McGinn on Indistinct Union vs. Union of Spirits
Bernard McGinn is the greatest historian of Christian mysticism alive today and probably of all time. As a historian of mysticism, he deftly studies the texts of mystics themselves, noting patterns and themes throughout different genres and sub-movements of Christian mysticism. He has completed the first three of a planned Five Volume Series of the History of Western Christian Mysticism (for Eastern Orthodox Mysticism see John Meyendorff and Vladimir Lossky). McGinn himself does not practice the higher mystical injunctions of the Christian path.
Perhaps most important contribution has been his recognition of two classes of Christian mysticism: union of spirits and indistinct union. He describes the difference thusly:
(From The Flowering of Mysticism, vol. 3 in The Presence of God Series):
"New forms of apophatic language that express the mutual infinty of God and the self were pioneered by women mystics. These expressions move beyond the usual accounts of the necessity for eradicating the fallen and sinful will to emphasize that what keeps us from full union with God is the very created will itself. Hence, many of the thirteenth century women seem to find the traditional understanding of unio mystica, that of a loving union of spirits, finite and infinite, inadequate to describe the kind of union they wish to attain--an indistinct indentity with God in the No-Self." (p.157)
The traditional Christian mystical path was first annunciated by the Eastern Orthodox spiritual master known only as Dionysius (aka Denys or Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite).
Dionysius was a traditional name ascribed to this otherwise unknown author. Dionysius is mentioend in the Book of Acts in the New Testament. Paul, as the story goes, proceeds to the Areopagus in Athens and begins a spiritual dialogue with some of the resident Greek philosophers. Paul begins by telling them that in walking around the grounds he noticed a shrine to "an unknown god". Paul tells the Athenians that he too worships this Unknown God, Creator of the Universe. The Athentian philosophers, so says the story, receive this idea well.
It is as this point that Paul states that this Unknown God has been revealed (incarnated) in the person of Jesus Christ. Here Paul loses the crowd. Greek myth is full of men ascending to god-like status (Hercules), wondeworker messiahs, and gods descending to the human plane as supermen, but no story of God descending to the human condition out of love, in a manner of accepting brutality, the mark of criminality, a life among the unclean and sinful, and eventual crucifixion.
Whether or not the story is "historical" is not very relevant. For all intensive purposes, the story is "pure fiction." But the meaning behind the story is very true to Paul's theology (as seen in his letters, Acts is historically attributed to the Gospel writer "Luke" who was said to have been a disciple and traveling companion of Paul's).
Paul famously stated to the Cornithian Church that he preached Christ crucified and nothing else. To both Jews and Greek this was a Scandal. For Jews, the scandal of God the Utter Transcendent becoming Flesh, and for the Greek (used to this notion), that this God-man would accept humiliation, pain, suffering, and death.
So the story of Paul with the philosophers is "true" insofar as it accurately relates Paul's vision of Christ.
Anyway, there is one Athentian philosopher listening to Paul whose heart is moved and converts to Christianity. His name, says the story is Dionysius.
Now, the mystic author "Dionysius" was actually a 4th-5th century Syrian who had some connection (very unclear) to the Athenian mystery school of Neoplatonic philosophy under Proclus (after Plotinus the greatest Neoplatonist in history).
When Dionysius' corpus was assumed into the Christian tradition it came to be thought that he was in fact the actual convert of Paul. This would have made his writing apostolic and was accorded a status almost equal to the New Testament writings.
It is a very interesting case in the history of the tradition because his words were in many ways deeply controversial and might never have been accepted had people not assumed he was of the generation of the first disciples.
Dionysius shortest and most powerful work is a treatise known as The Mystical Theology. In this work he lays out the vision of a three-stage progression to union (henosis in Greek) with God: purgation, illumination, and union.
Purgation is the process of being purged from one's unexamined immersion in the daily waking-day world. Purgation leads to illumination, the path of subtle lights, sounds, and identity with the Soul. It is in the Illuminative path that one expereiences the love relationship between the Soul and God.
Illumination culminates in Total Union with God. A union between the Soul and God never to be broken--mystical symbolized by an everlasting marriage vow (Christ marrying the Mystics Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Avila, Bridgette of Sweden).
In Greek Orthodox Theology this union is called Divinization. The Soul is made to partake into the Divine LIfe, though never being equatable with God. The Soul, as Paul said, is "adopted" into the life of God. Or to quote St. Irenaeus: "God became human, so that humanity would become God." [That is the most "orthodox" of Church Fathers, not some wild-eyed heresy by the way, no matter what you may hear to the contrary from some overly Protestant evangelical Bible-thumper].
This union reaches its mystical apex in an experience of God as Darkness (Apophatic theology). Dionysius said that the subtle-illuminative light becomes so bright that it "dazzles" and "darkens the mind." As the mind-heart are darkened, they temporarily lose consciousness of time and space and even a separation between itself and God.
This experience is known as The Cloud of Unknowing. As Moses went to see God "face to face" on the mountain, God passed "his back" in front of Moses, for no one could see the face of God and live. This experience of Moses at the top of the mountain (symbolizing the apex of the spiritual journey) was metaphorically interpreted as the Biblical legitimation of the Cloud experience.
The reason Dionysius references Paul's story of the Unknown God is that in the experience of the Causal Cloud and its Dazzling Darkness, one does not ever know God. One may participate in the Divine Life, experience this participation as overwhelming quiescent Love, but there is no knowledge or understanding of God. No conscious self-reflective knowledge that is--there is a knowing but so transcendent of our common modes of knowing that it is better called an "UNKNOWING" or a "LEARNED IGNORANCE."
In the 12th centuy, in Western Christianity, the Cisterician mystics (Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry, Aelerd of Rievalux) all began to practice a form of mystical union they described as a unitas spiritus. This unity of spirits was as McGinn says, depicted as loving union between the Soul and God, flowing back and forth into one another. The Western Christian mystics tended to emphasize the emotional-affective aspect of this union, while the Eastern Christian mystics tended to emphaisze the cognitive-awakening aspects, but either way it is clear that divinization in Dionysius and Unity of spirits in Bernard is the same basic state of consciousness.
Further, these three steps correlate in integral terms with what Wilber calls the three Great States (from Vedanta-Vajrayana): gross, subtle, and causal. Purgation, illumination, union--waking, dreaming, deep sleep.
But notice that in the Eastern religious tradition, there is also the Fourth: The Essence and Ground of any and all States, i.e. the Nondual.
The Nondual is not another state as opposed to the prior three, but the ground and essence of any and all arisings. Waking-gross, dreaming-subtle, deep sleep-causal come and go, but the Nondual never comes into nor goes out of being.
The Unity of Spirits-Deification Model notice however is still predicated on the notion of a separation (ontologically) between the soul and God. The Soul, in the experience of the Cloud (contemplation) might FEEL AS IF there were no difference between it and God, but the difference still remains (ontologically).
There is a Union, but a Union of two totally different entities: The (Created) Soul and The (Uncreated) Soul-Maker.
The two most common injunctions-prayer techniques in Christianity are the Prayer of the Heart and Centering Prayer, the former representing the Eastern Orthodox Path, the latter the Catholic-Western path.
The great names of the Orthodox tradition are: Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Ephraim the Syrian. This tradition was most common throughout (pre-Islamic) Syria and Eypgt, Greece, Eastern Europe, and Russia.
The great names of the Catholic three-fold tradition are: Bernard, Teresa Avila, John of the Cross, The Cloud Author, Thomas Merton, and Thomas Keating. Common in Catholic W.Europe and the Americas.
[In a subsequent post I will show, using post-metaphysical thinking, how to reconcile Eastern and Western Christian mystical theologies.] For now, back to issue of Indistinct Union.
--
Indistinct Union
Notice then that the unity of spirits, three-step process only proceeds to the Causal. In
Eastern terms, this means that the traditional Christian mystical path is a purely relative affair.
There is movement--from false self to a True Self united to God. There is progression--three stages of states. There are two entities relative to one another: God as related to the Soul and the Soul.
In Eastern Orthodox Theology there is the teaching of God's Essence and God's Existence.
God's Existence is God as God-is-for-Us, God as God relates to Creation, i.e. Emmanuel (God-with-Us).
God's Esesnce is God as God IS, God's Self, if you will. No relation.
The Orthodox Tradition teaches that in this mortal human life one may only experience God's Existence, never God's Essence. God's Existence brings Deification and partaking of the Trinitarian Life.
What McGinn notes through his historical research is other Christian mystics claim that in fact, this life, one may experience (however partially) God's ESSENCE.
What I will argue in the next post, is that Indistinct Union is Christian Nonduality, i.e. the description of Union with God's Essence is in fact native Christian Nonduality. I will then give an integral framing to the interpretive scheme necessary to connect the traditional three-fold path and this more radical four-fold nondual path.
Perhaps most important contribution has been his recognition of two classes of Christian mysticism: union of spirits and indistinct union. He describes the difference thusly:
(From The Flowering of Mysticism, vol. 3 in The Presence of God Series):
"New forms of apophatic language that express the mutual infinty of God and the self were pioneered by women mystics. These expressions move beyond the usual accounts of the necessity for eradicating the fallen and sinful will to emphasize that what keeps us from full union with God is the very created will itself. Hence, many of the thirteenth century women seem to find the traditional understanding of unio mystica, that of a loving union of spirits, finite and infinite, inadequate to describe the kind of union they wish to attain--an indistinct indentity with God in the No-Self." (p.157)
The traditional Christian mystical path was first annunciated by the Eastern Orthodox spiritual master known only as Dionysius (aka Denys or Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite).
Dionysius was a traditional name ascribed to this otherwise unknown author. Dionysius is mentioend in the Book of Acts in the New Testament. Paul, as the story goes, proceeds to the Areopagus in Athens and begins a spiritual dialogue with some of the resident Greek philosophers. Paul begins by telling them that in walking around the grounds he noticed a shrine to "an unknown god". Paul tells the Athenians that he too worships this Unknown God, Creator of the Universe. The Athentian philosophers, so says the story, receive this idea well.
It is as this point that Paul states that this Unknown God has been revealed (incarnated) in the person of Jesus Christ. Here Paul loses the crowd. Greek myth is full of men ascending to god-like status (Hercules), wondeworker messiahs, and gods descending to the human plane as supermen, but no story of God descending to the human condition out of love, in a manner of accepting brutality, the mark of criminality, a life among the unclean and sinful, and eventual crucifixion.
Whether or not the story is "historical" is not very relevant. For all intensive purposes, the story is "pure fiction." But the meaning behind the story is very true to Paul's theology (as seen in his letters, Acts is historically attributed to the Gospel writer "Luke" who was said to have been a disciple and traveling companion of Paul's).
Paul famously stated to the Cornithian Church that he preached Christ crucified and nothing else. To both Jews and Greek this was a Scandal. For Jews, the scandal of God the Utter Transcendent becoming Flesh, and for the Greek (used to this notion), that this God-man would accept humiliation, pain, suffering, and death.
So the story of Paul with the philosophers is "true" insofar as it accurately relates Paul's vision of Christ.
Anyway, there is one Athentian philosopher listening to Paul whose heart is moved and converts to Christianity. His name, says the story is Dionysius.
Now, the mystic author "Dionysius" was actually a 4th-5th century Syrian who had some connection (very unclear) to the Athenian mystery school of Neoplatonic philosophy under Proclus (after Plotinus the greatest Neoplatonist in history).
When Dionysius' corpus was assumed into the Christian tradition it came to be thought that he was in fact the actual convert of Paul. This would have made his writing apostolic and was accorded a status almost equal to the New Testament writings.
It is a very interesting case in the history of the tradition because his words were in many ways deeply controversial and might never have been accepted had people not assumed he was of the generation of the first disciples.
Dionysius shortest and most powerful work is a treatise known as The Mystical Theology. In this work he lays out the vision of a three-stage progression to union (henosis in Greek) with God: purgation, illumination, and union.
Purgation is the process of being purged from one's unexamined immersion in the daily waking-day world. Purgation leads to illumination, the path of subtle lights, sounds, and identity with the Soul. It is in the Illuminative path that one expereiences the love relationship between the Soul and God.
Illumination culminates in Total Union with God. A union between the Soul and God never to be broken--mystical symbolized by an everlasting marriage vow (Christ marrying the Mystics Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Avila, Bridgette of Sweden).
In Greek Orthodox Theology this union is called Divinization. The Soul is made to partake into the Divine LIfe, though never being equatable with God. The Soul, as Paul said, is "adopted" into the life of God. Or to quote St. Irenaeus: "God became human, so that humanity would become God." [That is the most "orthodox" of Church Fathers, not some wild-eyed heresy by the way, no matter what you may hear to the contrary from some overly Protestant evangelical Bible-thumper].
This union reaches its mystical apex in an experience of God as Darkness (Apophatic theology). Dionysius said that the subtle-illuminative light becomes so bright that it "dazzles" and "darkens the mind." As the mind-heart are darkened, they temporarily lose consciousness of time and space and even a separation between itself and God.
This experience is known as The Cloud of Unknowing. As Moses went to see God "face to face" on the mountain, God passed "his back" in front of Moses, for no one could see the face of God and live. This experience of Moses at the top of the mountain (symbolizing the apex of the spiritual journey) was metaphorically interpreted as the Biblical legitimation of the Cloud experience.
The reason Dionysius references Paul's story of the Unknown God is that in the experience of the Causal Cloud and its Dazzling Darkness, one does not ever know God. One may participate in the Divine Life, experience this participation as overwhelming quiescent Love, but there is no knowledge or understanding of God. No conscious self-reflective knowledge that is--there is a knowing but so transcendent of our common modes of knowing that it is better called an "UNKNOWING" or a "LEARNED IGNORANCE."
In the 12th centuy, in Western Christianity, the Cisterician mystics (Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry, Aelerd of Rievalux) all began to practice a form of mystical union they described as a unitas spiritus. This unity of spirits was as McGinn says, depicted as loving union between the Soul and God, flowing back and forth into one another. The Western Christian mystics tended to emphasize the emotional-affective aspect of this union, while the Eastern Christian mystics tended to emphaisze the cognitive-awakening aspects, but either way it is clear that divinization in Dionysius and Unity of spirits in Bernard is the same basic state of consciousness.
Further, these three steps correlate in integral terms with what Wilber calls the three Great States (from Vedanta-Vajrayana): gross, subtle, and causal. Purgation, illumination, union--waking, dreaming, deep sleep.
But notice that in the Eastern religious tradition, there is also the Fourth: The Essence and Ground of any and all States, i.e. the Nondual.
The Nondual is not another state as opposed to the prior three, but the ground and essence of any and all arisings. Waking-gross, dreaming-subtle, deep sleep-causal come and go, but the Nondual never comes into nor goes out of being.
The Unity of Spirits-Deification Model notice however is still predicated on the notion of a separation (ontologically) between the soul and God. The Soul, in the experience of the Cloud (contemplation) might FEEL AS IF there were no difference between it and God, but the difference still remains (ontologically).
There is a Union, but a Union of two totally different entities: The (Created) Soul and The (Uncreated) Soul-Maker.
The two most common injunctions-prayer techniques in Christianity are the Prayer of the Heart and Centering Prayer, the former representing the Eastern Orthodox Path, the latter the Catholic-Western path.
The great names of the Orthodox tradition are: Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Ephraim the Syrian. This tradition was most common throughout (pre-Islamic) Syria and Eypgt, Greece, Eastern Europe, and Russia.
The great names of the Catholic three-fold tradition are: Bernard, Teresa Avila, John of the Cross, The Cloud Author, Thomas Merton, and Thomas Keating. Common in Catholic W.Europe and the Americas.
[In a subsequent post I will show, using post-metaphysical thinking, how to reconcile Eastern and Western Christian mystical theologies.] For now, back to issue of Indistinct Union.
--
Indistinct Union
Notice then that the unity of spirits, three-step process only proceeds to the Causal. In
Eastern terms, this means that the traditional Christian mystical path is a purely relative affair.
There is movement--from false self to a True Self united to God. There is progression--three stages of states. There are two entities relative to one another: God as related to the Soul and the Soul.
In Eastern Orthodox Theology there is the teaching of God's Essence and God's Existence.
God's Existence is God as God-is-for-Us, God as God relates to Creation, i.e. Emmanuel (God-with-Us).
God's Esesnce is God as God IS, God's Self, if you will. No relation.
The Orthodox Tradition teaches that in this mortal human life one may only experience God's Existence, never God's Essence. God's Existence brings Deification and partaking of the Trinitarian Life.
What McGinn notes through his historical research is other Christian mystics claim that in fact, this life, one may experience (however partially) God's ESSENCE.
What I will argue in the next post, is that Indistinct Union is Christian Nonduality, i.e. the description of Union with God's Essence is in fact native Christian Nonduality. I will then give an integral framing to the interpretive scheme necessary to connect the traditional three-fold path and this more radical four-fold nondual path.
posted by CJ Smith @ 7:56 AM
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