her inner inability to see the high things. The only seeing that the Virgin had was earthly, that is, it was of the senses instead of the intellect, even though she herself was pure as was her love before it was tinted and tainted by her eye. Her act of lighting an earthly lamp, a humanly manufactured device, meant she refused to trust her love and had fallen from the inner eye of the light of faith into the sensuous darkness that only seemed to be light. It was a fall back into the flesh (ego) that leads the soul to the shadows, a fall from the spirit that elevates faith and love and that Paul in Christian theology called the “pneuma.”

Consequently, although after she lost Eros she eventually overcame all the obstacles that the envious Aphrodite set before her and even risked her death, the offspring of her union with love (Eros) was not divine but human. The fulfillment of her inferior and sensuous love was Pleasure. Pleasure binds the relationship between the Virgin and Love to the earth and prevents it from soaring to Heaven. Psyche, by meeting Aphrodite’s tests, was raised up to join the gods and became immortal, but, because she failed the highest test of Love itself, she did not acquire eternal life. In Christian terms, she united with a messenger from God (an angel in the form of Eros) but never flew from the beauteous angel to God in the form of Eros’ parent, the Heavenly Aphrodite.

Like all tales of this type, the myth of Psyche and Eros is both an explanation for the human condition and an indication of how it might be bettered. Our tendency is to treat love, not as it always is, a bond with Heaven, but as a path to physical or emotional pleasure. We follow love not along its upward and Heavenly path but instead along is downward and earthly path. We want to move from loving to possessing the object of our love. The motive for this goal of possession is pleasure and we achieve it by uniting physically with the object. “Physical union” means the union the ego (flesh) achieves through the senses. Any connection that is sensuous is physical. We physically possess someone we love, of course, in the genital sexual act. However, our mere sense of touch gives us a feeing of pleasure that we think gets generated by contact with the body of the beloved person. Moreover, any use of any of the senses in relation to an object of love is physical union. Merely looking at the body of another is this kind of possession. The lust of the eye is the lust of the flesh already satisfied. Even imagining the body of another is a form of physical possession of an object and could be so though the object does not exist except in imagination. As expressions of how love is lost as a path to Heaven, all of these forms of union or of physical possession are equal. They all mean we fail as Psyche failed.

It is in this way that the earthly soul marshals and uses its immortal core. The Virginal element, the purest and most beautiful element is stirred to love by Heaven above. She knows in the beginning only love itself. She must persist in love itself without insisting on seeing and knowing the nature of love. This is because she cannot see and know the nature of love until love raises her understanding up to Heavenly heights. Only then can she know where love is leading her. If she grows impatient and is tempted by her less pure, less beautiful, more earthly sisters to see love before she is able to see God, she will lose Heaven. The soul she dwells in will be granted pleasure when she so yields, but pleasure will never fulfill her. She is bereft of love itself and so can never reap the Heavenly rewards of love. She remains immortal; she is the heart of the soul that God breathed himself into and cannot die though the rest of the soul is of human origin. However, she does not fulfill her promise as the vehicle that brings eternal life to the whole soul.

That she was taken up by Eros shows the low level of understanding she rested on because of the impoverished human development in the place where she dwelt. Eros is the lowest level of love, the offspring of Aphrodite. It is love that expresses itself physically. Love itself is, however, never physical. The specific form the love we experience takes is determined not by love but by the level of our development and so of our capacity to love. Nevertheless, starting even at the physical level, the soul can be raised to the Heavenly level of love and, through that level of loving, to Heaven but only if it remains blind to its beloved. This Heavenly union is not with love but union with the true source and goal of all love, God.

The lesson the tale teaches those who read it with intelligence is that we are to follow love with our understanding filled not with facts, feelings, and theories but with faith. Blessed by faith, we do not examine love and try to apply the understanding of the senses to research it. No one can know the meaning of love until love reveals it. We must follow love in the darkness that is our ordinary understanding and rely on the light that faith alone gives this understanding. Faith is blindness and so it is darkness to earthly understanding but sight and light to Heavenly understanding. The ancient Greek story reveals the need for faith in the soul. The Virgin there must be equipped by the soul for this kind of understanding. The oil in her lamp must be the oil of faith that turns air into fire when lit. Otherwise, she may be stirred up by love prematurely. If so, she will not be able to resist the temptation Psyche yielded to.

Chapter 9

Temples, Angels, and the Ladder of Union

Temples

The word “contemplation” means “with the temple laid out.” The state of contemplation is that of recollection within the temple. There are, however, three temples. The outer temple is the church building, particularly the sanctuary or shrine within it. The inner temple is the soul. The upper temple is Heaven itself. This is the greater and more perfect temple sanctuary “not made by human hands” that Christ enters. (Hebrews 9:11-12) Through meditation we enter the inner temple; through contemplation we enter the upper temple. The inner temple, the temple of our soul, has two chambers. In the first we withdraw from the world; in the second we move into an alternate realm. Once in that realm, a darkness will eventually descend. We let ourselves enter this darkness, which is the first chamber of the upper or third temple. In full contemplation, the most glorious aspect of the soul enters Heaven for God dwells with it. (1 Corinthians 4:16-17) Where God dwells, there is Heaven.

While we enter the outer and inner temples partly through our own efforts, access to the upper temple is entirely passive. We are granted the gift of access from the King of Heaven. Contemplation is the fulfillment of the prayer, “Thy Kingdom come,” because Heaven is the Father’s Kingdom. It is the kingdom of love, justice, and truth. In the movement into the inner and upper temples through the states of meditation and contemplation, we can be aided by first entering physically the outer temple, the sanctuary in the church building or any space that, designed properly and sanctified by the gathered people of God, facilitates our withdrawal from the world and from the loves and cares of our flesh.

The outer temple or the outer church is a copy in shadowy form of both the inner sanctuary and the Heavenly sanctuary. This outer temple, however, we can construct accurately without direct access to the inner and upper temples. This is because the outer temple is constructed to reproduce the whole universe. The universe operates according to God’s order. If we could see this order when we live in the world, we would not need to build churches. We do not see it, however, not because it is not there but because our eyes have been corrupted by the flesh and worldly affairs. Paradoxically therefore, we need to construct most artfully and artificially, a place that reflects accurately the order of the universe and so God’s presence within it. The principle of its construction is the same as the principle that guides all true art. Paintings, novels, dramas all seek by very artificial and conventional ways to break us out of our unnatural perceptions of everyday life so we can return to our ability to see naturally. We can evaluate the quality of church buildings, the decor and ceremonies that occur within them, on the basis of how fully they mirror the order of the whole universe. However, it is only after we know the inner and upper temples that our judgment can be trusted. Those who design the best churches need access to the Heavenly temple if their churches are to be fully sanctified.

Christ becomes our high priest only because He stands in the Heavenly sanctuary. (Hebrews 8:5-6) The lower two temples become temples and gain their holiness only by their connection to the upper temple. The building gets its holiness from the holiness of the souls that enter it, and these souls get their holiness from the holiness of Heaven that enters them and of its high priest. But we can find help from the lower sanctuary to gain access to the interior our souls and then to Heaven. Thus, we seek access to the inner sanctuary of our souls by the act of entering the church. Properly attentive in this sanctuary, we, the people of God, bring the blessings of the soul to the church but only as far as we passively permit our souls to allow the blessings of the Heavenly sanctuary to descend into them. Only then is the church set on securely holy foundations. It is not the building that makes us holy nor the community that gathers there that makes the church holy but only Heaven when it descends to us and through us to the church. This descent takes place only if we enter the meditative and contemplative states. Paradoxically, we enter the church to become holy, but the church becomes holy to us only through the activity we undertake and the passivity we undergo while there.

A figure from the realm of the senses embedded in the proper way of behaving in the outer temple reveals the distinction between the experience of the upper temple of contemplation and the inner temple of meditation. To begin the movement of the soul, we must first withdraw from the world into meditation. This is because we have to detach our spirit from the sensuous images. Thus, we remove our bodies from the business of the world; we withdraw our eyes by dimming the light or lowering our eyelids; we close our ears by entering solitude and silence. This is how we should behave when we enter the outer temple or the church sanctuary. The church sanctuary should be silent and still, all talk, all normal sociability, we leave behind. The entrance into silent sanctuary along with what then we should do is the outward image of an inner process.

Next, still in the state of separation from our senses and the flesh we reached by beginning meditation, now we move into meditation’s second phase and activate our minds. This we may do first by seeing the special sights that decorate the church sanctuary, hearing the ethereal sounds of sacred music, and the sacred stories that, while reflecting images of “reality,” are “unfactual” and of events we could never know through our senses. These stories give us our first glimpse of a level of reality that is beyond facts and allow us to think at that higher level.

The contemplative state that follows these two phases of meditation starts with our minds fully open to the other-worldly reality, the inner realm of spirit. Spirit has detached itself from the world by first shutting out ordinary sensations and worldly concerns and then attaching itself to images of unreality that represent the eternal. Strengthened by these representations, it can gradually go beyond them. It will leave the images as it discovers the realm of pure spirit. Now our eyes re-open and our ears fully listen. Our senses re-awaken, but they are no longer attached to the visible world.

Having completed our preparation under this practice of meditation, we open our eyes in the sanctuary of the church and we see bread and wine, but we apprehend it with the spirit and so we perceive the body and blood of Christ where otherwise we would see only simple bread and wine. We are now in the state of contemplation. What happens to our spirit is like what happens to our seeing when our eyes are open but they do not focus on a specific thing and so see all and nothing simultaneously. It is what happens to our hearing when we unfocus so we hear all the sounds in the room but comprehend none of them; they have no meaning to our minds. This separation of the seeing and hearing from the understanding or “mind” is like the detachment of the flesh and world that remains in our senses but separates from our spirit. Under this condition, nothing of the flesh or the world engages our energy or spirit. We see and hear all things but none of them attracts our spirit

Early Christianity developed explicit ceremonies to express the movement into mediation and from mediation to contemplation. There are two halves in the ceremony of the Mass. In the ancient terminology, the part of the Catholic Mass that takes place before the consecration is called the “Mass of the Catechumens” (Mass of the “Learners” or “Hearers”). This first part of the Mass is the exact equivalent in outward form of the second phase of the state of meditation that takes place in the first chamber in the soul. The Catechumens must achieve perfection in this inward state before they are allowed to participate in the second half of the Mass, the “Mass of Sacrifice.” Prepared, they can return and appreciate only then the perfect truth of Heaven through its best expression on earth, the actual presence of Christ in the bread and wine. It is only because this presence is totally invisible to the senses and to reason that it can represent the perfect truth of Heaven. The perfect truth of Heaven unites with the perfect untruth of earth. No one can see the truth who still holds on to any ordinary perception of the bread and wine. We must not even think of the bread and wine as a sign of Christ’s presence; we must be able to see that presence. Misunderstanding, we turn even the words of Jesus against him. He tells his disciples to repeat the ceremony he had performed with the bread and wine “in memory of me.” Ignorant of the true meaning of the phrase, which points to the perfection of the memory in its virtue of hope, they considered the repetition to be merely the sign of historical remembering instead of an actual transformation in being. The Mass of Sacrifice expresses the state of contemplation and illustrates how we might perfect our participation in that state. Entering the state of contemplation or the Mass of Sacrifice before we are prepared by the Mass of the Catechumens is likely to desecrate the inner or outer temple and destroy the power it has to raise us up.

We enter the “church” to enter the soul. We enter into the soul to find there its purest part, the Virgin. Described in the Song of Songs, this is the Virgin Mary. The Virgin is the pure and undefiled spirit breathed into the flesh by God at the moment of creating Adam from the earth. The Virgin is the image of God that makes it possible for the soul to take on the likeness (or be like) God. It accounts for the Biblical pronouncement: “You are gods.” (John 10:34; Psalm 82:6) While always pure, the Virgin has been asleep. The senses have turned her head to the flesh so she erroneously expects her spouse to come to her from the world.

But the Spouse is never seen with the eye and never comes in the flesh and from the world. The Virgin remains a Virgin even as she awaits, even while still captured by the chains of illusion, the coming of her Spouse. She stays ever-youthful as the soul and the flesh age in time through their involvement in the world, which is the realm of time. There is no path to Christ except through the Virgin. She is an essential part of God’s plan for redemption.

Image and Likeness of God

Of all created beings, only humans are created in the image of God. Not even angels, more purely spirit than humans, share this dignity. It rests in humans alone because only humans share with God the power of creation. The human soul, while intelligent and having, therefore, the ability to know God, is also intrinsically linked to the body and, through the body, to the “earth” or the known universe. The soul’s interaction with both body and earth is creative. The soul has the power to move from, and be moved by, the Nothingness within to act in the everything of the body and the earth outside. Precisely because they are pure spirit, angels cannot act on the earth, and fallen angels need humans to carry out their destruction on earth.

The soul, however, is free. It can abandon its natural creative activity and confine itself merely to the created. It betrays the Divine light within and above when it allows itself to be guided by the flesh and led by the worldly light. Then it still acts on the earth, but not creatively. It alters things, but it does not redeem them. While retaining the unalienable image of God, it fails to maintain itself in and fulfill in its life the likeness of God.

As pure spirit, angels are closer to God than humans. They are, however, more completely servants of God. Humans participate in God’s life in a fashion beyond that of the angels. This is why, when resurrected in Christ, the human who has become a brother or sister of Christ is also served by the angels. Fallen angels seek to master the human instead of serving. Even fallen angels cannot avoid serving God, but they strive to rule over humans by keeping them lost in the flesh. They do this so they can rule, through human powers, over the earth. Angels constitute a bridge between God and humans. They remain attached to God like a thread, but they fall when they take what God sends and present it to humans in a distorted form. They thus turn humans away from their creative birthright, leading us to violate the divinity we share with God. In this indirect way alone do the fallen angels assault God.

Angels are closer to God than are humans. They are God’s first creation of spiritual entities. They are pure spirit. They are not, however, created in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, they do not participate in the creative power of God. They are high creatures, but they can never be creators. Humans, however, created in the image and likeness of God, can become creators. We are not only spirit but spirit that makes flesh. Lower beings are flesh and may be driven by spirit, but they do not have a spiritual life. They can “make” things but they do not create them from the Nothingness of spirit.

By virtue of their spiritual nature, however, fallen angels can influence and control human beings Humans, under the influence of fallen angels, do not grow to the likeness of God and become co-creators with Him. They still hold God’s image, but only in the freedom of the spirit do they act to develop the ability to be like God. When they renounce the divine spirit, they become anti-creators or destroyers. The light of fallen Lucifer is a knowledge that does not unite the human spirit in itself nor unite it with God. Diabolically, it divides it from God and divides it within itself. Humans no longer recognize their spiritual kinship with each other but are doubly divided in themselves and from one another. The work these spirits take up as they live is the work of satanic destruction.

Only by dominating humans spiritually, can the fallen angels command the creative power of God. None of them can challenge God directly; they can only rebel. All of them, in thousands of ways, however, can tempt humans to abandon God and to act according to the spirits who are at war with God. Only God’s Son come alive in us has the power to defeat these evil ones. They can do nothing on earth. They can only project the illusions that distort the spirit of humans so humans will use the unique share of Divine creative power God gave them at birth and for as long as they live against God. Satan is a liar and a master of all the lies and illusions humans live by. Satan does not do evil; Satan is evil, and evil is illusion. The only substance the evil of a pure spiritual being has is illusion or the power of illusion that it establishes in humans. Evil has a substance but its substance is illusion.

Without the living presence of Christ within, there is no salvation or safety or protection from illusion. Brought to life within, He becomes there the just judge seated at the right hand of the Throne, breaking through all illusion, and distinguishing between life and death. God preserves the human race by sending His Son to come alive within humans and to bring to them the Holy Spirit that maintains their connection with God. The Holy Spirit is the pure and purifying spirit that renders us immune to demonic spirits of all varieties.

Since they are themselves spirits, fallen angels or demons fly fastest to the more spiritual people. Those who are the closest to God and share most fully in the Holy Spirit are an irresistible temptation to the lusts the demons have for a share in God’s life. The prince of the demons cannot help, therefore, to anticipate hungrily the descent of Christ into the soul. Deceiving Christ there would then give Satan power over God Himself. The Son of God can be tempted but will not yield. Satan lies in wait only to be crushed. All humans, however, are vulnerable to Satan’s temptations including those who stand apart in the smallest way from Christ. There is more rejoicing in Hell for a single fallen great soul than for thousands of small ones just as there is greater rejoicing in Heaven over the salvation of a single small soul than over dozens of great ones. For a saint to enter heaven is the cause of infinite rejoicing; for a sinner to do the same increases that rejoicing infinitely.

The fallen angel, Lucifer, while far beneath the level of the divinity possible for humans, surpasses us always in intelligence and the power of reason. The Devil’s reasoning is impeccable. Thus, when he appears in the Garden, even in the form of a frightening serpent, his words still deceive Eve and Adam. The pure but innocent virgin, Eve, falls prey to them. So powerful are his words that she does not notice the dragon-like form of the creature who is spewing them forth. Even from human mouths powerful words can come and, in their power, conceal a decadent being. Criminals or criminal lawyers can render invisible their snake-like qualities by fine reasoning. The innocent in soul and the higher in intelligence are the most vulnerable to deception. Each soul must be wary of elegant talk both when it is grounded in impeccable logic and when it is inflated with high-blown emotions.

The innocent and pure, however, are not helpless before the power of logic. They have a guide to help them discriminate between Divine Logos and Demonic logic. It is the character of the speaker. Turn from the voice to its source. See the being of the serpent and know that nothing good can come from hearing its words however eloquent they are. The Devil can change his voice but not his image and likeness. The innocent need not submit to the diabolic words of the Devil. They can turn to the image of God within themselves, compare this image with that of the dragon in front of them, and use it to judge the Devil and repel his deceits. They can see him for what he is. The being of the Devil can, of course, charm the feelings and appear beautiful to the eye; the wavy pattern on the back skin of a snake can so attract you that you want to keep it always near to you. It is not the eye of the senses, nor the hearing of the senses, nor the speaking of the senses, nor the emotions of the senses that reveals the abysmal ugliness of the Devil but only the eye of the soul that has the Divine image always available to it within.

Unfortunately, those who most want to actualize the image of God within by achieving the likeness of God in their lives are also most vulnerable to the Devil’s deceit. This is so because they discourse in spiritual terms. They are seekers of truth. They listen to spiritual logic wherever they find it. Those absorbed in the logic of commerce remain less directly vulnerable to the Devil even while more indirectly vulnerable to him through the flesh and the world. Moreover, the purer and more innocent seekers of the divine spirit are more sensitive and sympathetic. They respond to the Devil’s emotional sweetness when he appears in human form. A sympathetic ear attuned to spiritually deceitful logic is an easy betrayer of the upward path.

The Virgin and the Likeness of God

The work of contemplation involves our awakening to the Virgin asleep in the inner temple. At first, we find her weeping. She is distressed because all the hopes the fleshy soul stirred in her of finding her Spouse in the world have failed. Because of the painful state they would find her in, “good citizens” all-too-often avoid meditation because meditation is entering the temple where she is found. They enter the outer temple, but never awaken the Virgin of the inner temple. They grow smug in obedience to temple rules and society’s values–and not only smug but arrogant and vindictive towards those who break the rules. They do not understand that those who wrongly violate the Laws of the outer temple do so only because, while still ignorant of the “good” and so unable to raise up their lives, they sense the unseen presence of the Virgin and Her unhappiness in their own souls and in everyone’s conformity to the fallen social order where the rules are “obeyed.”.

There is less hope for such “good citizens” than there is for the law-breaker, the outlaw, or the “sinner.” Good citizens sin, but they do not see the sin because of the beam in their eyes that blocks their vision; they see only the sin of their neighbors. They cannot, because of the beam in their own eyes, remove the tiny speck in the eyes of their neighbor that leads the neighbor into sin. They can only condemn and long to punish the sinner for their own unrecognized sins. Only those who recognize their sin have a chance. These see the Virgin battered and torn. They may be helped if they can understand why she is wounded and how to heal her wounds. They see the image of God besmirched; they need to understand that this is because she was led to turn her faith, hope, and love to the world below instead of to Heaven above.

The first work of awakened souls is to prepare the way and cleanse the Virginal image of God within. This is the preliminary step in moving to become like God. This turning is, as Plato shows in the line analogy and the cave allegory of The Republic, from the visible goods the senses know to the eternal goods of justice, beauty, and truth intelligence alone can know.

Thus prepared, the Virgin regains her loveliness. She stirs and turns toward the love that flows to her from above. The Father sends His Spirit of Love as she raises her love to Him. United with the Father in this Spirit, she bears the Holy Child. Once the Child grows to maturity, it is no longer the flesh or ego and illusions of the world that direct her and guide the soul but the Christ she has given birth to through the Spirit who lives within her. The soul becomes a city of God, the new Jerusalem, and participates in God’s Kingdom of Heaven.

Through the Virgin and the Child, the soul itself and all its faculties of understanding, memory, and will are united with God. It is not the soul as such that was and is the beloved of God and is united now with God, but the Virgin within the soul. The soul does not become Christ, the savior, but Christ is born within the “cave” of the soul, the inner temple where the virgin has taken refuge. For this reason, the soul can always be lost again since it can forget the Virgin and renounce the Son. No soul is safe until it completely detaches itself from the flesh and the flesh from the world. As long as Christ resides in and rules over the soul, however, the senses are rejuvenated, the flesh resurrected, and the world redeemed.

Just so, the Father does not descend to the church, the community of mortals, when is members unite with each other merely in body or in soul. God seeks to unite only with the Virginal element within the soul and only unites those who unite with Him there. (“The reign of Heaven is within.”–Luke: 17-21) Obviously, God does not single out for His love the church building, the church social organization, the church hierarchy, the church people. This is why no group of people are the chosen objects of God’s love, though some may be “chosen” by God for a mission on earth. No arrogance or sin is a greater sin against the Holy Spirit than the belief of some group of people that it is better, more loved by God, than any other. This should be obvious merely from the evidence of all the abuses, destruction, and war the world suffers because of this mistake. On the other hand, each person Christ has been born into from the virgin within is united with all other such persons in a unique way through the presence of God. This way, however, is not exclusive. It binds each of them and the whole in universal love for all humans and for the human side of every nation on earth.

The earth (apart from the soul’s illusory involvement in it) is of God, is good, and needs to be redeemed from human error. The redemption is in the purification of the Virgin and the birth and growth of the Holy One. It is the Heavenly birth that purges the soul of error and illusion spread by the Evil one, the deceiver. When the soul sees the world for what it is, instead of dwelling under the illusion that it can gain its redemption in the world and from the world, the world is preserved or saved. The redemption happens when, as the Song of Songs says, “He belongs to me and I belong to Him.”

In history, Jesus, the first-born of the dead, is the first to complete this process. As human, he needs the Baptism that cleanses the Virgin who gives his Divinity inner birth. As Divine or as Christ, His life is a heavenly model for all on earth to emulate.

The Father, in the form of the Holy Spirit, is the Bridegroom not of the soul but of the Virgin within it. To understand that it is not the soul that God loves but what of the soul is Virginal is to solve a very great mystery. It is that God’s love is for all and none. We experience God’s love as exclusive and for us alone. Each of us feels that we are singled out for this love. At the same time, we can feel abandoned by God. This is so because the love that pours down upon us from the Father is neither for the flesh nor for the soul but for the Virgin. The Virginal element is entirely without “flesh” or “identity.” It is both wholly unique and special and wholly indistinguishable. It is entirely without distinction or separation. To distinguish itself in any way would be to destroy itself. It is itself undefinable. Our experience of the love that flows from the Father to Her and from Her to the Father is infinite. It is universal love–from the Infinite to the infinite and back. The Virgin is the true image of the Infinite that makes us godly. The soul, which is not infinite (though granted immortality by virtue of the infinite element within it), awakens to the infinite. Paradoxically, this finite and separate substance experiences both finding and losing itself in the infinite so the experience is simultaneously finite and infinite. The soul must avoid the illusion that the Father loves it. It must not believe that the love of God is particular instead of universal. God’s love is always a universal love though always with a particular expression.

The Son born from this union of Infinite with infinite is the Divine representative on earth. This Son rules the flesh (ego). Thus, the Divine and Infinite expresses itself on earth. As the Father unites with the Virgin, as Infinite joins infinite, so the Son unites the Infinite with the finite flesh. This is the miracle of Divine incarnation. Mere human understanding cannot grasp the miracle because human understanding is a function of the soul. A function of something cannot comprehend the whole of that thing nor the secret of its infinite depths. The brilliant light of human understanding, given by God in the Garden, is dark and darkness to the inner Divine light. What the Divine light reveals is an intractable paradox to human thought. Humankind can come to understand the mystery but only by transcending merely human reason. That transcendence is knowledge but knowledge that human reason knows only by the name “faith.”

The Ladder of Union

There are two levels in the movement to understanding the integrative principle called “the Good” or “God.” The first is labeled “meditation”; the second is “contemplation.” Each of them itself has two phases. Thus, the movement upward is a ladder of four basic rungs. The first is the purification of the intellect from the senses. This step involves “recollection.” By means of a wide variety of methods, the intellect “recollects,” draws back, or “detaches” itself from the world and the flesh, from all that we know by our senses. It becomes more and more passive. There may be immediate benefits available once this is done–often a peace and joy temporarily descends–but these do not always come to refresh the soul. As it practices detachment, it may remain dry and thirsty. The second step is a re-activating of the intellect. Paradoxically, this may mean returning to the senses but filling them with what is not sensuous and what cannot be of the flesh or of the world. We can do this in either of two ways. First, we may use actual pictures or statues to stimulate images that are not of this world. Second, we may devise images wholly in our minds that are the work of pure imagination. We may gaze at paintings of the “Madonna and child” or picture in our minds Jesus’ suffering in the garden of Gesthemane. These pictures and images are different from those of ordinary sensations, not in appearance but in origin. They arise from Divine inspiration.

Our perch on either of these first two rungs is unsteady. We are always vulnerable to falling. We fall off the first rung when we use the process of recollection for mere relaxation and regeneration that allows us later to return ” refreshed” to live in the world in our old way instead of moving upward to the second rung. We fall from the second when we misappropriate for our own ego the holy images and pictures by using them either for emotional gratification or to gain pride in our own spirituality and worth.

Along the ladder to the highest level of integrative knowledge, the largest gap in the rungs is between the second and third. Since this is the movement from meditation to contemplation, it should not be surprising that it takes an especially long and hard stretch of the legs. Bridging the gap demands something extra of us. This something we can get when we move from inner processes to outer activity.

Typically described, meditation is, first, withdrawal from activity in the world and, second, entrance into inner activity. However, the movement from the outer world to the meditation of the inner and back to the outer after meditation is itself an important element in the transformation taking place in this state and a vital preparation for the daunting task of entering the state of contemplation The most significant element here is simply the movement itself. We must bring the two realms close together because the outer world and the inner spirit that are separated in meditation eventually must be united in contemplation. A transformation must be taking place not only in the soul’s faculties as it moves from the senses to the spirit but also in the soul’s living presence in the world.

While back in the world after a spiritual meditation, the soul must struggle to avoid forgetting what it has known in spirit. What it has seen when the senses were taken into the darkness, it must speak in the dim light of the world it returns to. (Matthew 10:27; Luke 12:3) It must live in the world according to spiritual truth. Thus, it is as much by the way it lives in the world as by what it does when it withdraws from the world that allows it to progress. The soul is elevated first by faith and grace, but then completes and solidifies that faith in works. This is why James, one of the three who were closest to Jesus and the teacher of righteousness, insists that works are the essential manifestation of faith and that faith without works is empty. It is faith that justifies, but grace is only one part of faith. (James: 14-26) If the soul fails to follow its elevated insights when it lives in the world, its meditative withdrawals will be disturbed by that failure. Forgetting its spiritual insights while in the world, it in subsequent meditation realizes its failures and grieves, though it may not know why. Pain tempts it either to abandon meditation or to practice the false meditation of forgetfulness. It then drinks deeply of the waters of Lethe, the waters of the river of forgetfulness that in Greek symbolizes what separates the two realms.

By refusing to forget, the soul practices and develops the virtue of courage. Courage entails remembering its life in the world when it enters meditation and remembering the grace of spiritual light it got in mediation when it re-enters life in the world. This remembering is the first foundation of all the virtues, especially the other three virtues of the soul, wisdom, temperance, and justice.

It is easy for the soul to dwell in eternal things when it is engaged in meditation and to dwell in material things when it is back in the world of the senses. Similarly, it is easy for the soul to serve God when practicing withdrawal from the world and easier yet to serve people and things other than God when the soul is absorbed in worldly affairs. In meditation, the soul must recall its earthly loves and hopes and suffer in conscience for them. Active in the world, it must not forget but always be guided by its spiritual hope of eternal things and its love of God. Only to the extent that it remains always in the light of spiritual truth and follows this light as it lives is it able to acquire the virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Justification cannot be complete without works.

The meditative phase of purifying the faculties of soul–understanding, memory, and will–is not finished until the soul detaches from the senses not only in meditation and in the world but also in thought and in deed. It is not truly empty until then. It must be utterly empty before the Divine presence can fill it. Every single attachment to any object of the senses whether it is a thing, an idea, or a person is enough to lose completely. A single one is enough to create the illusion that this abyss of infinite spiritual loneliness, which is our souls, can be filled with the world.

Chapter 10

Meditation and Contemplation

One of the clearest marks of distinction between the nature and function of contemplation and meditation is that meditation takes place apart from life while contemplation is a way of life. Even the phrase “the contemplative life” has a smoothness that contrasts with the awkward sound of the phrase, “the meditative life.” True, meditation can be a part of life. In that sense you can be living a “meditative life.” However, you cannot be in the state of meditation as you are living your life. Similarly, meditations are about life. While you are meditating, you are considering your life or refreshing it by withdrawing from dealing with it. In either case, while part of life, it is apart from life.

The situation is very different in the case of contemplation. Contemplation is not a way of seeking union with the Good. It is the uniting with the Good. The Divine Marriage in the soul between the Holy Spirit and the Virgin is taking place and the Divine Guide is being born and is providing direction to the soul. This means that the soul itself does not act in relation to the process. It is passive. The Virgin, the Holy Spirit, and the Divine Child take over once meditation and a life of virtue under the Law have prepared the way.

The soul is then not only released to go back to life in the world but also required to return to it. This is because the Union within the soul can go forward only on the basis of the soul’s relationships in the world and in the flesh.

During the transitional stage from meditation to contemplation, which can be very lengthy, meditation should continue. In truth, some meditation is valuable throughout life because the perfection demanded by contemplation fluctuates and can be lost. Even the fruits of the preparations that we had made to enter it can shrivel. The bridal chamber in the soul, can lose its luster. Then we also lose the ability to live in the state of contemplation. We can slip farther back than we were before we started meditating. We may even commit the sin of presumption and assume we have already been “saved” and need no more efforts of virtue and meditation. Thus, even the elect–those chosen by the purification of the virginal element within–can be led astray.

Nevertheless, it is important to understand that meditation, while continuing to be useful, is not the goal. It is only a beginning and only a vehicle for reaching the destination, not itself the final end. It is a method, moreover, whose value is temporary and fleeting. The sign that our dedication to it needs to diminish is a certain dryness or aridity in it. This is evident when meditation becomes a habit, when it grows pleasant, when it interferes with life, and when it turns into its own end. We begin to see that it is taking us no farther though we enjoy it and it gives us comfort so we push harder into it. As long as it continues to contribute to changes in our life, it is still valuable. When it merely allows us to sustain the life we are already leading, it loses its value. The key sign that we need to reduce our involvement in meditation is that its two aspects separate from one another.

These two aspects are (1) the process of withdrawing mentally from constant involvement in, and care for, the everyday life of the flesh (ego) and the world and (2) placing the mind in the middle (“medi-tation”) of paradox and confusion. The first is the passive emptying of the mind; the second is filling the mind with thoughts that lead to transcendence. Meditation that becomes purely passive is nothing but a temporary withdrawal from life. It is pleasant because the mind then can be at peace with itself. It has disarmingly comforting consequences. We find we have more energy to live our ordinary life without the bother of having to live it in a new way. Either when one side of meditation becomes the only side we practice or when we alternate between the passive or “emptying” side of meditation and its active side, we are in trouble.

The active side of meditation is mental activity that draws the understanding higher by considering conflict and paradox. Activity here does not refer to activity in the flesh and in the world but in the mind. The mind withdraws from attention to and activities of the ego and the world. It does this so it can move into activities that draw it upward. Only thus can it develop the capacity for understanding the Good. The mind absorbed in the world relies for knowledge on both the senses (we perceive “things”) and on our intelligence (we are aware of what does not come in the act of perception such as how we know what something is and that it is a good thing to eat). The problem in this is that our mind is not developing and elevating its intelligence even while it is using the intellect. Moreover, its involvement in, indeed, its intimate embrace of, sensory knowledge keeps it bound down to a lower level.

The intellect needs to be freed to consider (meditate on) the basic paradoxes of life if it is to grow. It cannot do this if it is constantly figuring out how to act. Concentrating on the problems of action leaves no space to examine the paradoxes of existence itself. Even watching programs on television or plays where you see other people dealing well or poorly with conflict and paradox in life does not develop your ability to live better or from a higher level yourself. You may see either that those shown are not making good decisions and their lives going badly or that the noble and courageous heroes are making higher choices, but you do not learn the inner basis of making the better choice in your own living experiences of life’s conflicts and paradoxes.

The problem, then, with pursuing the active side of meditation either exclusively or alternating with the passive side is twofold. First, if it is absorbed directly in life’s problems, whether they are physical diseases or challenges from the work world, it does not transform the intellect but only reinforces the limits already in place and used in life. Second, if it alternatively separates from life, it becomes abstract. Your intellect disassociates from life and flows free in fantasies of escape. In the first case, it remains a method of mere logic. In mere logic, you face contradictions and try to resolve them. However, you do so using a form and terms or concepts that your mind already contains. Therefore, your mind is not genuinely elevated in the process. Moreover, the “resolution” is only temporary. As a result, you circle back in your suffering from the fruitless activity of thinking to the peaceful escape of passive meditation. Then later you may take up another bout of trying to resolve conflicts by the logic and language you already possess.

The most intractable and dangerous problem in meditation is getting stuck in it. You might either persist at it “nobly” despite the dryness, and rest in the comfort of escaping the world or, through misplaced activity, keep thinking you are making progress. You might even indulge yourself in a combination of all of these. The worst part of this is that, when you recognize that you are stuck, you may pre-maturely abandon meditation as unfruitful and leave it behind in your desperate grasping after contemplation. The move beyond meditation to contemplation, however, can be only very gradual and some meditation is necessary throughout life except for the most highly developed saints. It is hard to see how anyone, struggling on their own and without support, could pass beyond this confusing phase of meditation without getting trapped.

Meditation means moving outside and beyond your life; contemplation means moving beyond and outside meditation. Meditation negates life; contemplation negates meditation and affirms life. Those leading the contemplative life may find it useful to return periodically from that life back into meditation. Meditation in the beginning is a break out from ordinary life; later, it also can be a break from the contemplative life.

The Role of Myth

After the withdrawal from the world and the silence withdrawal brings, the second phase of meditation requires mental activity. This activity, however, takes a form different from ordinary perceptions and reasoning. The mind now perceives through symbol instead of sign and proceeds to think in the form of myth instead of the form of discursive reasoning.

The importance of this change can be seen when we understand how “reality” as we normally perceive it and reason about it is partly a product our own minds. In every act of perception, our minds organize the chaos of information our sense organs pick up. They do this automatically and unconsciously. Whenever we see a real “thing,” our minds are always contributing an organizing concept such as “tree,” “lion,”, “bird.” None of our concepts ever fully represents what is there however much we expand them and link them into conceptual networks: “Birds build nests in trees.” “Lions rule the jungle.” Moreover and as a consequence of the fact that our concepts partly construct and confine the reality we see, all good that we attribute to this or that thing is also constricted and restricted.

When Jesus “heals” the man who was “blind from birth,” he does so neither by repairing his eyes nor by fixing his brain. These seem to be the only things that are needed and used in the act of seeing. The man “blind form birth,” however cannot see, not because of flaws in his eyes or brain, but because of flaws in the quality of the relationship between them. That relationship is ruled by the words or concepts that channel what the eyes sees into comprehensible forms. Because ordinary language is not spiritual, it leaves us blind to the most important aspects or depths of what is immediately in front of us. Jesus heals by giving or teaching a supernatural Word or Concept that restores to the eye and the brain their natural powers so the “blind” man now sees.

We can abandon the blindness of artificial and narrow knowledge in the beginning only if we withdraw from ordinary life activity because we always conduct life activity in relation to the “things” our minds partly constructed. One we have withdrawn and are at peace, we turn to an entirely different kind of concept. This new type of concept allows us both to see a different, deeper, and more spiritual reality and to think about it. The new concepts are different in that they are based on symbols, which have multiple, varied, and contradictory meanings, instead of signs, which, like STOP, have only a single, non-contradictory meaning. These symbols are put together in stories and the stories are neither fiction for fact. They are sacred myths, and, when used appropriately and not as fantasy escape from the stresses of living in the world, they elevate the mind to a higher capacity for understanding.

The very nature of spiritual growth cannot be expressed except in symbols and parables. The passive phase of meditation begins once we see or find the invisible mustard seed or yeast. We then act to bring the flour, the yeast, and the water together and work them into a dough. Then we rest into the passivity of the first phase of contemplation when the dough rises because the combination has invited the spirit in; the spirit than inflates the dough. Finally, we consume the bread of life: it gives us new life and so brings us back to action. The rhythm of this movement under meditation is into passivity and from passivity to action, and under contemplation it is from activity to passivity and from passivity to activity.

Imagination

The mind can consider (or “meditate upon”) these myths either by reading or imagining. Very young children usually picture the events of the story with their “inner” sense or “imaginations.” In churches, people may gaze on carvings or paintings of Christ, saints, or Buddha as a basis of meditation. They may also read the stories that flood their minds with gifts of holy images without a doing a great deal of active imagining on their own.

The sacred use of the power of imagining, which is natural and spontaneous in us, gets undermined when it is confronted with the iron “reality” of the world that presses down on and imposes itself on us. This is particularly true of children, in whom the imagination is typically strong. In meditation, we must conceal and separate this power of imagination from the world and exercise it only when we have withdrawn from the world. David’s psalms illustrate the meaning of this condition: “But I am like the deaf, hearing nothing, like the dumb, saying nothing, like someone who does not hear, who has no answer ready.” (Psalm 38:14-15) “Dumb and silent before the wicked, I refrained from any speech.” (Psalm 39:3)

This withdrawal from the world and the subsequent re-energizing of the natural powers of the inner senses, which is the essence of meditation, is also the primary function of religious services such as the Catholic Mass. These ceremonies are withdrawals from the world and activity in it. Entering the sanctuary, the people must leave the flesh and the world behind. The sanctuary is a place of quiet and is desecrated by worldly or idle chatter. Even personal relations, other than those that are already pure in God, must be suspended and ordinary greetings renounced. Here there is no mother, father, business associate, passing acquaintance. Here all are empty. Only once this state is reached are the sacred images and stories safe from desecration.

If we fail to achieve precisely this kind of withdrawal, we almost certainly will lose control of the power of the symbols and myths that fill our mind. Nothing can destroy the presence of either symbol nor myth in us, and when we are unable to appreciate them properly, they become destructive. Then corrupt politicians can manipulate masses of us and lead us to participate in the horrors of wars and holocausts. Myths within us, even though they are not manipulated by anybody, can lead us to assault a fellow human being because “they look different” or are “queer” without our ever knowing we are not attacking them but a symbol of our own inner devising, one that represents a quality of ourselves we do not want to understand.

Seeing that the myths of imagination are not factual, children who lack proper guidance and “adults” who remain spiritually childish turn them into fiction and use them, not as a place to get a deeper understanding of life but as one to go to as an escape from life. This happens to all of us normally when we read novels and watch films. Then we all fall victim to those who present us with images or symbols and, knowingly or unknowingly, manipulate us through them. As victims, we will follow them “in love” or “in faith” even to our deaths.

The state of meditation and the state of contemplation both have a passive period and an active period. We enter the initial, the passive, phase of contemplation when the images of active imagination grow cold and no longer stir us. We accept this deadening of our inner senses as we accepted before the deadening or mortification of our outer senses. In the subsequent active phase of contemplation after this initial passivity, it is no longer we who act but God acts on and within us.

Solitude

The solitude of the first phase of contemplation is fuller and deeper than the solitude of meditation. Paradoxically, while the solitude of meditation requires a withdrawal from the world and a mortification of the senses, the deeper solitude of contemplation does not. The solitude of contemplation is inner, not outer. Therefore, the person in this state can be fully engaged in the world. Inwardly, such a person is, however, entirely apart from and dead to the world. This means that the soul, which is the organ of knowledge of the good, is no longer led by the old goods of the ego and of the real world the person is acting in. It is dead to these and since it is not yet fully awake to the divine, it may feel dead to everything. As it persists in faith, however, it is more and more guided in the world by spiritual union with God. By contrast, the solitude of meditation is a withdrawal from the world and from activity in it. This is because meditation requires the use of the human faculties and these we cannot employ for spiritual exercises when they are otherwise absorbed, as they must be, in worldly affairs. The solitude of contemplation, which is the preparation for the direct knowledge of God, does not require the use of our human faculties. They, therefore, can absorb themselves in the world.

This distinction is vital. All-too-often the double meaning of the word “solitude” is missed by those who do not understand the difference between the lower state of meditation and the higher state of contemplation. They, therefore, think solitude always means a withdrawal from the presence of others. This physical withdrawal is only the solitude of meditation. The solitude of contemplation is entirely inner. If anything, it is like the common experience we all have, though on a less profound level than contemplation, of “being alone in a crowd.” Under contemplation, we might not choose to be with others, but we do not have to avoid being with them. One reason for avoiding trying to pass through the stage of meditation on your own is that it makes the final transformation to the second and higher level of contemplation harder. It is easier to realize you do not have to withdraw from others, the world, and your activity in it if, while still at the meditative level, you associate with others whose presence interferes least in your meditative state because they are in it or even already in the more advance stage of contemplation.

Finally, although in the final state of contemplative union, withdrawal from the world is not necessary, we might choose to withdraw. Two principle dangers confront those who are considering returning to the world from the outer solitude of meditation. The first is that it may be premature. When we are still in the state of meditation, we may hear that physical withdrawal is not necessary. Then, either mistakenly or in arrogance we decide that we can abandon the silence of meditation. The other danger faces us when in the contemplative state we want to withdraw from the world because our interactions there are unpleasant. When in the contemplative state, we need to endure this suffering of the world. In contemplation we are called to serve. We are to serve others in the world and cooperate in its redemption. Withdrawal under these circumstances could mean a fall out of the contemplative state of union that would, at best, thrust us back to the beginnings of the meditative stage. We rest between the twin dangers of presumption, on the one hand, and weakness, on the other–between pride and self-indulgence.

Active Passivity

The active passivity that we must attain already during the first stage of contemplation is its very great secret. We usually associate activity with effort and effort with the movement of our bodies or minds. For us, all notions of activity are associated with the flexing of the muscles. Even the effort of thinking seems like a muscular contraction. All this activity and the sense of this kind of activity we must bring to stillness before we enter the first stage of contemplation. This passivity is a veritable pacifying, and we achieve it by passing successfully through the second stage of meditation.

But now we come upon the secret of the first stage of contemplation: a total passivity of this kind wherein we are lost and absorbed during this first stage of contemplation must become, without ending, a new kind of activity and effort. When all bodily activity ends (This does not necessarily mean the body itself stops moving but only our inward investment in its efforts.), then the soul grows active. The outer struggle stilled, the inner struggle begins. One, most basic, activity of the body in the world, is to protect itself from destruction. But we are not in the body now. However, usually we find ourselves assaulted by forces we experience as coming from outside of us and beyond us. They are “inner” or spiritual forces and yet we feel them as external. As long as we remain still and passive in our senses and so to the world, we can be sure we are protected from demons or spirits who have fallen into the world. Thus, the spirits that now assail us are not fallen spirits but holy spirits. Nevertheless, we feel them as a threat and are sorely tempted to fight them to save our lives.

Here is where the inner activity joins with outer passivity. We must remain passive before the onslaught of these divine forces and accept them though it means the destruction of our ego/flesh inwardly. To do so, however, demands the greatest effort and activity. This activity involves restraining the automatic resistance our ego puts up against the divine forces; it struggles to activate the silenced faculties of the soul. It is the only kind of warfare that is truly holy. It is wholly inner and consists of no physical activity; it even excludes the activity of mind or reason. In the ordinary sense, all our faculties of soul–all understanding, all memory, all will are silent; in the secret sense, all are speaking. Miraculously, absolute passivity joins absolute activity to meet the Divine.

PART III

AWAKENING IN THE SPIRIT OF CONTEMPLATION

Chapter 11

From Meditation to Contemplation

“Out of Egypt I have called my Son.”

Hosea 11:1

In both the Hebrew and the Christian Bibles the land of Egypt plays a vital role in the journey to the Promised Land of salvation and so to progress of the soul. From earliest times, we find various leaders of Israel, sometimes accompanied by the whole people, constantly going into and out of Egypt. In these histories, Egypt plays two roles: as a place to escape from but also as a place to seek refuge in.

Here are some of the principal events in the Bible that concern Egypt. First, the “father of faith,” Abraham, flees to Egypt because of drought in Haran. (Genesis 12:9,13,20) Fearing his reception, he pretends that his wife Sarah is his sister. She is welcomed into Pharaoh’s house and both are treated well even after Pharaoh discovers Abraham’s deception. Abraham’s son by Hagar, who is to be great and to found a great nation himself, marries an Egyptian woman his mother finds for him. Later there is also the important story of how Joseph, after his brothers left him in the cistern where the Midianites found him and sold him in Egypt, becomes the trusted servant and advisor of Pharaoh’s officer. He gets imprisoned because of false accusations against him made by the officer’s lustful wife but is rescued and set over all of Egypt by Pharaoh when he correctly interprets Pharaoh’s dream. Then, when famine strikes all the land, he saves from starving the brothers who had years before tried to kill him. (Genesis 37:45)

The most important of all the histories of Hebrew involvement in Egypt are, of course, those involving the subsequent struggle of the Israelites to escape from Egypt and particularly the passing over of the Angel of Death who kills the firstborn of the Egyptians but not those of the Israelites and the passing over of the Israel from Egypt through the desert into the land of Promise. Israel is forced to serve Pharaoh by making bricks with mud, water, and straw. Moses is inspired to lead Israel out of Egypt when Pharaoh demands that the Hebrews not only make the bricks but themselves supply the straw for them. “Passover” is the tale of Moses’ attempts to get Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go, God’s punishment upon Egypt for not doing so, and Moses’ ultimate success. Subsequently, in the first book of Kings, Haddad flees to Egypt for protection; his is the first flight there after the exodus. (1 Kings 11:17)

Later there are more tales of Egypt. Jeroboam flees for protection to Egypt (1 Kings 11:40) Solomon makes an alliance with Egypt’s king and marries his daughter. (1 Kings 3-1) Then he imports a staff of advisors from Egypt. (1 Kings 10:29) Later, Egypt attacks Israel. (1 Kings 14-25) In the second book of Kings, Israel is depicted as depending on Egypt. (2 Kings 18:21) There are innumerable references to Egypt in the second book of Chronicles, in Psalms & Proverbs, in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, the Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, and even in Jude’s letter. Finally, in the Christian Gospels we find the story of Joseph and Mary seeking and finding refuge in Egypt from the attempt of King Herod to get rid of Jesus by killing all infants born during the time appointed for the birth of the savior. (Matthew 2:13)

All these incidents illustrate something that is most significant in inner terms about Egypt. The first and most obvious point is that the relation of the Hebrews to Egypt, from the time of Abraham through the rise of Christ, is ambiguous and paradoxical. The wisest of the Hebrews, Solomon, even made an alliance with Egypt. Egypt represents a place of refuge and help to run to as well as a place of suffering to escape from. If the Israelite children were spared by the angel of death so they could escape from bondage to Egypt, Jesus was saved from the extermination of infants because his parents passed over back into Egypt during the slaughter. Why this endless fascination and involvement with Egypt. Clearly, Egypt does not represent something simply bad. It represents evil. Evil is a good that is mistaken for something better or higher than it is. It may also be a good that creates an obstacle for something better or a good that we place higher than something better. Evil is the realm of sin, and sin is the realm of illusion. Therefore, when we are released from our illusion, whatever real thing that the illusion was attached to–in this case Egypt– is redeemed. It then can bring to us the limited good it holds for us.

How can we understand this paradox of Egypt in a way that would help us advance our inner development? Egypt and Pharaoh are identified as representing the flesh and the world. Egypt is the world, that realm we humans create by naming things. The name we use expresses our relationship to what is there. Consequently, once we created a world by naming things, when we look at that world we see in there not what things are but only their relationship to us. The whole fabric of the realm of things is woven of the threads of relationship. This relative realm is the one we work in to improve the usefulness of “things” to us. We modify them to make them more useful. Pharaoh is the “flesh” or the ego we draw out of ourselves and design in order to live in the world of things. It is who we are to ourselves and to others as we live in the world of things we have created. We create the things by naming and then they crate our flesh or ego, which is the modification of the self that relates to these “things.” Neither the world nor the flesh are, of course, in themselves bad. They are both useful to us. They become evil only when we stop seeing their limits. Then either we think they are more important than they are or they demand that we give them what of the soul belongs not to them but to God.

Moses becomes the opponent of Pharaoh. Moses is not himself the ultimate leader of the people of Israel, but only the one who shows them the way out of Egypt and points them in the direction of the land of promise–a destination he himself will never reach. The “people of Israel” in the inner sense represent those elements or “virgins” within our souls that belong to the spiritual realm. Part of the spirit serves the flesh and the world, but not the virginal part. The original motive and inspiration to build a world and an ego is pure spirit. All inspiration is of the spirit. The world and the flesh are merely temporary means to achieve the spiritual goals. When the world of things and our flesh or ego that is attached to them begins to assert control over the whole soul, they place the spiritual under the subjection of the material. This disorder is an evil, a condition brought on by illusion. A leader in us must rise to guide these innocent virginal elements out of this malevolent system. It leads by its faith and hope to a destiny it cannot yet see. Because the world and the ego draw all the life energy from the spirit, they cannot survive without the support of the spirit. When they see themselves losing their place of honor in the soul, they pursue and seek to recapture the new leader and its followers. The Red Sea of Baptism separates the virginal elements from the worldly; it saves the virginal cleansing them from their attachments to the fleshy and destroys the “captains” of Pharaoh by the same cleansing that separates them from their source of energy in the virginal spirit. Solomon in his wisdom reaches out to Egypt in alliance because he knows that the spirit must not ultimately reject or deny the flesh but must finally save it and make peace with it.

Were this all there is to the tale of Egypt, it would still be a story wonderful and enlightening for the seeker. However, there is something still more esoteric embedded in the meaning of Egypt. Egypt is a refuge the purest flee to for protection. While inferior to the fruits of the promise and so a restraint on our growth, Egypt, in itself and outside the illusions we attach to it, is intellectually higher than certain alternatives. Egypt does not represent merely the material world and the material flesh, it also represents spiritual development in the intellect. Even holding on for a moment to the image of Egypt as standing for the world and our flesh, however, there still are circumstances when the more spiritual elements of the soul should flee to it. That is because the Hebrew people living together, these purer spiritual elements themselves, can fall. When they do so, they grow more deeply corrupt than mere flesh and the world. The people of Israel can fall prey to evil spirits. The higher and purer these spirits are, the worse they are. Thus, the corruption of Joseph’s older brothers who refuse to change and accept the new life whose freshness is embodied in their brother’s youth–indeed, they try to kill it–are worse than the people of Egypt. Furthermore, the spiritual corruption of King Herod, represented by his envy of the possibility of a true and final leader rising in Israel who would replace him, is worse than the evils of the flesh and of the world. Moreover, because it is not interested in the pure spirit but in developing the spiritual faculties of the soul that they might better serve the flesh, Egypt ignores pure spirit in its midst and allows it to hide there and even prosper. Thus, the Holy Family can survive in hiding there. Egypt does not want to kill the pure spirit but use it if it could. Egypt cannot understand the threat pure spirit presents to it. Herod, however, understands and so is driven to kill it. Sometimes our purest spirit within must hide itself from malignant spirits and take refuge, for example, in “philosophy.” Still spiritual but embedded yet in language, worldly philosophy thinks those who represent spirit to be merely infirm and incapacitated philosophers. It, therefore, sees no danger from them and would even stand up against worldly leaders to protect what it considers as one of its weaker partners.

There is, consequently, a still deeper and more profound meaning to Egypt. Egypt is a place not just of the world and flesh and not just of temporary refuge for the pure spirit, but also of spiritual development. Abraham, Joseph, and Moses (and perhaps even Solomon) grow in wisdom in and through Egypt. This wisdom is not only material but spiritual. The pure spirit is fostered in their embrace of Egypt. It grows to a point where it must finally separate itself from its foster parent. The spirit fed on youthful food in Egypt. There the philosophical activity of the soul could lead to the development of its faculties to the point where it was ready to break free and become passive. In the philosophy represented by Egypt, spirit survived and thrived although it was not fulfilled. All those who stayed in Egypt for a time grew spiritually. Joseph, who had achieved honor and success in Egypt’s philosophy as the officer’s steward, was exposed and tested by the officer’s wife. In fleeing from her embrace, he had to leave the steward’s cloak she grasped in her clutching hands. His flesh was exposed. His brothers had stolen the multi-colored Sufi cloak given him by his earthly father to cover his flesh. It was after the fall in the officer’s household from all material grace, represented by the loss of “clothes,” that he rose to a higher spiritual level and saved Egypt and his family. The Israelites who joined him in Egypt prospered and brought blessing to Egypt as long as Pharaoh recognized their spiritual superiority. All the Hebrews who spent time in Egypt benefited from it.

Egypt represents the place of elevation we call spiritual meditation; the command to leave Egypt comes when the soul has developed the capacity for maturity. The spiritual elements within it have been purified and are ready to take charge of the soul and to rule over life. Now the temporary truce between them and Pharaoh ends. The Hebrews flee. Quickly, however they find themselves, as does every growing spirit that takes this final step to spiritual maturity and freedom, in a desert. They find the spirit deprived of its childish food and crude sustenance. They have not yet understood where they are going or what kind of nutrition will replace the sustenance Egypt’s philosophy afforded them. They do not yet know what Christians call the bread of life or Christ though they are give a pre-figure of it in the manna of the desert. It is very hard to find the faith and hope needed at this point and not turn back. This negative experience of the Hebrews in the desert for forty years and Christ in the desert for forty days is an encouragement to go forward inwardly as our predecessors did outwardly. It can teach us what we must first achieve, help us to pass beyond, and sustain our hope during the hard process of final spiritual transformation.

Chapter 12

Joseph and Christ

Although Jesus is born in the soul through the Holy Spirit of Divine Love and through the Virgin there who has been properly purified, the birth of Christ requires the participation of still another human being. To reach full realization of its potential, the Christ born within us, like the Christ born in history, needs a second earthly parent. This second parent is Joseph. The Virgin is the opening of the channel to Heaven, but her spouse Joseph is the opening of the channel to the earth. The Virgin Mother is the channel to the Heavenly Father; Joseph is the channel to the earthly mother. Only when both channels, the upper and the lower, are opened, does the full nature of the offspring of the perfect union of God and human realize itself.

Joseph serves the infant and child Jesus in relation to the earth as both his protector from the world and his educator to the world. There are three major moments when Joseph plays his part in giving birth to the Christ. None of these is wholly passive.

The first is simply the protection and care he lavishes on the Virgin in the final stages of her pregnancy when he takes her into Bethlehem. Christ’s birth must occur not only in a certain place belonging to the earth mother but also in her very womb under the earth in a cave with the earth’s “animals” assembled. The Heavenly King is born to rule both the Heavens and the earth. Joseph is a necessary agent for the Heavenly Ruler’s descent to the realm of His earthly kingdom.

The second occasion when Joseph performs his role as protector is the flight into Egypt. Warned by an angel of the danger to the Infant Jesus from King Herod who himself had been inadvertently warned of Jesus’ birth by the three wise men from the East, Joseph guides Mary and Jesus to exile in Egypt. Part of our soul is ancient and wise; it mirrors the three “wise men” who came to Jesus’s birthplace with their gifts that represent this wisdom. It knows that Jesus is born God (the Frankincense is a God’s due), King (the gold of his earthly crown), and savior of the earth (the myrrh that embalms the body of the perfect sacrifice that saves). Unworldly human wisdom, however, looking only to the sky above and not also to the earth below, too precipitously celebrates and too carelessly announces the birth. It is too excited by the news and too vulnerable to the wiles of worldly rulers to keep it secret from them.

The world’s spiritual ruler, named variously Lucifer, Diabolos, and Satan, and the world’s rulers know that the arrival of Christ will depose them. Fearing the loss of their power and prestige, they will do everything and anything they can to denounce the birth and kill the Divine child should he fall into their hands. They must, of course, act before the Child gains the strength to take possession of his rightful throne as ruler of the earth. They must silence the Word before He has a chance to speak. If they delay, it will be too late. His voice will expose the fleshy and spiritual lies of the world for all to hear, and, once spoken, his words will endure forever.

Like Joseph, the community of mature Christians today need to protect this Divine Child born within the soul of young Christians from the wiles of the external world. But, still more important, each of us within whom the Divine Child is born to the Virginal element of our souls through the power of the Holy Spirit of Divine Love must allow and encourage the Joseph element to protect this Child from too early exposure to the more worldly elements of the soul and particularly to the old rulers of the soul whose envy of being replaced would lead them to kill it. Thus, since unworldly wisdom will not remain silent but will announce the arrival of this child, the inner guardian and protector of the earth, Joseph, must spirit the child away beyond the grasp of the world’s rulers. Amazingly, the refuge is in Egypt. This is because, as the most powerful of the rulers in the world but ones lacking the revelation of the Hebrew Bible, the ruler of Egypt sees no risk of being replaced by a mere infant. Not recognizing the danger, the world of Egypt lets the infant live.

Joseph, under Divine instructions as he was when he accepted marriage to a young woman pregnant with someone else’s child, hears the angel in a dream and takes the Infant and the Virgin Mother and flees with them into Egypt. In the land of Israel, among the chosen elements within the soul, the significance of the Savior’s birth is known. He is to rule over God’s people and, by virtue of this rule, he is to gain power over all the earth. He must find refuge among those of the world strong enough in the world to protect him but who do not know the danger to their rule because they cannot at first grasp the meaning of His presence or the power of the Word He brings.

The third and final contribution Joseph makes to the birth of the Christ is both protective and educational. It is shown when Jesus is twelve years old and disappears into the Temple as his parents are visiting the Holy City of Jerusalem. They find him teaching in the Temple. Here is his first public manifestation as the Divine Logos (“Word” or “Discourse”). His Divinity he acquired from the Father through the Holy Spirit. It came to earth into the Virgin. His Divinity and humanity are both present from the moment of birth, but the union between them is not complete. He expresses the Divine in his Father’s House. Outwardly, this house is the Temple in Jerusalem but, inwardly, it is in each soul once it is prepared. However, neither He nor His words are yet ready for the world. Therefore, he returns home with his parents and is subject to Joseph’s guidance. He will grow under this guidance until the time is right and the fusion of the Divine with the human in the world is complete. Only after that can He make his Divinity fully manifest in his humanity on earth.

There is very little information in the canonical Gospels concerning Jesus’ childhood. It is hard, therefore, to determine just what he needed educationally to bring out his dual nature as both human and divine. There is, however, one non-canonical Gospel–the “infancy” Gospel of Thomas–that purports to record Jesus’ childhood up to his presentation in the Temple at twelve. If the Temple story already cited shows the need for Jesus to grow in understanding of the world, earlier stories reveal how he needs to develop his dual character before setting out on his own.

One of the most striking and obvious differences in the behavior of Jesus as a child depicted in the Thomas Gospel from his life as an adult shown in the canonical Gospels is how quickly he judges people and punishes them using his divine powers. On several occasions he injures and even kills other children. For instance, Jesus caused a child who had opened and drained a puddle of water he had gathered to “wither away.” Apart from speculation about the inner meaning of “gathered waters” and “withered child,” the tale is striking for the harm Jesus does to an ignorant child. By contrast, in the canonical gospels and as an adult, he never harms but only heals and helps others and prevents their injury. When Peter raises his sword to strike the Temple guard sent to arrest him after his agony in the garden, Jesus stops him. Of course, there are instances when the action of the mature Jesus produces negative reactions within others, but these are the consequence not of Jesus’ acts but of the sins and illusion of those whom his words disturb.

Because of this we may say two things. First, among what Jesus needed to learn as a child before he was ready to leave his earthly father Joseph and do the work of His Heavenly Father was earthly humility and its earthly expression of Divine compassion. Anyone as divinely perfect and powerful as Jesus while still a child would need to learn about the weakness of humans and also how to join his Divine perfection with his own earthly weakness. Before Jesus could learn enough about himself and those he was sent to save, he would be, like any gifted child, ignorant of himself and intolerant of the vulnerability and sins of others. Through his own suffering and temptations as a human in the world, he will learn humility and compassion. He learns not to condemn too quickly and to punish too precipitously the fallen sinners he encounters later. If anything, he comes to treat them with greater compassion than he does the good people whose sins are few.

The other point concerns our attitude to our fellow humans within whom the Christ is being born. They may be as we are in our youth when our love of a Good we do not yet know well can make us arrogant and judgmental. Looking back from when we grow older, we may suffer in conscience because of our actions in our childhood. We remember with shame our arrogance toward others and with guilt our desperate pursuit of and indulgence in the inferior goods we then thought were higher. However, we must not condemn ourselves or denounce the blessing of having been touched in our youth by the divinely inspired love of and search for good that allowed us to be judgmental. It was a gift from God. Only the delusion that it belonged to us was wrong.

This “Gospel” of Thomas, moreover, was excluded from the Canon probably because it would scandalize ordinary minds. Instead of presenting the image of Jesus as a conventionally sweet, obedient, and loving child, it, like his appearance in the temple at twelve, shows him to be rebellious, insubordinate, and arrogant in the face of humanly established order. Thus, conventional minds would think it wrong to expose our children to such a model. However, the image holds an important lesson for us. It is that those truly touched by God in their childhood are as likely to be strong-willed, independent, and even occasionally harsh as to be sweet and obedient. As the adult Jesus found those closest to God to be among sinners and the socially outcast, so, too, we will find some who are closest to God when they are children among those we least admire.

An understanding of the vital importance of these three contributions Joseph makes to the birth, growth, and development of the Christ is most important for those who are working to move from the practice of meditation to the state of contemplation. Meditation, which only prepares and purifies the Virgin to receive the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Infant Christ, culminates in this union between God and the soul through the Virgin within it. The contemplative stage that follows this birth involves the survival, growth, and final victory of the Christ on earth. The point of transformation is extremely dangerous and delicate because it is accompanied by an almost irresistible temptation to shout in public and proclaim the arrival of the Infant savior in the soul. That would expose Him to inexpressible dangers of destruction. There is also the temptation to keep Him among his own kind, the chosen elements in the soul that have been gathered and led by an originally necessary but now a superfluous and increasingly jealous spiritual order. Then there is the final danger where the Child, no longer an infant, is allowed too early access to His rightful place: publicly proclaiming in the Temple the knowledge of God. The Christ must be acclaimed, must go to his chosen people, and must proclaim the truth even outside the temple and to the whole world, but only when the time is right. The time is right only after the Child has grown, in wisdom and strength and under the care of Joseph, to understand compassionately and endure meekly the reception He will receive.

The role of the inner Joseph in the Divine plan for our redemption has never been given its full due. In fact, it has hardly been recognized. Christianity rightfully glorifies the Virgin Mary in history as the prefigure of the Virginal element in our own souls which must be purified to receive, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Divine Child destined to be ruler of the earth while sitting at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. She is a necessary medium for our ultimate redemption in Christ. Once Mary is raised up into Heaven, she can return to lead us to the Virgin in our soul. Like Mary in the Gospels, this Virgin is the indispensable vehicle for our receiving the Christ within. Our works of purification for this Virgin, that is, our practice of the virtues, are necessary before the gift of grace can come. They continue in contemplation after the gift of Christ’s presence arrives within, but they then proceed in freedom and pure love instead of from efforts of the inspired ego under the guidance of faith and hope.

How Joseph is not only part of the Divine plan but also an indispensable element in it has likewise been neglected. The neglect of this essential element is due in part to timing. Both the preparation of the Virgin and the descent of the Holy Spirit precede the role Joseph is to play. It sounds as if his role is secondary, almost an afterthought. Thus, the beginning of our journey towards God is always from the Virginal element within and its opening to the love of God. This requires enormous effort. However, even the birth of the Holy Child requires the protective presence of Joseph. Timing alone, however, is not an adequate explanation. There has to be a more hidden significance for the tendency to ignore and underrate Joseph.

Some of it is that the followers of Jesus who took up his throne of leadership over the Christian community on earth were tempted to focus only on opening the upper channel leading to the birth of Christ within. They celebrated Christmas, the arrival of the Christ Child, and Easter, the departure of Jesus making room for his elevation to Heaven and the arrival of the Holy Spirit within his followers that constituted their rebirth and His Second presence. They did not, however, celebrate His Childhood and Youth. These are, after all, secret from the world. This allowed them to associate themselves exclusively with the Heavenly descent of Christ and ascent of Jesus and to assert their right to rule the earth in His place. (Matthew 16:19; 18:18) They should, in fact, have also represented the Joseph function as well.

Joseph’s role was not only protection from the world but also education to it. Once the presence of Christ comes alive within a member of the Christian community, then the elders of the Church need to perform the Joseph role of educating it not just in the upward channel but also in how to express and realize itself in the world. Moreover, only by recognizing the necessary role of Joseph in the education of Jesus can they then admit that their role, like Joseph’s, must disappear once its function has been accomplished. The mature Christian is free and independent and needs no rules on earth since Heaven rules within.

Two forces pushed them to forget the vital role of Joseph. The first is outward: an unholy alliance with the prevailing social order that the infant had to be protected from and educated to stand against. The second is more inward and involves a betrayal by the followers of Christ, a betrayal of Him to their own egos.

The most devastating conclusion to those who wanted to associate themselves only with the Divine and ruling power of God through Christ was that, once the Christ within each of us had been educated and grown into mature strength on the earth ready to face the world, they were to set it free. They, therefore, were to surrender their parental power over it. Like too many human parents, they wanted to keep asserting their power over the child they helped bring into the world. They were frightened by the chance that their children would make the wrong choices on earth in the face of the clever wiles of the world, the flesh, and Satan. Unlike the good father of the prodigal son, they would not let their children go into the world. They wanted the story to stop in its application to us with the return of Christ from the outer temple to remain subject to His earthly parents. Then they wanted to interpret the rest of the history of Jesus on earth as nothing but the representation here of divine power. Then they could claim He left the elders, whose descendants they were, permanently in control of all the faithful on earth when he ascended into Heaven. Each soul was permitted to have its own contact with Heaven through the Virginal Mother but its only contact with earth would be through and only through “mother church,” which would determine the rhythm of behavior on earth.

However, the story of the relationship of dependence between His earthly parents and the Christ born within to all mature Christians does not end with Jesus’ submission to Mary and Joseph. It ends when Christ leaves his parents on earth and when, finally at one with His Father in Heaven and fully strengthened for life on earth in the face of the world, he openly turns his back on his earthly dependent relationship with His mother and brothers and turns His face to all on earth saying of the mass of God-loving humanity “Here are my mother and sisters and brothers.” (Matthew 12:46-50) Jesus reinforces his message of the need to turn away from earthly fathers when he answers a disciple who wanted to join him saying, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” Jesus told him: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.” (Matthew 9:21-26)

This turning away from foster parents and all earthly family relationships can happen only with Christ’s maturity, his inner uniting of both Divine and human dimensions. All His relationships on earth are now in and through God. Therefore, He is united as family with all who are born with the image and likeness of God. Civil and “biological” relationships (factual parents) are of the flesh (ego) and the world. The old mother and father (Mary and Joseph, priest and king) were according to the flesh. The new relationships are in the spirit. Friends are now friends in God and enemies in the flesh are now brothers under God.

This is not merely a new way of thinking about other people; it is a new way of being and living. The former kind of intimacy among people brought by the now lost ego or flesh becomes the new and greater intimacy of the spirit joined in the Divine. Now all interactions between people become interactions through and in the “name of” God. The earthly domain remains but it is superseded by the Heavenly. It must not place itself in opposition to the Heavenly. Thus, we must abandon our parents in the flesh since our relationship to them and our spiritual dependence on them becomes an enemy of God. To deify “family values” is to demonize the Divine spirit if by “family values” we mean the values we have manufactured by ourselves for our earthly families.

Mature Christians turn from depending on their foster parents on earth. This includes the foster mother, the Church. Then they turn to live in the world, as Paul does, grounded in and guided by the Christ who is alive within. Of course, Christ does not reject his earthly parents any more than we should. He respects them and arranges for their care when he leaves them. (John 19:25-27) However, then He takes care of them in the flesh; not they of Him. So it most be with all of us. We must, in faith and love and hope, turn to the earth and stand up to the world and care both for the inner earthly parents that fostered the Christ within and for the Church without.

In this, there are, however, twin and opposite dangers. First, the earthly parents may want inordinately to continue holding their power over the Christ once the Christ is grown up, and, second, the Child might be persuaded in a false appeal to Heaven to abandon His earthly parents too soon and refuse to return submissively from the Temple. It is all-too-easy for us to act like the prodigal son, to grow overconfident of our power to represent the Divine in the world, and to leave prematurely the foster parent provided within to protect the Divine inspiration from the world. So also with those who rebel against the Church and, instead of continuing to honor and care for it in their own maturity, abandon, condemn, and abuse it. The soul must not allow itself too soon to expose the vulnerable Child of the Holy Spirit to the wiles of the world and to the great illusion-maker, Satan, who rules in it.

Chapter 13

“Behold, a Virgin Shall conceive….”

Elizabeth and Mary

According to Luke, the final steps in the final movement of salvation begin with the priest Zechariah who is told he is to have a son and to name it John. (Luke 1:5-79) We need to understand the inner meaning of this story and not just its outer form. Israel and the Holy Mountain of Jerusalem where the priest serves are inwardly the human soul and the elements that populate it. The soul is living in the world. Zechariah is one of the upright “leaders” in the soul. He succeeds to the rulership by chance or lot. This is as happens when someone is living in the world under the guidance of the spiritual law. We are ruled from above through a variety of inner priests according to the content of our lives. In the family we have one kind of ruler or standard of righteous behavior, in our jobs, another. Each part of our divided life has its own priest to represent its different and opposite share of the Law and each “priest” succeeds one another according to how the world presses on us that day.

Elizabeth is Zechariah’s wife. She is a pure woman and, while not a virgin, is still virginal in the sense that she has given birth to no children. No child has opened her womb and passed out into the world. The same angel Gabriel, who had revealed to the prophet Daniel the future coming of the Lord (Daniel 9:20-25), now appears to Zechariah to tell him his wife is to give birth to the new Elijah, John the Baptist. Of course, since he is elderly and his wife is past child-bearing age, he cannot grasp how they are accomplish the mission. The mute silence Gabriel imposes on him until after the birth and naming of John indicates that he is to have no role in bringing forth or influencing the son except endorsing the name “John” that Gabriel and Elizabeth give him. Since John is not born of the priestly line of his father, he is not to be given his father’s name nor the name of any other family member. He is to be prophet to the whole of Israel not prophet to a mere part of it.

The events surrounding the birth of the herald John show that in the final stage of meditation we are to be led by an entirely new kind of reason. The priestly mentality of our past movement now yields to the prophetic and universally purifying power of John. John’s power comes not from a development that flows smoothly and directly out of the established character and practice of the soul, but from a radical break. He is a new birth in the soul brought forth out of a pure woman. She is the matrix of something higher in the soul. Zechariah, unknowingly, would stand in the way of her power and the child who would displace his power, so Gabriel sets him aside temporarily.

John’s birth represents the arrival of the method of mortification that leads the soul to die to all it believed in. Zechariah could work only through the senses–only through the good he could understand based on images and the Law that regulates visible behavior. He could reason only from these assumptions. John was raised in the desert and avoided eating flesh. This means his knowledge was purified from the senses (in the desert) and the ego (in the flesh). He wears the image of the destruction of order and civilization in his savage clothing of wild animals. He exposes the contradictions in the lives of those who follow the Law, lives that grew too closely linked to the material social order. Legitimate authorities such as Herod, therefore, very understandably see him as the destroyer of law and order. However, since he exposes hypocrisy and deceit and provides a cleansing, the people of the soul respond well and start following him. They see him as an embodiment of truth.

Unlike what happens to Zechariah, Joseph, the man destined to be Jesus’ earthly father, faces something very different. According to Luke, the angel does not approach Joseph before Gabriel first talked with his wife Mary. The angel does not even appear to Joseph in person. Instead, he comes to Joseph only in a dream. (Luke 1:20-25) Before the angel appears to Joseph in the dream, Gabriel speaks face to face with Mary. Beyond Elizabeth, Mary is the completely pure woman–the true Virgin who has had no sexual commerce with men, that is none with those parts of the soul involved in guiding relations with the outer world. The Holy Spirit is to come in spiritual fullness to her alone. Only she is pure enough to bear the Child of this Holy Union. Mary is the element of the soul that is purely passive before God. Her birthing chamber has been prepared by the suffering of the ages, by the cleansing power of John’s prophetic method of meditation. She is the one who brings the soul to contemplation.

The roles of Elizabeth and Mary in God’s plan for salvation are not sufficiently recognized. This is because of the two levels of meaning that must intertwine in Biblical stories: the descent of Christ historically and the descent of Christ mystically. Mystically, John is the transitional agent who must be born within our souls. He is born to a woman, married to a priest of the Law in the world, who has given birth to none before him. Christ also must be born within us. It is Christ alone who replaces the worldly priestly guides represented by Zechariah. To accomplish both the first and second inner birth, to produce first the inner purifying prophet and then the Holy Child, the soul must prepare the birthing chamber for Elizabeth and Mary. The Law prepared Elizabeth and her chamber for the birth of John. John prepared the chamber for Mary, the perfect Virginal element in our souls. The second coming of Christ is not like the first where He comes in a fleshy form. The second coming is on the clouds of Heaven. It is a mystical descent.

Mary

Who is the Virgin of the soul that conceives the savior by the power of the Holy Spirit? (Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23) It is easy to recognize in a spiritual sense that the story of Mary and the birth of Christ are outer figures for an inner process. In the story, both the “historical” Mary and the “historical” Jesus rise or are raised into Heaven. This rising from the earth into Heaven makes them spiritual models for all left on earth. The return of Christ is a descent from the clouds of Heaven into the soul and so back to earth. In heaven, he rules eternally. In the soul that has been purified and so has turned to the eternal, he also rules eternally. Thus, the second coming happens after the Virgin in the human soul is purified. Then the Spirit of God descends to her. Finally, they give birth to the Christ. Christ becomes the perfect sacrifice who finally re-unites us with God. No one can gain access to the Heavenly Christ immediately; instead, each to contact Christ must follow invariably the path that Jesus followed.

The initial paradox in the process of this return of Christ concerns the Virgin, the “royal bride arrayed in cloth of gold brought to the king in all her finery.” (Psalm 45:13-15) She is, on the one hand, always present in the soul but, on the other, the Holy Spirit is not. Always there, she remains unnoticed until called by the messenger from God and the descent of the Holy Spirit that culminates in the Divine marriage.

In every human soul, without exception, there is an element that is ever-virgin. No matter what the person does, no matter what the overall state of that soul, the Virgin remains forever pure. If so, why does not the Spirit descend to everyone and give birth in this Virgin to the new leader or ruler of the soul, the Christ? It is because the Virgin is darkened and hidden, lost and wandering, confused and ignored in the soul. The element of the soul that ignores and places her in darkness, those involved in and corrupted by their contact with the world, must be cleansed. Moreover, if the Spirit is to descend, it needs a proper dwelling. The soul itself must be prepared. Only then is the Virgin established in such a way and in such a state as to be ready to receive the Spirit. These are the tasks John is to carry out.

The image of this prepared dwelling is of a bridal chamber. The soul provides a room, decorates it, and dresses the Virginal element as a bride should properly be dressed, in clothing of purity and splendor. The plight of the Virginal element might be seen even in the perennial Cinderella story of children. In this tale, Cinderella is the young, Virginal woman who the divine Prince from the King’s palace cannot find until she is properly honored and clothed. She is the only person of true value in her household. In fact, her ugly sisters even need her to make the clothing that covers their distorted flesh and gives them the appearance of goodness. Each needs the works of the good to cover it. Cinderella plays the role proper to the Virgin, that of a handmaiden. She is, however, elevated to be the handmaiden of God after the wicked step-sisters had forced her to serve them.

Seekers of integrative knowledge must not be ashamed to use children’s stories to aid their understanding. Jesus, himself set children up as the model to be emulated for those trying to enter the kingdom of Heaven where the unifying standard of goodness, God, resides. He instructed his followers that before they could enter the kingdom, they had to become like little children. (Matthew 18:2-5) This does not mean that adults are to become childish, but, like little children, they must return to the purity of the longing in their souls that adults teach the child to divert. Much of the worldy education of children distorts and cripples the young soul. Children, knowing the goodness and purity of their own intentions, are prodded despite this purity to achievements that are worldly and so are impure. These include doing well in school and dressing and behaving “properly.” The child who reads the tale of Cinderella senses that these achievements are like the wicked stepsisters who pretend that they, the inferior, are good and then take a mask of clothing from the one who is truly good. Adults praise the inferior achievements and often seem to despise the genuine longing for pure good present as the Virgin in the child’s soul.

We are to become like little children but not childish. Actual children immediately know the truth in the Cinderella story. Their souls respond to it automatically. However, they rarely understand its meaning. They, at best, use the story to make themselves feel better when they are placed in, and accept conditions of, actual life that insult the Virginal Cinderella within. They may dream that in actual life someone in the world or in the flesh who knows the truth and sees them as they truly are will come to save them. They understand neither that there is no one in the world who can save them nor how to save themselves from the world. Adults who, like children, see the truth in the Cinderella story also need to understand that its message is inner. If they do not understand that the prince comes not in the flesh but in the spirit since only spirit can see the lovely gown created by the spiritual god-mother they remain childish themselves. They go to films and read sophisticated novels that represent a truth that stirs their souls. Childishly, however, they misunderstand the stories and use them, not to awaken, but to sleep more soundly and to dream by.

The purification process that must take place before the Holy Spirit descends to give birth to the Christ is never a cleansing of the Virgin herself. She is always pure and never loses her purity. She has been immaculate since conception. The dwelling, its decoration, her clothing, her muddied appearance, and those who degrade her are what get purified. This, of course, is accomplished by operations and achievements that are spiritual and not material. Only after this is done can she herself develop her strength.

The Elevation of the Virgin

The preparation of the Virgin, necessary before the Holy Spirit of God can overshadow her, we can understand partly by examining the faculties or operations of the soul. In each of them the Virgin dwells. These faculties are the intellect, the memory, and the will. If memory is clouded by nostalgia for things past, it turns, in illusion, to things. You might recall your lost childhood and remember only the good things forgetting the indignities, terrors, and tears. Then your hope dwells on false memories and things of the past. Since you are unable to re-acquire such things and to re-enter a state of joy because they never actually existed as you remember them, you still dream of them. Through these dreams, you may escape from the world and in them you can live in the world. In any event, your hope is bound to what is below and is not freed for what is above. The original and Virginal element in memory would bring you back to the truth about how things were and what your childhood condition was. It would distinguish between the good spiritual state you lived in because you were surrounded by familial love and the material situation your eyes could see, which had little to do with the joys of your childhood. Of course, your enlightened memories will be of bad things as well as of good. These bad things the Virgin would no longer permit you to deny. She recollects them in truth and sees that the badness was less in them than in the spirit of anger, resentment, and unhappiness surrounding you and your parents.

The same is so for the faculty of intellect as for the memory. Every human being has the capacity to distinguish truth from falsity, the true good from the false good. We could not live as humans if we did not constantly exercise this faculty. Our exercise of it, however, is tainted. It becomes limited, partial, and relative. This is mostly because we use reason to calculate about reality and about rightness in the world of visible material and social relations judged by a material standard of value. Thus, we calculate which food is better, which is tastier to the tongue or more nutritious to the body. When there is a dispute among us, we seek its resolution by referring to some legal standard of good and bad. With our intellects drawn in this direction, our faith automatically inclines toward things or outcomes in the visible world instead of the invisible. The genuine standard of truth and value is there, but its spirit has been concealed, encrusted and muddied by visible appearance.

Finally, all human beings have a spiritual faculty of soul called will. Will, too, typically turns to and follow material things that attract it. The Virginal element in the will longs only for the good itself. The good itself is spiritual. Under prevailing conditions, however, the will seeks the object of its longing in the visible world. Consequently, its love gets confused. The Virginal and original impulse is forever there but, because the soul is focussed on what the senses can perceive, it is darkened and hidden.

The bridal chamber where the Virgin sits waiting is the chamber that hope builds once it gets purified. Purified hope is hope centered on the divine. The spiritual treasures of intellect decorate the room. These are the sense of rightness and truth that have turned from material and visible goals and achievements toward timeless values. The garments of purity and splendor the Virgin wears that finally attract the Lord, the Spirit of God, to her are the garments of spiritual love for what is above. She frees herself from all the soul’s misguided longing for the things of the world; now she loves only the timeless and eternal. Loving, she is loved.

The Virginal element of the soul nothing ever can darken or despoil though she may sit darkened by the darkness of the soul’s chamber and despoiled by the soul’s absorption in the goods of the world. The Virgin is Virginal through all time. What creates confusion and darkness is the condition she finds herself in because she is enclosed within an unenlightened soul. Still, the only touch she herself responds to is that of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit then engenders in and through her the Christ–the actual living presence of God within. Her Virginity is altered neither by the touch nor by the Spiritual Child she gives birth to. Thus, the great prayer of the Angel Gabriel that honors the human element within all of us that carries the image of God and can bring the soul to the likeness of God sings to it: “Hail, Mary, ever Virgin.” The earthly and historical Mary could give birth to dozens of babies; the historical Jesus could have many brothers and sisters. The heavenly Mary, however, the Mary raised to Heaven, is the model for what in the soul gives only Spiritual birth. Her Virginity continues forever. The Heavenly Christ finds brothers and sisters through the Heavenly Mother initially and, as Her marriage in the Spirit proceeds through the Heavenly Father, in every man and woman who lives or who has ever lived.

The Three Transformations of the Virgin

Once the bridal chamber has been cleansed of debris and purified, the preparations for the descent of the Holy Spirit take place. They all are conducted in the process of spiritual meditation that is called “discourse.” It is easy to see that reasoning can raise our understanding. It is harder to see that it is not the contents and the processes of logic alone that elevate the soul. The reasoning is only the “male” or “active” aspect of thought. It can fulfill the John-the-Baptist function of cleansing out the debris of lies from the birthing chamber. While partly spiritual, however, it is absorbed in the material it is assaulting. The “female” or “passive” element is the Virgin, and she must participate in the discourse as well and not be merely silent witness to it if she is to become properly prepared.

In the context of holy discourse, the virginal and “female” element passes through three stages of development. True meditation begins only when both the “female” and “male” aspects of discourse join together. In spiritual discourse, as in what we call “dialectical logic,” the male element is active and protective. He learns rhetoric and agility in debate the way an athlete does in sport or like a warrior is trained to protect his wife and household from enemies, rapists, and seducers. He struggles in the material world. His view of his position is like that of Joseph in relation to his marriage to Mary when he first discovers she is pregnant. If she had strayed and had united with another man, she would have adulterated the holy union of marriage and must be kept from it.

Since she is to bear the fruit of spiritual conception, Mary has to become completely open to penetration by the Holy Spirit. Only then can she fully participate in the spiritual struggle of discourse. Joseph, the male protector who would otherwise prevent the Virgin from fornication and adultery, must let her. The spiritual struggle she takes part in is the soul’s inner discourse; here the inner female who the “male” normally defends against all contact with outsiders must be open herself to change. In discourse, as in battle, it is easier for the male to fight when he knows the good he is fighting for. It is also easy for him to construct a material and so artificial and false image of good in his mind in order to sustain his energy to fight well and successfully. Thus, the male combative element is likely to lose the spirit of truth in the heat of the battle unless the soul remains open to doubt. This doubt of knowing the true and the good is called the “weakness” that is actually the strength of the “female” or passive element in discourse. Failure to admit the passive was the central error of Greek thought and also the source of the catastrophe we find in the most ancient and revered poem of the Greeks, The Iliad, where the males fought over Helen who herself did not take part in the battle; some versions of the story of the Trojan Wars have Helen not even present in Troy during the entire conflict.

While it is true that the female element must be protected from the cold methods of combat–the words we humans develop to articulate understanding and to reason with–it must be open and utterly vulnerable to the Holy Spirit, to Wisdom itself that is beyond words. It is not the “male” but the “female” who alone bears the capacity for spiritually new birth. This is the marvel of Mary when she accepts the Holy Spirit who will fertilize her. It is also the marvel of Joseph, the male and active element in discourse. Like her, it must be wise enough to accept that it by itself does not contain knowledge of the good, but only an exterior expression of this knowledge.

The passivity of the Virgin in spiritual discourse is different from what would be seen as healthy passivity in the worldly discourse of the male. The male passivity is represented in good science when a scientist yields and gives up a cherished theory once shown evidence that contradicts it. The Virgin is not of the logic of the senses but of the spirit. Her strength is her willingness to be passive to, or to recognize truth in, the Spirit. The “weakness” of the Virgin is “weakness” seen only because she does not fight for the material, for words and theories. She is truly strong in that she does not yield to evidence based on the senses or pure logic. She does not yield to the male when he has been persuaded by mere empirical evidence. The Virgin is the spiritual guardian of the soul no less than the male is the material protector of the Virgin.

There are three stages in the development of the virginal element of the soul in discourse before the fullness of the new birth is accomplished on earth. The first is Mary as Mother submitting herself the way we have just described. She represents the principle of acceptance of the Spirit in preference to her earthly “husband,” the words of human expression pursued by the male. In this she delivers herself to the hope of salvation.

The second is the Mary of the Martha and Mary stories. In this phase, Mary is taught in three ways by the Spirit through Jesus. The first is when she “chooses the better part,” unlike her sister, and sits at the feet of Jesus listening and learning and not serving him food the way women would do and her sister Martha actually does; she is fed by instead of feeding Jesus. She recognizes him as teacher of the Spirit. (Luke 10:38-42) The second is when her brother Lazarus dies and she testifies in faith that had Jesus been present earlier, he could have saved him; then she witnesses Jesus calling Lazarus back to life. (John 11:1-44) The third is when John identifies her as the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet and dries them with her hair; her anointing recognizes the divinity of Jesus even as he walks on the earth. (John 12:3) Each of these has a distinct significance in the elevation of the Virgin in faith. Eve brought forth the spirit of deceit when she listened to the serpent in the garden; Mary now bears the spirit of truth when she attends to Jesus.

The third form Mary takes that illustrates her final development is that of Mary Magdalene–the great sinner who sins are forgiven because she loves much and so is more beloved by Jesus than any other woman. It is specifically this Mary that all the gospels agree was first to see Jesus after his resurrection (Luke 24:10; Mark 16:1-9; Matthew 28:1-10). John is tenderest in his treatment of the final scene where Mary encounters the risen Christ at the tomb. She remains there after the others have left, passively weeping over the loss of the Lord. Christ speaks to her. She does not initially recognize His voice; only after He calls her by name and she turns to look does she see Him as the risen Christ. In the non-canonical Gospel of Mary Magdalene, she is not only the first to awaken in love to the contemplative union with the Holy Spirit but her teaching is rejected by nearly all the other apostles who remain the reluctant “male” active element that stays embedded in its own human media of discourse.

Throughout all three of these stages Mary remains a Virgin. It is just as important a miracle that she can remain a virgin after having led the life of the “prostitute” Magdalene as she could after giving birth to a child. Indeed, remaining virginal despite the involvement with many different languages of different male protectors is a greater mistake and harder to believe and requires more faith than remaining a virgin after giving birth. Through it all, her love stayed pure and undefiled. As she loves, so she is loved by Jesus. The ever-virgin wears three masks, but all of them are named “Mary,” and all of them are the Virgin.

If the Virgin is to receive the Spirit who will give birth in her to the Christ, her dwelling and her person must be prepared. She dwells in the soul. The soul must not only be cleansed but also decked out as a bridal chamber. The bridal chamber is, when it is properly decorated, the City of God, the new Jerusalem, the city of peace, that descends from on high and needs no light from the sun because it gets all its light from the Father. This is the city God-as-Spirit descends into once it has been prepared. The prepared soul, when God takes up his dwelling in it, is the Kingdom of God that is to come, and we pray in Jesus’ prayer that it will come. The prepared and blessed soul is also named the Church or Temple of God.

Peter

The soul, the church, the city, the kingdom-to-be needs a spiritual foundation and a heavenly agent who can lay its foundation. It also needs an earthly agent who prepares the ground for the foundation. This agent, this earthly stone, the Peter, is only the earthly side, an earthly parallel of the Christ who alone is the Daily Bread of the Kingdom and the true foundation that is yet to come. Peter, along with the other Apostles, is the successor of Joseph. He also is the earthly father element in the interior discourse that elevates the earthly mother of the soul.

This earthly agent, this ground-breaker or Peter, is inspired by faith, love, and hope. It, like him, is lead by hearing not yet by seeing. This stone hears the voice of God in material or earthly forms–the sacred writings. These words appeal to the ears. We do not see God; our first knowledge of God’s nature is by what we hear. Hearing is a less secure and less certain form of perception. To live in a Godly way when all you have is what you hear takes greater faith. “Faith then depends on hearing, and hearing on the word of Christ.” (Romans, 11:17) Those who have not seen and yet have faith because they have heard are blessed with this greater faith. Moreover, following in faith what you have heard when all the visible evidence contradicts that faith develops your ability to see. Job concludes after all the trials he endured: “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know. I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you.” (Job 42:4-5)

Hearing, the voice of God in Scriptures and inspired in faith, love, and hope, the agent, Peter, decorates the soul, the bridal chamber through how it manages life in the world. Guided by Scripture, it leads the soul to accomplish good works, it brings to the person an essentially good character, and achieves a good character itself.

Within this soul, the heavenly virgin dwells. The agent’s task is further. The agent must protect and respect the purity of the Virgin and keep it undistracted. It must not allow passionate elements of the soul to become despots who put the Virgin in their chains. It must keep her free from lies–from those clever arguments that would deceive her as to the good. It must protect her from the power of deluded energies or spirits that could overwhelm her. Just as he protects her from inferior conceptions, however, she protects him from falling into error for she alone knows pure spirit and she alone can recognize the Holy Spirit when it descends.

The agent of God watches over the Virgin, protects her, and feeds her the truths, not merely the Law, drawn from sacred writings. This is the Peter who is to feed the lambs–the pure and innocent element–of the soul. The rocky mound, the soul’s lower defenses against the corrupting world the agent builds, are of the earth however. These defenses could not hold except that they are formed and shaped by the Heavenly. Every word in Scripture itself is a union of earth and Heaven. Every word gains and retains its protective power from its Heavenly aspect. Within every earthly word (which, by itself and separate from the Heavenly, kills) is the Heavenly Word, the spirit that gives life to the earthly word and to those whom it guards.

Once the Virgin is secure and the bridal chamber is ready, the Holy Spirit descends to her spirit and the two give birth to Christ’s presence. Then the good stewardship of Peter is rendered obsolete. Mary Magdalene sees the spiritual Christ and reveals Him to Peter and the others. Christ supersedes Peter. Christ is the Heavenly rock that now becomes the cornerstone of the temple. Now, at last, the City of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, that is ever “at hand” is realized.

God’s presence within each soul now unites it with all other souls. The worldly church–the one composed of people whose souls were guided by Scripture and who have been seeking the Kingdom–is inwardly transformed. It (the group of people) gains a new center and a new unity born of the real presence of God as earthly judge within each soul. Then the purest human love that united the people of the former church is transformed into Divine love. Peter’s church becomes Christ’s church. Then the church’s unity is absolute.

The earthly church of Peter, the one still united only by hearing Scripture, is a prefigure of the Heavenly Church. The Heavenly Church is not just inspired by God’s message and promise but united in God’s presence. It is natural for the earthly church to aspire to imitate the absolute unity that belongs only to the Heavenly Church and to free itself from factions and denominational strife. However, premature attempts to end the disunity of the earthly church can become the last and most fierce and demonic temptation of this church. It is a temptation inspired by Lucifer, the “light-bearer” himself. The earthly church may seek unholy unity even by military force or civil law. It tries to use a worldly tool to accomplish what can only be a gift of God. Even should it seek such unity by means other than physical force (for example, by the forces of pressure, personality, or persuasion), it still commits the sin of pride of the flesh or ego against the Holy Spirit.

Neither the soul nor the community of souls can be coerced by worldly means or by fleshy motives. Should the agent of God sent to prepare the foundation fall because of these motives, the inner temple and the outer temple, the inner church and the outer church, also fall. The Kingdom of Heaven cannot be kept safe by force and flesh, and those who, like Peter unguarded by the Virgin, seek to secure it that way condemn themselves and all in their charge. We need the support of Heaven to keep us always from the final temptation where we think we can free ourselves by transforming earthly stones into Heavenly bread, have our flesh rule the world divinely, or command God to descend and order his angels to save us from crashing to the earth from the top of the earthly temple we have built with our hands.

The Altar of Sacrifice

God instructed Moses after he entered the Cloud of unknowing how to construct the altar of sacrifice and holocaust. It was to be an altar made of earth. It could be of stone but only natural stone and not cut. It was to be reached without having to climb steps. (Exodus 20: 24-26)

These instructions reflect the need for the purity of the earth that bears the sacrifice. It must be pure in the sense that it is wholly from God and not a product of human talent and ingenuity. The sacrifice does not hallow this altar but the altar hallows the sacrifice. (Matthew 23:19) The sacrifice was always of the first fruits of the labor of human hands and also the product of God’s universe–the first and most blemish-free of the flocks. All sacrifices were products that otherwise would serve humans as food. Fire purified them from any taint of human use; the altar purified them from being the results of human labor. The only offering acceptable to God is what is produced by God. We creatures who “create” must return to the Creator not only what we create but the creative source present within us from which we create and which was placed there by God and is God.

In more ancient times the sacrifice on the altar was human life and not mere animal life. This giving back to the Creator what we have been given remains clear as long as we sacrifice our children or other pure, virginal, and undefiled people. Peoples who practiced ritual and sacrificial killing tended to choose either from the young and innocent or from the older only those who had been relieved of the burdens of performing human labor. The ones selected to be adult sacrifices stopped leading ordinary lives and were completely cared for in preparation for their sacrifice not because they were gods or were being themselves deified but because only by renouncing all human activity did they preserve the inner purity God gave them from the corrupting influence of life in the world. Human sacrifices were either of those who were young and uncorrupted and so still belong to the divine, instead of the human, order of creation or those who had been returned to it by the sanctification of being pampered and released from human labor.

The same is true of prisoner sacrifice. The victor in combat was a human victor; the victory was achieved on the basis of human skill. The loser in both ritual and real combat was chosen by God for the honor of being an appropriate sacrifice. His defeat placed him closer to God since his fate was not from his own will and skill but from the divine. The combatants had to train and fight as hard as they could because only then was failure a mark of Divine preference and choice. To fight well and lose was more holy than to fight well and win.

An inversion of this most ancient attitude to the divinity of losers and of their role in sacrifice and the altar of sacrifice started with the Greeks and reached its culmination in ancient Rome. Increasingly, the Greeks made their Olympic games celebrations of the divinity not of failure but of success. It was the victor whom they crowned with the laurel of the gods, and it was the city of the victor that claimed proof of divine blessing. The Greeks in this devised a way they, through humanly developed skills that led to victory, could command the gods instead of submit to them. At least the Greeks, while honoring victory, still celebrated the power of the gods; in Rome the gladiatorial games celebrated only the power of the state.

The choice of human failure as being marked by divine grace is the core secret and superiority of Christianity over both the monotheism and polytheism that preceded it. It is what, coming through the Christian rediscovery of the insights of Moses that had been lost increasingly in the Judaism of Christ’s time, raises Christianity above the ancient Greeks while preserving their glorious intellectual achievements. Christ always blesses the poor and all who fail at achieving the human good. These are the new chosen of God under Christianity. It is also why the image of absolute failure–that of Christ on the cross is the symbol of divinity in the flesh.

A “Christian” people today who celebrate victories in the modern Olympics betray Christ. Their “Christianity” makes a mockery of Him. Such sports are not what they seem; the are not mere “entertainment.” Instead, the way their “fans” treat them make them demonic religious rituals. They celebrate not the divinity of human failure but the divinity of human success. Theirs is the Roman religion of wealth, of power, and of progress. Their faith is in human not divine power. When they pray it is not in secret but decked out in public. Their altars are not the altar of pure earth and stone but of human ingenuity and carved, not natural, stone.

The altar of sacrifice is ultimately, of course, an inner altar. The purity of the earth and stone is the purity of Peter. Unlike Mary, who was to be the mother of the sacrificial lamb and whose purity existed because of her youthful innocence, the combative Peter is purified because as a “male” he is a failure. Peter’s weakness made him strong but only when he accepted it and so united with the passive and pure Mary Magdalene. So weak was he that he could not on his own keep faith, hope, and love in Jesus even while Jesus still lived and while Peter followed him. This Simon became the rock of the altar of sacrifice. He was not the sacrifice but the earthly rock set as the visible cloak atop the spiritual rock on which the sacrifice took place once Christ departed from the flesh. The church Christ founded on earth is not a group of people, not a social organization, and certainly not a material building or a bureaucracy. It is instead the hard rock of weakness that is within each of us. It is this rock of human weakness, purified by failure in human endeavor so that the divine rock beneath it shines through it, that alone is pure enough to bear the sacrifice of the Child of the pure Mother born of the Holy Spirit.

Chapter 14

Virgin and Birth

Who is the Bride and Virgin

When we read of the Bride in The Song of Songs, we find she cries out, “Have you seen Him whom my soul loves.” (Song of Songs 3:3) We can understand these words of love in two senses. One alternative illustrates the earthly way and the other the spiritual way of reading the Bible.

In the earthly mode, we conceive either of an actual woman who is flesh and blood or, allegorically, of a woman who represents the actual church. She has a soul she feels exists inside her and so she refers to “Him who my soul loves.” However, since in fact her soul leads her flesh, she is the soul. Thus, it is the soul that has the flesh instead of the flesh that has a soul. Nevertheless, from this earthly perspective, the woman or the church seems to be driven passionately to pursue her Beloved and unite with Him in the flesh. Her soul, the very essence of what she is, loves Him. Her will is absorbed in her pursuit of this Beloved.

In the alternative spiritual mode, however, the Bride is not the body that is driven to pursue and unite with the Groom by an irresistible love in its soul. No, on the contrary, the Bride is the spiritual Virgin who dwells within the soul. She possess the soul; it belongs to her. Thus, when she calls out to the one she loves, she properly calls this soul, “her” soul. This is not because it resides in her but she in it. Her “soul” is her dwelling place.

The soul itself always has a fleshy (ego), worldly, and sensuous side. Therefore, it, by nature, cannot attain the Beloved who is knowable only in the purity of spirit. It cannot even search adequately for the Beloved because all its efforts will be afflicted by its fleshy side. Thus, the soul loves and longs for God but can seek God only up to a certain point. Then it must give way to the Virginal element within it.

The whole history of Israel up to the annunciation and birth of Christ is a figure for union with God. It shows the way the soul makes straight the path and prepares the dwelling that allows the Virgin to open the channel of access to God. The will grows purer and purer in love for God. It detaches itself more and more from the flesh and the world. Helped by a new element, it abandons the flesh of Egypt and the domination of the worldly Pharaoh. Now another element becomes stronger in the soul and replaces the Pharaoh who represents the rule of the world and its cleverness. This element is Moses who unyieldingly leads Israel to the land of promise where the inner temple will be built to provide a place for the Virgin to give birth to the new ruler in the soul who is Christ. Finally, it is cleansed by the mortification prescribed by John the Baptizer, the last recurrence of the ancient prophets. The purification of the disciples of John and the Pharisees is one that seeks to deny or mortify the flesh; the Spirit, however, does not deaden the flesh but resurrects it. Thus, Jesus, tells those followers of the Baptizer when they ask why his disciples do not fast, “Can wedding guests mourn while the bridegroom is with them?” Because of Jesus, the Spirit is with them. It has not yet united in marriage with the Virgin, and the Christ is not yet born within. However, already Jesus’ presence prefigures the redemption of the flesh and the world to come. When the will is wholly disillusioned with the goods of the world in the desert of mortification, it releases the Virgin from her prison-tower and from its efforts to bind her to the world and the flesh.

The highest and last preparation of the soul itself in all this is the purification of its love. Love, which always directs the will, grows cold to the world and warmer towards God. Its face is always naturally turned toward God, but it gets diverted and confused by the things the senses show it. Now the darkness, this false sensuous light of the world, lifts. The soul moves by love as it always has. But now the love recovers its natural inward focus. It is re-conferred upon, placed into the hands of, the Virgin who has been waiting. It is time for her to stir in this love. She who has been asleep awakens. She calls to the Beloved and He is there.

Suddenly, however, the soul in that part of it built by human hands, which is never utterly without blemish, intervenes. The artificial and fostering elements of the soul that will die with the coming of the Christ because Christ supersedes them all are not yet dead but only diminished in power. They drew their power from the Virginal ground, but now that ground is occupied with Christ. The Moses/prophetic element, that has been leading the Soul and protecting the Virgin, at the last moment itself fears being displaced by the arrival of Christ. The world and the flesh whisper of this danger and strengthen the fear already residing in the Moses/prophetic element. Its fear is re-enforced by the possibility it is deluded and failing to live up to its responsibilities to protect the soul from its enemies. Thus, fear and temptation undermine and may even kill the love the soul has returned to the Virgin. The Beloved would vanish. The promised union lost. Thus, both Moses and the prophets, including Elijah in the form of John the Baptizer, must yield and die before the inner union can be consummated.

The Inner Temple, the Virgin, and Marriage

In the inner temple of the soul we find the Virgin who is betrothed from all time to God. She is destined to be the bride of the Holy Spirit and has only to accept that destiny. This spiritual betrothal and longing for the union of marriage, however, may get displaced into the earthly relationship between man and woman. Then the man acts out in the flesh or ego the role of the Holy Spirit, and the woman acts out the role of the Virgin. The marriage they anticipate between them and the children they hope to give birth to become false displacements of the Heavenly Marriage. The child they bring into the world is only a human child, but they give it the place belonging to the Divine Child or Christ.

This lower human union and birth is permitted, even when it is a spiritual displacement because of the weakness of the flesh and its inherent sinfulness, but only under certain conditions. One of them is that the earthly marriage must be for life; another is that it must be undertaken before God and remain in the service of God. Since it is a displacement of the true spiritual longings of the lonely but betrothed Virgin in the soul, it will eventually reveal its illusory quality in suffering and disillusionment. The loving energy of the married couple toward each other will dissipate, and anger, bitterness, and even hostility may replace them. The couple inspired for a time by the birth of a child whom they may falsely experience for a few hours, days, or years as a redeemer for their marriage and their lives, eventually grow disillusioned as the child develops into an ordinary, all-too-human, and sometimes troubled adolescent.

Staying in their marriage because of the oath “until death do us part” they took before God and living in this marriage under the rule of God, each partner through the help and support of the other can now turn in the spirit from each other to God. Each allows the Virgin within to move toward unity with the Holy Spirit. This is easy as long as their marriage in the flesh was instituted and practiced under God. Their souls then develop spiritually through the suffering and decline of their old, illusory relationship as they continued to live with one another and with their chidden in love and courage and kindness.

The man and the woman in the marriage that was based on displaced love but was designed, through the oaths and presence of God, outwardly to support their growth, awaken to parallel but opposite tasks. Each has different obstacles to reaching the inner marriage. For example, if one of them was playing the passive Virgin and the other, the Holy Spirit of God but both lack spiritual insight, each may try to acquire the spirit the other represents by clinging to the other’s body, or by melding with the image of the other, or by the trying to reverse roles with the other. Even if they avoid these derailments of spirit into the flesh and remain on the inner, spiritual path, they still find another obstacle. The woman whose outer role is like the Virgin within the soul would have an easy time knowing how to take on the Virginal attitude of spiritual passivity toward God. She, however, is less likely, exactly because she is emulating the Virgin in the flesh, to experience a strong desire to leave behind this fleshy imitation though she longs for her Heavenly Spouse. On the other hand, the poor man who is trying to act out the role of leader, the active Holy Spirit of God, in the flesh is driven hard to the spiritual passivity he lacks even in a fleshy imitation but cannot accept passivity because he believes it to be a weakness in a man. Moreover, he is likely, once he gives up his male aggressiveness, to become a woman in the flesh or ego by inverting his “sexuality.”

The earthly marriage is not the Heavenly marriage that all humans long for. The earthly infant is not the Holy Child that only the Spiritual Marriage gives birth to. The values of the earthly family are not the values of the Heavenly family. The earthly marriage, at its best, is a figure of, and a path to, the Holy marriage, but in no way can it ever replace the binding of two people in the flesh that comes only from God .

The great Apostle and Evangelist Paul wrote that marriage is permitted only because of the weakness of the flesh and the hardness of the heart and that it would be better not to be married. (1 Corinthians 7:9-36) This, obviously, does not mean that there is anything bad about a man and a woman committing themselves to live with each other, unite in the flesh, and raise children. What it does mean is that it would be better for them not to misplace their spiritual longing for a union with God and for the birth within of the Christ Child into the flesh of their earthly relationships. It also means that the irresistible drive humans usually feel to unite in the flesh and to give birth to new life is a displacement of the spiritual energy that should be directed to the inner marriage and the Holy birth. The flaw is not in the union of the flesh but in the displacement into the flesh of what belongs to God. The act is not wrong, the illusion is. But the flesh is weak and has illusions; therefore, marriage (the marriage of displaced love) is permitted but only under several conditions that will allow for the ending of illusion when the time is ripe.

It is understandable that those whose minds are confined to the material realm reverse the truth and see spiritual striving as a displacement of material and natural impulses. Their view from below is that those who are frustrated and psychologically abnormal are unable to fulfill themselves in physical love and so displace it in spiritual quests. They have much empirical evidence to support this, and it appears persuasive. For one thing, the language of spiritual union is similar to the worldly language of sexual union. Thus, they believe that a woman who is sexually frustrated gets “betrothed” to Christ and becomes a nun or that being a nun is a way of avoiding sexuality. Moreover, since all of us begin our lives lost in the flesh and so deceived as to the nature of our desires by the “reality” of the visible world that presses upon our senses and our minds, we are likely to have found our way to the spirit only after enduring actual frustration while trying to live in the flesh. Thus, the spiritual focus might seem the result of our failure. If our spiritual quest is successful, however, and we gain spiritual enlightenment, we will see things more clearly. From an enlightened standpoint alone is it obvious that the language that we use to define our involvement in material marriage and families was from the start and in the largest part a displacement of longings in the spiritual realm we had not yet realized were there. It then becomes clear that the outer arrangements and the outer language are only weak imitations of the inner possibilities and inner language.

The material mind that wants to believe that spirituality is a sign of failure is also reinforced in its error when it sees the many people who, out of frustration with life in the “real” world, turn to “spiritual” things as an escape from it. They, too, talk of love for God, spiritual marriage, and the birth of the Christ within. From the lower material level of knowledge, it is hard to distinguish true spirituality from fake, but there are distinguishing characteristics. One is that the escapists usually condemn the world instead of living in it and redeeming it. Moreover, where it rules in a soul, the false spirit can live only through imagination instead of actuality. It must have the pictures and images of God or specific words and stories that it enshrines in its heart that are all idolatries. The true Spirit and true Union are entirely unnameable.

The mind that remains embedded in the material realm of the senses and discursive reason can find all the evidence it needs to develop a false psychological theory of how pathologies of soul lead to the “abnormalities” of shifting what “naturally” belongs to the “real” material and sexual realm into an “illusory spiritual” realm. Only if that mind is willing to break out of its own prison under the pressures its own soul experiences as true when it lives the life of illusion in “the real world” does it have a chance of seeing that it has performed an intellectual inversion and committed an abominable perversion.

Grace and Truth

Once the virginal part of the soul has conceived and given birth to the Divine Child, the soul is still not safe. The Child brings grace and truth. Both virtues are now present in the bridal chamber that is the soul but the Divine Presence is yet a child. The soul may still not accept the salvation that the divine child brings. If not all its faculties have developed, it may accept only one side of the child, either grace or truth. Not accepted whole, the Child “departs” and the Virginal mother is left bereft and desolate with a sword piercing her heart.

The Child brings grace and truth. If the soul has grown in the works of faith and so has purified its faculty of understanding, it can accept the truth the child brings. Thus, it knows the Good by faith, which is the virtue of the understanding, but, because of a lack of will caused by retardation in love, it does not accept grace. It has sat and listened at the feet of Jesus like the Mary of the Martha-Mary story who does not continue to grow in love like the Mary of the Mary Magdalene story. This means it knows the good but does not love it. This lack of love undermines its ability to live what it knows. The ground grace has fallen upon is barren. (Luke 8:5-13; Matthew 13:3-21) The truth yields no living fruit. The Child “departs.”

On the other hand, the soul may be purified in its faculty of will. Its efforts have endowed it with higher love. In love, the will accepts the grace of inspiration the presence of the Child gives it. Because, like Mary Magdalene, it loves much, it is forgiven much. (Luke 7:47) It gains spirit and is about to sprout, but the birds of the sky come and swallow the seed of grace. This means that the soul, unpurified in the faculty of understanding, appropriates grace emotionally for the purposes of flights of the flesh. Limited in understanding and lacking in faith, it fails to recognize the truth that the energized will comes from God. It presumes, like Lucifer, that the grace belongs to it. It takes possession of grace instead of being possessed by it.

This is the foolishness of the betrayer of Jesus who eats at his table and takes the bread and wine from His hands and then turns his master over to His enemies. Judas, however, also illustrates the third and worst possible condition. Even after accepting the grace but turning it to his own fallen will, he finds that Christ remains with him and the spirit of truth grows strong enough in him that he realizes what he has done. Therefore, he represents the soul, developed both in understanding and in will, that separates the understanding from the will as the rope around the neck separates the head from the heart and the soul “dies.”

Judas’ failure of soul is, therefore, the failure of the soul’s faculty of memory. The fruit of the purification of this faculty is the virtue of hope. The spirit of grace and the spirit of truth can be received only together and in unity by a soul blessed with hope. We experience the energy of grace but know because of truth that this grace is neither our possession nor what we deserve. We cannot accept this dichotomy, the disruptive effects of possession that is not possession and a gift that is not deserved, without hope. Thus, after seeking, finding, and serving Christ, we betray Him. Instead of eternal salvation, we arrive at eternal condemnation.

The Divine Union in the soul between the Virgin and the Holy Spirit and the fruit of that union, which is the presence of the Divine Ruler–the Christ–in the soul, present the unprepared soul with its greatest danger. The love, stirred up prematurely in the Virgin awakens the Virgin to the love of the Lord. The Divine Love is the gift, the grace, that Divinely inspires the soul. The soul unprepared to contain such power because it is lacking in the virtue of the understanding, or faith, and the virtue of the memory, or hope, can be overwhelmed by it. What should bring eternal life brings death.

Because in each of us, the progress of the soul is bound to be uneven, we are likely to suffer when we advance in one of these three because of a lack in either or both of the other two. In few of us, however, are the other two entirely lacking. Therefore, in nearly every case the feeling of death is only a goad to develop the other two virtues. Even the worst case, however, where this arrival of the Spouse and the Child comes to an utterly unprepared house, need not end in catastrophe. Here the Communion of the saints, the community of those already blessed with Divine Union within, can sustain even the least developed soul. This Community, this wholly invisible communion of the saints, must never cut itself off from any of its members. It must withhold the keys to the kingdom from no one. Judas may cut himself off from the Community and die, but the Community must never cut itself off from him. If it does so, it is to its own death and condemnation. To cut itself off from the least soul is for it to decline, disintegrate, and start dying. It is the cursed and fruitless fig tree.

Chapter 15

The Virgin and Love

The Virgin

What attracts the love of the Virgin to the Lord and the love of the Lord to the Virgin is, of course, her virginity, her purity, her innocence. Whoever loves purely loves only the Lord. Purity, in turn, attracts the Lord and draws Him to the Virgin.

The image of the one who is the bride of love is an image of patient waiting. The soul’s withdrawal from the world, which is less its withdrawal from the world than the withdrawal of its love from the world, means that the soul has attained self-control and liberation. Love has returned to the inner Virgin. This virgin of love, who has never been touched by the world even as she has been led into it, has been covered with muddy earth. She herself has remained pure, but the soul has drained her love from her and has sent it out to the flesh and the world. As a consequence of its absorption in the world, the soul suffers first from illusion and then from disillusion.

Disillusion is more hopeful but also more dangerous to the soul than is illusion. The virgin’s energy is the energy of love. It is her dowry and what is owed her Husband. This energy the flesh (ego) and the world (society) steal. Even so, it remains the Virgin’s love. When something is stolen, it merely changes hands. It never belongs to the thief; it is never the thief’s property, and the thief cannot enjoy it. The thief is necessarily and inevitably disappointed with the false possession. This disillusion undermines the thief’s possession and use of love. The thief is dispossessed of the property that was never his to begin with even as it remains in his hands. Disillusion over the false fruits of love generates the despair wherein the spirit of love is lost. The spirit may temporarily return when the thief is seized by another illusion pursuing it too until it also falls. The soul can follow this cycle of spiritual incarnation and re-incarnation endlessly.

The danger of falling into this cycle accounts for the warning found in the Song of Songs against stirring up the Virgin’s love before its time. Love stirs prematurely when it is not yet enlightened by understanding. The soul still lacking enlightenment grows impatient and loses self-control and so it pursues illusions. It can regain patience and self-control after disillusion. But disillusion brings a great trap. It can lead to death without resurrection. A new illusion may give the soul a second chance to escape death, but without the preparation for the Beloved–unless love turns to Him in new-found patience and self-control of soul, the Beloved cannot approach. If the net of faith catches the soul that is plunging into disillusion, however, it can save the Virgin from the negative abyss of despair. Since faith is always a gift, it can arrive miraculously even at the moment of utter disillusion. Whether this unready Virgin, whose lamp is going out for want of oil will be prepared to accept the gift is another question. Should the words of hope, the good news, reach the hearing of the soul even while its eye is enslaved in disillusion, faith may come alive. Even these divinely-inspired words of faith, however, the soul can misread, degrade, and turn to flesh. It can find a new lover in the flesh and manufacture, using its own stunted faculties, an illusory image of the Beloved.

Under these spiritually dangerous conditions, the community of holy ones is invaluable. Since the Virgin of the soul is never alone and is never cut off from the community of souls–she is one with all virginity in infinity and eternity–she will hear other purified Virgins calling to her and can be sustained through the sound regardless of the condition she falls into. These prepared and holy Virgins cannot share the oil of their lamps with the unpurified, but they can share the light of those lamps. This enables the foolish Virgins opportunity to buy their own oil and find their own light and so be invited into the marriage feast with the Bridegroom within.

Communion

True union with God and union among members of the spiritual community can be based only on mutuality. The union of Christ with the Father is one of mutual indwelling: Christ dwells in the Father and the Father dwells in Him. The sacrament of Communion that joins the soul with God and every such soul with every other cannot be consummated unless the faithful feed Christ as well as accept being fed by the Holy Spirit through Christ.

This mutuality is the miracle of Communion. It is a spiritual union, of course, but still a union of mutuality. Christ offers Himself as a channel of food for our spirit. We receive Him. This is not yet Communion. Communion happens only when Christ finds in us a willing spirit that He can feed off. The soul must be prepared for the divine union within so it can give as well as receive. Not to be prepared is to receive Christ unworthily. To receive Christ unworthily is to receive Christ not at all.

That we are worthy does not mean that we are sinless. No one is sinless and so all would be unworthy were sin the barometer of worthiness. To be worthy, the sinner must be forgiven the sin. The essential movement of the soul into forgiveness is within it; the Virgin withdraws love from the flesh after recognizing its contaminating influence. Then Christ Himself feeds the soul of the Holy Spirit and, in feeding it, renders it pure. There is naturally a needed preparation before feeding through Christ–a repentance or turning away from the world–but no other preparation the faithful can make is ever adequate in itself to achieve the state of forgiveness. No gift is worthy of the Father except the Lamb. The taking in of the flesh of the Lamb transforms the Virgin. Only thus does she become a worthy gift of food for the Lord only then.

Still further, the soul must release the Virgin and offer Her to the Lord. It must not seek to suck the blessings of the Holy Spirit Christ showers down upon Her and drain them off into the flesh and into the world. This does not mean that the flesh and the world are not blessed and redeemed by the divine union but only that neither can command for itself the use of the spiritual gift. Instead, the soul and, through the soul, the flesh and the world are ruled by the union.

The Communion of the Saints

Just as the union of the Virgin and the Lord is perfect so also is the union of all who have been perfected in that Union. As our love of God is fulfilled only in the soul’s Union with God so also our love of each other is fulfilled only in the light of the Divine Union. It is toward this ultimate, indissoluble, unconditional, and most intimate union that our love for each other draws us.

The Communion of mutual love among mortals requires no more equality between those who share in it than the Union with God requires equality between us and God. Human communion does, however, require mutuality in spirit. Those seeking admission to the community in love must prepare themselves to be worthy of this spiritual union. In each, the Virginal element in the soul must be detached from the flesh and the world.

The inequalities that are rendered superfluous and so overlooked and overcome are not only in the flesh but also the spirit. A soul may be more or less spiritually developed. This means its faculties such as the understanding may be more of the spirit and less of the senses in one person than another. One soul may be more spiritually perfect than another. This inequality is, however, irrelevant. Regardless of the soul’s level of development, the Virgin within can withdraw from the fleshy involvements of its faculties. Thus, while it is to be expected that the more spiritually developed will lead the flock in its movement toward mutual communing, this is not inevitable. Leadership, moreover, does not mean leadership in the social sense but in the spiritual sense that requires no visible expression. Any soul can lead should it enter into purity since purification is a grace and a gift. It may come to the soul that had been least perfect up until the moment of this grace. Moreover, there must be a mutual feeding. All who come to be fed by others and not to feed them in turn–to be spiritually nourished and not to nourish from the spiritual virginity within the soul–delude themselves and damage the communion. They have sought communion unworthily.

Soul

Despite the Divine Union, the soul, as long as it lives on earth, cannot be at peace. It dwells with the Lord of Heaven, but it is still also on earth. Its Virgin is of Heaven, but its flesh is of earth. With one eye it sees the timeless and eternal; with the other, it sees time. Thus, all of its faculties are divided in two. The understanding dwells in Heavenly knowledge or faith but a faith that is still proved and tested by earthly knowledge. The soul’s memory dwells in hope, but the world tempts it to despair. Its will dwells in love, the bond of union with God, but the flesh turns and tempts that love to depart from God.

The Divine Union is a spiritual union. We, however, are both spirit and body. Our union with God is not complete. The Virgin and the King marry, but the Virgin and the Child born to the Virgin only rule over the soul and the flesh. Neither the soul nor the flesh disappears. We remain united with God only as long as we remain in the spirit. We remain so only as long as the body is subordinated to the spirit. Then and only then is our world saved and redeemed.

Likewise, it is only in the spirit of love that we are one with our brothers and sisters. When we are in the spirit and the spirit is in God and God is in it, then we are united with them. Then, too, the faculties of our souls are one–one in faith, one in hope, one in love. Therefore, one understanding, one memory, one will. Nevertheless, since each soul is still connected to a different body and its senses, neither our souls nor our bodies are one. The souls and the bodies are connected and united but only in the spirit and only as long as all remain in the spirit and the spirit remains in holiness.

The final stumbling block for those who long for the union of Divine and human in love is that they think that the union they seek is in the soul and in the flesh. Still under the influence of the powers of darkness, they seek the mate of their soul (the soul-mate) or of their body (flesh-mate). They do not anticipate the spiritual union. They cannot know its nature until they attain it. Even when it comes they may miss it. They lose it at exactly the moment when it is about to arrive because they blink. Their eye drifts to focus upon the separation that remains of the soul and of the flesh and they falter. They are disappointed. They lose hope, faith, and love.

This fall from grace is all the more precipitous because they fail to remember that the process of moving to Divine union and living in the spirit demands a sword that divides the soul and flesh. The higher the development of spiritual union with God, the sharper the break between the soul and the flesh. Those dwelling still in the flesh turn away from those dwelling in the spirit. Everyone abandons them though not everyone to the same degree. Some merely leave. Others denounce them. Still others seek to destroy them in the soul and in the flesh. For those seeking union with the Divine, this abandonment is their severest test. It is a perpetual martyrdom and the inner meaning of all martyrdom. Passing though this temptation alone allows the Virgin to reach full Union with God.

On the other hand, should we survive this final temptation, achieve Union with the Divine in spirit, allow spirit to rule our souls and our souls to rule our flesh, then perfected love flows from us to all. No matter that they abandon us and seek to take our lives. We love them with a supernatural love. We are united to them though they are divided from us, saint and sinner joined in perpetual embrace. No force on earth can defeat this love. What God joins together, no human can ever separate.

Flesh

With the inner birth of the Christ, the new ruler and judge of good in the world, the soul is transformed. The transformation, while sudden, is not yet complete. This is because the senses continue to enfold the soul in a flesh and a world that floods it with information that opposes what the transformed intelligence knows. We still experience ourselves as “flesh” (or as an “ego-identity” such as “man” or “woman”) and the world as a realm of realities and goods (things we see as “real” and as “good”). Because of the power of the senses, the resurrection of the flesh and the redemption of the world through the Christ can happen only with the subsequent purification of the senses themselves.

Spirit still gets trapped by, and lost in, both the flesh and the world. This is because the senses automatically confuse the material realities they see with the spiritual. This happens through the medium of words. Thus, there is a difference between my looking down at my body and seeing a male sex organ, on the one hand, and judging, on the other, that I am a “man.” (There is a spiritual error even in perceiving the sex organ, but let us ignore it for the sake of illustration). When I identify myself as a “man,” I invest spiritual qualities in the material flesh. Because the name “man” has symbolic meanings to me other than “a human being who has a male sex organ,” it draws energy and spirit into itself and draws my energy and spirit to behave in a certain way in life. I live as a man because I “am” a man. This manhood I never see with my eyes. It is a set of attributes grafted from my spirit to what I see with my eye.

When you eat a slice of pizza, you say “This is good.” You conclude that, because it has a certain effect on your mouth and nervous system, it is good. The taste pleases you or is pleasant, and so you say, “It is good.” In saying this, you attribute spiritual qualities of goodness to a material object. Obviously, you may gain some elements of goodness from eating the pizza, but the pizza itself is not therefore good. Moreover, you can be in a physical condition of ill-health where eating pizza makes you sick. You then experience a “bad” in relation to pizza. Moreover, the pleasant taste in the beginning may be only an illusion of good while the pizza is actually poisoning you.

Both these examples, one of a false identity and the other of a false “good” we identify with, are only symptoms of the problem the soul faces. The soul needs to detach itself from the flesh and the world, and it can do this only by transforming the operations of the senses themselves. This transformation can take long. First, the spirit begins to withdraw from the senses. It sees less and less value in things before finally it transcends them. Reason can start this withdrawal. We reflect on how deluded and confused our formerly confident perceptions of ourselves and of goods in the world were and are. This insight is enormously unsettling. Few can sustain the demands of holding on to it for long in the beginning. All we experience then is loss–ego and the world. We seem to be worth nothing and the world worth less. This persists as long as old material “names” continue to drive our spirit. We see “food” and the spiritual meaning “good” arises in the sight, but then Reason deflates the spirit. We see ourselves as “real men,” but Reason deflates the value of the self-image.

Our natural reaction to the deflation is to seek other identities or other “good” things. But, once in the grip of the spirit of truth, Reason eventually disposes of them. It leads us to the point of desperation. This darkening of our senses is the pre-condition for the final phase in their transformation. Those who saw and heard and spoke first grow blind, deaf, and dumb. Now the Christ comes–the living Word. He shows us we could not see, hear, or speak only because the senses were blocked by old words that are inadequate for the spirit. First, he blocks out eye with mud and our ears with his finger. He spits from his mouth the word that has blocked our ears. The act of blocking the old words, opens the senses to work through the new Word.

Carrying with us the Divine name (God) and names for the Divine presences (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), our senses are gradually changed. Through using spiritual names, they begin to hear and see in the spirit. Our eyes may still sense the geometric harmony and material beauty in another person’s face but only dispassionately and without excessive spirit. We can recognize these attributes, but they do not, therefore, move us. We feel we have lost our entire emotional life. Beyond this, because we now see also with our eyes the beauty or ugliness of the soul of the other, we are moved by Divine love and, if the soul is beautiful, by divine beauty. This is our new sensuous and emotional life, but it is not easy to recognize it as such at first because it is so different from our former sensuous and emotional life.

Only after this happens is our flesh resurrected. We now identify with an ego guarded by the spirit united with God. Our joy in ourselves is great. Moreover, our new ability to see spiritually redeems the visible world. Our new vision and the actions it inspires in us rescue the world from illusion and return it to truth. We see it as it is and for what it is. We now know it all participates in God.

CONCLUSIONS

Chapter 16

Final Fear

There is a last inner barrier facing those who seek the union with God that brings integrity to the soul. In meditation we removed the chaff from covering the wheat seed and the skins from the grapes, then we ground the wheat and pressed the grapes; in contemplation at last we placed our purified soul into Heaven’s hands. Now we feel a new kind of fear, and we must conquer it before we can eat the bread and drink the wine and reach our goal of spiritual transformation. Only then will we acquire new spiritual senses and new spiritual emotions. It is a strange fear whose quality is very different from the fear we felt before when our ego was threatened by spiritual progress and a quality that does not yet reflect the higher emotional life still ahead of us. This fear can keep us from accepting the divine presence. When in its powerful grip, we are paralyzed. Final fear has two faces–one looks upward and the other downward.

The downward face of final fear is the apprehension we feel when we see what the arrival of God starts doing to our life on earth. Certain blessings and encouragements that sustained our upward movement dry up. Until the last phases of growth, the movement towards God is a turning away from the world and the flesh. The heart shifts direction upward and moves above and beyond these illusions. The intellect, will, and memory turn from the finite to the infinite. We still are alive, however, and we still live in the flesh. Our souls feel the loss and dying as a liberation. We have progressed up to the very gates of Heaven, but we could do this only by facing the suffering of conflicts in the flesh and the world and by transcending them. The mortifying activity of the flesh completes its job; flesh kills flesh and achieves its death at its own hand. Now, there is nothing more to say or do and yet the gates of Heaven remain locked. We experience the loss of everything and a gain of nothing.

The last step on the ladder to God is one we cannot take. We depend utterly on God to make this movement for us and raise us up as God elevated the Virgin Mary to Heaven. The last step is not another detachment from the earth of the sort we have taken pride in making and that was accompanied by the exhilaration of liberation. It is instead a new “attachment.” The last step is the world’s return to us and our return to the world. The final positive movement, this raising up, redeems the world for us so we begin to rejoice not in losing it but in recovering it. All we had lost through our own efforts and had to give up we gain back in glory. Since this is the opposite of the detaching process that has taken us so close to the divine, we doubt and falter. God is raising us up, but we feel it as our falling back into the world. This frigid feeling casts us into rigidity. The muscles in our foot contract and will not move it to the last rung on the ladder. The muscular contraction closes us off from God. It is a spasm of the flesh or ego and so an assertion of the flesh instead of the saving surrender of the flesh necessary for the union with God. Fear, which when we started our quest was of losing the world, reverses itself in the end. We had conquered the fear of loss and were comforted by the ecstasy of liberation. Confronted by the experience of regaining the world in God, we now cringe at the sight of God’s gift of the redeemed world. This fear chills our love and our ability to receive the love of God. We would be lost were it not for the faith and grace that can get us through this crisis.

The other face of final fear comes not when we look down to the earth we are receiving back but when we look upward and begin to see the face of God for the first time. Then we fear because of our unworthiness before the Divine. We know we are not worthy of the goodness and joy that God bestows on us. Of course, we are not. No one ever is. These are gifts of God’s love, freely given as gifts must be. We do not get them because we deserve them. If we did, they would not be gifts but payments for our achievements. They would be something we deserve instead of something we are given–human rewards not Divine blessings. The starving ego normally resents gifts when it needs them to survive, and it even more resents the giver who gives the gifts its life depends upon. It eats the food and then raises its heal against the One who provides it. (John 13:18; Psalm 41:10)

In this sense of unworthiness we see echoed that of Adam when, after eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God seeks him out. But Adam is hiding. When God asks him why, Adam replies that he is naked. God says, “Who told you you were naked? You have eaten then of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat.” (Genesis 3:10-11) At the highest point before the final step in contemplation we retrace Adam’s fall. Just as he recognized that he had no clothing and the mask of ego/flesh no longer concealed him, so now do we. All of what is called ego or flesh and that covers the soul and that Adam and we develop living in the world outside the garden to hide like Adam, our lost innocence, we now lose. For the first time we stand naked before God. Having given up everything of the flesh, we are nothing. There is no attractiveness to our souls. We are afraid.

This fear is founded on a special form of false humility. It is very different from all those that preceded it. Other sorts of humility are false because they are fake and a show. We parade our humility before ourselves and others to prove it is there. We take pride in that we are more humble than anyone else. These kinds of humility are false, even when honest, because they are humility in the face of others instead of humility before God. In ordinary honest but false humility we bow to other human beings; in true humility we bow only to God. The final false humility, however, is genuine. It is both honest and before God. It is false not because it is fake and misdirected but because it is faulty and flawed.

Because this is a humility not before others or ourselves but before God, it is pure and complete. Humility before others is always relative; humility before God is absolute. Here we are aware of the absolute abyss that separates our earth-bound lowliness and ignorance from divine and heavenly heights and wisdom. The mere recognition of our lowness distinguishes between ourselves and God. This keeps God at a distance and keeps Him from drawing closer. The flaw in this humility is not in our awareness of how inferior we are. We are inferior. To recognize that we are would not be a fault. Instead, the flaw is our blocking of an equally true and balancing understanding of our place in the universe.

The sense of lowliness that causes fear when we experience God approaching we can overcome if we keep in mind our two-fold nature. We all have the spark of divine life within us. It is not us, but it is ours by birthright. All our efforts have helped that divine spark to glow and burn more brightly. God comes to us now not to earthly ego but as divine flame comes to divine ember. This coming of God is a second coming. It is God’s uniting with God. We were created in the image of God, and we have corrected the corruption in ego that grows in all of us and distorts and diverts us from achieving the likeness of God. Even original sin is never strong enough to destroy the image of God within us that preserves our dignity and gives us always a claim to the respect of others no matter what else we do or become. What we lost in that great sin was our ability to live like God, creatively representing the Good in our limited lives. Now the Virgin within has given birth to the Christ Child and the Christ Child has grown in wisdom and strength. Now the love of God descends to unite with itself in the form of Christ and through the Holy Spirit. Consequently, a new life has become possible, a life led in the creative likeness of God. This life is creative life–the life of a creator instead of a mere creature. The genuine humility that is honest and before God is also the humility of ego before the divine and virginal ember glowing within. The ego must first humble itself before what appears as the youngest, poorest, and most virginal element within it. Then accepting that purified element as the divine ember it is, we as divine face the Divine. Immediately, God descends to transform its life.

The ultimate aspect of final fear hits only after we surrender and in dignity receive the riches of Spirit. Then fairly bursting with light and flame, God may plunge us into what feels like utter darkness and coldness. Paradoxically, the light and warmth are still within us, but we have no ability to gain access to them in life We can feel utterly abandoned forsaken. This condition is a final gift from God and is proof of God’s presence.

The power we had been given is a great danger to us and made us a great danger to others. It is a Divine power, but it can fall into the hands of demonic elements. If our soul is less than perfect, our minds not freed from conventional human reasoning, this imperfection can make us vulnerable to deceptions about good and bad in the world. Then all the energy and spirit from above we can derail into demonic activities in defense of what we judge to be right when it is not right or wrong when it is not wrong. Since all things in the world and all actions others perform are mixtures of bad and good, unless our powers of discriminating in each of them between the good and bad are perfected, we can, under the influence of the agent of illusion, exaggerate either the bad or the good. Then the glorious divine spirit we receive we will direct in demonic ways. This is why God will keep our egos from accessing the spirit–from seeing any good or bad in the world that can excite our magnificent spiritual gift. Thus, we will experience an utter death of spirit exactly when our treasury of spirit is richest. Spirit is there in abundance, but a final gift of God prevents us from access to it until we grow more perfect in understanding. If we persist in faith that all this is still from God and a sign of God’s presence within us and so conquer our fear, then the promise of union will be fulfilled.

We receive as our inheritance at the end of our journey to the top of the mountain not only God but the whole earth and our own bodies. Our joy is no longer in the infinite as a refuge from the finite. The joy now is in the finite through the power of the infinite. The rupture of heaven and earth is sealed, the wound healed, the union annealed.

Chapter 17

Universality, Unity, & Redemption

Human flesh God created from the mud of the earth. In the flesh, therefore, we, like mud, are both multiple or composite and universal. The mud of the earth represents the composite of all things in the universe. There is nothing in the universe that is a stranger to us because there is no element of it that is not a part of our flesh. All are elements within us. We are at home in the flesh everywhere. Not only are we at home but also, once we give it its proper name, the form or essential character of everything from stone to sparrow we now make our form. We fulfill our universal character endlessly as we learn to fly like birds and live under water like fish and travel to other planets like light itself. We are universal and so we have liberty beyond that of every creature; we fulfill our universality through the use of our intellect. We learn about the universe and we learn to live according to the universe of forms.

The problem is that while all the elements of the universe are united in us, our powers of knowledge are limited. Therefore, as we fulfill ourselves in studying each fragment we find in the universe, we can at best know only a few parts of it slightly and only one well. In living from that form, we ourselves become fragments and fragmented. Each one thing in the universe we seek to understand and use or live from grows alien to every other. Thus we disintegrate and thus tensions and conflict arise within us and among us. The growth in human power and liberty is a growth that belongs to the human race as a whole. It is general humanity and not each individual that grows in this universal fulfillment. All of us find ourselves more and more subordinated to the human universe of difference and diversity. Our fate, therefore, is both fragmentation within and conflict and oppression from without as the human community grows in specialization of function and the consequent mutual helpless dependency. As we pursue the fulfillment of our composite and universal nature in this way, we decline and die.

We humans are, however, more than mud. We are more than a mere coinciding of the totality of opposing forces of the universe. The mind that captures all the elements and forms of the universe reflects only the lower half of what we are. Beyond our universal matter and form, we are alive, and we move ourselves. We gained this life and motion when God breathed His breath into the muddy figure He had fashioned out of clay. This breath of God within us is what is immortal in our soul. It is from God directly without any intermediary from the universe of created things. Nothing separates or ever can separate our souls from God–from either God’s love for us or our love for God. This love rests in us as spirit. By virtue of the spirit, we who are universal transcend the universe.

Three Descents of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit that transcends the universe descends into our souls on three occasions. The first is when God breaths the breath of life into us at our creation. This breath is our spirit. It is a share of God’s Spirit and is God’s permanent presence in us. This is the spirit that moves us and is ours but is also God’s and is never separated from God. God is the source or Father of our spirit, our, souls, and our lives.

However, living in the universe, we claim the spirit as our possession, and living according to the flesh and the senses, we appropriate this spirit for our ego and for the world. We remove it from its proper realm, which is above the universe, and instead place it in the various points of the universe we are in at the moment. We take the inner wealth we have been given, our daily and Heavenly bread, and waste it as prodigal sons who are constantly spending our Heavenly inheritance and so incurring debts from God or trespassing against God.

The Holy Spirit descends a second time. That part of the soul that receives and holds the first breath of life was never destroyed through our dissipation in the ego and the world. She remains the Virgin of pure love, hidden from the ego, waiting and longing for the Lord who gave her life. She is never persuaded that the goods of ego and world–the goods of the senses–are true, but she knows no other. To this Virgin the Holy Spirit descends and she becomes the mother in the soul to the birth of the Savior. She is blessed and honored above all other loves in the soul.

The fruit of her womb is fully human and fully divine. He is the second Adam who must, like the first, be tested. He will choose which side of his understanding will rule: the word or discourse that is logical or the Word or Discourse that is metalogical and mythic. He must choose one or the other: the human or the divine. Choosing the human, he would remain, like the old Adam lost in time and place, in error, illusion, and conflict. Only the proper choice brings the proper order to life–the choice where the divine rules the human. Like Mary, this fruit of her womb is also blessed. Choosing the Divine is never easy, but if He passes through all the obstacles and tests and chooses correctly, then the Holy Spirit descends a third time. This third descent happens in Jesus’ Baptism where he is accepted as the Son of God and recognized as the second person of the Trinity. When the third descent comes to us, it bridges the gap between the Son and the Father, between our lives in the world to which we are sent and the original Source that sent us. This bridge is the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The third descent of the Holy Spirit comes to Christ when he is Baptized; it comes to us in our Pentecost.

For us the, the Holy Spirit descends to the Virgin to fertilize the embryonic Jesus who is fully present only in and through the Eucharist and descends as the permanent presence unifying the Son who now dwells with the Father in our Confirmation. Thus strengthened, we, like Jesus, can survive the three temptations of the desert.

Eternal love

From the very first breath of Spirit, we are forever united to God in love. The love of God has no end. The soul loves God so much, it hastens to do His will on earth. As it hurries in service to the Good in the limited realm of the world, however, it falls and suffers. God loves it only more because of the suffering it endures for His sake. God’s love does not change now; God has known in all eternity that the fall will happen to us as we live in time. Moreover, God is unchanging, neither increasing in love or decreasing in it. But the soul suffers. It suffers because in its fallen state it cannot serve God and it cannot arise from its fall. The fall does not anger God for that would involve another change in the Unchanging, though the soul may feel anger because of its state. If only the soul were not sorely tempted to seek to escape the pit it has fallen into by relying on its own devices. The fall has not only caused pain but has addled the faculties of understanding. Thus, the more the soul tries to raise itself the deeper it tumbles. The soul must wait patiently for God to raise it up. And this God will do. It waits in faith and hope and love until it is redeemed in God’s love.

We say “forgive us our trespasses” instead of “forgive our trespasses” because God does not need to forgive what He does not blame. We are blameworthy for the flaw that leads us to fall, but God does not blame us. Not blaming us, He does not need to forgive us. Moreover, if He “forgave our temptations,” it would mean He changed. Still, we feel the forgiveness of God. This is the forgiveness God gives us. Thus, we pray “forgive us” or “forgive for us” our trespasses because, alone, we cannot forgive ourselves. The forgiveness is an operation that happens in us when we turn our gaze back from our suffering and fallen state to God who is constant in His love.

It is the soul that can join together the diverse and otherwise fragmenting elements of the universe in us. It is the soul in its unalterable union with God that integrates and unifies our lives in this diversity of the universe. By our flesh we are at liberty in the universe. This means, however, only that we have or can have power over everything in the universe including our own bodies since they are only composites of the elements of nature. Liberty, however, is not true freedom. Liberty is only an increase in our options; it does not free our choices. If we pursue liberty as if it were the same as freedom or if we live under the delusion that each increase in liberty brings us closer to freedom then our illusion drives us to conquer the universe to gain more options or ourselves but, in the process, we fragment and destroy ourselves, lose our souls, and so lose our lives.

The sin that leads us in this catastrophic direction is belief in the redemptive power of the flesh–belief, in other words, that the Good we seek is to be found in our works upon the universe and in our success in pursuing them. When our souls get absorbed in the flesh and the world, they forget God. They forget the source of unity and life in the diversity of the elements. Then they bring disunity and death in their very successes. One example of this deadly sin is to struggle inspired by competition, for success in competition is a way we delude ourselves into seeing God in worldly works.

Our flesh inevitably draws us outward and downward and into the fragmentation of the world or universe. Our souls alone draw us inward and upward. It is inevitable that we fall–maybe seven times a day. It is necessary that we allow ourselves to be picked up by the love we bear for God and God bears for us. The flesh can save the world no more than it can save itself. Through the soul and through the divine birth within it, the flesh can be saved and the fragmentation and conflict of the world redeemed.

The world always looks like it is falling apart as the flesh is constantly decaying. Human flesh, like the universe, preserves itself but only by constantly new generation. Human life is immortal but only in the general or only as the human race. Each human life is eternal but only in the soul and in God. To seek the eternal in the merely immortal is a great mistake. It destroys both soul and flesh.

Chapter 18

The Flesh, the World, and the

Contemplative State

We reach the contemplative state when the Good itself has taken up residence in our souls. The redeeming Child has been born, raised up by the Virgin, and in turn raising up the Virgin from mortal Mother to immortal Magdalene. The soul lives in the faith found in its understanding, the hope residing in its memory, and the love ruling its will. Since all its faculties now direct themselves to God, it lives an interior life. Nevertheless, the contemplative person acts in the world and may live like anyone else. The birth of the Divine Child to the Virgin Mother within is not the culmination of spiritual growth. It is not the end of contemplation but, in a certain sense, only its beginning. Once it happens, we must return to life in the world. Guided by the Divine Presence within, energized by the Holy Spirit the Child brings, and so connected permanently to the Father above, we live. As we do so we move from lower glory to higher glory, but always we are filled with glory to the top of our capacity. In this kind of living, our capacity to contain, hold and cherish the Divine Presence increases, and we can partake in more and more of the glory. This is the life of integrity and sanctity. It is the fulfillment of the promise of integrative studies that move from obedience to the disciplines of Law through the active passivity of meditation to the passive activity of contemplation.

Human life is double. The soul is not the human being but only that element of the human being that carries knowledge of and contact with the Good. The soul is the directing and guiding element of the person. It leads us to and through things in the visible world. All that it knows through the senses, however, is at best a mixture of good and non-good. This is understandable even purely philosophically. It does not take faith to understand that there is no thing we see that is so good that it has no disadvantages. Even the visible thing that is perfect exists in time and in time loses its perfection and dies. The soul’s great task is not simply to single out goods in the world but to discover the standard by which it can judge the relative value of all those goods the senses present to it.

The soul is thus the master and measurer of all things. Its measuring capacities are, however, only as good as the quality of the standard of measurement it has and uses. The grocer who measures out apples by weight on a scale is only as able at his task as his honesty and the scale allow. Similarly, there are two qualities the soul must possess to be a successful measurer. It must be honest, and it must possess accurate standards.

The soul’s “honesty” is the foundation of the whole body of its virtues. The soul that is honest with itself sees itself clearly, admits what it truly is, and so will be humble. The soul that is honest knows it longs for a goodness it does not possess. The soul that is honest, admits that it not only does not possess a good it longs for but that the good it longs for it does not understand. It admits its ignorance and bravely struggles for more wisdom.

The scale or standard it uses to measure the value of what it sees and seeks is beyond it. Just as the principle of weight or gravity that allows for the existence of a scale is timeless and beyond the scale, so is the standard, ruler, measure of good eternal and beyond the soul. The soul can seek to find the standard, but it does not create it. This standard is the Good itself or God. Since it is wholly inner and eternal, it comes to the honest soul as a gift. It remains only as long as the soul remains receptive to the inner and eternal.

Like everyone else, the person in a contemplative state has flesh. We are all spirits but we are incarnated spirits. The “flesh” the spirit gets incarnated into is the “ego.” It is not the natural “body” but the body we create as a product ultimately of our senses. We must avoid falling into the grotesque error of thinking that “incarnation” means putting spirit into the natural body. Instead, it means putting spirit into what we identify as ourselves in the world and what we call the “ego.” Ego is the self we build by “looking.” It arises from what we see not merely directly when we look at our bodies with our eyes or feel with our other senses but also indirectly. The indirect sensuous foundation of our egos includes all the impressions we gather of our relations with other people and other things in the world. It comprises all the “roles” or patterns of acting we find there that we then identify with as well as of all the “things” we invest with value such as houses and cars. The “flesh” is constituted both of the body we see and feel and of the whole series of roles and objects we witness ourselves participating in. When we identify ourselves with the visible body and roles and things, we create our ego.

The “flesh” guides our behavior toward an interaction with the sensuous world. From the point of view of the soul, however, the flesh is not master but servant. The ego is born both of the soul and of the world. It is established as the intermediary between them and is derived from the contact of the senses with the world. The ego, therefore, orients itself to the world to acquire there what the standard of Good in the soul indicates is better and to avoid what the soul judges to be worse. The soul loves its flesh as the master loves a good and necessary servant.

Because the ego is born of the world and not just of the soul, however, it can become attached to the world. This happens when it allows itself to be guided by the standards of the world instead of by the eternal standard. These standards are sensuous pleasure, reputation and success. This misguidance is nearly inevitable to the soul that is undeveloped in its understanding of the eternal Good it longs for naturally from birth. In its ignorance, it can easily mistake a good in the world and one presented to it through its senses for an eternal Good. By doing so, it deifies that thing in the world and in the deception acquires enormous spirit to pursue that thing. It falls into idolatry. Honesty, however, provides the soul with a corrective for its error. For example, once it possesses the thing it has deified, it will find it is not eternal. Moreover, eventually it will also see that nothing in the world as presented through the senses is eternal either. This honesty allows the soul to detach itself from the illusion that things are what it wants. Honesty, however, does not itself illumine the soul with knowledge of the eternal Good. The honest soul, without help from above through hearing words and receiving aid from others, can get lost and fall into despair.

Challenges also come to the soul from the flesh through another channel. The ego is of the world as well as of the soul. As one of the two parents of the ego, the world makes claims on its child. Both other individuals and social organizations in the world have their own standards that are not necessarily of the spirit. Social organizations should be designed to serve the spirit and eternal goods but nearly always at least some part of them serves their own goods. Educational organizations–schools–should serve the care and eternal goodness of each soul and particularly the timeless good of “truth.” Then they prepare the soul to live in the world. Instead, however, they can be designed to serve the material prosperity of the larger society and do nothing but train children and young adults, the way dogs are trained, to learn how to serve corrupt businesses whose god is money. Or, even more malignantly, schools may devote themselves to serving their own material perpetuation. Their leaders can run them for the sake of the school itself and for the sake of the functionaries within it instead of for the transcending good it is designed to serve. Then the schools evaluate children by “tests” that the schools themselves devised. Schools do need to serve the good of the larger society they are a part of. They do this, however, only by serving the true Good of the larger society and not is partial and displaced distortion of the good. The larger society must serve the eternal good not the physical and time-bound goods of its material order. Leaders of educational institutions must always battle two forces of corruption: the larger society that demands that the school serve its economic goals and the educational organization that seeks to perpetuate itself for its own sake. Only transcendent goods are proper to human organization. Any other standard is appropriate only for sheep or dogs.

Once in the contemplative state, we love our flesh because it is our good and necessary servant. This is so although it never fully escapes the temptation to betray us because it is partly born of the material world. However, as long as the soul itself is pure and filled with divine wisdom, the flesh becomes gentle and cooperative. Once the soul develops, the flesh recognizes the soul’s natural superiority. Before then, the soul was superior to the ego only by nature; it was inferior in its undeveloped condition. But now the flesh recognizes the soul’s actual superiority because, developed, the soul is so obviously above it. Moreover, now enlightened by the wisdom the developed soul brings it, the ego sees the falseness the claim the visible world makes that it is or contains the transcendent and timeless good. Before this enlightenment, the world, the larger society and its realities, appeared not only more powerful but higher in goodness than the soul and the ego. Now the person, soul and flesh together, attains its dignity and superiority to the immense universe around them that otherwise overwhelms and oppresses it. Through the presence of God in the contemplative soul, the flesh is resurrected. It is raised above all that is material however immense.

It is obvious that the perfect state of contemplation is a purified state. It is less obvious that this purified state exists to live in the world. Only when we are living in the world, not withdrawn from it, is the final perfection of purity certain. Otherwise, it may exist as an illusion produced by the temporary absence of temptation.

Nowhere is the level of transformation that takes place in contemplation clearer than in where we love. Whenever love appears and in whatever form it comes, it is always from God and only for God. God is found in love itself. Before the final stage of perfection, we experience love always for some object. It makes no difference what we call this object. It can be a material thing such as a new house; it can be another person such as a beloved spouse; or it can even be a mental object we believe is “god.” These objects all have something in common: they are all products of our imagination. The new house we see is only partly what is there; what we see is always a relationship between another thing or another person and ourselves, and most of this relationship we imagine. It is nearly entirely imagined in so far as we see the new house as “good.” The person we love is not who is in front of us but always partly from the imagination and projected into what is in front of us. Even the “god” we “love” whom we have never seen with our outer senses may still a product of our physical and spiritual imagination.

All Love is from God

The path to God culminates in the ending of all images of God. It is a return to the energy of love itself. All this energy or spirit belongs to, and originally comes to us from, God who shares it with us. This means we do not and cannot love except where we apprehend goodness. Thus, God (the complete and holy Good) motivates and energizes all love. God is its origin. We have no choice in the directing of our love. The only issue is whether we actually know the Good or merely imagine it. As we grow familiar with the reality of the object we imagined and imagined we loved (other things, other people, gods), the imagination detaches from it and our energy towards it fades. It feels as if our love were dying when it is only withdrawing from illusory objects. Even the images that we projected onto objects–the images that stimulated our love–do not stimulate our love by themselves once we recognize them as images. Love is commanded only by the real and living God.

Two of the greatest illusions of the love of God resides in our romantic “love” and our “friendships.” We may fall in love with others of the opposite sex because, since they are our polar complement, they stimulate when they are with us the image of unity and wholeness. It is this appearance that draw out the energy of love because it imitates the unity of God. God is good united. God is one. Our joy in the presence of the other as other, however, depends upon preserving the polarity and keeping the soul of the other merely half developed. Only then do we receive great pleasure when we unite with it. Thus, to sustain itself the love must also sustain the illusion and it sustains the illusion only by continual violence: the illusion produced by outer unity maintains itself by the violence of inner division, disunion, and disharmony.

Friendship, before it is redeemed by the perfection of contemplation, is also violent. Unredeemed friendship is not friendship at all but actually “comradeship.” Comradeship is generated by having the same position in life as someone else. Only people whose egos are alike can be comrades. Such false “friendship” is only an equality in confinement or a shared prison where in each “friend” the ego violates and oppresses the soul. The clearest example of this violent “unity” is the relationship of “comrades-in-arms,” or fellow soldiers, but it is so also obvious in “team players” in sport and business. This inward violence extends outward since to pursue our “love” in this false friendship, we must force our comrade to confine his life to his ego/role. Moreover, this comradeship requires hostility toward, and so violence to, everyone outside the team. Finally, acts of open or concealed violence done to these “outsiders” generate emotional feelings of divine power among the violent that falsely emulate the omnipotence of God.

The very craving for carnal contact in romantic love is driven by the divine image of absolute unity or oneness. The very drive to make others and myself the same in a group and to distinguish ourselves from all outsiders is only an empty simulation of the unity the whole human race would have once it found God.

All Love is for God

Under the state of contemplation, our love is for others as for ourselves. This love is universal and excludes no one. The knowledge of the One God unites the soul and makes it one. This soul sees many “goods” but only as limited intermediaries, that connect it to God and simultaneously, because they are intermediaries that separate it from God. Others are like a wall that divides the house into rooms. Walls connect two spaces as well as stand as the barrier that divides them. Under the imagination and before the love that arises with perfect contemplation, we see only the wall and imagine that the wall itself contains the God behind it. Contemplation returns us to live in the “real” world but in a different way. We realize that the wall is the connection to God and we meet God through the other not in the other. Others are loved as the necessary channel to God but not possessively since they are not the goal of love. Loving the world is like loving walls. The more strongly loved, the more the walls represent god, but the walls loved strongly are strong prisons. A prisoner of love is still in chains. To possess the whole world is not to possess God but to lose God utterly. We are not punished for pursuing the world; the pursuit is the punishment.

In the highest state of contemplation all are loved as brothers and sisters. We are all offspring from and intermediaries back to Divine Love. But we do have special friends. Christ loved all His disciples but only one is described as “the disciple Jesus loved.” This special love rests on the capacity of two people to realize, not just in the sense of “understanding” but also in the sense of “making real,” the presence of God. A married couple must move from the illusion that each is the object of love for the other. In fact, they will move from this once they live together long enough and are honest enough to see the reality of the other and how the reality cannot sustain the projected image that drew out their natural love. Striving to preserve their love, each may react by trying to get the other to sustain the former illusion by acting or dressing in a way that pleases the imagination. To advance in purifying their love, however, they must come also to see the way the other is a channel for the Divine. Then God is real in their mutual presence and their love is fulfilled. Then we live fully in the world and in our solitude but we are enlightened and redeemed by love. The love that comes from God now returns to God. The circle is complete and perfect. Love is from One, for One, and brings One.

The resurrected soul loves other people. It loves them as it loves itself and its own flesh. It loves their souls whether developed or undeveloped because these contain the image of God. Realizing God’s image in itself by developing its likeness to God, the soul now recognizes that image in others where before it could not see it. Moreover, it loves the flesh of others when their flesh is resurrected by the development of their souls Without even deliberate action and simply by living from its resurrected nature, the resurrected soul leads the undeveloped souls and their flesh to resurrection.

In the contemplative state, the soul also loves the world. The Divine presence communicating with it redeems the world. The contemplative soul is drawn into the world guided by the Standard of Goodness to bring through living in the world goodness into life. It also, in how it lives in the world, continues the creative work of redeeming the world that was only started by its own resurrection. Such a soul lives in the light of God and brings God into the world. It seeks goods that come through the world and takes joy in them. It embraces the world it must live in and the suffering it endures being there because of the opposition of the fallen world to it. It welcomes the suffering because it now knows that suffering is the process of redemption. Without ordinary work and without suffering, there would be no redemption for the world. The soul in the contemplative state cannot live without participating in the world and cannot participate in the world without suffering the contradiction between the world’s good and the eternal Good.

Those who reach the state of contemplation live in the world and in the flesh. They love both. Their lives, moreover, are as varied as any lives could be. Externally, they may dwell in a cave and in a desert of isolation or they may have a house in a great city. They may take any job or no job at all. They may have wives, husbands, and children or they may remain celibate. Nothing is denied to them outwardly as long as they stay faithful to the Heavenly Order within. Things are permitted them that ordinary citizens find disgraceful; things are denied them that ordinary citizens believe noble. They have achieved the freedom and dignity that is the human birthright. All other forms of human freedom and dignity pale and reveal themselves, in the Divine light, as distortions of truth. They are at last ready to go forth and practice the art of living. In the final stage of contemplation, filled with the Divine presence, life itself becomes a prayer and every act a benediction.

THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

THE SPIRIT OF CONTEMPLATION

Purity of Intent

Introduction to Contemplation

The Church and the Treasure

UNDERSTANDING THE SPIRIT OF CONTEMPLATION

Transfiguration

The Journey in Faith

The Element of Water

Angels, Demons, and the Flood

Baptism

Faith and The Waters of Contemplation

Souls and Meditation or Contemplation

Elements and Faculties of Soul

Flesh and Inner Possession

The Threefold Presence of God

Heart, Will, and Prayer

ENTERING THE SPIRIT OF CONTEMPLATION

The Second Coming

The Two Deaths

The Virgin, Psyche, and Secrecy

Temples, Angels, and the Ladder of Union

Temples

Image and Likeness of God

The Virgin and the Likeness of God

The Ladder of Union

Meditation and Contemplation

The Role of Myth

Imagination

Solitude

Active Passivity

AWAKENING IN THE SPIRIT OF CONTEMPLATION

From Meditation to Contemplation

“Out of Egypt I have called my Son.”

Joseph and Christ

“Behold, a Virgin Shall conceive….”

Elizabeth and Mary

Mary

The Elevation of the Virgin

The Three Transformations of the Virgin

Peter

The Altar of Sacrifice

Virgin and Birth

Who is the Bride and Virgin

The Inner Temple, the Virgin, and Marriage

Grace and Truth

The Virgin and Love

The Virgin

Communion

The Communion of the Saints

Soul

Flesh

CONCLUSIONS

Final Fear

Universality, Unity, & Redemption

Three Descents of the Holy Spirit

Eternal love

The Flesh, the World, and the

Contemplative State

All Love is from God

All Love is for God

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