04 May 2013
Dear Jeanie,
Thank you for your two very good responses. I just finished a straight
7 hours of Saturday week-end duties, and sat down comfortably at last.
The pups and I had a longer drive to Raynesford, as the main highway
is under repair, and traffic is rerouted on meandering roads. Then I
gave the dogs a run up a muddy lane on a mountain, celebrated Mass in
Raynesford, spoke with parishioners, took communion to a parishioner
who is seriously ill, visited a ranch with a kennel, drove back to
Belt, prepared and ate a quick meal (rice and canned tuna fish), then
celebrated another Mass, spoke with more parishioners, let the dogs
out.... and am now here, ready to write.
As
with your intense realization-experience, my interest and focus is also
on philosophy, not "religion," but I would add that "religion," a term
coined by Cicero, is not in any way a very definable term, but a
general topic. In Cicero's day, "religion" surely included philosophy
as a way of life, for the root meaning of religio is that to which one
binds or commits oneself. Plato had already coined the term "theologia"
to cover discourse on the gods; his own noetic philosophy treats the
divine as the Good (Agathon, Republic), or Intellect (Nous, as in the
Laws), or Demiorgos (Timaeus), and so on. Since that time, even
“theology” covers a wide variety of phenomena. Of course, so does
“philosophy,” for now it may include what Plato called “philodoxy,” the
love of opinions rather than love of wisdom.
Remember that I wrote you a few nights ago that I am working on a
problem about "the gods," and you seemed a little surprised? Consider:
Israelite religion recognized a number of gods, but Yahweh was the god
of Israel. Centuries later, through Deutero-Isaiah, Yahweh became the
“one god” of all the earth, and post-exilic Judaism became what we now
term “monotheistic.” Whereas earlier Old Testament passages (Israelite)
can mention “the gods” as real, later passages, after the exile,
declare the gods to be “no gods,” or not real, “false gods.” Then early
Christianity picked up the Jewish conception, with its antagonism to
"the gods," but was in a sort of bind, finding divinity in Jesus, the
Holy Spirit, and the unknown god beyond (called “Father”), a position
criticized for inconsistency by some "pagan" thinkers arguing against
Christianity (such as Celsus). And of course the early Christians--even
the Apostle Paul--were highly intolerant of "the gods," accepting the
Jewish bias. (In Acts 17, Luke has St. Paul admit anger at the
Athenians for their statues and "idolatry." St Paul even saw a statue
to Agnosto Theo--to an unknown god--and then launched out on his homily
proclaiming the unknown god now made known through Christ. As for the
other statues and gods, Paul evidently missed the truth of the reality
they were symbolizing, for he shared the Jewish-monotheistic bias.
Islam (at least in the Koran), is as single-mindedly monotheistic as
Judaism, and apparently intolerant of "the gods."
But that brings me back to Plato and Aristotle, or especially, to
Plato (4th century BC) and Plotinus (c 200 AD): these great
philosophers have major "revelations" of what Plato calls "the truly
divine," the Nous, "the beyond," and Plotinus especially writes about
"the One" that is “beyond being." And yet, these philosophers can
write about "the gods" without the kind of anger or dismissive mockery
found in the so-called monotheistic religions. It is the function of
"the gods" once the "truly divine" has been differentiated that I am
trying to understand. There seems to be more to divinity than can be
absorbed only into the more radically-divine symbols (the One, the
First Cause, the God of Israel, and so one. This phenomenon is
fascinating. A key document here is Plato's Phaedrus (mainly on
language and love), a masterful work of philosophy, and supremely
beautiful. Soon I shall reread the Phaedrus, in part to understand the
"surplus of divinity" issue to which I just referred: in a phrase, that
there is more to the divine than can be symbolized in “God” or an
equivalent symbol. In the Phaedrus, Socrates presents a myth in which
the gods and their human adherents are led once a year to the summit of
the cosmos, and gaze upwards towards divinity beyond the cosmos, the
"truly divine." Note that "the gods" have their purpose, they are not
dismissed; like the psyche with its divine partner, the gods are
intermediary between being-things and the divine “beyond.” As Plato
says in the Epinomis, "Every myth has its truth." Those words often ring
in my mind, and lead to tolerance of various ways to symbolize
reality. The gods, too, have their truth.
In
mainline Christianity over the centuries, "the gods" were officially
dismissed, but came back, I would argue, in different dress: mainly in
the saints. Or more precisely, the gods did not come back, but the
"surplus of divinity" or divine reality that is more than in God alone
finds its place again--it is given symbolic meaning. In one's
meditation or thought, some of the saints seem to function the way the
gods did in “cosmological” cultures, such as the Egyptian, Greek,
Roman, Norse, and so on. I may be wrong on this, but the problem of “the
gods” bears thought. Experiences of reality were being symbolized as
“the gods” that would only be lost or discarded at a price.
When the more radical Reformation (as in John Calvin) threw out
adoration of the saints (even smashing statues, stained glass, and so
on, as "idolatrous"), then the world became far more "dedivinized," and
lost much of its "charm," or "magical quality," as I seem to recall
Max Weber's describing the effect on culture. A strictly Protestant
theology, and perhaps an Islamic one as well, leaves no room (or very
little room) for mediation of divinity. More ancient Catholicism and
Orthodoxy, on the other hand, absorbed the experiences of the ancients,
with their "world full of gods" (Thales), but changed the names, and
modified the "causes" of their divinity. Example: today at Mass a
prayer praised God for his "mighty love." I probably smiled reading it
,thinking of "the mighty Aphrodite," and praise for the power of the
god Eros in Plato's Symposium. Even in our secular
(Protestant-originated) culture, stories such as those around "St.
Nicholas" as "Santa Claus" have much of the aura of a kindly Greek god
who visits children, a kind of lesser divinity bestowing blessings. In
short: I am fascinated by the "excess of divinity" that spills over
into gods and saints, and is not confined to "the wholly Other," and so
on. As noted, the problem at least bears thought, and a place to
begin is with Plato’s treatment of “the gods.”
As
for philosophy, please recall the account given by Plato (in the
Phaedrus, I believe), in which Socrates unfolds this logic: Philosophy
is the love of wisdom (philosophia); the god alone is
truly wise; therefore, philosophy is the love of god. Philosophy is
the intellectual love of the divine. Not a religion, but a way of life.
Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus (and surely Parmenides and Heracleitos
before them) engaged in philosophy as a response to experiencing their
soul or consciousness (psyche) being moved by the god,
often symbolized as Nous (Intellect). Indeed, that was the primary
meaning given to “soul”: the “place” in which the divine and human
meet. One cannot read Plato's Republic, or the Symposium, or the
Phaedrus, or the Timaeus, and so on, with any kind of attention and not
be aware of divine action on one’s soul while reading. Through his
writing of dialogue and myth, Plato seeks to stir up similar
experiences to his own in the consciousness of the reader. That is
their purpose. Foremost among these experiences is the intellectual
search for the divine that is moving (or drawing) one to search. To study Plato is to search for the God moving one to search.
I cannot think of any truly secular philosopher until we get into "the
moderns," especially Hobbes, Descartes, and then the French
Enlightenment philosophes (whom Plato would have
recognized as sophists). Philosophy, shall we say, was no
“inner-worldly” activity, but a participatory movement into God,
variously symbolized and understood. Note that it is Descartes, in the
17th century, who tried to "prove" the existence of God--something no
ancient or Christian philosopher would have attempted. The very famous
passage in Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, for example, in which
Thomas supposedly tries to "prove" God's existence is misread if one
thinks that is what Thomas is doing. He provides 5 ways (viae) in which
the mind can recognize that God is (not "exists"), but these ways are
not intended as a demonstrative proof, but far more as a "pointing to"
from one mind to another. There is a pair of technical terms for the
difference, but I do not recall it precisely (something like apodeictic,
epideictic. with the difference between a logical demonstration and a
pointing to for one who will look). Recall that for St. Thomas, God
does not exist anyway; He / it is: Esse per se subsistens,
to be subsisting through itself. Not an existent, a “being-thing,” at
all. But modern philosophers still had to deal with “God” in some way.
Hegel collapsed God into human self-consciousness, especially his own.
And not even Nietzsche could not leave God alone! He had to struggle
hard to declare God "dead," and that “we have murdered him.” (In the
process, Nietzsche did explore the consequences of the death-of-god to
consciousness, and for that I give him great credit for his brilliant
insights).
***
Now, as for what I previously termed "divine dreams." Your account of
"lucid dreaming" sounds fitting, and may include what I mean. But at
times there is a "divine" content to such dreams, and these I would
mark out as significant as a kind of "revelation" of the unknown,
although God remains beyond the dream. Something of divine presence in
the psyche is made known. Such divine dreams are intense,
authoritative, and provoke remembering. You asked for several examples:
1. The night Alma Packard died--mother of
Muriel, Judy, and Noreen--I had a vivid dream. A man and Alma Packard
were sitting at a round wooden table, across from me. Nothing else was
visible, just the table and the two persons in a gentle light. I did not
recognize the man, but on reflection when awake I took him to be
Muriel's father. In any case, Alma looked me in the eyes and said one
simple sentence: "Have compassion on Muriel." That was it. For the
following weeks and months, I obeyed. I made a point of visiting
Muriel, and had dinner with Muriel and her sisters weekly. When I saw
her, I would always give Muriel a firm embrace. And we talked about her
agony, for her mother, who had just died, was also her best friend. We
did not play "too holy to mourn," the way Muriel said folks in her
church wanted her to act. Muriel has often thanked me for the
compassion I showed her. For my part, I was obeying the insight or word
through the dream.
2. During the 1980's, while
in the monastery, I dreamed one night that I was in India. I was in the
River Ganges, the sacred river, walking upstream. Many people were with
me, moving in the same direction. I kept walking upstream, uphill, and
gradually people faded away. The river became a small stream in the
Himalayas, but I kept walking up the stream, alone. Finally I came to
an opening between large rocks, out of which a very small amount of
water was flowing from the source. I peered into the darkness, into the
small opening between the rocks, and saw nothing, but realized that it
was the source of the sacred river. Now, what did the dream tell me?
That I am searching for God, and never to give up, but to peer into the
darkness, and that from out of that darkness flows the life-giving
stream of God. The dream expressed and assured me of the search which
constitutes my life. I had other dreams related to this one, but the
essential experience is similar: "Seek [God] and you will find."
3. Also during the 1980's, while you and Vic were living in Saudi
Arabia, I dreamed that I was on a train to you. As the train came
around a sharp bend, suddenly I saw in the distance the Great Mosque of
Mecca, with a glistening dome, beneath a deep, purple sky above and
behind it. I immediately was overcome with intense awe--and fell down
on the floor of the train in worship of the unseen God. That was the
dream. Note: to this day, when I see Muslims on their knees praying, I
am reminded of that awe before God, and I much appreciate that
experience as the basic "religious" experience: awe, wonder. And recall
Socrates in the Theatetus of Plato: "Philosophy begins in wonder."
Aristotle says the same in his Metaphysics (properly called "First
Philosophy"). I think that the experience of awe is the fundamental
experience engendering philosophy.
Consider the
insights given: Have compassion on the one suffering; continue the
search, and you will find; the experience of awe (with awe of the
Almighty, El Shaddai in Hebrew). At least for me, these experiences and
similar ones, presumably, form the living core of my "spirituality,"
and provoke the mind's search for God that is the philosophical life.
There is no dogmatic content here. Is it a wonder that I prefer
philosophy as search to theology or religion as belief? "The Tao that
can be expressed is not the Tao."
