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Thanks so much Derek. This straightens out my confusion.  Salablanca made dozens and dozens of changes to St. John of the Cross's writings when he prepared the first published edition of 1618. This was to prevent John's being classified as an alumbrado, or early form of quietist. However, only the Spiritual Canticle was left out in its entirety, and all omissions and changes are restored in twentieth century editions. [/QB][/QUOTE] | ||||
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Consider what Fr. Keating wrote, for example: Metaphorically, the way I have received this all is that, this nondual self-forgetfulness is an ecstatic journey on which we venture and from which we return, again and again and again. This bridal mysticism is nothing less than Divine intercourse of those otherwise already joined in Mystical Union. To be metaphorically explicit, it is the difference between Marriage and the Marriage Bed. As with Bernardian love, we go beyond but not without self. _______________________________________________ Consider, then, St. Bernard's commentary on the Song of Songs: This is how I would conceive any state beyond transforming union. This is clearly, in St. Bernard's view, a matter of experience, a type of awareness, an affective moment and not, rather, a perduring ontological reality. The following is an excerpt from an introduction to St. Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs by Prof. Katherine Gill for her courses at Yale Divinity School and Boston College: ENHANCES PERSONAL IDENTITY Consider, then, this story from one journeyer. As Fr. Keating explained in response to a questionnaire: So, for all the talk of stages and levels and ways regarding the transformative journey, it is good counsel to give up the need to know where we are or where others are on this journey for there is no way to accurately judge such things. It is important, in my view, to draw a distinction between phenomenal states and psychic structures, on one hand, and transformative stages and levels of virtue, on the other hand. It is enough to know that they can often be highly correlated but important to know that they are not necessarily indicative one of the other. Some are given glimpses. Some experiences are fleeting and transitory. Others are more perduring. All is unmerited and freely given by God for reasons known to Him alone. | ||||
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JB, what's not clear is the meaning of "It" in Keating's sentence, "It involves the union with God in which the will . . ." I took "It" to refer to Transforming Union, not non-duality, as this is what the "Cistercians, Franciscans, Carmelites and other religious groups" have described for centuries. The "forgetfulness of self" that often ensues is called mystical ecstacy, and that, too, is well known and happens in the context of Transforming Union. What I hear Keating saying is that Nonduality is beyond all this. That, certainly, is what BR is saying in no uncertain terms. She mentions this "sinking in" that leads to states of temporary ecstacy, then describes how that eventually became the door through which she passed into the journey she describes, first, as no-self, then resurrection and ascension. Are we reading Keating the same way, here? | ||||
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I am saying that the only thing of a nondual nature that I can interpret from our own contemplative tradition is a transitory state [brief periods is what Keating said] of self-forgetfulness ensuing from ecstatic experiences that are gifted, sometimes to whomever for why-ever as God sees fit, sometimes to those otherwise in unitive states, as God deems fitting. As I said before, I think there is a journeying away from and a return to self experientially vis a vis awareness. What I am suggesting is not a "reading" of Keating or a telling of what I think might be his interpretation, although I do recall he has always emphasized a dialectical relationship between apophatic and kataphatic modalities. Yes, I think Keating is speaking about transforming union or bridal mysticism in that paragraph. | ||||
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Let's add Keating's next sentence to the quote we are considering: And let's juxtapose this with Gill's take: Gill and Keating are saying the same thing? No? | ||||
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What may be going on here is a lack of rigor in mapping exercises? Also, as I said before, I doubt Rohr and Keating would buy BR's interpretations wholesale. | ||||
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To be clear, what specific revelations disclosed by Jesus in what form, Phil? For example, did you mean like Rebecaa said: "IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE THERE ARE MANY MANSIONS" ? | ||||
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It is only in this paragraph that Keating amplifies what he means by nonduality. And he clearly describes it using epistemic categories and not ontological, which is to say as states of mind or awareness. Is it possible that Keating could be referring to a more or less permanent epistemological structure, where phenomenal nondual states become more or less permanent psychic structures? While BR is going totally ontological? | ||||
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Phil, I've been very slow to understand what you have been saying about the Christian Path all along. If this is inappropriate to say please delete this post. In reading the 3rd page of the preface of "The Path To No-Self" I was struck with a shear terror. The falling away or absence of the self center (ego). Not even in my personal exposure to Eastern religions was there an absence of the self center (ego). It was transcended. And when it was transcended there was a deep deep peace. I have read of other states but not known anyone who had experienced them. I'm wondering if this is what you've been saying all along Shasha. You betcha i'm going to be using a different level of discernment in what practices i use. Thank you all for these discussions. | ||||
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I provide the materials, below, for reference purposes --- regarding the Beguines and any references to further journeys beyond transforming union. I do see some discussions that might be interpreted in epistemic terms vis a vis the self (e.g. what the soul sees or doesn't see, what the self does or does not experience, in terms of detachment and even dis-identification), all very conventional it seems, but nothing that could be interpreted ontologically. That there might be journeys into states beyond what are otherwise experienced in Transforming Union, that there might even be epistemological or psychic structures associated with such journeys, I see no reason to doubt such possibilities. In fact, I'm looking forward to an eternal journey of getting ever closer to God and others, by whatever modalities. As for personal annhiliation and/or permanent losses of self-identity, ontologically speaking, I cannot see how that would not be wholly heterodox? One of the Beguines was Marguerite Porete, a French mystic, who was burned as a heretic in 1310. From http://mariannedorman.homestead.com/Beguines.html , we might glimpse how it is the Beguines described other states of consciousness: Timothy Conway in Meister Eckhart (1260-c1328)�Nondual Christian Mystic Sage writes:
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Ajoy, per my reading of Merton, not only is the ego not annhilated but, rather, transcended, even the False Self (or persona) remains necessary, but, being insufficient, must merely be transcended. And so it is with eros, philia, storge and agape (CS Lewis 4 Loves), or with Bernardian love (love of self for sake of self, love of God for sake of self, love of God for sake of God, love of self for sake of God). In all of these movements, I like to say, we go beyond but not without. When I finished a year or more of immersion in Merton, that is what I came away with: beyond but not without. And this is profoundly incarnational. God sees what He has made, looks at what She supports via creatio continua, and sees that it is good! (And this is the crux of the matter as to why we are having this conversation re: BR's writings. They seem to deny the eternal goodness of some aspects of creation, seeing them rather as ephemeral, merely temporal, goods. John 3:16 is all I can say.) | ||||
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JB, I don't think it helps matters that Keating in one place uses the word "stage," then in another, "state." Either way, the reference is experiential, as is almost always the case when speaking of mystical experiences. I understand a "state" to be a temporary experience and a stage more or less permanent. So "transforming union" or the unitive stage is considered a "stage" on the spiritual journey, although many have glimpses of this union from the beginning. Same with non-duality, which is mystical ecstasy. To say that this becomes a permanent stage would indeed be a first -- something akin to the beatific vision, only still seen "dimly" so long as we are in the body. The general intuition in Christianity re. ontology would be to do what you've been doing -- to assume that individuality persists, only one isn't paying attention to it. So it doesn't help matters when Keating relates this "no-self" situation to states and stages experienced by non-theist Buddhists (and B did the same). Of course, this raises the question of whether B's experience is indeed a passage through ecstatic experience or a shift to a Buddhist-like state -- back to Arraj's reflections. It also doesn't help matters that BR does, indeed, seem to draw ontological implications, or at least uses that kind of language (e.g., loss of individuality). On the whole, she doesn't really address ontological issues, however, and when you try to discuss them with her, she hears it as some kind of questioning the authenticity of her experiences (as in her reply to Arraj). So there's a bit of summary for me, as I sense myself needing to move on. I'll keep checking in, of course, in case something new comes up. | ||||
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Ajoy, I think you're getting it. Hang in there, and re-read the parts that address this. B is indeed saying not only that Ego is lost (not transcended), but consciousness of being a self or individual is as well. Furthermore, she's proposing that this is what will happen to all of us. | ||||
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That's one, but more to the point is the testimony of the Apostles that the risen one was Jesus, the same man they had walked and talked with. He even has the same body, only it has been transformed. Even after the Ascension, the one who appears to Paul on the road to Damascus calls himself "Jesus," and not some abstract theological concept like "the Christ" or "the Logos." So the teaching of the Church has been that the individual human being, Jesus of Nazareth, was raised from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the Father by virtue of his union with the Logos, or Word. Additionally, there are countless passages that presuppose the persistence of individuals in the afterlife. E.g., the teachings on the last judgment, where each individual is judged and goes on to eternal reward or punishment. Experientially, Christians know firsthand that the effect of God's love is to enable one to become the person God created one to be. The closer we draw to God, the more we become who we are. The life/energy that animates the soul is of the divine, which will be the animating principle of heaven's residents. Just as the cells in our body live by the life of the soul and retain their individuality (even in the same tissue) so will individual humans who live by the life of God. | ||||
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johnboy, thanks for the link to THE BEGUINES. very timely for me. rebecca | ||||
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I agree. But Keating didn't invent this ambiguity. Classically, writers have spoken interchangeably of degrees, states, stages and ways of the spiritual life. See http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14254a.htm I do think that some of the jargon is being employed too loosely. And this lends an appearance of too facile a mapping of one paradigm onto another, whether it be BR's no-self, or that of Advaita Vedanta, onto classical formative spirituality, or whether it is Wilber's evolutionary ontological schema onto same. It can lead to misunderstandings and has. Still, a careful reading of everything in context clarifies some of the ambiguity in Keating's case, while amplifying the heterodoxy in BR's case. Yes, but ... Still, we must honor the distinction between a mystical experience, on one hand, and a level or degree or stage or state of sanctity or virtue or perfect charity, otoh. Sure, there are manifold and multiform phenomenal states, psychic phenomena or experiences that can be correlated with whether or not one is on the purgative or illuminative way, whether one is in this or that interior mansion, whether one is at base camp or the summit of Mt. Carmel. When speaking epistemically, especially of nonduality, a state would be temporary, an epistemological structure, or if you prefer stage, would be more permanent, which is to recognize a type of nondual consciousness that is not so much an experience per se as it is, instead, a way of perceiving reality. Of course, there is another notion of nondual realization, not of an experience or perception or type of awareness, in which case the state of one's consciousness doesn't matter: nonduality is just there to see. And it does seem to me that a good panentheist might figure this out through philosophical contemplation, someone else through an intuition of being, still another through a kundalini experience, yet another through enlightenment. If Keating indeed follows Wilber's take, this is all a nondual state entails. At any rate, there is more to this stage paradigm than just the experiential aspect; when speaking of the transforming union we are talking not just about phenomenal experiences but habitual virtue, increased charity & sanctifying grace, preservation from mortal sin and general avoidance of venial sin and so on. Mystical ecstasy is a type of nonduality, but does not exhaust that reality. Keating speaks of the transient nature of such ecstasy as is associated with bridal mysticism. I do not interpret him to be suggesting that this is what becomes permanent. Rather, at this point, I'd suspect he thinks in terms of nondual realization, an epistemological structure, whether one thinks of that in terms of a perduring unitive consciousness (or way of perceiving reality), or, as Wilber would (and Keating leans on Wilber), nondual realization, which doesn't require any form of consciousness per se. Actually, based on my clarification in the prior paragraph, it makes sense to me --- relating this more or less permanent epistemological structure (not the transient ecstasy) to the Eastern experiences. Until she clarifies what she is saying philosophically, other than her raw retelling of her experiences, I will not be able to fruitfully engage her other speculations. That'a all. If she doesn't want to, then that is none of my business, but, I feel, a loss. I started to move on 48 hrs ago  | ||||
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You're welcome, Rebecca, except that now I have this song , Begin The Beguine, stuck in my head!  | ||||
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Now, this may seem to leave a question begging ... of why, when it comes to nonduality, so many go the pantheistic route, or, worse, the materialist monist route, or maybe not as bad, the idealist monist route, rather than the panentheist route. And I'm just going to leave this here as a footnote. The reason is, in my view, that they have not seen the wisdom of Dionysian logic, as has a modern counterpart in the semiotic approach of Charles Sanders Peirce; or they have not been exposed to a dialogue between the univocity and analogy of being, of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. Or, they just don't know how to get around the seeming inviolability of the principle of noncontradiction. The answer lies in the coincidentia oppositorum of Nicholas of Cusa:
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On a silent retreat a few years ago at the Abbey of Gethsemani, I did experience what seems exactly like B.'s description of the VOID. I was simply surrendering my life to Christ that weekend, nothing unusual going on...I laid my body down on the bed, closed my eyes, and I was suddenly dropped into the void. Words are impossible to describe. I experienced a total black, vast, endless abyss...there was no me, no other, no God...my body was hallowed out, as though I disappeared. It was quite terrifying in a way you could never know fear except in the face of total emptiness. I don't know how it is possible to be *aware* of non-existence (paradox!), but there it was, no other way to say it. Fortunately, I found something in me rise up (I guess I prayed?), and I was taken out of there! Thank God...I don't see how anybody could actually live in the Void, integrate this place into daily life. As you note above, the VOID is not peaceful like unity consciousness or what I think people mean by transcending their egos. In the latter, I feel intimately connected to everything, I am an expanded, merged, giant being, equally distributed across the land. I see myself looking back at me everywhere I go. One sees the "stuff" that is God everywhere. In the void, I am gone, wiped-out, annihilated. They sound rather like opposites, don't they? I know the void exists, in that I didn't imagine it, etc., but I accept it as a mystery. Perhaps it is one of the many rooms in our "Father's house." However, I don't see the void as a "core" of my being or of God's Being. Maybe I would have learned more if I had remained there longer than a few minutes....? (that is not a wish, Lord!) Still, neither of these realities, as awesome and mysterious as they are, feel relevant to what Christ wants to accomplish in me (us?). ...and furthermore, and why I don't resonate with B's story, neither of these realities feel like they are *beyond* my experiences of the spiritual marriage (what feels to me like being on fire with divine love, locked in a rapturous embrace, knowing that it is Christ who unites me to the Father). To me, unity consciousness and the void feel like *metaphysical* realities (what Arraj and Phil describe as natural mysticism, is that right?). Like seeing the landscape of an unseen world. Cool, awesome, weird, but by themselves, they don't teach us about God's Love or how to live in the world--therefore, this natural mysticism cannot feed your soul. On quite the other hand, the spiritual marriage--Transforming Union--feels like a God-given, God-Graced supernatural Love that one literally knows as a gift made possible by Christ Jesus. Somehow, this revelation is locked into the embrace and one also knows there is nothing beyond this union until Jesus returns in Glory or He calls us home (whichever comes first). Thanks for listening... Christ bless you, Shasha | ||||
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Shasha, let me overanswer your concerns here by using your comments as a foil for some other things, too. When evaluating phenomenal states, psychic structures, psychological stages, Lonergan's conversions and ontological and theological degrees of perfection, we must carefully define their essential nature, inventory the graces that might accompany them and identify their fruits. In other words, we need to draw distinctions, but as Maritain said, in order to unite. Since grace can build on nature, any epistemic value-realization offers promise, including such as Zen and nondual realization, including such as natural science and natural mysticism. It also offers perils and pitfalls, for, as Richard Rohr says, "something that is partially true, and even good, [can be] made into the only lens through which you read reality, and then it becomes untrue. Heresy could be defined as when we absolutize a partial truth." Natural science is a partial truth. When it becomes "the only lens through which you read reality ... then it becomes untrue," or what we call scientism. Natural mysticism is a partial truth, but, when it becomes "the only lens through which you read reality, then it becomes untrue," or what Arraj has called "nondualist imperialism." Jim writes: To the extent we have been considering nondual realization, alongside other epistemic faculties, properly considered, I have emphasized their holistic relationship and have suggested that all of our epistemic faculties must enjoy an integral interplay, each with the others in every human value-realization (whether dialectical, trialectical, tertadalectical or what have you). Wilber, on the surface, appears to affirm this integrality with his all quadrant, all level approach, but, with no logic or coherence or empirical observations, a priori concludes that the nondual state is "the highest estate imaginable," and, there you have it, the fatal epistemological ailment Arraj calls "nondualist imperialism." I have no problem with correlating nondual realization with this or that stage in this or that paradigm, based on some type of empirical observation and rational demonstration of when and why it should emerge now versus later on our journeys of individuation, conversion or perfection, for example. When it does emerge, however it emerges and for whatever reasons, ascetical or philosophical, it must, then, simply take its place as one furnishing among others in our epistemic suite, enjoying an integral interplay in all of our human value-realization pursuits. If in appropriating Wilber, one finds the nondual realization concept useful as an epistemological structure, more or less permanent, and one buys into an integrally conceived all quadrant-all level epistemic outlook, and one sees some value, even, in his rather emergentist take on the great chain/nest of being, I see no problems, really, in using this gift in our Christian imaginations and modeling attempts. If what Wilber means by the "highest estate imaginable" is the nondual stance toward reality not conceived as in my account above (and throughout this thread), then we are precisely looking at a "nondualist imperialism." And Christianity cannot appropriate that, and not because it is bad theology. Before that, it is plain and simple bad science coming from a an epistemologically bankrupt philosophy. Daniel Helminiak explicates this problem: http://www.visionsofdaniel.net/R&HSch4.htm I hope this helps more than confuses. Perhaps Phil could flesh out how Zen, properly appropriated, can be a boon rather than a bust for the Christian contemplative. I have described the perils and pitfalls, but do not want to deny the promises, which every Merton student would affirm. Also, Google this syntax: +nondual +innerexplorations +"natural mysticism" and that should direct you to some of Arraj's thoughts as informed by Maritain. | ||||
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From Johnboy: Until she clarifies what she is saying philosophically, other than her raw retelling of her experiences, I will not be able to fruitfully engage her other speculations. That'a all. If she doesn't want to, then that is none of my business, but, I feel, a loss. Don't hold your breath. Also, I've just read and re-read your reflections on Keating's statements and I still think you're giving him too big a pass. When he says non-dual consciousness is a stage beyond transforming union, the "grace of the Ascension" (that's straight from BR) and akin to what the Buddhists describe, then the reader is to be excused if s/he hears an endorsement for BR's schema and that the Eastern experience is deeper than the Christian's. No one ought to be expected to do all the nuancing, disambiguating, etc. that you've done, here, JB. If Keating intended to not give such impression, he ought to be more careful about how he states things. ---- One final thought on Jesus' revelation and the persistence of individuality. That we have bodies certainly establishes us as individuals, for the life that takes place in a body belongs to this or that person and no other. When Jesus rises from the dead, he shows us that life in a new kind of body goes on, and he promises that he will raise us up as well on the last day. The Tradition has understood this to mean that we will all be given new bodies, glorious bodies, to clothe the spirit/soul body that goes on after death. Our belief in bodily resurrection -- a dogmatic teaching of the Church -- is a certain affirmation of the continuance of individual human life, though in what manner or form we can only speculate, based on what Jesus has revealed about such bodies. One can assume they will be distinct and have some resemblance to the body we had on earth -- we will not all look exactly the same, in other words. Believers who read people like BR and others who share their private revelations ought to remember all this and compare what they're hearing with the faith of the Church. If it comes down to making a choice between one or the other, there should be no contest. | ||||
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Addenda on Keating: JB, note the influence of BR on Keating in the quote below: - http://www.centeringprayer.com/Mystery/2easter07.htm You buy?  What happened to "Jesus" along the way? What's the basis for believing that his death on the cross was death to his "personal self?" That's vintage BR, but I'm not seeing any evidence for it in the resurrection narratives. Of course, I guess that depends on what one means by "personal self," but I take that to imply intelligence and will consciously expressed by an individual human agent. That's all present and accounted for in the risen Christ, as is his loving, his memory, and even his scars. Seems his relationships with his disciples are also still quite personal. | ||||
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This is fair. More to the substance and less regarding the style problems, do you think he would agree with my interpretation? Do you think BR would? Do you? | ||||
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Yes, Paul asserts that Christ *lives* in him, but Paul ALSO shares that Christ does not always *reign* in him! What is that scripture about how he, Paul, continues to do battle with his flesh, that he actually HATES what he chooses at times? And there's another scripture in which Paul says he has NOT achieved perfection and falls short! Somebody has those scriptures at the tip of their mind...can you help? | ||||
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This is a prime example of our need to employ Dionysian logic, to embrace the coincidentia oppositorum. We must distinguish between univocal and equivocal predications of God. We generally cannot employ univocity when speaking of God and creatures, which is to recognize that the words we use to describe humans, like person, for example, cannot be literally predicated of God. There is an equivocity in play in any words we use to describe both God and humans. The way we bridge these distinct realities is to employ, then, analogical predications, which is to affirm that the Trinity is in a relationship LIKE that enjoyed by us a persons. When we speak of the Mystical Body of Christ or the Cosmic Christ, we speak of an eternal reality and employ such words as body and cosmic, not literally, but analogically. Even when we speak of Jesus in His life on earth, the precise nature of His humanity remains shrouded in mystery and these rules of predication would apply metaphysically. Revelation, though, has literal and historical dimensions (what can I know?), anagogical dimensions (what can I hope for? Last Things?), mystagogical dimensions (how does this all relate? and initiate into mystery), allegorical sense (how is this metaphor sustained?) and the tropological sense (morally and theotically, what must I do?). So, while we cannot say literally and metaphysically how Jesus' essential nature was realized, we can say that spiritually and morally He revealed the fullness of God's Trinitarian Life to us, as well as how we are to respond and what is in store for us. I think it is fair enough to say that our relationship with God is, in some sense, undeniably personal. As we conceive of the Mystical Body of Christ, there is obviously something transpersonal, that goes beyond our understanding of the personal, which is not employed univocally of God and creatures in the first place. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with also recognizing that the Reality of God cannot be robustly described using any of our human categories for, apophatically, the only literal descriptions we can predicate of God are those statements of what God is not. What we have, then, in Dionysian logic, is a trialectical (tetradalectical?)interplay between the both/and of apophatic/univocal predications and the kataphatic/equivocal predications, as well as the neither/nor of the unitive subversion of binary logic, hence, dichotomous thinking. Temporally speaking, we also have a tension between what we can experience now vs eschatologically versus proleptically (as though the future were present). Therefore, when we read this: On the Christian path, God is known first as the personal God, then as the transpersonal God, and finally as the Ultimate Reality beyond all personal and impersonal categories. Since God's existence, knowledge and activity are one, Ultimate Reality is discovered to be That-which-is ... There is no reason to interpret this in terms of strict binary logic, as either/or dichotomies. It is an initiation into the Dionysian logic of the both/and/neither/nor. All of these references to God are true. We go beyond each but without none. At least, this is the case I made as lead counsel for Meister Eckhart in my prior reincarnation as a canon lawyer. | ||||
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Topic Closed Shalom Place Community Shalom Place Discussion Groups General Discussion Forums Christian Spirituality Issues Bernadette Roberts responds to Jim Arraj