I'm placing this thread here, rather than in the spirituality forum, as the theology of Christian mystical tradition is indespensible for understanding where Oriental and Western-theist paradigms converge and part; however, a purely philosophical treatment of the issue would take us away from the way a living faith informs those differences, and deepens the core tenets of orthodoxy.


Apart from the issue of Marion misrepresenting orthodox Christian faith, I'd like to present a contrast that may reveal the (or one) cause of the innate instability of non-dual perception, and the extent to which transcendental grace, or the Eternal in which the present moment inheres, is continually infusing human faculties beyond the ability to cognize both at the same time.

Consider these two perspectives, one from Marion (which I found quoted on-line), and the second from Jan van Ruusbroec (1293-1381), the latter considered by scholars to have treated the heresy of quietism, accusations of the same made of Meister Eckhart, one of Ruusbroec's contemporaries and a favorite of Marion's:


Here's the quote from Marion:

"We see, when we realize the vision of the Kingdom of Heaven, that we, like Jesus, are not mere human beings after all, but are now, and have always been, nothing less than immortal, unlimited, divine Spirit.

In his ministry, Jesus wanted more than anything else to tell us about the non-dual vision of the Kingdom he saw. He saw a Kingdom right here on Earth in which everyone was truly and substantially �one� with God and �one� with each other. At the same time, however, he saw that this non-dual �oneness� didn�t take away from God�s transcendence or from our humanness or individuality."

(Jim Marion in his Putting on the Mind of Christ, p.14)

Here is Ruusbroec. I quote him at length, and beyond fair use, because he shows us, in a mystical language that aches in the reader in places, the nature of non-duality from an orthodox Christian perspective, the way in which natural and supernatural grace, the present moment and the Eternal, and immanence and transcendence all arise within the vision of the Trinity. This is just the first installment of Ruusbroec I'll make here, as he unfolds many aspects of this issue very carefully as a spiritual director. (Marion's work may need more attention, if in fact the passage I quote above needs a larger context to do him fairness).

We can begin to see how Ruusbroec exposes the error in assigning non-duality to a higher stage of spiritual growth than the Unitive Stage:


"The sublime super-essential unity of the divine nature, where the Father and the Son possess their nature in the unity of the Holy Spirit, above the comprehension and understanding of all our faculties, in the bare essence of our spirit: in that sublime stillness, God surpasses all creatures in created light. This sublime unity of the divine nature is living and fruitful. for out of this same unity, the Father knows the Son and all things in the Son. And the son knows the Father and all things in the Father, for they are one one-fold nature. From this mutual vision of the Father and of the Son in an eternal brightness, flows an eternal complacency, a fathomless love, and that is the Holy Spirit. And through the Holy Spirit and the eternal Wisdom, God inclines Himself towards every creature individually, and He bestows and enkindles each in love, according to his nobility, and the state in which he is set and for which he is chosen on account of his virtues and the eternal providence of God. And hereby all good spirits in heaven and on earth are moved to virtues and justice.

Now mark: I am going to show you a similitude for this. God has created the uppermost heaven as a pure one-fold clarity, encircling and surrounding all the heavens and everything physical and material that God ever created. For it is an outward dwelling-place and a kingdom of God and of His saints, filled with glory and with eternal joy. For since this heaven is an eternal unmixed clarity, neither time nor place exist here, not motion nor any more change, for it is steadied and immutable above all things. The sphere next to the empyrean is called the prime motion. All movement springs forth here, from the uppermost heaven, by the power of God. From this movement, the firmament and all the planets run their course, and from it all creatures, each in its kind, live and grow. Now understand: in like manner, the essence of the soul is a spiritual kingdom of God, filled with divine clarity, surpassing our faculties, except by a one-fold mode, about which I am not going to speak now. See: beneath this essence of the soul, in which God reigns, is situated the unity of our spirit just like the prime motion, for in this unity the spirit is moved from above, naturally and supernaturally, by the power of God. For we have nothing of ourselves, neither in nature nor above nature. And this movement of God, when it is supernatural, is then the first principal cause of all virtues. And in the movement of God, some enlightened persons are given the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, just like seven planets which enlighten and fructify all human life. This is the mode by which God possesses the essential unity of our spirit as His kingdom, and by which He works and is overflowing with gifts into our potential unity, and into all our faculties(pp. 89-90)."


Jan van Ruusbroec, "The Spiritual Espousals," translated by Helen Rolfson, 1995.

As I noted in my final exchange with Jim Marion, I don't think any mystical experience interprets itself outright, but is always understood to some extent in the context of the exoteric/explanatory tradition in which spiritual practice is pursued.

Personally, I think it's an open question whether non-dual experiences such as are described in the East are an experience of God at all. There's generally no evidence of the exclusively divine attributes manifest, and there are other non-theistic explanations for the experience:
1. That this is the direct experience of what Helminiak calls the "non-reflective aspect of human consciousness." This would be the soul awake to itself prior to any reflection -- the face you have before you are born, if you will, open to direct experience of self, cosmos, other, etc.
2. The silencing of left-brain processing along with a corresponding fullness of right-brain awareness also seems to predict such a state.

The quote by Ruusbroec above seems to be affirming these possibilities while placing the "movement of God" "beneath this essence of the soul." It's possible, of course, that Easterners experiencing non-duality would sense this, but it's unlikely that they would identify this movement to be anything other than a deeper level of non-dual consciousness.

So as you might expect, I strongly resist classifications of mystical experience that place non-duality at the top, with inter-personal mysticism as merely a stage on the way. Wilber does this, as does Bernadette Roberts. What I believe, as noted in the dialogue with Jim Marion, is that there are at least three lines of spiritual development along which human growth unfolds:

quote:

A. Psycho-spiritual: individuation process; integration of intra-psychic polarities (male/female energies, conscious/unconscious, thinking/feeling, etc.); wholeness.
- Dreamwork, journaling, Meyer's Briggs, Enneagram, therapy, Focusing.
- Jung, Michael Washburn's transpersonal psychology, third-force psychologists

B. Metaphysical mysticism: Ascending the chakras; kundalini process; cosmic, non-conceptual consciousness; True Self; Enlightenment; Causal Level; God as hidden Ground of one's Being; compassion.
- Detachment, zazen, dis-identification with self-image; living between extremes; working with guru/master.
- Buddhism, Advaitan Hinduism, Taoism, Wilber's spiritual teaching.

C. Love mysticism: Inter-subjective relationship with God; purgative, illuminative, unitive stage; gifts of the Spirit; grace; Agape.
- Lectio divina, worship, spiritual direction, Sacraments, the Bible.
- Mystical traditions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

There are all sorts of admixtures of these, of course; E.g., Wilber's "Integral Psychology" blends A and B to the extent that one doesn't know where the boundaries between them actually lie. Also, various esoteric teachings often blend B and C.

It's possible to find people who are well-developed in one of these pathways but not the others. You did a nice job in Mythic God pointing out how we sometimes find psychologically unintegrated gurus -- point well-taken. Also, in the Catholic mystical tradition, we find Saints who are in union with God (C), but don't necessarily show much development in A and B. Indeed, what we can affirm about C is that this kind of union with God is possible even for young children; contrast that with pathway B, where union isn't acknowledged until/unless one experiences some degree of non-duality. Finally, we both know, I'm sure, individuals who are psychologically integrated, but who don't have much interest in spirituality.

Yes, and what I see in Ruusbroec's description is the way the human potential for non-duality is taken up via grace and transformed into something quite different. So perhaps we can say that while God is beyond all the faculties, the blind spot in non-duality almost predicts not seeing Him when, experientially, the nature of being, which can only be known by God, is collapsed into consciousness as awareness of being known drops away. This seems to involve . . . .


"God knowing us from within His own uncreated Being, prior to our own creation and the appearance of consciousness, is a transcendental presence/supernatural grace (able to create out of nothing; hence our faculties cannot acquire that state as consciousness); as such, we can't see Him sustaining our being within His being from His uncreated pov. So as our being inheres in what we cannot know, non-dual awareness can only see its sustained being as its own mirror, but not as being sustained by His uncreated Being."


And so I find it peculiar, at least in my memory of reading Bernadette Roberts books some years ago, that she says very little about the person of Jesus Christ, and in the aftermath of her non-dual awakening finds him only as the undifferentiated vastness of awareness (suggesting, like Marion, that he awoke to non-duality during his lifetime). Perhaps this personal sense of grace came before her alleged shift beyond Unitive Spirituality, but I don't recall her mentioning it in that way.

This state of not being able to know the nature of being as only God can is one that remains a state of graced, dark faith in the Christian mystic, but in some manner seems to become a kind of subtle object in the non-dual path, if we are to compare them at all from a psychological pov. This subtle objectifying of awareness (the internal dialogue is never permanently silent, as Tibetan Buddhists describe in the path of Dzogchen) is an effort that may block receptivity to being known beyond the faculties, as the latter are not surrendered, nor can they ever achieve this end on their own, whether it is being taken up in Him, or resting from all effort in consciousness.

This isn't unrelated to Phil's notion that Buddhists may be confusing the way the true self transcends (but never eradicates) the ego with the Divine transcending the self.

The true self, for all its ability to respond to grace, cannot in its enlightenment create out of nothing, stop thinking, deconstruct phenomenal awareness and absorb the subconscious, display omniscience, or rest itself imperturably from craving and aversion; and yet, New Agers and Buddhists want to equate it with the Divine as an explanation of the universe's causality.

This defies both honest experiential awareness and the simplest logic.

All so true, w.c. And note that Guatama never wanted to venture into the kinds of questions and issues you raise, as he knew that his experience provided no answers to them. To be fair, no Christian contemplative can do most of what you've described, either, only they don't portend to have "realized" divine consciousness.

Just more musing on this issue, Phil. Folks like Jim Marion who propose that Jesus Christ's life is merely equivalent to enlightened human consciousness have much to overcome, and don't seem willing or able to address even simple distinctions in their attempt to re-invent Christianity or reduce theism to eastern concepts. As I recall, Marion almost gave a pass on this issue when you raised it. Here's another way of stating what I think is his irresolvable dilemma:

If human consciousness were equivalent to the power of quantum dynamics, and quantum dynamics virtually the same as the omnipotence of the Creator, we'd see elightened human beings creating out of nothing and overcoming death. In fact, were God and enlightened human consciousness even nearly the same, then according to quantum theory merely being an awakened observer would mean being a creator in the literal sense. And so this crudely obvious limitation easily differentiates the awakened self from God.

Perhaps what is even more interesting, or suspicious, is that folks like Marion have built their paradigms around neglecting this simple line of reasoning and observation. Not only do these otherwise complex paradigms, such as Wilber's, fail the test of reason, but nobody shows forth to demonstrate their having any real human substance.

These are all very good points, w.c. There really are incongruencies inherent in heterodox positions, and these are seen clearly if one plays them out a ways. I've pointed this out a number of times with regard to monisms -- e.g., why should God be ignorant of God's own nature, as enlightenment paradigms maintain? What kind of deity would that be?

Helminiak points out as well how some of these systems violate the mind's natural movement to understand things rationally, and how they even go so far as to undermine the life of the mind/intellect by proposing that IT is the obstacle to our experience of divine union. This is the straw man version of "God is beyond our concepts" insofar as it assumes that reason and conceptualization are somehow inherently delusional. It's a short step from here to cultic dynamics, where one's judgments are suspended or discounted in favor of the pronouncements of enlightened ones.

Yes, as in "God is beyond our concepts," which as you say leads to a kind of "anything goes." Experientially I know that your point elsewhere about the self transcending the limits of the ego is one that gets identified with "consciousness as God," but since even the enlightened self is inherently unstable, there certainly is an ongoing re-building of the straw man among these group. I believe Marion did a side-step on this one too when you raised it during your dialogue with him.

And so your point re: enligthenment notions, where God is ignorant of His own nature, would be funny indeed if it weren't such a sad comment on the mis-use and mis-perceptions of human power leading to an unrecognized narcissism in the New Age.

Right. So the key thing, here, is the relationship between faith and reason. Christian theology has always acknowledged a congruence between the two even while affirming faith as trans-rational (which is not to be confused with "a-rational" or "non-rational"). Furthermore, faith provides something of a "focus" for reason . . . even a "perfecting" of reason. Without faith, there are some things that reason cannot know -- e.g., reason operating in a strictly scientific/empirical paradigm cannot affirm what reason acting in a philosophical or theistic paradigm can comprehend. None of this is to say that mystical experience is an outcome of rational activity, of course; only that mystical experience touches and transforms reason, enabling us to understand and integrate the experience. Once reason is viewed as somehow antagonistic to mystical experience, however, then the door is opened to just any silly irrational system or perspective -- the sillier, the more "profound."

I truly enjoy this dialogue. Discussed are the findings and mental perceptions of Marion, Roberts, Wilber, etc., with Phil and w.c.'s views and opinions on their insights.

I am experiencing a new found awareness within myself that the more I am learning, the less I know. I thought at one time I knew something and now find that I hardly know anything. Like a new born baby I am learning anew and looking at the world with the eyes of innocence and a baby's purity. There is such a vast knowledge and it is all beyond my own understanding and comprehension.

The point I am making is that the above mentioned individuals also have their faith in what they believe is truth. I am not here to defend them, but I do understand that what they project outwards into the world by their quest in spiritual truth is what they truly believe lives within them. I can accept and/or reject what is said by them, and still stay true within my own being and my own faith and my own truth.

Freebird, I guess another way to frame some of the issues we're reflecting on, here (and elsewhere), is whether a teaching is worthy of belief if it turns out to be rationally incoherent and/or incongruent. So, for me, at least, what is implied by the very existence of reason is a calling to understand the truth as deeply and faithfully as possible. This doesn't deny the fact of mystery and aspects of reality that are beyond our knowing, but it does mean that what I profess to believe and know ought to be as rationally intelligible as possible. And the problem we're pointing out is that once this principle is abandoned, it's actually impossible to be true to one's being. What we have, instead, is fidelity to someone else's truth, and not one's own.

Freebird:

I'd also suggest that when people aren't willing to engage reason in an exchange they are willingly a part of, as Marion was with Phil, there is more than just a difference of opinion going on, or that a lack of reason is creating frustation in the exchange. When people recognize their views lack coherence in being shared with others, there is usually an attempt to make oneself clearer, and this requires reason. But another response is to feel threatened at the level of private experience, and then either open to that uncertainty, or try to fortify one's bias with as much argument as one can muster.

And so reason can be used and mis-used, either out of intuitive promptings that simply assume its function in the other person, or by the will that is unwilling to open itself to the unknown beyond the confines of the familiar.

My meditations this morning are watering the lawn and Transcending the Levels of Consciousness, the Stairway to Enlightenment by David Hawkins. From Chapter 13, Reason:

"Intelligence and rationality rise to the forefront when the emotionalism of the lower levels is transcended. Reason is capable of handling large, complex amounts of data and making rapid, correct decisions; of understanding the intricacies of relationships, gradations and fine distinctions; and of expert manipulations of symbols as abstract
concepts become increasingly important. This is the level of science, medicine and generally increased capacity for rationality, conceptualization, and comprehension. Thus, knowledge and education are highly valued. Understanding of information and logic are the main tools of accomplishment that are the hallmarks of level 400. This is the level of Nobel Prize winners, great statesmen, Supreme Court Justices, Einstein, Freud, and many other important figures in the history of thought as represented in The Great Books of the Western World.

The shortcomings of this level are the failure to
clearly distinguish the difference between symbols
(i.e., res cogitans) and and what they represent (res externa), and the confusion between the objective and subjective worlds that limit the understanding of causality. At this level, it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees, to become infatuated with concepts and theories, and to end up missing the essential point.

Intellectualizing can become an end in itself (e.g.,relativism, and its negative impact on acadamia). Reason is limited in that it does not afford the capacity for discernment of essence or the 'critical point' of a complex issue."

--------------------------------------------------

Only one out of twenty five people grow beyond reason, which is already a very high level. It might be a lonely place beyond this level, which may be why mystics retire to the wilderness.

wilderness_world@lonely_mystics.org

MM, you're still giving credence to Dawkins' calibrations? I thought we'd rather thoroughly exposed it all to be just as much or more a faith-based system as anything else.

The quote by Dawkins illustrates a typical Eastern understanding of reason that pretty much confines its operations to deductive processes while restricting its validity to empiricism. That's so much narrower than the classical view of Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Catholic theologians like Thomas Aquinas. For them, reasoning is an operation of the intellect, which is the very intelligence of the soul. The higher "intuitive" operations of the intellect can grasp truth directly, but it is through reasoning that we come to understand and integrate these intuitions. The process, described so well by Lonergan, entails:
A. Being attentive - senses, intuitions, etc.
B. Being intelligent - questioning, formulating initial hypotheses.
C. Being reasonable - checking one's hypotheses from a variety of "angles."
D. Being responsible - deciding what to do about what one knows.
This goes on in our consciousness all the time about everything, including relationships.

It makes little sense to me to say that "intellectualizing can become an end in itself" unless, by this, Dawkins means to say that the process of reasoning itself becomes the activating event stimulating A . . . that we are attentive to our reasoning, then we raise questions about that, etc. This kind of investigation is the concern of the branch of philosophy we call epistemology . . . how we know what we know. Very few people do this, however, and, at any rate, this kind of "intellectualizing" is not without merit.

It seems to me that what Dawkins and others operating out of enlightenment paradigms are proposing is that the incoherences and incongruities inherent in their explanations are simply an example of the limitations of the intellect and its reasoning power, to which they propose some kind of alternative mystical "knowing." Wilber's "three eyes" of knowing and the way he speaks of "paradox" when acknowledging the incongruities between them is another fine example.

The danger in all this is that once one buys into such a flawed analysis of human reasoning and intellectual life, then one is vulnerable to pretty much any charlatan who comes along claiming to have "higher knowledge." Dawkins' psuedo-scientific calibrations and their supposed grounding in "universal mind" is a set-up par excellence for this kind of deception. I'm not doubting his sincerity, here, only pointing out the problems inherent in his approach.

Same goes for Jim Marion's. As w.c. pointed out, it's possible for one to use reason to defend almost any position, but the results will be more or less successful depending upon how faithful one is to the inner imperatives of being attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible. When, additionally, the over-arching context is orthodox Christian belief, then some explanations are sure to be more congruent with what the Church affirms than others. This isn't simply a matter of opinion, as though whatever one happens to think about orthodoxy is just as correct as what another person thinks.

I realize these kinds of deliberations and concerns are not for everyone, but I hope you can all see what kinds of consequences ensue when they are seriously neglected.

Note how the entire exchange about reason, including the various and sundry notions of enlightenment, depends upon reason. Few would know of Dawkins without being able to read his books or attend his seminars, all requiring reason in order to process and integrate experiences that may involve intuition or stake claim to enlightenment.

One of the primary flaws of the New Age, and of Buddhist philosophy, is its assumption that human beings are capable of direct knowing, or omniscience. Our limited ability to know anything directly and completely makes reason even more important, as through it we realize these limitations, just as one would realize the limits of human love through conscience.

Looking over some vipassana teachers like Stephen Levine, Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, they are giving instructions in a discursive process involving intellect, but in a slow motion fashion, as in watching frame by frame of a film. The process involves A,B,C,D as Phil has mentioned, but informed by something else. Hawkins calls this essense, and a Christian mystic or Charismatic would call it the Holy Spirit. Some might call it the intuitive and subconscious. Aurobindo's Subconscient, Superconscient or Supraconscient is
a more collective hundredth monkey affair.

Hawkins next paragraph:

"Reason is disciplined by the dialectic of logic
as a necessity to discern the linear truth of confirmable facts. It produces massive amounts of information and documentation, but it lacks the capability to resolve discrepancy in data and conclusions . All philosophical arguments sound convincing on their own. Although Reason is highly effective in a technical world where the methodologies of logic dominate, Reason itself, paradoxically, is the major block to reaching higher levels of consciousness because it attracts
identification of the self as mind. Transcending this level is relatively uncommon in our society (only four percent do so), as it requires a shift of paradigm
from the descriptive to the subjective and experiential. That a shift of paradigm is requisite to understanding higher levels of consciousness and spiritual reality is not as yet recognized by even such fields of study as 'science and consciousness' or 'science and theology' that seek for confirmation of spiritual realities (nonlinear, which calibrate from 500 and up) in the limited and linear domain of the 400s."

Its a big leap forward, and I'm willing to explore it.

Thanks for the feedback, gentlemen. <*))))><
and

paradigm_shift@subjective&experiential.com

MM:

Good luck, but your sources are confusing aspects of consciousness with the Holy Spirit. After years of Buddhist and Hindu practice, I'm fairly sure these teachers are not, in fact, familiar with that distinction. Not to say the Holy Spirit isn't operating beyond their faculties however, or that natural grace isn't being expressed in the true self's ability to tap into a presence larger than the ego.

Aurobindo also collapses on this point as well, equating the self with something more than the mind. In doing this, of course, he's speaking of the self as the unmoved mover, which it is not, as it has none of the properties of a real creator, i.e, cannot create out of nothing, overcome death, be omniscient, etc. . . And so just a small dose of reason is needed here. Surely the awakened self is more than the ego, yet never replaces it. But again, this is far from the uncreated Holy Spirit, both logically and experientially.

And so reason, for those like Aurobindo, would be a problem along the way to enlightenment only insofar as the self is expected to be completely enlightened yet incapable of overcoming death, becoming permanently stable in awareness, or creating out of nothing. Reason probably seems like a problem because these gurus are always having to fall back on it due to the self's inherent instability within the present that inheres in the Eternal, as the self is incapable of pure, unalloyed enlightenment. IOW, they probably feel that if the dialectic mind could be dissolved, pure presence would preval, and yet the self is as inextricably bound to reason as it is to ego awareness, time and space, and other limited capacities already mentioned.

MM, read the quote you posted about reason from Dawkins you shared two posts above and then read my critique about how he speaks of reason above. You've just proved my point! Were you trying to do that?