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Thomas Cattoi, June McDaniel (Eds.) - Perceiving The Divine Through The Human Body - Mystical Sensuality-Palgrave Macmillan US (2011) PDF
Thomas Cattoi, June McDaniel (Eds.) - Perceiving The Divine Through The Human Body - Mystical Sensuality-Palgrave Macmillan US (2011) PDF
Human Body
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Perceiving the Divine through the
Human Body
Mystical Sensuality
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and
has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Cattoi, Thomas.
Perceiving the divine through the human body : mystical sensuality /
Thomas Cattoi, June McDaniel.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-349-29834-1
1. Human body—Religious aspects. 2. Sensuality—Religious aspects.
3. Mysticism. I. McDaniel, June. II. Title.
BL604.B64C38 2011
202'.2—dc22
2011013948
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
The Mysticism Group of the American Academy of Religion viii
List of Illustrations ix
Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel would like to extend a word of thanks
to Burke Gerstenschlager, Editor at Palgrave Macmillan, and Kaylan
Connally, Editorial Assistant, for their help in making this volume a reality.
They would also like to express their gratitude to Dr. David Rounds, Editor
of Religion East and West, and to Prof. LikKuen Tong of the Academy for
Field Being Philosophy of Hong Kong for allowing the republication of the
articles by Joseph Molleur and Laura Weed.
Laura Weed’s article “Daoist Mysticism: Embodiment, Eudaimonia and
Flow,” was previously published in LikKuen Tong (ed.), Wei Wu Wei: Essays
on Taoist Philosophy (Hong Kong: Daoist Association Press, 2009), 45–57.
Joseph Molleur’s article “A Hindu Monk’s Appreciation of Eastern
Orthodoxy’s Jesus Prayer: The ‘Inner Senses’ of Hearing, Seeing, and
Feeling in Comparative Perspective,” was previously published in Religion
East and West No. 9 (October 2009), 67–76.
The Mysticism Group of the
American Academy of Religion
T
he spiritual senses have grown out of favor in the modern world.
Like the appendix, they may be considered vestigial organs, once
important but today atrophied or disused, vaguely known but of
uncertain function. They may be considered less “real” than the appendix,
as they are harder to find. On the other hand, we have a clearer idea of their
function than we do of the appendix (theories on whose uses range from
helping immune function to digesting tree bark), as the mystical literature
of various religious traditions describes their nature and development.
Humanity routinely develops and loses skills. A good example is memory.
Earlier forms of schooling emphasized the importance of rote memory,
especially before publishing became available. In ancient India, brahmin
sages would memorize entire Vedas, which consisted of thousands of stanzas,
and recite them in order without an error (it was understood that each recita-
tion was symbolically recreating the world, and any error would distort that
world, so they would have to go back to the beginning and do it properly
in case of a mispronunciation). In the early twentieth century, Classics schol-
ars could often recite the Iliad in the original Greek, and students at Muslim
madrassas today can recite the entire Qur’an in Arabic. Yet in the modern
West, we see college students who suffer through memorizing a single page
from a textbook.
Another form of memory that gets lost is eidetic or “photographic”
memory. With this sort of memory, the person can still perceive an object
after it has been removed from sight. Today, this is sometimes seen in
childhood, but it is rarely developed in modern cultures. Indeed, children
physical objects, only with the perceptions of the subtle body. From the
Advaita perspective, both realms of sensation are unreal and illusory. In the
state of deep sleep, we have a state of pure witness, but no sensations, even
from the subtle body. There is only consciousness, without memory. In the
deepest state, there is direct perception of the Absolute.4
From the Advaita Vedanta perspective, the mind reaches out toward its
objects through the sense organs, drawing in sensations and impressions,
and it stores and evaluates them. There is indirect perception without the
five senses, like pleasure, pain, and knowledge of self, and also direct percep-
tion by the five senses, in which the object must be knowable, exist in time,
and have some relationship to the knower. The highest form of perception,
direct mystical insight, does not involve separate sensory organs, but is
rather a direct merging of self and infinite consciousness.
As we move toward the Yoga schools, we may note that spiritual senses
come into play as a result of yogic meditative practice, with the withdrawal
of the senses and the focus of the mind on a single point. This draws the
mind into various states of concentration or samadhi, leading to kaivalyam
or liberation. As the yogi performs spiritual practice or sadhana, the sense
organs are transformed. By the practice of samyama or meditations on
specific objects, we see the development of unusual abilities—the vision of
subtle, hidden, or distant objects; the vision of inner anatomy and physiology;
knowledge of the minds of others. Ordinary perception is stilled or
redirected.
Yogic perception may involve a single intuitive sense, or a variety of
spiritual senses. It includes flashes of intuition about future events ( pratib-
hajnana), and knowledge of past, present, and future events. These occur
as a result of a single insight, for temporal order is understood as an artificial
construction of the intellect.5 For these events, there is a single perception
or cognition, rather than a set of spiritual sense perceptions. There is also
siddha-darsana, valid and immediate perceptual knowledge of hidden and
remote objects, using transformed external sense organs (involving super-
natural vision, sound, touch, taste, smell, and knowledge). This transforma-
tion may occur through spiritual practice, visualization, mantra, drugs, and
accumulation of karma. This “sensory perception of supersensible objects”
comes through sense organs that are strengthened and purified, according
to Candrakanta.6 Yogic perception is the highest excellence of human per-
ception, according to Jayanta Bhatta, for the minds of yogis can have
immediate knowledge of all knowable objects, even varied and contradic-
tory ones.7
Yogic perception is sometimes divided into ecstatic (yukta) and non-ecstatic
(viyukta) varieties. According to Prasastapada, ecstatic yogic perception
6 ● June McDaniel
involves realization of the essential nature of self, space, time, and con-
sciousness, while non-ecstatic perception involves hidden and remote
knowledge using sense organs.8 For the philosopher Udayana, yogic percep-
tion (yukta pratyaksa) occurs when yogis withdraw consciousness (manas)
from the sense organs and focus it on supersensible objects. An example of
this is seen in the Bhagavad Gita, when Arjuna sees Krishna through his
spiritual (divya) eye, an ability granted by Krishna.9 There is a longstanding
debate in Vedanta and yoga philosophy as to whether supernatural percep-
tion occurs through pure awareness (manas) or through separate spiritual
senses, or transformed external senses. Some philosophers understand that
spiritual perception is still limited (by ignorance, karma particles, or mate-
rial elements), while others argue that there is special perception by liber-
ated souls, in which the mind becomes transparent and all of reality is
reflected. Here the mind is unobstructed, and the yogi can see things as
they really are, an ability bound souls do not share.
The supernatural yogic states, in which specific forms of hidden knowl-
edge are perceived, are understood to occur as a part of spiritual practice
whose further goal is samadhi, a total focus of mind. The goal of samadhi
may be understood in two forms. Nirvikalpa samadhi has the soul identified
with the Absolute, a union of knower, known, and knowledge. We may
perhaps call this a collapse of perception, as there is no relation of subject
and object. The limitations of time, space, and causation are negated, and
the person enters a state of pure existence, consciousness, and bliss. Infinity
is a state of consciousness rather than a personal deity.
However, there is also a form of samadhi in which infinity is understood
as a God, a personal figure with a personality and emotions. This is called
savikalpa samadhi, a state in which the senses are withdrawn from the objec-
tive world and focused on God. God may be understood in a particular
form, as one’s ishta deva or personal form of God, or through a relationship.
God may be one’s mother, father, child, friend, or beloved, and the devotee
becomes the embodiment of love. This approach has been elaborated in the
tradition of Hindu bhakti or devotional love.
Each form of Hindu devotion has its own theology and spiritual prac-
tices, but we can give as an example the Gaudiya Vaishnava school, in which
the major deity is Krishna. His devotees focus on Krishna as a monotheistic
god, the origin of the universe, who exists in eternal play with his consort
Radha in the heaven of Vrindavana. Gaudiya Vaishnava devotees can wor-
ship him in many moods, but one that is greatly respected involves the
manjari sadhana. In this practice, devotees take on the spiritual bodies of
Radha’s handmaidens or manjaris, and they live eternally in Krishna’s para-
dise. These spiritual bodies are composed of pure devotional love ( prema)
Spiritual Body, Spiritual Senses, Past and Present ● 7
and are young and female. They are created by visualization and meditation,
with spiritual senses that are focused on the play (lila) of Radha and Krishna.
Each spiritual body has its own service to the deities, its own color of cloth-
ing, its own residence. The devotee must memorize the layout of the heav-
enly Vrindavana world, learn the location of Radha’s house and village, and
Krishna’s house and village, and the pond in the forest where they meet, and
locales for their various flirtations. When the visualization is successful, these
places and events are directly perceived through the spiritual senses within
the siddha deha or visualized spiritual body.10 Such a spiritual body exists not
only during life, but is understood to live eternally after death.
There is a strong link between the material body and the spiritual body,
which is increased as the devotee’s love intensifies and the heart softens. It
can show up physically, as in stories where the spiritual body is burned
while boiling milk, and this shows up in physical burns on the person.11
There are also stories of devotees getting physical indigestion from food
eaten by the spiritual body. While the spiritual body normally exists sepa-
rately from the physical body, at times they may interact or even merge
together. The spiritual senses come to be merged with the physical senses,
and the deity and heaven may be sensed with the material body.
This range of understandings of spiritual senses, from one sense to many,
from united to separate spiritual bodies, may be seen in the chapters in this
volume.
Joseph Molleur’s chapter, “A Hindu Monk’s Appreciation of Eastern
Orthodoxy’s Jesus Prayer: The ‘Inner Senses’ of Hearing, Seeing, and
Feeling in Comparative Perspective” examines some aspects of Vedantic
understanding of the spiritual senses and compares them with Orthodox
theology on the inner senses. Swami Prabhavananda followed the philosophy
of Ramakrishna and the Vedanta Society, but also had an interest in com-
parative religion. He was particularly interested in the Hindu practice of
mantrajapa, in which a sacred word or mantra is repeated for long periods
of time, until the sound resonates on its own. The practice of mantra is
found in both yogic and bhakti traditions—Molleur cites Prabhavananda’s
use of both Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and Narada’s Bhakti Sutras. Prabhavananda
argues that the Jesus prayer in Eastern Orthodoxy, in which the name of
Jesus is invoked until it becomes automatic, like the heartbeat or breath,
can be viewed as a mantra. Both are forms of interior prayer, in which
contemplation is constant and uninterrupted. Both mantrajapa and the
Jesus prayer involve the spiritual senses of hearing and seeing. The Jesus
prayer is said to move from the lips, to the spirit, to the heart, until it occurs
spontaneously, as mantrajapa does. However, while much Hindu practice
also emphasizes visualization of images, the Orthodox practices avoid
8 ● June McDaniel
the tantric exchange of sexual fluids brings supernatural power and a change
in the practitioner’s status and abilities. Sexual interaction is primarily by
touch, which is the most important of the spiritual senses for this tradition.
It brings direct contact with the deity and evokes a depth dimension not
present in ordinary perception.
It is the sense of touch (sparsa) that best represents the tantric conception
of contact with divinity, and like sexuality can evoke the intensity and
transformative power of bliss (ananda). While the spiritual sense of sight is
important for the initial stages, it is touch that represents closeness to and
interaction with the deity.
David Gray’s article, “Experiencing the Single Savor: Divinizing the
Body and the Senses in Tantric Buddhist Meditation” deals more specifically
with the Buddhist tantras. It focuses on one in particular, a manual attrib-
uted to the tenth-century tantric practitioner and mahasiddha Luipa, called
the Cakrasamvarabhisamaya. It describes a purification practice in which the
senses are visualized as male deities, and their sense objects are visualized as
female deities. They are imagined as embracing in sexual union, which both
represents and induces a union of sensory powers and their objects, creating
a state of bliss or ekarasa. It is a transformation of human perceptual powers
in order to gain liberation.
One major process of tantric purification involves identifying aspects of
the self with deities by means of visualization. In this case, the body is rec-
ognized as a mandala, and the senses and elements are cleansed of ignorance
by the process of identification with male and female mandala figures.
Ordinary human senses are corrupted by egotism and greed and perceive the
world in a limited fashion. They are dim echoes of the divine senses. But
this process allows the person to recapture original perception, recognizing
that the world is filled with Buddha wisdom and bliss. Deities are placed
in the eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, and sense of touch, and also in the bodily
elements. These deities act as transforming agents within the human subtle
body, a body similar to the physical one, which is capable of supernatural
power and movement. The purification process leads toward the extremely
subtle state of clear light of nonduality. The male and female deities engage
in sexual union, which represents the union of the senses and their objects
(or elements). Their state of bliss in union reflects the consciousness of the
practitioner. The senses within the spiritual body are cleansed of obstruc-
tions, divinized, and able to perceive the true bliss of union.
With respect to East Asian perspectives, we also have two papers on
Chinese religion, focusing on Daoism. Louis Komjathy’s chapter, “The
Daoist Mystical Body,” shows many similarities between Daoism and the tan-
tric Hindu and Buddhist traditions. He describes the Daoist understanding
10 ● June McDaniel
astonishing ability to suffer freezing and burning and beating, and yet
remain whole and unharmed, demonstrated the power that a spiritual body
could possess, and her relationship with God.
Derek Michaud’s article “The Patristic Roots of John Smith’s True Way
or Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge” is a study of Christian
Neoplatonism, ranging from the Patristic writer Origen to the Protestant
John Smith. Both Origen and Smith are dualists, assuming the existence of
separate but related physical and spiritual bodies, each with their own
senses. For both, the physical and spiritual senses are ontologically distinct.
Michaud describes the spiritual senses as perceptual, as they encounter
purely noetic or spiritual objects, but also conceptual, as their objects are
nonphysical, like concepts and ideas.
Origen based his understanding of the spiritual senses on his interpreta-
tions of the Bible, especially the prophetic books, which give many exam-
ples of dreams and revelations (with visions of cherubim, hearing divine
voices, and tasting living bread). For Origen, these are not allegories—they
are literal, but in a different way. Smith was a philosopher and theologian,
and based his understanding of these senses on scripture as well as on
Descartes and his notion of mind/body dualism. Smith described visions of
light common to Origen and Plotinus, and understood Christ to link purity
of heart with beatific vision. He emphasized seeking God within the self,
with the soul’s own senses, rather than in books.
Both writers sometimes speak of five separate spiritual senses, and also
of a single spiritual capacity, an “intellectual sense” or “sense of the heart.”
Such senses can be understood as multiple, or as fused together. All human
beings have such senses, it is part of human nature, an important aspect of
rational beings. However, most people do not realize this potential. For
Smith and Origen, the development of the spiritual senses requires personal
effort and practice, as well as the gift of divine grace.
Michelle Voss Roberts’ chapter, “The Body Gains Its Share: The
Asceticism of Mechthild of Magdeburg,” focuses on a medieval saint and
beguine of the thirteenth century. Mechthild contrasts body and soul, but
does not understand them as ultimately separate. Instead, they are linked
together through a unified sensorium, a single set of physico-spiritual senses.
These senses begin as ordinary physical ones, but with ascetic practice and
contemplation they are transformed into organs of divine perception.
The ascetic path involves three sorrows: for guilt, for purification and
penance, and for love of God. All of these sorrows are understood as painful,
but ultimately transformational. The soul becomes able to rise and fall, “as
love dissolves through the soul into the senses,” and the senses are refined
and divinized. The physical senses are thus able to participate in mystical
Spiritual Body, Spiritual Senses, Past and Present ● 13
Notes
1. Carol de Chellis Hill, Henry James’ Midnight Song (New York: W. W. Norton,
1993), 19.
2. See June McDaniel, The Madness of the Saints: Ecstatic Religion in Bengal
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), chapter 3, for more details on
Ramakrishna and other Shakta siddhas.
3. Raghunath Safaya, Indian Psychology: A Critical and Historical Analysis of the
Psychological Speculations in Indian Philosophical Literature (New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1976), 223. Citta also holds such basic instincts or
vasanas as the desire for name and fame, concern for beauty and attractiveness,
and the passion for knowledge.
4. Ibid., 237–42.
5. Jadunath Sinha, Indian Epistemology of Perception (Calcutta: Sinha Publishing
House, 1969), 139.
6. Ibid., 131.
7. Ibid., 132.
8. Ibid., 133.
9. Ibid., 134.
10. See McDaniel, The Madness of the Saints, 45–50.
11. Ibid., 48.
Bibliography
de Chellis Hill, de. Henry James’ Midnight Song. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
McDaniel, June. The Madness of the Saints: Ecstatic Religion in Bengal. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Safaya, Raghunath. Indian Psychology: A Critical and Historical Analysis of the
Psychological Speculations in Indian Philosophical Literature, New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1976.
Sinha, Jadunath. Indian Epistemology of Perception. Calcutta: Sinha Publishing
House, 1969.
CHAPTER 1
L
“ ord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This
prayer formula, sometimes with slight variations (such as the omis-
sion of either “Son of God” or “a sinner” or both), is referred to in
Eastern Orthodox Christianity as the “Jesus Prayer” or the “Prayer of the
Heart.” Two of Eastern Orthodoxy’s most prominent commentators on
the Jesus Prayer tradition, Kallistos Ware1 and Lev Gillet,2 have rightly
pointed out that the appeal of the Jesus Prayer in recent decades has spread
beyond the confines of Eastern Orthodoxy, with many Roman Catholic and
Protestant Christians now repeating the prayer as a regular component of
their spiritual practice. Appreciation of the Jesus Prayer has spread even
beyond the borders of Christianity. For example, in an article called “Jesus
Prayer and the Nembutsu,” Taitetsu Unno, a Shin Buddhist of the Pure
Land tradition, explores with great appreciation the affinities between the
Orthodox practice of repeating the Jesus Prayer and the Japanese Pure Land
Buddhist practice of repeating as its normative prayer Namo Amida Butsu,
“I take refuge in Amitabha, the Buddha of Immeasurable Light and Life.”3
Another example is Swami Prabhavananda, the main subject of this chapter.
Prabhavananda, who led the Vedanta Society of Southern California
from 1923 until his death in 1976, is one of the most influential monks
of the (Hindu) Ramakrishna Order to have “come to the West.” In three of
his published commentaries (two on Hindu sacred texts and one on the
New Testament’s Sermon on the Mount), Prabhavananda quotes extensively
from The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way, Russian
Orthodoxy’s anonymously authored classic texts on the practice of the Jesus
Prayer. The aim of this chapter is to analyze Prabhavananda’s treatment of
Eastern Orthodoxy’s Jesus Prayer tradition, with special attention to the issue
of the “inner senses” of “spiritual hearing,” “spiritual seeing,” and “spiritual
feeling.”4
While the events described in The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim
Continues His Way probably took place some time between 1853 and 1861,
the first Russian edition of the texts was not published until 1884.5 It is
unknown how long they may have existed in manuscript form prior to their
initial publication. The books have since become enormously important,
because they have popularized the spiritual approach of another—and con-
siderably less accessible—classic of Eastern Orthodox spirituality, The
Philokalia.6 Indeed, it is largely due to the widespread popularity and appeal
of The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way that the Jesus
Prayer tradition is no longer limited to Eastern Orthodox Christians but
has come to make a strong impression on non-Christians such as Swami
Prabhavananda.
Together with the novelist Christopher Isherwood, one of his most
famous western disciples, Prabhavananda coauthored a translation of and
commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali—Hinduism’s premier how-to
guide for the practice of meditation. (How to Know God is the rather
unconventional title of their Yoga Sutras translation and commentary.)
Verses 27–29 of Part 1 of the Yoga Sutras read as follows: “The word which
expresses Him [Ishwara/God] is OM. This word must be repeated with
meditation upon its meaning. Hence comes knowledge of the Atman
[indwelling divinity] and destruction of the obstacles to that knowledge.”7
In commenting on these verses, Prabhavananda and Isherwood emphasize
the power of the word in spiritual life and how the constant repetition
(a practice known as japa in the Hindu tradition) of a spiritually charged
word or phrase (called a mantra) can greatly conduce to spiritual progress.
In the course of their commentary, the authors quote at length three
paragraphs—all of which will subsequently come under consideration in
this chapter—from The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His
Way.8
Prabhavananda also draws directly on the two books in his commentary
on Narada’s Bhakti Sutras, titled Narada’s Way of Divine Love. One of the
Hindu tradition’s most important sacred texts on the “path of devotion,”
Narada’s Bhakti Sutras articulates the various ways by which a spiritual
A Hindu Monk’s Appreciation ● 19
The spiritual senses of “inner hearing” and “inner seeing” seem to feature
prominently here. Concerning inner hearing, the practitioner voices, first
“with the lips” and then “in the spirit” and “in the heart,” the words of the
Jesus Prayer until eventually, after long practice, the prayer voices itself
20 ● Joseph Molleur
within the heart and mind. Prabhavananda notes: “You can make japam
[repeat the divine name] aloud if you are alone, or silently if you are among
other people.”15 And on the prayer’s voicing itself within us of its own
accord, Prabhavananda notes: “Through constant practice, the repetition
becomes automatic. It no longer has to be consciously willed.”16 In other
words, eventually we reach the stage where we hear the Jesus Prayer repeat-
ing itself within us, nearly all the time.
As for the spiritual sense of “inner seeing,” this concerns the instruction
to form and maintain a clear mental picture of Jesus while meditating on
the words of the prayer. Very significantly, Prabhavananda does not launch
into a discussion of a practice that is common in Hindu spirituality, the
meditative practice of visualizing every aspect of the appearance of one’s
beloved deity, from head to toe. Instead, he makes comments such as the
following: “If we persevere in our repetition, it will inevitably lead us . . .
to think about the reality which it represents.”17 And, “You then live always
in the awareness of the presence of God.”18 Also, “The aspirant must feel
the presence of God within himself as he chants the name.”19
This approach shows that Prabhavananda has an appreciative insight
into Orthodoxy’s nervousness about attempting to picture Jesus’ physical
appearance in one’s imagination. In contrast to the teaching in The Way of
a Pilgrim concerning the practice of “forming a mental picture of Jesus’
constant presence,” a hermit whom our pilgrim encounters in the sequel, The
Pilgrim Continues His Way, warns against “using the imagination and . . .
accepting any sort of vision [spiritual seeing] during contemplation,”
including with respect to Christ.20 On this subject, Eastern Orthodox theo-
logian Kallistos Ware writes: “As we invoke the Name, we should not
deliberately shape in our minds any visual image of the Savior.” Preferable
to “forming pictures of the Savior” is “simply feeling his presence.”21 Ware
cites many examples of Orthodox authors who have strongly expressed this
preference.22 So what seems at first glance in The Way of a Pilgrim to be
encouragement to exercise one’s spiritual sense of “inner seeing” is really
understood in the Orthodox teaching on the Jesus Prayer to concern “inner
feeling,” and Prabhavananda understood this. His comments emphasize
“feeling” the beloved deity’s presence during japa rather than “seeing” the
deity’s physical form in the mind’s eye. (Picturing Jesus in one’s imagination
must not be confused, however, with a practice highly prized in Eastern
Orthodox spirituality, the practice of viewing actual icons of Jesus with
one’s physical eyes.)
The second passage that Prabhavananda reproduces in all three of his
books under discussion was taken from The Pilgrim Continues His Way. The
speaker is a skhimnik, a monk who has attained the highest of the three
A Hindu Monk’s Appreciation ● 21
Many so-called enlightened people regard this frequent offering of one and
the same prayer as useless and even trifling, calling it mechanical and a
thoughtless occupation of simple people. But unfortunately they do not
know the secret which is revealed as a result of this mechanical exercise; they
do not know how this frequent service of the lips imperceptibly becomes
a genuine appeal of the heart, sinks down into the inward life, becomes a
delight, becomes, as it were, natural to the soul, bringing it light and nourish-
ment and leading it on to union with God.24
On the notion that repetition of the Jesus Prayer can bring the soul light,
we read earlier on in The Way of a Pilgrim an even stronger assertion:
“Everyone who . . . sink[s] down in silence into the depths of one’s heart
and call[s] more and more upon the radiant name of Jesus . . . feels at once
the inward light, everything becomes understandable to him, he even
catches sight in this light of some of the mysteries of the Kingdom of
God.”25
Swami Prabhavananda has much to say on this topic of seeing an inner
light during japa and the process of illumination more generally. For
example, he writes: “Through repetition of the mantra, mind and heart are
purified. Eventually the name is experienced as living and conscious, as one
with God—and illumination is attained.”26 And commenting on Jesus’
teaching that “[t]he light of the body is the eye: if, therefore, thine eye be
single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matt. 6:22, KJV),
Prabhavananda says: “Concentration of the mind on the chosen ideal of
God is the way to uncover . . . the divine light within.”27 Further, com-
menting on the teaching of the Yoga Sutras that “concentration may also be
attained by fixing the mind upon the Inner Light, which is beyond sorrow”
(I:36), Prabhavananda writes: “The ancient yogis believed that there was an
actual spiritual consciousness, called ‘the lotus of the heart,’ . . . which
could be revealed in deep meditation . . . and that it shone with an inner
light. . . . [T]hose who saw it were filled with an extraordinary sense of
peace and joy.”28 It is worth noting that, both here and in the passage from
The Way of a Pilgrim referred to just above, the locus of this inner light is
said to be the heart.29
We may well ask: Is this process of illumination, of perceiving light
within oneself, properly understood as an inner feeling? Or as inner seeing?
Or merely as intellectual illumination? Eastern Orthodox theologian
Lev Gillet offers the following interpretation: “[T]he invocation of the
22 ● Joseph Molleur
Concerning the luminous vision to which the Jesus Prayer leads, let us dis-
tinguish four possibilities. There is in the first place the perception, by the
natural organs, of a light produced supernaturally; this has happened to both
saints and sinners. Next, far above the first as a limiting case, there is the
supernatural perception of a supernatural light, a perception that is not sen-
sible or physical, and that consequently transcends normal psychology.
At the bottom of the ladder, there is the purely symbolic use of the word
“light,” when the name of Jesus is regarded in a figurative sense as the sun
of the soul. Between this case and the first one considered, there is room for
an intermediate possibility: the constant or frequent practice of the Jesus
Prayer can place the one who prays in an habitual inner state of “luminosity.”
Even if he closes his eyes, he has the impression of being penetrated by radi-
ance and of moving in light. This is more than a symbol; it is less than a
sensible perception, and is certainly not an ecstasy; but it is something real,
although indescribable.31
St. John Chrysostom, in his teaching about prayer, speaks as follows: “No
one should give the answer that it is impossible for a man occupied with
worldly cares, and who is unable to go to church, to pray always. Everywhere,
wherever you may find yourself, you can set up an altar to God in your mind
A Hindu Monk’s Appreciation ● 23
one’s beloved deity, resulting in the descent of the prayer into the heart, the
eventual automaticity of the prayer, and the experience of inner light. This
phenomenological similarity has been recognized not only by Prabhavananda
but by the author of The Way of a Pilgrim and by Kallistos Ware as well.
We read in The Way of a Pilgrim (unbeknownst to these nineteenth-century
Russians, the Hindu practice clearly predated the Christian one): “It was
from [the great and very holy men of olden times . . . such as Anthony the
Great, Macarius the Great, Mark the spiritual athlete, John Chrysostom]
that the monks of India . . . took over the ‘heart method’ of interior prayer,
only they quite spoiled and garbled it in doing so, as my starets explained
to me.”36 And according to Kallistos Ware, “The frame of the Jesus Prayer
certainly resembles various non-Christian frames [he mentions Sufi as well
as Hindu parallels], but this should not make us insensitive to the unique-
ness of the picture within, to the distinctively Christian content of the
Prayer.”37 In other words, as religious phenomena, the Orthodox Jesus
Prayer tradition and the Hindu practice of japa, or mantra repetition, are
very similar, but when it comes to the specific divine name invoked by
practitioners of the two traditions, for Ware (and, one suspects, for the great
majority of Christians) it makes all the difference in the world that the
name is Jesus, rather than Vishnu, or Krishna, or Shiva, or Kali, or Durga,
or whatever other divine name a Hindu may use to address the presence of
the divine. And the reverse is undoubtedly true as well: most Hindus would
not feel right reciting the name of Jesus.
Returning to the possible reasons for Prabhavananda’s repeated references
to an Eastern Orthodox practice, first, it is clear from the tone of his discus-
sions of the Jesus Prayer that he held the prayer in great respect and con-
sidered it to be a valid spiritual practice. This is not surprising when we
recall that the Ramakrishna Order, of which Prabhavananda was a member,
views Jesus as a bona fide avatara, or divine incarnation, and has therefore
always shown great respect and reverence for him. Second, the sort of spiri-
tual path that is advocated in The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim
Continues His Way is familiar to many Hindus and can perhaps be viewed
as giving evidence that the practice of mantra recitation may be universal.
A third possible reason is that Prabhavananda might have felt that Western
readers would understand what he had to say about prayer more easily if
he referred to a Christian prayer practice that was in many ways similar to
his own. And finally, having shown knowledge of and respect and sympathy
for a Christian practice, Prabhavananda undoubtedly hoped that this would
inspire Westerners to view his religion with the same generosity and
understanding.
A Hindu Monk’s Appreciation ● 25
Notes
1. Kallistos Ware, “The Power of the Name: The Function of the Jesus Prayer,”
Cross Currents 24:2–3 (Summer–Fall, 1974): 187.
2. Lev Gillet, On the Invocation of the Name of Jesus (Springfield, IL: Templegate,
1985), 7; The Jesus Prayer (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1987), 86–7.
3. Taitetsu Unno, “Jesus Prayer and the Nembutsu,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 22
(2002): 93.
4. As a monk of the Ramakrishna Order, Prabhavananda stands in the spiritual
tradition of Advaita Vedanta that traces its lineage back to Śankara. According to
Śankara, there is a strong distinction between the physical senses and the corre-
sponding spiritual senses. For example, “There are two types of vision in every
one of us . . . ordinary and real.” Śankara explains the difference as follows:
“Ordinary vision is the function of the mind connected with the eye. . . . It is a
process, an action, and so it has a birth and a death.” By way of contrast, “real”
vision is “the vision of the ātman ”—the vision of the divinity that lies at the core
of one’s being—which is “like heat and light of fire.” Unlike “ordinary” (physical)
vision, this “real” (spiritual) vision “has neither birth nor death”; it does not come
and go. For this analysis by Śankara, see Swami Ranganathananda, The Message
of the Brihadāranyaka Upanishad (Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, 2005), 393–95.
5. R. M. French, in his “Translator’s Note” to The Way of a Pilgrim and The
Pilgrim Continues His Way (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1965), xi–xii.
6. Published in five volumes as The Philokalia: The Complete Text, translated and
edited by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber
and Faber, 1979–2007). For a very useful abridgement, see Allyne Smith, ed.,
Philokalia: The Eastern Christian Spiritual Texts (Woodstock, VT: SkyLight
Paths, 2006).
7. Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, How to Know God: The Yoga
Aphorisms of Patanjali (Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1953), 56.
8. Ibid., 56–64.
9. Swami Prabhavananda, Narada’s Way of Divine Love: The Bhakti Sutras
(Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1971), 85.
10. Ibid., 85–90.
11. Swami Prabhavananda, The Sermon on the Mount according to Vedanta
(Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1963), 87–91.
12. Some scholars contend that The Pilgrim Continues His Way has a different
author than The Way of a Pilgrim (see, e.g., Gillet, Jesus Prayer, 83), but this
debate lies outside the scope of the present study.
13. In the Slavonic original, the Jesus prayer reads as follows: “ȘɃɆɄɃȹȽ
ȝȽɆɈɆȺȪɅȽɆɇȺɄɃɁȽɀɈȾɁɔ!”
14. French, Way of a Pilgrim, 9–10; Prabhavananda and Isherwood, How to Know
God, 62–63; Prabhavananda, Narada’s Way, 89; Prabhavananda, Sermon on the
Mount, 89.
26 ● Joseph Molleur
Bibliography
Chariton, Igumen. The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology. Translated by
E. Kadloubovsky and E. M. Palmer. Edited with an Introduction by Timothy
[Kallistos] Ware. London: Faber and Faber, 1966.
French, R. M., trans. The Way of a Pilgrim and The Pilgrim Continues His Way. San
Francisco: Harper Collins, 1965.
Gillet, Lev. On the Invocation of the Name of Jesus. Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1985.
Gillet, Lev, and Kallistos Ware. The Jesus Prayer. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1987.
A Hindu Monk’s Appreciation ● 27
Palmer, G. E. H., Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, trans. and ed. The Philokalia:
The Complete Text. London: Faber and Faber, 1979–2007.
Prabhavananda, Swami. Narada’s Way of Divine Love: The Bhakti Sutras. Hollywood:
Vedanta Press, 1971.
———. The Sermon on the Mount according to Vedanta. Hollywood: Vedanta Press,
1963.
Prabhavananda, Swami and Christopher Isherwood. How to Know God: The Yoga
Aphorisms of Patanjali. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1953.
Ranganathananda, Swami. The Message of the Brihadāranyaka Upanishad . Kolkata:
Advaita Ashrama, 2005.
Smith, Allyne, ed. Philokalia: The Eastern Christian Spiritual Texts. Woodstock, VT:
SkyLight Paths, 2006.
Unno, Taitetsu. “Jesus Prayer and the Nembutsu.” Buddhist-Christian Studies 22
(2002): 93–99.
Ware, Kallistos. “The Power of the Name: The Function of the Jesus Prayer.” Cross
Currents 24:2–3 (Summer–Fall, 1974): 184–203.
CHAPTER 2
Indo-Tibetan Tantrism
as Spirit Marriage
Stuart Ray Sarbacker
is the primary goal of shamanic practice, one should not rule out the
possibility that shamans experience mystic (i.e., unitive) states and that
these should not be viewed as mutually exclusive categories.9 I would argue
that in fact, we should expect to see just such a thing—that the margins
of the enstatic and ecstatic are fluid, and over time shift and transform
accordingly with internal psychophysical reconfigurations and shifts in
external sociocultural conditions, even if the morphology of a tradition
changes so slowly as to make these changes virtually imperceptible or sim-
ply inconspicuous.
the agents of the spiritual world that are the recipients of these offerings,
are wrathful in character and often have animal attributes, paralleling their
shamanic counterparts. Though this may seem to only be a basic parallel,
analogous to the larger literal and figurative uses of sexuality in the com-
parative context, there is an important point of difference. This is the fact
that sexual fluids and their restraint (brahmacarya) and sealing (mudrā) are
seen as having profound ramifications for the spiritual path and physical
vitality as the distilled essence (bindu, “drops”) of life itself. It might be
argued that sexual fluids are the physical equivalent of the soul or spirit and
the physical analogue of the subtle physiological process, and in giving these
up, one is in principle giving up one’s spirit. As characterized in the
hat·hayoga tradition more broadly, the “bindu” composed of the vital life
energies (and ultimately sexual fluid) is the core basis for psycho-physiological
life and the process of rebirth, and therefore its manipulation and transfor-
mation has crucial spiritual implications. The bindu, which is the very
essence of life, is a powerful, refined spiritual substance that if manipulated
properly facilitates the obtaining of bodily immortality, spiritual mastery,
and unlimited gnosis of samādhi in hat·hayoga and tantra. Here is where one
of the clear parallels can be found—the tantric yogin or tāntrika exchanges
the vital force of sexual restraint and tapas acquired through yogic control
for the attainment of supernatural power. This power may be, in my analy-
sis, of a numinous character (approximating or assimilating divine abilities
such as flight) or a cessative one (lending toward insight or wisdom, as is
the case with the Buddhist prajñā goddesses, the d· ākinı̄s), and I believe
White would argue the primacy of the numinous over the cessative, espe-
cially in the early formations of tantra.
In the Kulārn·avatantra, which is the distillation of the kula or “clan”
tantric practices, the spirit world, and especially the Goddess (Devı- or Śakti),
is made manifest in the material world through multiple forms of mediation,
allowing the spiritual “transaction” to take place. The Kulārn·avatantra, which
represents a sophisticated attempt to systematize the practice of tantric yoga
into Śaiva and Vedānta traditions, presents a glimpse of how exactly the
spiritual “transaction” or spirit marriage can take place in concrete and sys-
tematic terms. These include the performance of incantation or mantra,
ritual worship (pūjā), the use of prohibited substances as offerings
(pañcamakāra), including sexual rites (maithuna). Pūjā, the performance of
worship through offerings, invokes the various sense-fields through offerings
that correspond to them—through the image, the offering of incense and
flowers, food and water, ringing a bell, through touching the image, and so
forth. The taboo substances are understood not only as transgressive offer-
ings appropriate for an occult deity, but also as the cultivation of inner
38 ● Stuart Ray Sarbacker
powers in the sādhaka, where the fragrance of wine activates the power of
will (icchāśakti), the taste of wine activates the power of knowledge
(jñānaśakti), and the intoxicating effect, the purification of mind
(cittaśodhana).26 Likewise, in the tantric sexual ritual of maithuna, the sen-
sation of bliss (ānanda) at the heart of the sexual act is seen as the power
of the goddess (śakti) in a tangible form, and the discernment of that reality
differentiates maithuna from the mundane expression of intercourse, and
activates the inner transformation of the sādhaka.27 Thus, through the proc-
ess of kaulatantra, the sādhaka strives for the complete and total divinization
of mind and body—identity with the god Śiva—and thereby the transfor-
mation into a deity with attendant knowledge (vidyā) and power (siddhi)
that is unlimited in nature.
The basic ritual and sexual equations, transactions, or contractual agree-
ments lay the foundation for the more extensive interpretation of tantric
maithuna as a consorting of identifiable gods and goddesses who dwell in
an ecstatic and timeless state, as opposed to the more “momentary” encoun-
ters of earlier tantra. On a purely speculative level, sociologically speaking,
this might demonstrate a shift from tantric encounters with “rogue” female
possession ritualists that are part of charismatic female movements (such as
characteristic of contemporary India and many other parts of the world)
toward an integration or control of such (liminal) possession ritualism
within the folds of a (liminoid) tantric tradition. On the other hand, the
exchange between the male and female might be argued to bring an elevated
spiritual status to both parties as the female is the gateway to possession
and personification (initiation) and the discharge of male sexuality is the
basis for the absorption by the female of the fruits of the male tapas and
procreative on a spiritual if not a physical level. The “contractual” arrange-
ment of this tantric relationship, or the exemplification of it through the
Śiva-Śakti relationship and the Buddhist analogues such as Cakrasam.vara
and Vajravārāhı̄, demonstrates the exchange of power in a state of equilib-
rium, and therefore a more stable resolution of the polarization and
exchange process.
Marriage (vivāha) in the traditional Indian context is centered on the ritual
control of sexual fluids, and therefore the continuity between sexuality, mar-
riage, purity, and spirituality is clear.28 Tantra inverts this paradigm, disrupt-
ing the physical basis of both psychological and social reality, and ultimately
creating a new order or equilibrium that is like a reverse mirror image of the
stability of brāhman.ical norms. Urban suggests this allows for the challenging
and subverting of the social order through the manipulation of its own sym-
bols.29 It should also not be forgotten that the core sectarian sense of tantric
identity emerged in part out of the Kaulatantra tradition, whose namesake is
Indo-Tibetan Tantrism as Spirit Marriage ● 39
Does the jealousy of the spirit spouse, for example, reflect the jealousy of
the divine powers that are battling for the souls of human beings, or is this
a metaphor for the power dynamics of human relationships? Might this be
a metaphor for relationships of power and attraction outside of one’s imme-
diate relationship, or a fantastic mirror image of such relationships—which
cannot be consummated in the manner of a material relationship, not hav-
ing the fullness of the physical dimension, with jealousy possible in both
directions? Or, analogously, a reality that would be familiar in the context
of polygamy or polyandry (or in contemporary polyamory), where jealousy
and other emotions must be held in check or dealt with in strategic ways?
In this analysis, issues such as fidelity in the spiritual and sexual dimensions
of life serve as a model for the complexity of relating to the larger “spiritual
family.” This is not to broach the topic of arranged marriages and the
complexity of issues that that brings to the fore, such as the ways in which
the broader social context of the conjoining play a crucial part of the nar-
rative of “union.” Marriage brings social order to the world, spirit marriage
to the spiritual world paralleling this world—perhaps with clear implica-
tions in the opposite: bodily marriage, spiritual effects; and spiritual mar-
riage, bodily effects. Another question would be, “Does the gendered body
enter into this equation, and therefore reflect an idealized spiritual
order?”—a point that may have implications with respect to the issue of gay
marriage, for example.
Two points stand out clearly with respect to the issue of the intersection
of spirit marriage and tantric traditions. The first is the idea that at the foun-
dation of the power relationship is a process of exchange, whereby the spirit
draws on the power human, to some degree “feeding” on it, and thereby
through that transaction exchanging and infusing the human consort with
power. In tantra, this transfusion of power is centered on the distillation of
spiritual energy (prān· a, bindu) in the subtle body (suks·ma śarı̄ra) in the form
of sexual fluids, identified and mastered in the form of the sensation of bliss
(ānanda), which is at the core of the psychophysical rituals of kaulatantra and
hat· hayoga and the transformation of the ordinary human person into a divine
being (such as Śiva) or a Buddha. The second point is that this exchange is
situated in a larger nexus of communal relationships that suggest that the
connection between the spirit world and the human world is mediated
through the consort relationship, and that power extends out of this primor-
dial conjunction. This can in turn be tied into larger discussions about the
role of sexuality as both a central component of embodied life and experience,
and as a metaphor for transcending the dualities implicit in embodied exist-
ence, world, and deity that characterize religious experience, and thus mysti-
cism, through a range of religious traditions and phenomena. Marriage and
Indo-Tibetan Tantrism as Spirit Marriage ● 41
Notes
1. Ninian Smart, “Understanding Religious Experience,” in Mysticism and
Philosophical Analysis, ed. Steven T. Katz (New York: Oxford University Press,
1978), 10–21.
2. Jerome Gellman, “Mysticism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall
2008 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/
entries/mysticism/.
3. Robert K. C. Forman, “Mysticism, Constructivism, and Forgetting,” in The
Problem of Pure Consciousness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 3–49.
4. W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1960), 62–123.
Though I find the distinction between “extrovertive” and “introvertive” quite
appealing as a “spectrum” of experience, I am arguing here that the term “extro-
vertive” can be fruitfully applied to the realm of the senses, a usage that is at odds
with Stace’s definition. On Stace’s assertion that sensorial phenomena should not
be included under the “mystical,” see Mysticism and Philosophy, 47–55.
5. See, for example, Erica Bourguignon, Religion, Altered States of Consciousness,
and Social Change (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1973), 3–35.
6. Stuart Ray Sarbacker, Samādhi: The Numinous and Cessative in Indo-Tibetan
Yoga (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 27–51.
7. In the second case, this would be so if the experience of the numinous “other-
ness” is understood as being the experience of an external force, the experience
of radical self-transformation, or some combination of these possibilities.
8. Two possible trajectories of interpretation that might be fruitful with respect to
looking at the noetic in this manner would be to plug this approach into James’s
theory of mysticism and Geertz’s definition of religion (especially the concept
of the “aura of factuality”).
9. Agehananda Bharati, The Light at the Center: Context and Pretext of Modern
Mysticism (Santa Barbara, CA: Ross-Erickson, 1976), 141–48.
10. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972), 67.
11. Ibid., 69.
12. I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession
(London: Routledge, 1989), 56.
13. Eliade, Shamanism, 71–73.
14. Wendy Doniger, Śiva: The Erotic Ascetic (New York: Oxford University Press,
1981), 40–82.
15. Ibid., 64–65.
42 ● Stuart Ray Sarbacker
Bibliography
Avalon, Arthur, M. P. Pandit, and Tārānātha Vidyāratna. Kulārn·ava Tantra. Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 2000 (1965).
Bharati, Agehananda. The Light at the Center: Context and Pretext of Modern
Mysticism. Santa Barbara, CA: Ross-Erickson, 1976.
Doniger, Wendy. Śiva: The Erotic Ascetic. New York: Oxford University Press,
1981.
Bourguignon, Erica. Religion, Altered States of Consciousness, and Social Change.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1973.
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1972.
Forman, Robert K. C. “Mysticism, Constructivism, and Forgetting,” in The Problem
of Pure Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, 3–49.
Gellman, Jerome. “Mysticism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/
entries/mysticism/.
Kripal, Jeffrey. Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the
Study of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Lewis, I. M. Arguments With Ethnography: Comparative Approaches to History, Politics &
Religion. London: The Athlone Press, 1999.
Indo-Tibetan Tantrism as Spirit Marriage ● 43
T
he Buddhist traditions are replete with meditation practices that
focus upon, or seek to transform, the human sense powers.
Buddhism is arguably a gnostic religion, one that sees salvation as
resulting from the attainment of knowledge. This knowledge, however, is
not the mundane knowledge of worldly matters (laukikajñāna), but rather
“ultimate knowledge” (lokottarajñāna) or the gnosis of ultimate reality. This
special knowledge, also known as the gnosis of a Buddha (buddhajñāna),
involves a special “yogic perception” (yogipratyaks·a), a direct knowledge of
ultimate reality attained via meditative practices.1 This is particularly the
case with respect to the Tantric Buddhist traditions that developed in India
beginning in the mid-seventh century.2 Tantric Buddhist traditions devel-
oped a wide array of techniques designed to heighten or transform a prac-
titioner’s perceptual powers in order to facilitate the rapid attainment of
awakening.3 There is, arguably, very good reason to include a discussion of
these techniques in a volume dedicated to the exploration of “mystical
sensuality.”
However, since there are some who would object to the application of
the term “mystical” to Buddhist meditative practices, it seems advisable to
begin with a defense of this application. Potential objectors would likely
include the Buddhists or advocates of Buddhism who attempt to portray
Buddhism as “rational” or “scientific.” Those who portray Buddhism in this
fashion tend to ignore the fact that the ultimate reality that Buddhist medi-
tation practices purportedly enable one to apprehend is typically defined as
T. Cattoi et al., Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body
© Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel 2011
46 ● David Gray
late ninth or early tenth century,11 begins its chapter on purity with the
following:
The true nature of all things is regarded as pure. Consequently, one can speak
of their individual differentiation in terms of the deities. The six sense pow-
ers, the six sense media, the five aggregates, and the five elements are naturally
pure, but they are obscured by the affliction of misknowledge (ajñānakleśa).
Their purification consists in self-experience (svasam · vedya), and by no other
means of purification may one be liberated. This self-experiencing, since it is
the purified nature of the sense objects, is supreme bliss. For the yogı̄ the
sense objects such as form and so on, and whatever else there may be, all
appear in their purified nature, for the world is composed of Buddhas.12
First, the Lord of Yoga should contemplate for some time the four divine
abodes.
prathaman tāvad yoges´varen·a caturbrahmavihārin·ā bhāvyam/ 15
rnal ‘byor pa’i dbang phyug gis re zhig dang por tshang pa’i gnas bzhi bsgom par
bya’o/ 16
Regarding the method whereby one succeeds, one [succeeds] with method of
unborn gnosis. The Vajrad·āka states that “He who applies himself to the empty
state should perform all actions with wisdom.”18 The actions here refer to
meditation on the four divine abodes and so forth. “Should perform . . . with
wisdom” refers to the object seen by the eye of wisdom. Regarding “the empty
state,” since for the wise growth is dependent origination ( pratı̄tyasamutpāda),
it is meditation on emptiness by means of the gnostic method. First . . . for
some time19 shows the yogı̄’s sequence of actions. The Lord of Yoga is one
made into a proper vessel by the four consecrations. The four divine abodes
are loving-kindness and so forth. “Contemplation” is the aspiration that all
beings have happiness, and seeing that they suffer, the aspiration that they are
free of it. It also is the aspiration that they are placed in the supreme state of
Heruka, and that they are established with all of the mundane and supramun-
dane virtues that exhaust all of the non-virtuous tendencies.20
Atiśa indicates that this meditation system starts out with a classical Buddhist
meditation on the four divine abodes, structured in the classical Mahāyāna
fashion, as a meditation on compassion and loving kindness. He also asserts
that this involves a meditation on emptiness as well, although he does not sup-
port this claim with any detailed description of the “meditation on emptiness
by means of the gnostic method” that he prescribes. But this assertion was likely
seen to be self-evident by Atiśa, since the very term “purification” (viśuddhi),
which designates the initial step of many sādhanas, also designates absolute
reality, the Buddha nature that is emptiness, as well as the practices designed to
give rise to the gnosis of absolute reality, buddhajñāna.21
Why does the meditation open with this contemplative exercise? Atiśa
addresses this questions as follows:
Now, this is the protection of yoga; by “yoga” here [Lūipa] intends the non-
duality of compassion and emptiness. Against what does it protect? [It pro-
tects against] discordant tendencies, malicious thoughts, violence, attachment
50 ● David Gray
to the lower vehicles, and the exhaustion the all of the roots of virtue without
augmenting them. As long as you have those things, you will destroy [the
virtues] previously produced, and you will rise to them again; you will fall
from one’s place in the Mahāyāna, and you will definitely not emerge into
omniscience.22
This practice then turns to the five aggregates, the classical Buddhist
formulation of the basic psycho-physical constituents that collectively and
interdependently give rise to our sense of self; they serve, in Sanskrit techni-
cal terminology, as the “I-maker,” ahaṅkara, the basis of our sense of self
and thus our “self-conception” (ngar ‘dzin pa) and also “pride” (nga rgyal),
as the term is variously translated into Tibetan. These aggregates are nor-
mally conceived as “defiled,” but here they are purified via their revisualiza-
tion as deities. Atiśa comments on this contemplation as follows:
Then one should give rise to the pride of the five aggregates. In this way
self-conception arises in dependence upon one’s attachment to oneself. And
depending upon attachment to the “mine,” one becomes possessive. But
one will lack self-conception insofar as one lacks attachment to self. And
if one is not attached to self, one will not become possessive. Vairocana, by
Experiencing the Single Savior ● 51
transforming the basis of this attachment, purifies the atoms of one’s material
form. He has one face and two arms, seated on lion throne on a moon disk
atop a lotus. His right hand holds a discus, his left a bell. Likewise, for the
other four aggregates there are Vajrasūrya, Padmanarteśvara, Vajrarāja, and
Vajrasattva.25 They have one face and two arms, and each holds in his right
hand his symbol, and in all of their left hands they hold bells. They sit on
lotuses and sun disks on thrones with, respectively, a horse, peacock, garud·a
and elephant. The Essence of all Tathāgatas is called Śrı̄ Heruka, who sits on
a corpse seat, black colored and with a vajra and bell.26
Here the five clans are the purities specific to the five different aggregates,
etc. Heruka is purity in general. Form, etc., conventionally are purity in
regard to the illusion-like deity. Śrı̄ Heruka is purity as the unborn ultimate.
He is the abandonment of cause and so forth, ru is the end of manifestation
and ka is non-locality.27 “Cause and so forth” is the abandonment of birth
either from self, other or both, or from causelessness. “The end of manifesta-
tion” refers to the lack of the states of abiding and destruction. Since he is
birthless and so forth he is the non-located nirvana. As it says in the
Vajrad·āka, “Without doubt, all empty forms should be regarded non-
discursively, with the eye of the empty appearance.”28 Meditating on the
conventional, illusion-like deities of the aggregates, elements and media is
emptiness with respect to the ultimate.29
Mohavajra is in the two eyes, Dves·avajra in the two ears, Īrs·yāvajra in the
two nostrils, Rāgavajra in the mouth, Mātsaryavajra in the [sense of ] touch,
and Aiśvaryāvajra in all of the sense media. The earth element is Pātanı̄, the
water element Māran·ı̄, the fire element Ākars·an·ı̄, the wind element Narteśvarı̄,
and the space element Padmajvālinı̄. Thus there is purification by the deities
in the aggregates, elements, and sense media.
52 ● David Gray
The text thus expands the purification process; after purifying the con-
stituents of one’s own self, one then purifies one’s sense powers and the
material elements. All aspects of one’s experience, subjective and objective,
are thus purified, reconceptualized as divine. Atiśa continues his exegesis as
follows:
and perfection stage meditations, such as those that follow this brief purifi-
cation contemplation in the Cakrasam · varābhisamayasādhana proper.
Tantric practice involves a complex vision of embodiment, which sees
our body/mind complex as consisting of three levels of increasing subtlety.
The yogic techniques that are concerned with the purification and transfor-
mation of the elements of this complex aim to achieve the ultimate
Buddhist goal, awakening, which is characterized by great bliss. They thus
seek to effect the eradication of the ultimate cause of bondage, the igno-
rance that gives rise to all forms of suffering.
These practices involve the cultivation and mastery of the “subtle”
(sūks·ma) and “extremely subtle” (atisūks·ma) elements of the body-mind
complex. The “extremely subtle body” in Buddhist advanced yoga
systems consists of the “indestructible drop,” which is the basis for the
most subtle consciousness, clear light ( prabhāsvara), which is described as
the gnosis of the nonduality of subject and object. This gnosis is Buddha
nature, the awakened mind, which is obscured due to ignorance.
Its obscuration is effected by the “subtle” and “coarse” (sthūla) bodies,
which develop from the latent dispositions associated with it in conjunc-
tion with the red and white drops inherited from the parents at conception.
They function almost like sheaths, limiting and distorting the gnostic clear
light, by yoking one’s native awareness to the channels of the sense powers,
which inclines one toward the deeply ingrained tendency to view
reality in a dualistic fashion, in terms of the subject/object, self/other
distinctions.
The “subtle body,” often termed in Buddhist literature as the “mind-
made body” (manomayakāya), consists of subtle channels, winds, and drops.
This body is compared to the body made by the mind that one inhabits
when dreaming, as well as in the postmortem “intermediary state” (San.
antarābhava. Tib. bar do). The subtle body is described as possessing super-
natural powers of perception and movement.33 The subtle body’s superior
sense faculties are dulled and limited by the “coarse” physical body, and are
thus only fully realized in dream and postmortem states in which it is sup-
posedly free of the body’s restraints.
The Caryāmelāpakapradı̄pa, a key “explanatory tantra” (vyākhyātantra) in
the Guhyasamāja tradition, describes as follows the generation of subtle
consciousnesses and sense faculties from the underlying “extremely subtle”
nondual gnosis of “clear light,” or “brilliance,” in Christian Wedemeyer’s
translation:
The Lord said, “The consciousness which arises from brilliance—that very
thing is called ‘mind’ (citta) [and] ‘mentation’ (manas). All things have [their]
54 ● David Gray
root, [having] the nature of defilement [or] purification. From that, [evolves]
the imaginary duality, self and other. ‘That consciousness is mounted on air.
From air, fire. From fire, water. From water, earth. From these [evolve] the
five aggregates, six media, [and] five objects.”
(Wedemeyer 2007, 215)
This passage describes the evolution of subtle and coarse mental and
physical states from the underlying extremely subtle clear light gnosis of
nonduality. It describes what we might term a personal cosmogony, the
generation of a psycho-physical universe for and by each individual. The
goal of tantric practice is to reverse this personal cosmogony and return to
the pristine gnosis of nonduality.
The tantric consecrations are, ideally, intended to effect this transforma-
tion. The consecration process is described in exactly this fashion by Atiśa
in his commentary on Lūipa’s sādhana. Here, he describes it as a gnosis that
is generated as part of the second and third “secret” (guhyābhis· eka) and
“gnosis of the consort” (prajñājñānābhis· eka) consecrations. It involves a
symbolic reconception of the initiate, using the very same sexual symbolism
and substances, the red and white “drops” of sexual union, by which the
individual is generated at and following conception.34 This gnosis involves
the realization of the clear light gnosis of nonduality, followed by the gen-
eration of the subtle body, which in the context of advanced yogic practice
is usually referred to as the “magic body” (māyākāya or māyādeha), which is
a purified mind-made body envisioned in a divine form, composed of the
deities of the man·d·ala.
Imagine that the five, the four mothers and Vārāhı̄, [descend] from the sky
holding the flask filled with the ambrosia of gnosis, and that they bestow
consecration with their hands. Then, the four mothers dissolve into Vārāhı̄,
and bestow the secret consecration with the seminal essence (bodhicitta) of
equipoise with Śrı̄Heruka. Then, Heruka takes Vārāhı̄ as his consort
(mudrā), and through being equipoised their winds dissolve. Relying on
that, contemplate the experience of the natural (sahaja). Then you, a child
of the clan (kulaputra), unite with the mudrā as Heruka, and, depending on
that, meditate on clear light, that wisdom which is attained in visionary
experience. This is the very essence of the Transcendence of Wisdom
( prajñāpāramitā) which is the purity of the three consciousnesses,35 and
which is liberation from birth due to the non-existence of body, speech, and
mind. This is the ultimate truth that has the characteristic of always appear-
ing completely luminous like the moon, sun, fire, and jewels. Regard
[everything] with the eye of wisdom and gnosis, the vision that is beyond
the objectification of the other. In this way, do not see anything in and of
Experiencing the Single Savior ● 55
itself, but see the clear light. And while there is no sort of causation at work
with this sort of clear light, conventionally, see the thirty seven deities from
mere wind-mind clear and complete like a reflected image, colored like a
rainbow, and distorted like [the image of ] the moon in water. Regard them
as caused, and since they arise, they are conventional.36
describes the body in a way that seems compatible with the manner in
which it is visualized in Tantric yogic practice, as follows:
[A]s a result of its holey-ness or gappiness, the living body cannot be defined
in terms of the binary opposites that structure conceptual reflection. The
body is neither “subject nor object” . . . rather, the body is the mean between
extremes—the “milieu” in which opposites like interiority and exteriority, as
well as subjectivity and objectivity, intersect. Never reducible to the differ-
ences it simultaneously joins and separates, the body is forever entre-deux.
(Taylor 1987, 69)
In Tantric praxis the body is the site for the blissful integration of the
dualities; an integration effected by the union enacted in its ritual and
meditative practices. While this union seemingly violates some of the basic
assumption of human experience, their view that the subject-object distinc-
tion is false may be worthy of serious consideration.
The body received increased significance in Tantric Buddhism as the
locus of liberation, a liberation that is characterized as blissful. This bliss
arises in the body insofar as the body mediates the subject and object,
integrating the two in a state symbolized as sexual union. In the advanced
tantric practices of the perfecting stage, this integration is achieved through
the unification of energies within the body. Regarding this the Tibetan
scholar Tsong Khapa wrote:
In brief, if you meditate on the perfecting stage, you generate the seminal
essence from the blazing up and flowing down of the white and red seminal
essences. That very thing is that on which the yogı̄ relies, as well as that
which must be served, are the commitments. The scope of their practice is
the enjoyment of the six types of sense objects by the six sense faculties.38
Furthermore, it is not the case that all are adept in all yogas, capable of feast-
ing to the extent of their ability on fish, flesh and so forth. One should
Experiencing the Single Savior ● 57
partake of the five foods and so forth with relish, even when they are not
present. At night one should always undertake extensive feasting. Then the
messenger should be bestowed. Placing one’s head in her lap, she is wor-
shipped in the fashion of the nondual hero.40 Whether or not she is one’s
mother, sister, daughter, kinswoman or wife, should one do thus in accor-
dance with the rite, one will be free of all bonds.41
The practitioner of love (kāmācāra)42 is given the fruit of all the powers of
mantra. He who is adept in mantra and mudrā knows that which was extolled
by the Sugata, that enjoying the enjoyable, that is food and drink such as the
caru oblations,43 with the savors and so forth (rasādyāh·), is the means of
achieving all powers.44
One must increase bliss in order to produce the union of bliss and emptiness.
In order to augment the “jasmine-like” [semen] on which one depends since
it is the support of bliss, it is necessary to expand the sense powers together
with their supports by enjoying special desired objects. As it says in the
Dvikalpa, “Since camphor is the cause, eat meat and especially drink
wine.”45
are capable of experiencing it. For this tradition, this can be achieved via
mystical practices that induce the experience of nonduality, the interpenetra-
tion of self and other, subject and object, linked in a continuous embrace.
Abbreviations
AV Atiśa Dı̄paṅkaraśrı̄jñāna, Abhisamayavibhaṅga
CA Lūipa, Cakrasam · varābhisamaya
CT Cakrasam · vara Tantra
HT Hevajra Tantra
KS Tsong Khapa, bde mchog bsdus pa’i rgyud kyi rgya cher bshad pa sbas
pa’i don kun gsal ba
VT Vajrad·āka Tantra
Notes
1. There has been considerable literature published on these ideas as developed in
Indian Buddhism, particularly the Yogācāra school of Indian Buddhism. See,
particularly, Dunne 2006, Woo 2008, and Makransky 1997.
2. For an excellent history of Indian Tantric Buddhism, see Davidson 2002a.
3. For additional discussions Tantric Buddhists claims that their practices yield
special knowledge of ultimate reality, see Steinkellner 1999 and Gray 2005.
4. For an extended exploration of this issue, see Lopez 2008.
5. For discussions of some of the implications of this tendency, see Schopen 1991
and Cohen 2006.
6. See Steinkellner 1999, Dunne 2006, and Woo 2009.
7. A classic expression of this idea is contained in the first chapter of the
Vimalakı̄rti-nirdeśa-sūtra. See Luk 2002, 13–14.
8. The term bhāvanā is usually translated as meditation, but this term can have a
passive sense that perhaps does not capture the active sense of the word, which
implies a “cultivation” or intentional reconditioning of the mind-body complex.
See Carrithers 1983, 44.
9. It was certainly composed by the late tenth century, when it was translated by
the Kashmiri scholar Śraddhākaravarma and the Tibetan translator Rin-chen
bzang-po. Regarding their collaboration and translation activity, see Tucci 1988.
10. Regarding Atiśa (982–1054 CE) and his life and works, see Chattopadhyaya
(1967) and Eimer (1979).
11. The Hevajra Tantra is translated and edited in Snellgrove 1959. Regarding its
dating, see Davidson 2002b, 65, 77–78n.69.
12. My translation of HT 1.9.1–4:
sarves·ām
· khalu vastūnām
· viśuddhis tathatā smr·tā / paścād ekaikabhedena
devatānān tu kathyate // (1) s·ad·indriyam · pañcaskandham · s·ad·āyatanam
·
Experiencing the Single Savior ● 59
las nyams pa dang /rnam pa thams cad mkhyen pa nyid du nges par mi ‘byung
ba’i phyir ro/
23. Sakurai 1998, 3.
24. CA 186b.
25. The basis of this practice is the ninth sarvānasthitakarmabhedavidhāna chapter
of the Abhidhānottara. See Kalff 1979, 162–63, 286.
26. AV 186b–187a: /de nas phung po lnga’i nga rgyal ba sked par bya ste zhes
bya/ /pa la/ ‘di ltar bdag tu mngon par zhen pa la brten na sngar ‘dzin pa ‘byung
la/ bdag gir mngon par zhen pa la brten nas nga yir ‘dzin par ‘gyur bas/ gang
gi phyir bdag tu zhen pa med na de’i phyir ngar ‘dzin med la/ bdag gi zhen pa
med na de’i phyir nga yir ‘dzin pa med par ‘gyur ro/ /der zhen pa’i gzhi bsgyur
pa’i phyir gzugs kyi phung po’i rdul phra rab rnams rnam par snang mdzad
kyis sbyangs te/ de yang zhal gcig pa phyag gnyis pa padma dang zla ba dang
seng ge’i gdan la bzhugs pa/ g.yas ‘khor lo g.yon dril bu dkur brten pa’o/ /de
bzhin du phung po bzhi’i tshogs la rdo rje nyi ma/ padma gar dbang /rdo rjer
gyal po/ /rdo rje sems dpa’ ste/ zhal gcig pa/ phyag gnyis pa/ g.yas rnams na
rang rang gi mtshan ma ‘dzin pa/ g.yon thams cad na dril bu dkur brten pa/
rta dang /rma bya dang /nam mkha’ lding dang /glang po dang /padma dang
nyi ma’i gdan la bzhugs pa’o/ /de bzhin gshegs pa thams cad kyi bdag nyid du
gyur pa ni dpal he ru ka’o zhes pa la ro’i gdan la bzhugs pa sku mdog nag po
rdo rje dril bu can no/
27. Atiśa here partially quotes the symbolic syllabic analysis of the name Śrı̄ Heruka
that occurs in the Hevajra Tantra as follows: śrı̄kāram advayam · jñānam· hekāram ·
hetvādiśūnyatā /rukārāparagatavyūham · kakāram
· bakvacitsthitam· // (HT 2.7.27;
edited in Snellgrove 1959, 2.24).
28. Atiśa here quotes VT 1.23: śūnyarūpam · idam· sarvam· śūnyākāren·a caks·us·ā /
paśyatām· nirvikalpānām · satām
· nih·śakatā bhavet // (Sugiki 2002, 89). The text
occurs as follows in the canonical translation: /gzugs ‘di thams cad stong pa
nyid/ /stong pa’i tshul gyis mig gis ni/ /dogs pa med par bsgom pa’i mchog /
rnam par mi rtog pa yis blta/ (fol. 2b).
29. AV 187a–b: /’dir rigs lnga ni phung po lnga la sogs pa bye brag gi dag pa yin
la/ he ru ka ni spyi’i dag pa’o/ /gzugs la sogs pa kun rdzob tu sgyu ma lta bu’i
lhar dag la/ don dam skye med du dag pa dpal he ru ka’o/ /de yang /he ni rgyu
sogs rnam par spangs/ /ru ni tshogs dang bral ba nyid/ /ka ni gang du’ang mi
gnas pa’o/ /zhes gsungs pas/ rgyu la sogs pa ni/ bdag dang gzhan dang gnyis ka
las skye ba dang rgyu med pa las skye ba spangs pa’o/ /tshogs ni gnas pa dang
‘jig pa’i tshogs dang bral ba’o/ /skye ba la sogs pa dang bral ba’i phyir mi gnas
pa’i mya ngan las ‘das pa’o/ /de bzhin du rdo rje mkha’ ‘gro las kyang /gzugs
ni thams cad stong pa nyid/ /stong pa’i tshul gyis mig gis ni/ /dogs pa med par
bsgom pa’i mchog /rnam par mi rtog pa yis blta/ /zhes gsungs pas/ phung po
dang khams dang skye mched rnams kun rdzob tu sgyu ma lta bu’i lhar bsgoms
la don dam par stong pa nyid do/
30. Sakurai 1998, 3.
31. CA 186b.
Experiencing the Single Savior ● 61
32. AV 187b: /de bzhin du mig la sogs pa la gti mug rdo rje dang / zhes dang rdo
rje dang / ser sna rdo rje dang / ‘dod chags rdo rje dang / phrag dog rdorje
dang / dbang phyug rdo rje ste/ dkar po dang / nag po dang / ser po dang /
dmar po dang / ljang gu dang / yang dkar po ste/ phyag mtshan ni bdag po
dang mthun no/ /yang sa la sogs pa’i khams la ltung byed ma dang / gsod byed
ma dang / ‘gugs byed ma dang / gar gyi dbang phyug ma dang / padma’i dra
ba can te ser mo dang / nag mo dang / dmar ser dang / dmar mo dang / sngon
mo ste rang rang gi dkyil ‘khor la bzhugs pa/ zhal gcig pa/ phyag bzhi pa/
g.yas kyi dang po rnams na ‘khor lo dang / rdo rje dang / padma dang / ral
gri’o/ /tha ma rnams ni gri gug go/ /g.yon na thod pa dang kha t. vām . ga’o/ /
padma’i dra ba can nyi ma la bzhugs pa zhal gsum pa phyag drug pa ste/ g.yas
pa gsum na thod pa dang / kha t. vām . ga dang / zhags pa’o/ /g.yon na lcag skyu
dang / tshangs pa’i mgo dang / gri gug go/ /de ltar na ma rig pa la sogs pa’i
nyon mongs pa ‘byin par byed pa dang / spros pa gsod pa dang / lhan cig skyes
pa’i bde ba ‘dren pa dang / mi dmigs pa’i snying rjes sems can gyi don byed
pa’o/ /dbyings dang ye shes dang thabs dang shes rab dbyer med pa’i byang
chub kyi sems las lha’i ‘khor lo rdzogs par byed pa’i phyir ro/ /de ltar zhes bya
ba la sogs pa la/ gang dag pa phung po la sogs pa dang / gang gi rang bzhin
du dag pa sgyu ma lta bu’i lha dang / ji ltar dag pa skye med du dag pa’o/ /bdag
gir ‘dzin pa dag par bya ba’i phyir/
33. See Wedemeyer 2007, 65. For a detailed discussion of the Buddhist antarābhava,
see Cuevas 2003, ch. 3.
34. For more detailed descriptions of these consecrations, see Gray 2007,
103–31.
35. These are the three subtle consciousnesses that emerge from (or, in reverse
order, lead to) the clear light consciousness, namely “luminance” (āloka), “radi-
ance” (ābhāsa), and “immanence” (upalabdhaka). Regarding them see Wedemeyer
2007, 95–96.
36. AV 197a–b: yum bzhi phag mo dang lngas nam mkha’ nas ye shes kyi bdud
rtsis gang ba’i bum pa blangs nas/ lag pas dbang bskur par bsam mo/ /de nas
yum bzhi phag mo la thims ste/ dpal he ru ka snyoms par zhugs pa’i byang
chub kyi sems kyis gsang ba’i dbang bskur bar bya’o/ /de nas he ru kas phag
mo mu dra gnang ste snyoms par zhugs pas rlung thim/ de la brten nas lhan
cig skyes pa myong bar bsam mo/ /de nas dpal he ru kas rigs kyi bu khyed kyis
mu dra dang gnyis sprod pa la brten nas myong bas nang ba thob pa’i shes rab
de ‘od gsal bar sgoms shig /de ni rnam par shes pa gsum rnam par dag pa shes
rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa’i ngo bo nyid lus dang ngag dang sems med pa las
dang / skye ba las grol ba/ zla ba dang / nyi ma dang / me dang / nor bu ltar
shin tu gsal ba rtag tu snang ba’i mtshan nyid can don dam pa’i bden pa de ni
mthong ba gzhan gyi g.yul las ‘das pa ste/ shes rab dang ye shes kyi mig gis ltos
shig /de ltar gang gi yang rang bzhin du ma mthong ba de ‘od gsal ba mthong
ba yin no/ /de ltar ‘od gsal ba de’i don rgyu ‘bras gang yang med mod kyi/ ‘on
kyang kun rdzob tu rlung dang sems tsam las lha sum cu rtsa bdun me long
gi gzugs brnyan ltar gsal la rdzogs pa/ ‘ja’ tshon ltar kha dog dang bcas pa/ chu
62 ● David Gray
zla ltar sgro skur dang bral bar ltos shig /de nir gyu rkyen la ltos nas skyes pas
kun rdzob bo/
37. The symbolization of the contact between the sense power and sense object in
terms of sexual intercourse is not in itself a revolutionary idea peculiar to the
Tantras; the sixth link in the chain of relativity (pratı̄tyasamutpāda) is sparśa or
“contact”, referring to the contact between sense organ and object. It was typi-
cally symbolized by a couple engaged in intercourse, and is depicted thus in the
Ajanta cave paintings, and also in written sources such as the Mūlasarvāstivāda
vinaya. See Schlingloff 1988, 167–80, and also Nihom 1994, 185–86.
38. That is, sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mind.
39. KS 42b: /bsdu na rdzogs rim bsgoms pas byang sems dkar dmar gyi ‘bar ‘dzag las
byang chub kyi sems skye ba’o/ /de nyid rnal ‘byor pas bsten zhing bsnyen par
bya bas dam tshig go /de la spyod pa’i spyod yul ni dbang po drug gis yul drug
la longs spyod pa’o/ /dbang po rnams la yang spyod yul zhes pa ni/ don dam par
yul dbang dbyer med pas nye bar btags pa’o/ /yul rnams bde chen gyi rnam rol
tu shar ba’i tshul gyis longs spyod pas bde chen ‘bar te/ yul yul can gnyis so sor
mi snang bar lhan cig skyes par ro gcig pa’i gnas skabs ‘thob par ‘gyur ro/
40. Tsong Khapa takes this as referring to sexual union, commenting that “placing one’s
head between her thighs means placing the head of the vajra in her lotus.” (KS 175a:
de’i brla gnyis kyi dbus su mgo bo byas pa ni rdo rje’i mgo padma mar bzhag pa’o/)
41. My translation from my forthcoming edition of CT 33.1–4:
42. The tenth century Indian commentator Bhavyakı̄rti defined this term as follows:
“Regarding kāmācāra, love (kāma) is the enjoyment of all objects of desire; that
is what should be practiced. He who conducts himself immodestly day and night
is a practitioner of love.” My translation from his Śrı̄cakrasamvarapañjikā-
śūramanojñā fol. 18b: ‘dod pa’i spyod pa zhe sby aba la ‘dod pa ni yul thams cad
nye bar spyod pa’o/ /de ni spyad par bya ba ste/ gang nyin mtshan du bag med pa’i
tshul gyis spyod pa de ni ‘dod pa’i spyod pa’o/.
43. In this context the caru oblation is a consecrated food offering consumed in
the context of the Tantric feast ( gan·acakra). Typically they consist of five offer-
ings corresponding to the five sense faculties.
44. My translation from my forthcoming edition of CT 9.7c–8d: kāmācāro
‘yam mantrah· sarvasiddhiphaladāyakah· // sugatavarn· itam· yam· jñātvā
mantramu[drā]sādhakah· /khānapānādi carubhojyabhojanam · rasādyāh· sarvasid-
dhiś ca sādhakah· //
45. KS fol. 94b: /de yang bde chen dang stong pa sbyor ba la bde ba ‘phel dgos
la/ de yang bde ba’i rten kunda lta bu rgyas pa la rag las shing / de rgyas pa la
Experiencing the Single Savior ● 63
‘dod yon khyad par can rnams bsten pas dbang po rte nbcas rgyas dgos pa yin
te/ brtag gnyis las/ de la ga pur rgyu yi phyir/ /sha ni bza’ ba nyid du bya/ /
khyad par du yang chang nyid do/ /zhes gsungs pa ltar ro/. Tsong Khapa here
quotes three pādas from the HT 2.11.15: karpūram · pı̄yate tatra madanam · caiva
viśes·atah· / balasya bhaks·an·an tatra kuryāt karpūrahetunā //; /de la ga pur btung
bar bya/ /de la ga pur rgyu yi phyir/ /sha ni bza’ ba nyid du ‘gyur/ /khyad par
du yang chang nyid do/ (Snellgrove 1959: 2.98–99). This is one of the verses
that Snellgrove does not translate.
46. HT 2.2.35: dehābhāve kutah· saukhyam· saukhyam· vaktum na śakyate /
vyāpyavyāphakarūpen·a sukhena vyāpitam · jagat (Snellgrove 1959, 2.48); trans-
lated in Snellgrove 1959, 1.92.
47. This association between bliss and awakening is clearly made in the Hevajra
Tantra as follows: “There is no being that is not enlightened, if it but knows
its own true nature. The denizens of hell, the pretas and the animals, gods and
men and titans, even the worms upon the dung heap, are eternally blissful in
their true nature, and they do not know the transitory bliss of the gods and
titans” (Snellgrove 1959, 1.107).
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Union of Female and Male Deities.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2 vols.
Kapstein, Matthew, ed. 2004. The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious
Experience, ed. Matthew Kapstein. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Katz, Steven T. 1978. “Language, epistemology, and mysticism,” in Mysticism and
Philosophical Analysis, ed. S. T. Katz. New York: Oxford University Press,
pp. 22–74.
Kripal, Jeffrey. 1995. Kālı̄’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and
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———. 2001. Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism & Reflexivity in the Study
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Experiencing the Single Savior ● 65
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CHAPTER 4
S
pecific Daoist adherents and communities emphasize the importance
of corporeality and physicality, specifically one’s body as the Dao as
sacred locale. But the “Daoist body,” as those who are familiar with
the work of such influential scholars as Kristofer Schipper, Livia Kohn, and
Catherine Despeux know, is multidimensional. It is not simply the ana-
tomical and physiological given of contemporary biomedicine. In the case
of certain Daoist movements, one’s body is understood to have subtle, eso-
teric dimensions that become activated through Daoist religious praxis.
Here the body itself becomes the means through which the Dao manifests
its own self-unfolding, and the means by which the Daoist adept experi-
ences the Dao as numinous presences. This is what I mean by the “Daoist
mystical body.”
Daoist views of the human body that form the basis of the present dis-
cussion thus problematize ideas of “the body” as a static, immutable given,
pointing rather to the way in which different bodies/selves are encountered
and enacted in different sociohistorical and religio-cultural contexts. It is
noteworthy that specific Daoist practices simultaneously recognize the
importance of “material” bodily constituents (organs, fluids, etc.) and
“energetic” or “divine” dimensions. The importance of the body in certain
forms of Daoist religious praxis may thus represent a previously unacknowl-
edged form of mysticism, namely, “somatic mysticism” (see Komjathy
2007). Here the “sacred” is experienced in/as/through one’s own body,
although what that body is deserves careful study.
Before discussing specific aspects of the Daoist mystical body, a few com-
ments are in order regarding Daoist “theology” and comparative categories.
First, I use “theology” as a critical comparative category, specifically in the more
givens” as well as the metaphors through which the body and its constituents
are understood often differ.11 So when one sees the body as a “machine,”
one may come to believe that “parts” can be removed and (sometimes)
replaced without any lasting disruption. However, if one sees the body as a
“country” or “universe,” one may recognize the interrelationship and inter-
dependence among its “inhabitants.” It is also possible that philosophical
reflection on and body-based practices employing alternative body-self
models may reveal and/or actualize other aspects of human being.12
The study of self in Asian contexts13 begs the question of the relation
between “self,” “body,” “consciousness,” and “mind.” There can be little
doubt that the idea of a disembodied, metaphysical mind, so often assumed
in philosophical contexts indebted to Rene Descartes’ (1596–1650) notion
of res cogitans (ego-self as “thinking thing”),14 is absent from classical
Chinese and Daoist views of self. However, is “self ” synonymous with body
in Chinese cultural and religious traditions? Expressed differently, when the
body dies, does personal identity cease? In a Chinese context, this issue
relates to further questions concerning death, dying as well as the afterlife,
and immortality, in particular.
The relationship between Chinese views of self and body is discussed in
Roger T. Ames’ contribution to Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice.15
Ames argues that in classical Chinese philosophy “person” (“self ”) is prop-
erly regarded as a “psychosomatic process.” According to Ames, Chinese
views of self, generally speaking, emphasize “polarism” over “dualism.” “By
‘polarism,’ I am referring to a symbiosis: the unity of two organismic pro-
cesses which require each other as a necessary condition for being what they
are,”16 and, “When we combine the process ontology of the early Chinese
tradition with its polar conception of the psychical [heart-mind/spirit] and
physical [body], it would appear that ‘person’ was seen holistically as a psy-
chosomatic process.”17 Ames in turn suggests that there are three senses of
“body” in classical Chinese philosophy, as expressed in three technical
Chinese terms. First, shen 身, possibly a pictograph of the human physique,
seems to be used most frequently to refer to one’s entire psychosomatic
process. In passages where shen as “self ” refers to the physical body, it is
one’s “lived body” seen from within rather than “body as corpse” seen from
without.18 The second character relating to Chinese notions of “body” is
xing 形, which is the “form” or “shape,” the three-dimensional disposition
or configuration of the human process. Xing-form has a morphological
rather than genetic or schematic nuance.19 Finally, a third character desig-
nating “body” is ti 體, which relates to “physical structure” said to be a
“combination of twelve groups” or parts. Ti-physical structure relates to the
scalp, face, chin, shoulders, spine, abdomen, upper arms, lower arms, hands,
The Daoist Mystical Body ● 71
classical Daoism (from the fourth to the second century BCE), in the inner
cultivation lineages of the Warring States (480–222 BCE) and Early
Han (206 BCE–9 CE).32 For example, according to Chapter 12 of the
Zhuangzi,
There are five conditions under which innate nature is lost. First, the five
colors confuse the eyes and cause vision to be unclear. Second, the five sounds
confuse the ears and cause hearing to be unclear. Third, the five smells stimu-
late the nose and produce weariness and congestion in the forehead. Fourth,
the five flavors dull the mouth and cause taste to be impaired and lifeless. Fifth,
likes and dislikes unsettle the heart-mind and cause the innate nature to
become unstable and disturbed. These five are all a danger to life.33
to as “inner vision” (neishi ).35 This practice involves turning the light of the
eyes, the corporeal sun and moon, inward. The combined “spirit radiance”
(shenguang) of the eyes then illuminates the body as inner landscape. In
terms of aurality, internal alchemy emphasizes the activation of the subtle
body. Here one listens to a deeper layer of one’s being, specifically the sub-
tle movement of qi throughout the organ-meridian system and throughout
the world and cosmos. This is the “Daoist mystical body” that forms the
centerpiece of the present chapter.
There is thus a more esoteric and mystical Daoist view that centers on
subtle listening, a listening that does not involve actual aurality. This subtle
and deep listening, sometimes referred to with technical terms like “mysteri-
ous perception” (xuanlan), involves qi as the deeper layer of one’s being and
of all existence. It is a listening to the subtle dimensions of life, being atten-
tive to the energetic qualities of each being and situation. In terms of the
later Daoist tradition, it involves the activation of the subtle body, and liv-
ing through spirit. Interestingly, this mystical being and energetic attentive-
ness is described as “listening to the inaudible,” “teaching without words,”
and “listening to the stringless music.” There is an invisible composition
and sonata occurring each moment, and one can train oneself to hear it.
One can thus exist in greater degrees of dissonance or consonance, of distor-
tion or harmonization. Such a condition may occur on the level of innate
nature, interpersonal relationships, community, society, world, and cosmos.
From a Daoist perspective, this is ultimately about the degree to which one
is in attunement with the Dao as sacred. It is about one’s being and pres-
ence, about one’s connection with the Dao and the Daoist tradition. For
Daoists, such a connection and commitment may allow one to transmit the
Dao (chuandao): “As for one who can awaken to this [clarity and stillness],
that one is able to transmit the sacred Dao.”36
Before moving on to specific examples of Daoist somatic mysticism, of
experiences of the Daoist mystical body, I would like to point out one addi-
tional characteristic of the Daoist tradition that may be unfamiliar to readers
of the present book. This is the Daoist practice of mapping the Daoist body
through diagrams and illustrations. Specifically, the Daoist religious tradition
includes a variety of fascinating body maps. As contained in the Ming-
dynasty Daoist Canon, Daoists began documenting the above-mentioned
views of the body through diagrams and illustrations. Tentatively speaking,
the earliest of these “Daoist body maps” were composed in the early medieval
period (the third to seventh CE), in the context of Highest Clarity commu-
nities. However, Daoists continued to create and commission such corporeal
diagrams throughout Chinese history, and many of the illustrations were
used as prompts or visual aides for Daoist meditation practice.37
76 ● Louis Komjathy 康思奇
body. The sacred may be experienced in/as/through one’s own anatomy and
physiology, though the Daoist corporeal landscape includes hidden water-
courses and nonspatial caverns.
Before moving on to the specific Daoist content of this chapter, two
additional points should be made. First, some theological positions are
complementary (e.g., panenhenism and somaticism), while others are con-
tradictory or oppositional (e.g., atheism and monotheism). Second, outside
of tradition-specific theologies, the dominant assumed theology is monistic,
especially in the form of Perennial Philosophy or New Age spirituality. This
is often the case in academic discourse about religion as well as in scientific
discourse concerning the universe. That is, reality is assumed to be singular,
rather than pluralistic, in nature.
For Daoists throughout Chinese history, the Dao, translatable as “the
Way” and “a way,” has been identified as the sacred and ultimate concern. As
expressed in classical Daoism, in the inner cultivation lineages of the Warring
States period (480–222 BCE), and from a foundational Daoist theological
perspective, the Dao has four primary characteristics: (1) Source; (2) Unnamable
mystery; (3) All-pervading sacred presence (qi); and (4) Cosmological process
that is the universe (“Nature”).39 The primary Daoist theology is, in turn,
monistic, panentheistic, and panenhenic; the secondary Daoist theology is
animistic and polytheistic. Conventionally speaking, earlier inquires into
Daoism, influenced by Christian views, have often unknowingly privileged
the monistic side, while denigrating the polytheistic side.40 This has been
expressed in the Western construction and historical fiction of so-called philo-
sophical Daoism and religious Daoism (sometimes appearing as “magical” or
“folk Daoism”), the use of which should be taken ipso facto as evidence of
inaccuracy and misunderstanding.41 In fact, as discussed briefly below, classi-
cal Daoist monistic theological views entail and frequently identify polythe-
istic elements. In any case, knowledge of foundational Daoist theological
views is essential for our inquiry into the Daoist mystical body and somatic
mystical experience.
According to the fourth-century BCE Daode jing (Scripture on the Dao
and Inner Power),42
And
Master Dongguo asked Zhuangzi, “Where does one find the Dao?”
Zhuangzi said, “There’s no place it doesn’t exist.”
“Come on,” said Master Dongguo, “Be more specific!”
“It’s in these ants.”
“As low as that?”
“It’s in the grasses.”
“But that’s even lower.”
“It’s in those tiles and shards.”
80 ● Louis Komjathy 康思奇
1. Palace of the Hall of Light (mingtang gong), located above the area
between the two eyebrows and one inch (cun) in.
2. Palace of the Grotto Chamber (dongfang gong), located two inches in.
3. Palace of the Elixir Field (dantian gong), located three inches in. This
palace is sometimes also called Niwan, literally meaning “mud-ball,”
but possibly a transliteration of nirvana.
4. Palace of the Flowing Pearl (liuzhu gong), located four inches in.
86 ● Louis Komjathy 康思奇
5. Palace of the Jade Thearch (yudi gong), located five inches in.
6. Palace of the Celestial Court (tianting gong), located one inch above
the Hall of Light.
7. Palace of Secret Perfection (jizhen gong), located one inch above the
Grotto Chamber.
8. Palace of the Mysterious Elixir (xuandan gong), located one inch above
the Elixir Field. This palace is sometimes also called Niwan.
9. Palace of the Great Sovereign (taihuang gong), located one inch above
the Flowing Pearl.58
Each palace is also associated with a specific god, and each god also occupies
a corresponding external sacred realm in the complex, multidimensional
Highest Clarity cosmology. The first four palaces are inhabited by male dei-
ties, while the last five are inhabited by female ones. For example, the Palace
of the Celestial Court is inhabited by the Perfect Mother of Highest Clarity
(shangqing zhenmu). Other texts also provide details on the color and style of
their clothing as well as their specific appearance. As Isabelle Robinet has
commented, “These nine cavities or palaces are only inhabited by deities if
one practices the visualization exercise. Otherwise they remain vacant. The
implication of this is that the visualization of these deities is, at the same time,
their actualization” (1993, 127). Before stepping away from the mystical body
in early Highest Clarity Daoism, I would note that the accessing of these
cranial locations also leads to a mystical encounter with various deities in the
Highest Clarity pantheon. One way of reading the Nine Palaces is that they
are actual portals into the cosmos, into Daoist sacred realms. Such gods and
their corresponding sacred realms simultaneously exist in the larger cosmos
and the adept’s own body. They can, in turn, be accessed in/as/through one’s
own corporeality. Here the brain contains a nonspatial or hyperspatial dimen-
sion—by assessing the Nine Palaces, which extend progressively inward,
deeper, and beyond, one opens mystical spaces within the body.
Patterned on heaven and symbolizing earth, inhaling yin and exhaling yang,
your body shares in the Five Phases and accords with the four seasons. The
eyes are the sun and moon. The hair is the stars and the planets. The eye-
brows are the Flowery Canopy (huagai) [Cassiopeia]. The head is Mount
Kunlun. A network of palaces and passes, the body serves to keep essence
and spirit at peace.
Among the myriad beings, humans have the most numinosity. With
innate nature and life-destiny merged with the Dao, humans can preserve
[this numinosity] by internally observing (neiguan) the body.
(Ibid., 3a–3b)62
Here one notes the body as microcosm and internal landscape. Through
the practice of inner observation, closely associated with visualization meth-
ods, the Daoist adept becomes a cosmologically infused and mystically trans-
formed being. Paralleling the above-mentioned Highest Clarity encounter
with the multiple layers of somatic numinosity, the Daoist adept practicing
neiguan emerges from the practice to discover cosmic interpenetration—one’s
body contains the landscape and universe, and the landscape and universe is
88 ● Louis Komjathy 康思奇
one’s body.63 In terms of the place of the senses in religious traditions and
mystical experience, Daoist inner observation places primary emphasis on
vision, and specifically the eyes as vessels of light. As the corporeal sun and
moon, the combined light of the eyes, referred to as “spirit radiance”
(shenguang) or “divine illumination” (shenming), can be turned inward to
illumine the inner landscape of the human body.
The final aspect of the Daoist mystical body that I would like to mention
is the place of vital substances and physiology in Song-dynasty internal
alchemy lineages. In order to complete alchemical transformation, late-
medieval Daoists sought to refine the various aspects of self into a pure or
transcendent spirit. Here it is noteworthy that alchemical transformation
focuses on the conservation of fluids and actual physiological processes: the
internal alchemist needs the body’s vital substances (vital essence, fluids, blood,
and so forth) to create the elixir of immortality. One can actually chart this
process in terms of classical Chinese medical theory.64 Alchemical transforma-
tion takes place inside the body; the body is required for internal alchemy;
and the completion of neidan praxis incorporates every somatic aspect.
Titled “Neijing tu” (Inner Landscape Map), this diagram is contained in
the Nanjing zuantu jujie (Phrase-by-Phrase Glosses of the Classic of
Difficulties; DZ 1024) by a certain Li Jiong (fl. 1269). Although conven-
tionally categorized as a “medical text,”65 this text is preserved in the Daoist
Canon, incorporates earlier Daoist materials, and clearly influenced later
Daoist body maps (see Needham et. al 1983; Despeux 1994; Komjathy
2008; 2009). As documented in this diagram, there is substantial overlap
between “medical” and “alchemical” views. Most importantly for the pres-
ent discussion, this “Inner Landscape Map” identifies the Nine Palaces in
the head, the Three Passes along the spine, as well as the movement of vital
essence (jing) and qi from the base of the spine to the head. The latter
practice is referred to as “reverting essence to repair the brain” (huanjing
bunao), and it is often combined in a larger, stage-based process of alchemi-
cal transformation. In such systems, the Daoist adept transforms vital
essence into qi. This qi is then circulated through the Waterwheel (heche),
also known as the Lesser Celestial Cycle (xiao zhoutian; a.k.a. Microcosmic
Orbit),66 during which one connects the Governing and Conception
Vessels, the meridians on the back and front centerlines of the body, respec-
tively. Here one finds a clear depiction of the activation of the subtle,
energetic dimensions of the human body.
There are various late-medieval neidan texts relevant for studying the
Daoist mystical body, many of which incorporate the earlier Highest Clarity
visualization and Daoist neiguan practices already discussed. Here I will be
content to focus on the tenth-century Chuandao ji (Anthology of
Transmitting the Dao; DZ 263, j. 14–16), one of the most influential early
Zhong-Lü texts.67 The last section of the text, titled “Lun zhengyan” (On
Experiential Confirmation/Signs of Proof ), informs the Daoist adept that
specific training regimens may result in specific types of experiences. After
one conserves vital essence, opens the body’s meridians, and generates saliva,
one begins a process of self-rarification and self-divinization. At the most
advanced stages of alchemical transformation, one becomes free of karmic
obstructions and entanglements, and one’s name becomes registered in the
records of the Three Purities. The embryo of immortality (taixian) matures,
which includes the ability to manifest as the body-beyond-the-body
(shenwai shen) and have greater communion with celestial realms. After the
adept’s bones begin to disappear and become infused with golden light
(jinguang), he or she may receive visitations from divine beings. This process
of experiential confirmation is said to culminate as follows:
In a solemn and grand ceremony, you will be given the purple writ of the
celestial books and immortal regalia. Immortals will appear on your left and
right, and you will be escorted to Penglai. You will have audience with the
Perfect Lord of Great Tenuity in the Purple Palace. Here your name and place
of birth will be entered into the registers. According to your level of accom-
plishment, you will be given a dwelling-place on the Three Islands. Then you
may be called a Perfected (zhenren) or immortal (xianzi).”68
90 ● Louis Komjathy 康思奇
Notes
1. While the Warring States period (475–221 BCE) is often read as a time of
proto-rationalism (e.g., by A. C. Graham and Benjamin Schwartz), more work
needs to be done on its religio-cultural characteristics. See, for example, Harold
Roth, Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist
Mysticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
2. On this distinction, see Roland Fisher, “A Cartography of the Ecstatic and
Meditative States,” in Understanding Mysticism, ed. Richard Woods (Garden City,
The Daoist Mystical Body ● 93
35. See Livia Kohn, “Taoist Insight Meditation: The Tang Practice of Neiguan,” in
Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese
Studies, University of Michigan, 1989), ed. Livia Kohn, 191–222.
36. Qingjing jing, DZ 620, 2a.
37. For some examples of these various illustrations, see Needham et al., Science
and Civilisation; Despeux, Taoïsme et corps humain; Komjathy, “Mapping the
Daoist Body.”
38. Of course, historically speaking, Catholic theologies are probably the most
developed and systematic, though that is changing in the contemporary period
with a more transdenominational Christian theology and with the emergence
of comparative theology. See, for example, David Tracy, “Comparative Theology,”
in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones (Detroit, MI: Macmillan,
2005), 9125–34.
39. A close reading of classical Daoist texts such as the Daode jing, Zhuangzi, as
well as sections of the Guanzi, Huainanzi, and Lüshi chunqiu provides evidence
for each of these characteristics.
40. This is generally true of most scholarship before the emergence of Daoist
Studies from the 1960s onward. It is intricately tied to traditional Confucian
prejudices, European and Japanese colonialism, Christian missionization, and
Orientalism, which is the heir of the previous three. Such interpretations of
Daoism generally privilege and provide selective readings of classical Daoist
texts and mischaracterize classical Daoism as a “proto-rationalistic” or
“philosophical” tradition. More recently, one finds appropriative agendas within
American hybrid spirituality to identify classical Daoism as “spiritual” or part
of some “universal wisdom tradition.”
41. For more recent revisionist work, see Roth, Original Tao; Russell Kirkland,
Taoism: The Enduring Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 2004).
42. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own. Catalogue numbers for
Daoist textual collections follow Louis Komjathy, Title Index to Daoist Collections
(Cambridge, MA: Three Pines Press, 2002). Numbers for the Ming-dynasty
canon parallel Kristofer Schipper et al.’s earlier index. For a survey of its contents,
see Kristofer Schipper and Franciscus Verellen, ed., The Taoist Canon: A Historical
Companion to the Daozang (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
43. I have rendered this line and the subsequent ones as referring to a cosmogonic
process. They may also be read as a description of the present cosmological
epoch. That is, they simultaneously refer to an unrepresentable and irretrievable
before and an immediately accessible dimension of the present.
44. These lines are noteworthy for using different Chinese characters that refer to
types of names. They contain ming, one’s personal name given by one’s parents,
and zi, one’s nickname given by oneself or one’s associates. Read from a more
technical perspective, the passage suggests that no one can know the former
with respect to what is ultimately real. Instead, Chinese Daoists provided a
provisional designation of dao, a Chinese character referring to “way” or “path.”
That is, ultimately dao is a placeholder for ——, which is formless, unnamable,
98 ● Louis Komjathy 康思奇
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Comparison to the Daozang. 3 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Unschuld, Paul. 1985. Medicine in China: A History of Ideas. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
———. 2003. Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient
Chinese Medical Text. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Varela, Francisco, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. 1993. The Embodied Mind:
Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Verela, Francisco, and Jonathan Shear, eds. 1999. The View from Within: First-Person
Approaches to the Study of Consciousness. Bowling Green, OH: Imprint
Academic.
White, David. 1998. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
CHAPTER 5
G
iven the contentiousness of the hermeneutics debate among
sinologists, I will begin my analysis of Daoist embodied mysticism
with a brief discussion of methodology. As J. J. Clarke has pointed
out, the traditional interpretation of Daoism for the West was established
by scholars who stressed a false dichotomy between philosophical and reli-
gious Daoism. Clarke accuses James Legge, for example, of
Russell Kirkland2 and Livia Kohn3 have also pointed out the degree to
which Western scholars have misunderstood Daoism by focusing on too few
texts of the Tao-tsang, by using Western interpretive lenses that considered
Laozi and Zhuangzi as individual philosophers who authored individual
texts rather than as possibly mythological spokespersons for anthologies that
embodied the wisdom of long-standing traditions, and by ignoring the
practices of common people to focus on a disrespectful Confucian analysis
of those traditions. So, I hardly need to argue, at this point, for the inac-
curacy of an interpretation of Daoism that contrasts the wisdom of Laozi
and Zhuangzi with the superstition of the Daoist religious tradition.
Instead, I will argue in this chapter for an understanding of the nature of
the embodied mysticism that was advocated by the Daoist tradition in
China. I will still make comparisons with Western philosophers, but I hope
that the Western comparisons that I make will more accurately reflect the
T. Cattoi et al., Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body
© Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel 2011
106 ● Laura E. Weed
thinking and practices of the Daoist sages and will avoid some of the pitfalls
for which Clarke, Kohn, Kirkland and others have faulted most twentieth-
century sinologists.
In my comparisons I will adopt a hermeneutic of the type used by Jon
Herman to elucidate the roots of Martin Buber’s “proto-dialogical unity,”4
through analyzing Buber’s encounter with Zhuangzi. Although there is prob-
ably no historical connection between the authors that I am comparing,
Daoist forms of self-cultivation and embodied practice bear a close enough
psychological parallel to procedures advocated and studied by Aristotle,
Maslow, and Csikszentmihalyi, for the comparisons to be fruitful and infor-
mative on two levels. First, in terms of what Herman calls an aesthetic or
romantic hermeneutic,5 the Chinese and Western advocates of embodied self-
cultivation are following similar procedures to achieve similar goals. Just as
one would expect that another human culture, no matter how different from
ours, would have some procedures of food production or waste disposal, one
can expect that some manner of analysis of self-cultivation is present in most,
if not all human cultures, and in cultures in which we find such practices we
can fruitfully compare the manner in which this is done for similarities and
differences that emerge in the local contexts. Of course, care must be taken
to respect the local contexts, but humanity consists of only one biological
species, so one need not throw one’s hands up in despair of any cross-cultural
comparison, as Steven Katz6 and other social constructivists do, because the
ethnic, linguistic, and cultural contexts in which people live differ. Second,
my analysis describes embodied practices. In discussing what people do with
their physical bodies, and the psychological consequences of the embodied
practices, one is approaching a scientific analysis of the situation and moving
away from a cultural or hermeneutic analysis, in any case. As one would not
expect incommensurably different reactions to SARs or the Bird Flu when
the virus crosses cultural, linguistic, or ethnic boundaries, and one would
expect regular exercise to improve the health of most humans, whatever their
cultural contexts, one would expect that these religious embodied practices of
self-cultivation will exhibit at least some similar effects cross-culturally. In this
sense, postulated cross-cultural similarities in practice might even be con-
strued as scientific hypotheses for sociological or anthropological research.
how Daoist practices that I identified in the first section of the chapter reflect
a conception of self-actualization, as expressed by Abraham Maslow, and of
flow, as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. From this comparison I will
conclude that Daoist practice has traditionally embraced an embodied form
of mysticism, that is, at once, philosophical and religious, although its reli-
gious expression differs from traditional Western forms of religious
expression.
Self-Cultivation, or cheng was an important traditional Chinese goal, what-
ever school of thought one belonged to, but for Daoists there was a stronger
stress on maximizing the natural expression of de, perfecting embodied
energy as qi, incorporating or relating oneself to Dao, and co-relating health
in body to proper function in society, nature, and Tian, than there was in
other Chinese traditions. Some of the teachings and practices concerning the
self and its cultivation were the following.
Daoist teachings regarding de, or self, variously interpret the ambiguous
Chinese conception of a human self as at once physiological, cosmological,
psychological, and transcendent. Livia Kohn argues that there are at least
two senses in the Xisheng jing7 (Scripture of Western Ascension) in which the
physiological body is understood to be the self. One’s de is born with one’s
body (xing) and is part of the functioning of one’s body in everyday life.
Kohn explains:
Xing is thus, not “matter” in the Greek sense of hyle but it does contrast
as the Chinese nonphysical functional equivalent of Western matter against
qi, spirit, in some contexts, and against shēn, the personal body or self, in
other contexts.9 Shēn is also understood as the conglomeration of the
senses,10 and the psychological ego-identity.11 Jung Yeup Kim translates shēn
as “creative indeterminacy” signifying that the self is a particular but inde-
terminate space of transformation, which of course is not separate from the
body, because there is no matter/spirit dualism in Chinese philosophy.12 The
physical form of a person (xing) is responsible for emotions and desires and
can distract from the Dao, but it must be intact for the self to come to the
body and reside as part of it.13 Kohn summarizes the role of the body in the
cosmology of the Xisheng jing as being at once individual and cosmic.
108 ● Laura E. Weed
Since both physical form and personality are ultimately aspects of Dao
in Daoist cosmology, disciplining the shēn aspects of body to prevent the
blocking of qi while enhancing the health and primordial qualities of xing
to make it a smooth vehicle for presenting Dao, which is ultimately its own
nature as well as the nature of the universe, is the goal of religious practice
in the Xisheng jing.
Russell Kirkland traces the specific steps used to achieve the Daoist ideal
of self-cultivation “within a cosmos comprised of subtly linked forces”15
across many centuries of Daoist practice in China. Kirkland summarizes
Ssu-mo Sun’s Chen-chung Chi (Pillow Book Records) as listing five instruc-
tions for achieving integration of the whole person with Dao.
They are:
1. “prudence,” i.e. self control and moderation in consumption and sensual
pleasures;
2. “prohibitions” regarding improper activities in those regards;
3. self-massage
4. guiding the ch’i by visualizational meditation
5. “guarding the One” to achieve apotropatic powers.16
Kirkland explains that these practices were expanded and elaborated over
many centuries of Daoist practice, during which complex analyses of bal-
anced diet and moderation in physical activity at the early stages of Daoist
practice, and instructions for achieving calmness or equilibrium in both
body and mind at the intermediate stages of development, were added to
advanced stage meditative analyses of “sitting in forgetfulness” and forget-
ting ordinary distinctions between self and other, which would lead to
“entering into suchness”17 and achieving wu-wei (doing without doing).18
Kirkland also points out that ritual aspects of Daoism, such as focusing on
sounds of words (chen-yen)19 interacted productively with a variety of East
Asian tantric practices, such as reciting of mantras.
Kirkland points out how eclectic Daoist practice became during the sec-
ond to sixth centuries, intertwining the philosophical, upper class, Huainanzi
texts and practices with practices advocated in less well-known texts emerg-
ing from the Heavenly Masters’ traditions, such as the Tai p’ing ching,
Daoist Mysticism ● 109
the Hsiang-erh, and the Nei-yeh. Kirkland summarizes the moral precepts in
some of these texts as follows.
Related texts in the Tao-tsang preserve thirty-six moral precepts said to have
been part of the original Hsiang-erh. Nine consist of “prescriptive precepts”
pegged squarely to the Tao te ching (e.g., “practice clarity and stillness” and
“practice desirelessness”). The others consist of “proscriptive precepts.” Some
of those go back to the Tao te Ching (e.g., “Do not delight in arms”) or the
Nei-yeh (e.g., “Do not waste your vital essence and life energy”), and others
preserve the wider social framework of the T’ai-p’ing ching (e.g., “Do not pray
or sacrifice to spirits and gods”).20
What all three texts, the Tao te Ching, the Nei-yeh, and the Chuang-tzu share.
is the idea that one can live one’s life wisely only if one learns to live in accord
with life’s unseen forces and subtle processes, not on the basis of society’s
more prosaic concerns.21
My play first aroused fear, and you were afflicted as if by an apparition. Then
I joined stupor to that and you were separated. But finally came enrapture;
for enrapture means turned out from sense, turned out from sense means
Dao, and Dao means the great absorption.24
The Tao does not desire emptiness, yet emptiness naturally returns there.
Virtue does not desire spirit, yet spirit naturally returns there. . . .
Daoist Mysticism ● 111
If human beings are empty, latent and free from action, they may not
desire the Tao, yet the Tao naturally returns to them. Seen from this angle,
how could the individual nature of beings not be natural?25
Kohn explains that the return to the Dao may be either an enstatic
absorption in the darkness of the Tao, or an ecstatic state of liberation into
a sense of spiritual freedom.26 In either case, it is the self-development of
the virtues already cited that leads to the natural and embodied, yet mysti-
cally transcendent state of the accomplished Sage.
There is yet another sense in which ethics is embodied for Daoists, as
well. Dan Lusthaus points out how closely the epistemological perspective
of seeing reality from the location of one’s body is connected to the ethical
evaluating system in which we judge some things better than others. It is
from the perspective of being embodied within a body and a community
that we judge some things as “good” and others as “bad”; but we universal-
ize the judgments falsely, forgetting their sources. In his analysis of the
ethics of the Zhuangzi, Lusthaus claims,
daimon, which means “divine being,”40 So, even in the choice of his word-
ing, Aristotle may have seen perfect order in a human life and perfect order
in the universe as harmoniously resonant qualities; in which the well-being
of the gods and the well-being of a human are united in happiness.
Thus, despite some obvious differences, Aristotle’s analysis of the intellec-
tual virtues exhibits some very Daoist themes. Skill and talent development
in harmony with one’s nature and inherent talents will bring one to perform
activities that bring about the highest level of happiness. Practicing these
activities to the point at which they become a form of contemplation is the
best of which a human is capable. Achieving that level of accomplishment is
reflective of the divine element in a human, and the closest one can come to
attunement to divinity. It is also the achievement of human happiness.
Aristotle’s moral virtues parallel what I called the negative directives of
Daoist practice. These involve a rational principle from the intellectual part
of the soul, in his faculty-psychology, dominating over the desirous portion
of the nutritive part of the soul,41 to seek a mean between excess and defect.42
Virtues such as temperance, moderation in eating, courage, the reasonable use
of money in a way that is neither miserly nor ostentatious, and the like, reflect
forms of self-discipline reminiscent of the Daoist injunctions to suppress or
ignore the shēn desires while satisfying the xing desires. For Aristotelian defects
of moral virtue would arise from too little attention being paid to the basic
needs of the body, while the Aristotelian excesses would be results of too
much emphasis on the shēn or psychological and egotistical propensity to
greed and grasping.
Indeed, there are some verbal parallels between the Aristotelian concepts of
psyche and the composite of matter and spirit that forms a substantial self, and
the Chinese concepts of shēn and xing. The soul, or psyche, for Aristotle, is the
form of the body, it is “the actuality of some form of body,”43 it is the symbolic
rendering of the organism, connected to Plato’s ideos.44 The substance, in con-
trast, is the principle that unites with the matter as a composite, making the
matter into a specific differentiated individual.45 In Daoism, the composite
might more properly be represented as ““cultivation of the mind/heart” hsiu-hsin
as in Nei-yeh V.13 and VI.5)”46 So although there is no direct parallel,one might
say that in Greek as well as in Chinese, the particular, psychological, and ego-
centric is to be suppressed, while the symbolic, organic, and highest sense of self
is the psyche, the soul, and it is to be cultivated. Both are the phusis or nature of
the person, just as both xing and shēn are the nature or de of a person in Daoist
texts. Both can be said to be ways in which the body is organized, in both lan-
guages. And both Aristotle and Daoists show a preference for the organic, the
natural, that connects to the divine over the egotistical and grasping aspects of
self, which represent individual and isolated manners of self-organization.
Daoist Mysticism ● 115
We are again and again rewarded for good Becoming by transient states of
absolute Being, which I have summarized as peak experiences. Achieving
basic needs gratifications gives us many peak experiences, each of which are
absolute delights, perfect in themselves, and needing no more than them-
selves to validate life. . . . Heaven, so to speak, lies waiting for us throughout
life, ready to step into for a time and to enjoy before we have to come back
to our ordinary life of striving.48
Maslow points out, however, that despite innate yearnings for self-
development, very few humans in fact achieve this level of human excel-
lence. The reasons for the high level of failure to thrive are of two types,
which, once again, correspond to failures of the negative and positive virtues
that I identified in both Daoist ethics and Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics.
116 ● Laura E. Weed
On the negative side, as Maslow points out, people are fearful, crave safety,
self-indulgent, have poor habits, embrace counterproductive cultural atti-
tudes, are injured by traumatic episodes, or are poorly educated.49 Failures
of the negative or moral virtues result in people who lack the self-discipline
for self-actualization. Failures of the positive, or Aristotelian intellectual
virtues result in poor health, both physically and mentally, absence of self-
identity and responsibility, boredom, and lack of direction, spontaneity,
creativity, or zest. The process of self-development advocated for Daoist
sages clearly bears important parallels with Maslow’s instructions for the
achievement of peak experiences.
Like the Daoist sages, and unlike Aristotle, Maslow stresses the safety
and health of the physical body. He points out that failure to meet basic
needs, such as needs for nutrition, exercise, and safety, or falling victim to
physiological trauma will disrupt one’s capacity to advance in a course of
self-actualization. Aristotle acknowledges the role of the nutritive part of the
soul in self-development only in the negative sense that moral virtue
requires moderation.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has continued Maslow’s project by studying
happiness and the activities that produce it directly. He has found that the
most happy people are the ones that he describes as having an “autotelic”
personality. Autotelic activities, according to Csikszentmihalyi, are activities
that people engage in for their own sakes, in opposition to activities that
someone might engage in because they have to or cannot avoid doing them,
or to earn a living, or to please someone else. Applied to personalities, the
word “autotelic” designates “an individual who generally does things for their
own sake, rather than in order to achieve some later, external goal.”50
Csikszentmihalyi has found, in reverse of common opinion on the mat-
ter, that the happiest people are the ones who embrace the most challenging
tasks, who work very hard at jobs that they find productive and on which
they focus high levels of energy and interest. He observes,
A typical day is full of anxiety and boredom. Flow experiences provide the
flashes of intense living against this dull background. . . . [A] person in flow
is completely focused. There is no space in consciousness for distracting
thoughts, irrelevant feelings. Self-consciousness disappears, yet one feels
stronger than usual. A sense of time is distorted: hours seem to pass by in
minutes. When a person’s entire being is stretched in the full functioning of
body and mind, whatever one does becomes worth doing for it own sake;
living becomes its own justification.52
Conclusion
I have argued in this chapter that Daoism promotes an embodied form
of mysticism, which bears intriguing parallels to Aristotle’s conception of
118 ● Laura E. Weed
Notes
1. J. J. Clarke, The Tao of the West (London: Routledge Press, 2000), 44.
2. Russell Kirkland, Taoism, the Enduring Tradition (London: Routledge Press,
2004), 3.
3. Livia Kohn, Taoist Mystical Philosophy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991)
4. Jon Herman, I and Tao (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996), 162.
5. Ibid., 133–35.
6. Steven Katz, Mysticism and Religious Traditions (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1983).
7. Xisheng jing (The Scripture of Western Ascension) is a Daoist scripture that dates
to about the fifth century, and there were at least nine editions of it during the
Song Dynasty. It presents itself as instruction given to the guardian of the pass,
Yin Xi, by Laozi and parallels the Dao de Jing in structure. But it is of sufficiently
late origin to incorporate some Buddhist influence, and it combines insights of
the elite intellectual Song version of Daoism, as it existed in Huizong’s Dynastic
court, with practices of southern Daoists.
8. Kohn, Taoist Mystical Philosophy, 96.
9. Ibid., 97.
10. Ibid., 101.
11. Ibid.
12. Jung Yeup Kim, from discussion of his paper, “Zhang Zai’s Qi Qua Field,” at
the APA in New York City, Dec, 2009.
13. Ibid.
14. Kohn, Taoist Mystical Philosophy, 99.
15. Kirkland, Taoism, the Enduring Tradition, 192.
16. Ibid., 200.
17. Ibid., 204 While the reference to “suchness” in the tradition shows Buddhist
influence, Kirkland points out that Daoist conceptions of transcendence were
Daoist Mysticism ● 119
Bibliography
Clarke, J. J. The Tao of the West. London: Routledge Press, 2000.
Cohen, S. Mark, Patricia Curd, and C. D. C. Reeve (eds.). Readings in Ancient Greek
Philosophy. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1995.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Finding Flow, the Psychology of Engagement with Everyday
Life. New York: Basic Books, Harper-Collins, 1997.
Herman, Jon. I and Tao. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996.
Katz, Steven. Mysticism and Religious Traditions. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press, 1983.
Kirkland, Russell. Taoism, the Enduring Tradition. London: Routledge Press, 2004.
Kohn, Livia. Taoist Mystical Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991.
Lusthaus, Dan. “Aporetic Ethics in the Zhaungzi.” In Hiding the World in the World,
ed. Scott Cook. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003.
Maslow, Abraham. “Psychological Data and Value Theory.” In Abraham Maslow
(ed.) New Knowledge of Human Values, pp. 120–32. Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery,
Gateway edition, 1970.
McKeon, Richard (ed.). Introduction to Aristotle. New York: Random House,
1947.
Schipper, Kristopher. The Daoist Body, trans. Karen C. Duval. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1993.
CHAPTER 6
Christina the Astonishing / Was the most astonishing of all / She prayed
balanced on a hurdle / Or curled up into a ball / She fled to remote places /
Climbed towers and trees and walls / To escape the stench of human corrup-
tion / Into an oven she did crawl / Christina the Astonishing / Behaved in a
terrifying way.
Nick Cave, “Christina the Astonishing,” Henry’s Dream (1992)
I
n his hagiography on Christina the Astonishing from 1232, Dominican
Thomas of Cantimpré (ca. 1200–1270)1 sketches an audacious and
original apostolate in which Christina as a living dead helps to effectu-
ate salvation. However, Christina’s excessive and self-inflicted physical
anguish has been met with great unease and skepticism2 and has been
pathologized3 by both her medieval contemporaries and her present-day
interpreters. This apprehension about Christina’s life prevents us, in my
view, from appreciating the full complexity of her life-world. In particular,
I want to challenge modern readings of Christina’s vita that sever her
incomprehensible and “unreal” bodily agony from her comprehensible and
“real” mendicancy. There has been a tendency to privilege Christina’s men-
dicancy as the factual, intelligible, and emancipatory dimension of her life
and to discount her physical suffering as fictional, unintelligible, and mar-
ginalizing, especially since the former can be translated into more palatable
postmodern terms and categories of agency (e.g., the subversion of patriarchy
and ecclesial structures). In this article, I argue that Christina’s extravagant
and suffering as “an immortal soul with a mortal body without damage to
it” help deliver souls from the misery of purgatory.8 She chooses the latter
option and here,9 following the first of two resurrections of her liminal
body, she (like “a female Lazarus”)10 commences her apostolate that was as
confounding to her contemporaries as it is to readers today.11 Many of her
contemporaries (including her own family) suspected her to be possessed
by demons. They doubted her mental sanity and subjected her to the
“mental care” of the time, that is, breaking her legs and binding her with
iron chains and a heavy wooden yoke in a dungeon.12 As part of her active
ministry, Christina adopts a mendicant lifestyle, preaches, teaches, hears
confessions, interprets Scripture, prophesizes, self-baptizes, and saves through
excruciating self-inflicted and public agony, which includes, among many
things, jumping into roaring fires, baking ovens, cauldrons of boiling water,
and rivers with freezing water.13 Bynum characterizes the Life of Christina
as containing “the most remarkable somatic miracles of any thirteenth-
century woman’s vita.”14 As Barbara Newman and Jo Ann McNamara
argue, many devout women in the Middle Ages engage in spiritual almsgiv-
ing for the spiritually disadvantaged (both living and dead) through—for
example—prayer, tears, fasting, and physical suffering, and their purgatorial
piety is highlighted by their hagiographers as a safe, fitting, and accepted
form of apostolic life for women.15 Nevertheless, Christina’s corporal afflic-
tions heighten this form of piety to an extent that it is radical even among
medieval constructions of women’s spirituality that center on suffering.
In Christina’s apostolate to the living and dead, her body is no longer
subjected to the constrictions of ordinary bodies. Seemingly at every given
opportunity, Christina leaps into burning-hot ovens, immerses herself in
boiling cauldrons, rolls around in roaring fires, remains submerged like a
fish for days in the freezing waters of the river Meuse, stands on a water-
wheel in the winter, is chased by dogs through woods thick with thorn,
lashes herself with brambles until she is completely covered in blood, stands
erect on fence palings—like a female Flemish Symeon the Stylite—as she
sings all the Psalms, stretches her arms and legs on the rack, and suspends
herself on the gallows between the hanged thieves, howling loudly as if from
the pangs of childbirth.16 She also engages in more traditional forms of
penitential activities, such as walking barefoot in all kinds of weather, weep-
ing, fasting for days between meals, and eating only vile and loathsome
foods.17 Through her lived purgatorial punishments—her excruciating
physical pain and her boundless tears—Christina attempts to dissuade her
audience from continuing their sinful lives and carries part of their purga-
torial torments in her body, hence shortening their stint in purgatory.18
She acts out her anguish in a spectacular performance, where her visual
124 ● Charlotte Radler
Her immortal soul suffuses her undead body and her spiritual senses her
earthly senses, rendering her body a phantasmal being and her sensory
experiences more intense. Her spirit and its senses transfigure her corporeal
body and earthly senses, yet her spirit and its senses cannot be conflated
with her corporeal body and earthly senses. Consequently, her body and
earthly senses are no longer constrained, but breach the boundaries of
ordinary bodies and senses in terms of malleability and capacity to endure
pain. While Thomas’ hagiography considers all of the senses, it especially
expounds on Christina’s heightened and transformed sense of touch in her
experiences of redemptive suffering (as she carries purgatorial torments in
her body) and her altered bodily shape during her mystical experiences (as
her body adopts spherical shapes).
Christina’s body takes on (even for a medieval context) bold sacramental
qualities in the text’s two mammary miracles, which establish another link
between her and Christ’s bodies. Just like Christ is eaten, Christina is
“eaten” and saves herself from starvation through her own emaciated body
as she nurses herself in the wilderness for nine weeks with the milk flowing
from her fruitful, virginal breasts.29 Thomas notes: “Without delay she
turned her eyes upon herself and saw the dry breasts of her virgin bosom
dripping with the sweetness of milk contrary to the very laws of nature.
A miracle! Unheard of for all the centuries after the incomparable virgin
mother of Christ.”30 Later, when she sits chained in a dungeon, her breasts
exude the clearest oil with which she seasons dry bread and cures her putre-
fying sores.31 In Thomas’ description of the miracles, Christina, like Christ,
becomes food, mirroring the more ontological understanding of the
Eucharist implicit in the emerging doctrine of transubstantiation.32 She
nourishes herself by feeding on her own breasts and not, as was more com-
mon, on Christ’s body. In this way, she transgresses the limits of her virginal
body and marks its extraordinary restorative qualities.33
Christina’s public mendicancy is multifaceted and complex, and consti-
tutes a form of spiritual activity that was neither officially sanctioned nor
viewed as suitable for laywomen.34 Like her bodily suffering, Christina’s
mendicancy becomes a forum for Thomas’ propagation of purgatorial doc-
trine and piety, and he construes her as an effective counterpoint to
Waldensian and Cathar teachings.35 Thomas describes how Christina begs
daily from door to door “in order to carry the sins of those whose alms fed
her.”36 As an itinerant beggar, she is an agent of redemption since God
renders her an opportunity for mercy, contrition, and penance that will
expedite the time her clientele serves in purgatory.37 Consequently, Christina
begs with intrepid zeal: if a person gives willingly to her, she gives thanks;
if a person refuses, she forcefully seizes her begging, since she knows that
126 ● Charlotte Radler
it will ultimately be profitable for the person.38 She graciously assists the
dying (from the Christian community as well as the large Jewish commu-
nity of St. Trond), exhorting them to confession of their sins. Christina
preaches repentance and conversion, the “hope of perpetual joy” and the
“horror of the destructive fire,” and she is “filled with the wondrous grace
of speech.”39 “And what else did Christina proclaim during her whole life
except to do penance and be human beings prepared at every hour?” Thomas
asks. “With many words, wails, lamentations, endless cries, she taught and
proclaimed this with the example of her life more than we have learned from
any writing or account of those before or since to the praise and glory of
Christ. . . .”40 She, moreover, rebuked many privately because of their secret
sins, and prophesied publicly and foretold many events, such as the recapture
of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187, the calamitous local battle of Steppes in
Brabant in 1213, and a local famine in 1170.41 She also becomes the spiri-
tual counselor and confessor of the Count of Looz, and shares his purgatorial
punishments.42 Furthermore, Thomas maintains that although Christina was
completely illiterate from birth, she comprehends Latin and knows so fully
the meaning of Scripture that she—though heedful not to encroach on the
sacerdotal domain—interprets it publily and rivals the most subtle thinker
in parsing intricate theological questions.43
Similar to Anselm’s atonement theory, Thomas indicates that each new sin
establishes a new debt that humanity ought to reimburse, but, unlike the
logic of Anselm’s model, he firmly believes that the liminal Christina can
pay it off through her participation in Christ’s kenotic suffering. Between
worlds and bodies, the undead Christina—who has not yet attained her
fully glorified and transfigured eschatological body—mediates between the
living and dead, in a sense, even more effectively than Christ. In the text,
the liminal, ambiguous Christina becomes a treasure trove of generosity and
love, which wrests meaning out of otherwise pointless suffering and realizes
the “opportunity of physicality.”46
A transient between worlds, Christina bridges the topography between
life and death. The boundaries between the heterotemporal realms are
porous and plastic, and the activities of the living and dead reciprocally
break through each other’s realities.47 Purgatory becomes, as Jacques Le Goff
observes, “an annex of the earth and extend[s] the time of life and of
memory.”48 Thus, while purgatory is a world of horrific suffering, it also,
paradoxically, constitutes hope and illuminates the solidarity and commu-
nity between the living and the dead.49 It, moreover, points to the open-
ended and dynamic nature of human communities, which are not limited
by time and space. For Thomas and his audience, purgatory, as a liminal
interstructural space between the fixed points of life and afterlife, is
grounded in historical reality, yet points beyond itself and signifies a
dynamic process of transition, transformation, and potentiality, whence
“novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise.”50 Thomas’ purgatorial
theology articulated through Christina’s apostolate of pain, hence expresses the
heterotemporality of the world that he configures and Christina inhabits.
As an interstructural, ambiguous person, Christina represents an alterna-
tive authority to clerical authority, which is by no means a secondary
authority. Thomas construes Christina’s authority as containing simultane-
ously two contrasting aspects of critique of and deference to sacerdotal
powers.51 On the one hand, as a lay woman, she reveres and acquiesces to
clerical authority; on the other hand, as a mendicant co-redemptrix, she is
a mouthpiece of the divine and thus, possesses a certain independence from
and superiority over the clergy.52 Even though Thomas’ configuration voices
his ambivalence about the clergy, he does not attempt to depict her as a
substitute or rival to clerical authority and office. Instead, through Christina
he explores an alternative and complementary realm of authority based on
preaching, teaching, visions, prophesy, ecstasy, and redemptive suffering.53
Her multifaceted apostolate proposes an alternative spiritual model that
may appear disjointed to modern readers. However, Thomas’ construction
of Christina’s apostolate and authority calls for a multivocal and dialogic
128 ● Charlotte Radler
historical method that imagines the life-worlds of the text, the medieval
contexts, and the contemporary contexts as heterogeneous.54 Such a meth-
odology necessarily exists in a tension, since it does not remove or assimilate
ambiguity.
precisely that which does not fit within modern, secularizing, and natural-
izing narratives.”64 Such a reading—which contains the double movements
of translating and refusing to translate in an aporia—demonstrates polyva-
lent and plural ways of being human and, as Chakrabarty writes, “help[s]
bring to view the disjointed nature of any particular ‘now’ one may inhabit.
. . . Thus the writing of history must implicitly assume a plurality of times
existing together, a disjuncture of the present with itself.”65 Thus, in sum,
I argue that the resistance to homogenizing “translations” of Christina’s
affliction invites a more comprehensive understanding of Christina’s apos-
tolate that appreciates radical heterogeneity across times, cultures, and sys-
tems of thought.66 It is only in this way that we can, as Nick Cave observes,
realize the truly astonishing nature of Christina’s life-world.
Notes
1. Among the vitae composed in the Low Countries, Thomas of Cantimpré’s Life of
Christina the Astonishing was second only to Jacques of Vitry’s Life of Marie of
Oignies in popularity. According to Barbara Newman twenty-three mss are known
(compared to the twenty-eight extant and three lost mss of Jacques of Vitry’s Life
of Marie of Oignies). In terms of extant manuscripts, twelve Latin mss exist, as well
as three Dutch and one English; seven additional mss were available to the seven-
teenth century Bollandists that are now lost. Newman, “Possessed by the Spirit:
Devout Women, Demoniacs, and the Apostolic Life in the Thirteenth Century,”
Speculum 73 (1998): 768, ft. 138; also published in an abridged and adapted form
as “Devout Women and Demoniacs in the World of Thomas of Cantimpré,” in
New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and Their Impact,
ed. Juliette Dor, Lesley Johnson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Turnhout, Belgium:
Brepols, 1999), 35–60. See further “Hildegard and Her Hagiographers: The
Remaking of Female Sainthood,” in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their
Interpreters, ed. Catherine M. Mooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1999), 32. See also Simone Roisin, “La méthode hagiographique de Thomas
de Cantimpré,” in Miscellanea historica in honorem Alberti de Meyer, vol. 1
(Louvain: Bibliothèque de l’Université, 1946), 548, 551–52; L’Hagiographie
Cistercienne dans le Diocèse de Liège au XIIIe Siècle (Louvain: Bibliothèque de
l’Université, 1947), 220–21; Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities
in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2001), 38–39, 42–43, 171, ft. 17.
2. In his work Surprising Mystics (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1955), Herbert
Thurston refers to Christina’s Life as a “preposterous narrative” (149). He
criticizes the Bollandists for a conspicuous “lapse of judgment” in their credu-
lous analysis of Christina’s vita (147) and characterizes Thomas of Cantrimpré
as “all agape for miracles and the most uncritical of chroniclers” (149). Roisin,
Liminality and Ambiguity ● 131
latam reverti.’” [“And at once the Lord responded to my request and said: ‘In
truth, my dearest, you will be with me here; but now I offer you the choice of
two things, namely either to remain with me now, or to return to the body and
there pay the penalty of an immortal soul with a mortal body without damage
to it, and by your very punishment to free all those souls on whom you took
pity in that place of purgatory, and, indeed, through the example of your pun-
ishment and life to convert living human beings to me, and to recoil from their
sins, and, after all things have been completed, to return to me at last laden
with the profit of many rewards.’”]
9. Ibid., 1.7, 652.
10. Newman, “Possessed by the Spirit,” 766. The youngest of three sisters,
Christina seems to be configured as a female Lazarus in the sibling triad, while
her oldest contemplative sister was modeled as a Mary and her middle home-
maker sister as a Martha. See also Brian S. Lee, “Keeping Body and Spirit
Together: The Volatile Life of St Christina the Marvelous,” Southern African
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 11 (2001): 42.
11. While admitting that his narrative exceeds all human understanding, Thomas
scrupulously appeals to Cardinal Jacques of Vitry and other anonymous yet
reliable witnesses to lend credence to Christina’s problematic apostolate in his
prologue. Thomas of Cantimpré, VCM, Prologue 1.1–3, 650; 1.8, 652 (“‘Nunc
ergo non conturbent vos illa, quæ visuri estis in me, quia super intellectum sunt
illa, quæ Deus ordinabit mecum.’” [“‘Now then let those things that you will
see in me not disturb you, since those things, which God will ordain through
me, are above understanding.’”]); Jacques of Vitry, “Vita Mariæ Oigniacensis,”
in Acta Sanctorum, ed. D. Papebroeck et al., vol. 4 ( June 23) (Venice: Coleti &
Albrizzi, 1743), Prologue 8, 638. Robert Sweetman writes: “Her story demanded
apologia and [Thomas] constructed his prologue in response to this demand. . . .
James, whose official capacities as archbishop of Acre and cardinal of the Roman
curia Thomas underlines, provides a weight and ballast to Christine’s story
which Thomas himself could not. . . .” “Christine of Saint-Trond’s Preaching
Apostolate,” Vox Benedictina 9 (1992): 67.
12. Thomas of Cantimpré, VCM, 1.9, 652; 2.17, 653; 2.19, 654. Four times,
they chase, capture, and shackle her, and once her shin bone is broken with
a cudgel in an attempt to contain her. See also André Vauchez, “Lay People’s
Sanctity in Western Europe: Evolution of a Pattern (Twelfth and Thirteenth
Centuries),” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate
Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1991), 31; Nancy Caciola, “Mystics, Demoniacs, and the Physiology of
Spirit Possession in Medieval Europe,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 42 (2000): especially 270–75, 278–79, 289; Newman, “Possessed
by the Spirit,” 763; Peter Dinzelbacher, Heilige oder Hexen? Schicksale auffäl-
liger Frauen in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit (Zürich: Artemis & Winkler,
1995), 172.
13. Thomas of Cantimpré, VCM, 1.11, 652; 2.21, 654.
Liminality and Ambiguity ● 133
14. Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and
the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 388, ft.
130. Carolyn Muessig describes Christina’s vita as “full of miracles, extraordi-
nary even for a saint.” “Prophecy and Song: Teaching and Preaching by
Medieval Women,” in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of
Christianity, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998), 150.
15. Newman, From Virile Woman to Womanchrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and
Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 111; “Possessed
by the Spirit,” 742. Jo Ann McNamara, “The Need to Give: Suffering and
Female Sanctity in the Middle Ages,” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe,
212–14, 221. However, McNamara also highlights the potentially subversive
dimension of purgatorial piety as it seemed to give medieval women mystics
“a direct channel to God, thus challenging clerical powers of mediation.” “The
Rhetoric of Orthodoxy: Clerical Authority and Female Innovation in the
Struggle with Heresy,” in Maps of Flesh and Light: The Religious Experience of
Medieval Women Mystics, ed. Ulrike Wiethaus (New York: Syracuse University
Press, 1993), 21.
16. Thomas of Cantimpré, VCM, 1.11–2.14, 652–53; 2.16, 653; 2.20, 654.
Newman argues that since purgatorial punishments supposedly entail altering
fire and cold, Christina’s propensity to jump into baking ovens, boiling caul-
drons, and icy waters suggests a homeopathic remedy. From Virile Woman to
Womanchrist, 120–21.
17. Thomas of Cantimpré, VCM, 3.25–26, 655.
18. Ibid., 4.45, 657–58.
19. Ibid., 1.2, 650; 5.56, 659. Sweetman, “Christine of Saint-Trond’s Preaching
Apostolate,” 71, 82–84; Margot King, “The Sacramental Witness of Christina
Mirabilis: The Mystic Growth of a Fool for Christ’s Sake,” in Peaceweavers:
Medieval Religious Women, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank
(Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987), 147–48. See further Jane Tibbetts
Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society ca. 500–1100
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 22; Anke Passenier, “The
Life of Christina Mirabilis: Miracles and the Construction of Marginality,” in
Women and Miracle Stories: A Multidisciplinary Exploration, ed. Anne-Marie
Korte (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 160–61.
20. Sweetman, “Christine of Saint-Trond’s Preaching Apostolate,” 97.
21. Thomas of Cantimpré, VCM, 1.11, 652.
22. Ibid., 2.14, 653.
23. Christina’s continuous intactness yet intense sensation of pain during her ordeals
marks a contrast with several of the martyrdom accounts in Jacobus of Voragine’s
The Golden Legend, which detail the saint’s miraculously painless dismember-
ment (and ultimate reassembling in the resurrection). See Bynum, The Resurrection
of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1995), 309–10, 313; Ellen Ross, “She Wept and Cried Right Loud for
134 ● Charlotte Radler
Sorrow and for Pain: Suffering, the Spiritual Journey, and Women’s Experience
in Late Medieval Mysticism,” in Maps of Flesh and Light, 45.
24. Thomas of Cantimpré, VCM, 1.10, 652; 4.46, 658.
25. Ibid., 1.5, 651; 1.8, 652; 2.20, 654.
26. Ibid., 1.5, 651; 1.9, 652; 2.16, 653.
27. Ibid., 4.46, 658: “vixque discerni poterat si spiritus transibat aut corpus. . . .”
28. Ibid., 2.16, 653: “Iterum cum oraret, et contemplationis in ea gratia divina
descenderet, velut calefacta cera, omnia membra ejus in unum globum conclude-
bantur, nec poterat in eis nisi tantum corpus sphæricum deprehendi. Cumque
spiritali ebrietate digesta actuales sensus propria membrorum loca reciperent,
instar ericei conglobatum corpus redibat ad formam, et extendebantur membra,
quæ sub informi prius materia claudebantur.” See also 3.35–36, 656.
29. Ibid., 1.9, 652. On the function of food and nourishment in the Life of
Christina the Astonishing, see Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious
Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987), 115, 120, 192–93, 234; Alexandra Barratt, “Undutiful Daughters and
Metaphorical Mothers Among the Beguines,” in New Trends in Feminine
Spirituality, 96–97.
30. Thomas of Cantimpré, VCM, 1.9, 652: “Nec mora: ad se reflectens oculos,
videt aridas mammas virginei pectoris sui contra ipsa naturae jura lactis stillare
dulcedinem. Mira res, et post incomparabilem Christi Virginem Matrem cunc-
tis seculis inaudita.”
31. Ibid., 2.19, 654: “Virginea enim ubera ejus clarissimi olei liquorem cœperunt
effluere. Quem illa in condimentum sicci panis assumens pro pulmento habe-
bat, et pro unguento; liniebatque ex eo vulnera membrorum suorum putrescen-
tium.” [“Indeed, her virginal breasts began to flow with a liquid of clearest oil,
which she had as seasoning of her dry bread, using it as sauce and as ointment,
and with it she smeared the wounds of her putrefying limbs.”]
32. The Eucharistic overtones are especially overt when considering the assumption
that breast milk constituted transmuted blood. See Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy
Fast, 270–71; Fragmentation and Redemption, 100, 114, 214, 220.
33. Thomas of Cantimpré, VCM, 1.9, 652.
34. See Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and
Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 176–77: “[T]he two most
dangerous activities for a woman are literacy and public teaching—to possess
the word and to move in public space. Yet, because of the requirements of
sainthood, in particular the need to demonstrate exceptional heroic power to
transform the world, women saints had to be literate, and they had to have a
public voice. Since these were disturbing traits in ‘good’ women, biographers
found themselves using a rhetoric that denied transgression at the same time
that it depicted women saints in fact transgressing the limits of proper female
behavior.” See further Francine Cardman, “The Medieval Question of Women
and Orders,” The Thomist 42 (1978): 593, 596; John Hilary Martin, “The
Injustice of not Ordaining Women: A Problem for Medieval Theologians,”
Liminality and Ambiguity ● 135
40. Ibid., 5.56, 659: “Et quid aliud in omni vita sua Christina clamavit, nisi pœni-
tentiam agere, et paratos esse homines omni hora? Hoc verbis multis, hoc fle-
tibus, hoc ejulatibus, hoc clamoribus infinitis; hoc exemplo vitæ plus docuit,
plus clamavit, quam de aliquo præcedentium vel subsequentium scripto vel
relatione percepimus, in laudem et gloriam Christi. . . .” See also 5.55, 659.
41. Ibid., 3.29–30, 655; 3.32–34, 655–56.
42. Ibid., 4.41–42, 657; 4.44–45, 657–58. The Count of Looz elects to give his
deathbed confession to Christina rather than to a priest. However, as not to
render Christina too seditious, Thomas adds: “et hoc non pro indulgentia,
quam dare non potuit, sed ut magis ad orandum pro eo, hoc piaculo movere-
tur” (4.44, 657). [“And this [he did] not for absolution, which she could not
offer, but so that by this atonement she would be moved all the more to pray
for him.”]
43. Ibid., 4.40, 657.
44. See Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, 134–35, 141, 167–70, 278. See also
Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints & Society: The Two Worlds of
Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1982), 153–54.
45. Turner explains the ambiguity of liminality: “The attributes of liminality or
of liminal personae (‘threshold people’) are necessarily ambiguous, since this
condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifica-
tions that normally locate states and positions in cultural space. Liminal
entities are neither here nor there: they are betwixt and between the positions
assigned and arranged by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial” (The
Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure [Chicago: Aldine Publishing
Company, 1969], 95). See further Turner, The Forest of Symbols, 97; Dramas,
Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1974), 232, 273–74; Blazing the Trail: Way Marks in the
Exploration of Symbols, ed. Edith Turner (Tucson: The University of Arizona
Press, 1992), 32, 49; Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Images and Pilgrimage
in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1978), 2.
46. Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 246 (original emphasis).
47. Paul Binski writes: “The doctrine of the intercession of the saints was based upon
the capacity of the saints to break the ancient boundaries between the living and
the dead. But the notion of intercession could be widened into a form of two-
way traffic, whereby not only the saints but also the living could act, by prayers
or other actions, on behalf of the dead. . . . This promiscuity between the quick
and the dead . . . was thus more profound than a merely physical or topo-
graphical relationship; it was at once spiritual and economic.” Medieval Death:
Ritual and Representation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 24–25.
48. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, 233. Le Goff charts a “dual geography:
a geography of this world coupled with a geography of the next” (177). See also
Vauchez. The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices,
Liminality and Ambiguity ● 137
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CHAPTER 7
Introduction
In the chapel at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, among the more unusual
sights in an otherwise properly plain, “Puritan” space, whose only images
are of opened books, are a series of stained glass windows. Like St. Paul’s
in London, this Wren church, too, did not survive the Victorian love of
interior decoration. Along the north wall, a series of panels depict great
ecclesial and educational organizers and systematic theologians, ranging
from St. Augustine to John Harvard. Along the south wall, one finds a series
of panels representing great figures in spirituality and mystical theology. The
series begins with Origen of Alexandria, and the second to the last is John
Smith, the Cambridge Platonist. Origen and Smith, the windows tell us,
have a connection. The Emmanuel College Chapel windows present ves-
tiges in light and glass of an insight from a more romantic age, when reso-
nance and intuition were important tools for the scholar.1 And the windows
are correct; there is a deep bond between Origen and Smith, a tradition
unbroken by the fall of empires and the discovery of new worlds.
This chapter explores a key aspect of that tradition. It provides an analy-
sis of the reception and modification of Origen of Alexandria’s (185–252)
doctrine of the spiritual senses in the “Discourse on the True Way or
Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge,” by John Smith (1616/
8–1652).2 Broadly speaking, and this is a matter of serious contention,3 the
concept of the spiritual senses may be thought of as the idea that in
addition to the physical senses the soul or mind has additional faculties or
powers for experiencing or encountering spiritual realities in a way that is
analogous to the ordinary functioning of the physical senses.
The analysis offered here is twofold. First, an argument about the exe-
getical and hermeneutical roots of Origen’s presentation of the spiritual
senses is compared to the closely analogous approach found in Smith.
Second, Origen is shown to have supplied an important source for Smith’s
conception and employment of the spiritual senses.
While the literature on the Cambridge Platonists always notes indebtedness
on their part to Neoplatonism and the Alexandrian Fathers, little discussion
is to be found of the long theological tradition of the spiritual senses with the
exception of J. C. English’s article on “John Wesley’s Indebtedness to John
Norris.”4 Such language is usually explained as merely evidence of the
“Platonism” of the group without drawing out the way in which this concept
has a long and fruitful life in Christian theology. Thus, attention is paid to
the influence of Plotinus and the Florentine Academy but not to Origen,
Augustine, Bonaventure, and other important theological figures that form an
important part of the tradition the Cambridge Platonists find irresistible.5
John Smith
While Origen needs no introduction in the context of a discussion of the
spiritual senses, and certainly no apology, some explanation for drawing our
attention to the work of the relatively unknown Smith is in order. Smith’s
significance lies in at least two areas. First, he offers an excellent window
into the dynamics of early seventeenth century thought in science, philoso-
phy, and religion.6 Second, while Smith’s memory continues today mostly
as an ancillary curiosity or source of contextual (or rhetorical) leverage for
the study of the more famous Cambridge Platonists—Ralph Cudworth and
Henry More, especially—in the more immediate aftermath of his brief
career, Smith exerted a significant influence on many divines including
Jonathan Edwards and possibly John Wesley.
Smith was an important source for the doctrine of the “sense of the
heart” as developed by Jonathan Edwards. As Brad Walton has said, “[A]ll
commentators since John E. Smith have recognized that John Smith’s own
discussion of the ‘spiritual sensation,’ presented in the first chapter of the
Select Discourses, constitutes a clear anticipation of Edwards, and probably
exercised a direct influence on his own thinking.”7 References to the influ-
ence of Smith on Edwards abound in the literature on Edwards. Smith is
connected to both the content of Edwards’ views on the sense of the heart
and to his rhetorical style.8
Patristic Roots ● 143
Origen as Model
Origen affirmed the existence of a set of five spiritual senses analogous to
the physical senses located in the mind or soul, what Origen calls the “inner
man,” which is distinct from the physical body and thus also from the
physical senses. Origen largely developed his view based on biblical evidence
and as a way of interpreting passages where the clearly nonsensible (i.e.,
spiritual, conceptual, or intellectual) is said to be sensed.18
For I do not suppose that the visible heaven was actually opened, and its
physical structure divided, in order that Ezekiel might be able to record such
an occurrence. . . . [A]lthough such an occurrence may be a stumbling-block
to the simple, who in their simplicity would set the whole world in move-
ment, and split in sunder the compact and mighty body of the whole heav-
ens. But he who examines such matters more profoundly will say, that there
being, as the Scripture calls it, a kind of general divine perception which the
blessed man alone knows how to discover, according to the saying of
Solomon, You shall find a divine sense; and as there are various forms of this
perceptive power, such as a faculty of vision which can naturally see things
that are better than bodies, among which are ranked the cherubim and sera-
phim; and a faculty of hearing which can perceive voices which have not
their being in the air; and a sense of taste which can make use of living bread
that has come down from heaven, and that gives life unto the world; and so
also a sense of smelling, which scents such things as leads Paul to say that he
is a sweet savour of Christ unto God; and a sense of touch, by which John
says that he handled with his hands of the Word of life;—the blessed proph-
ets having discovered this divine perception, and seeing and hearing in this
divine manner, and tasting likewise, and smelling, so to speak, with no sen-
sible organs of perception, and laying hold on the Logos by faith, so that a
healing effluence from it comes upon them, saw in this manner what they
record as having seen, and heard what they say they heard. . . .19
spiritual senses are not without literal meaning of some kind. That is, rather
than reading these passages as mere metaphorical references to knowledge,
or comprehension, Origen takes a sudden and unexpected turn by suggest-
ing such passages refer to literal spiritual senses, actual spiritual capacities
for perceiving the nonsensory.20
While Karl Rahner is certainly correct about the exegetical provenance
of Origen’s doctrine, his claim that it is a conclusion based solely on scrip-
ture fails to convince.21 Beyond the possible incarnational or sacramental
reasons for such a reading lies the possibility, suggested by Dillon, that
Origen is drawing on previous and contemporaneous speculation about
“a noetic correlate of sense-perception” found in Plato, Albinus, a Gnostic
treatise (Zostrianos), Plotinus (Enneads VI.7), and Philo.22 Only if the spiri-
tual senses have an initial air of plausibility can the move to read biblical
passages allegorically, but not totally so, be justified.23
Without some reason to suggest that such a thing is even possible,
Origen should be expected simply to allegorize the language of sensing the
divine out of the picture entirely. Since Origen does not do that, and
instead affirms literally spiritual senses, and given that there was ample
non-Christian speculation about spiritual sensibility in Origen’s intellectual
milieu, it seems likely that he asserts his view of the spiritual senses with
a basically platonic philosophical and a Christian scriptural background in
mind. Origen finds the spiritual senses in his reading of the Bible but he
was able to find them because he already had access to the philosophic
tools needed to “see” them. Origen’s interpretation was thus likely given
additional, and necessary, philosophical credence by a common tradition
within the intellectual context he shared with Plotinus and others who also
suggest similar intellectual senses.24 Regardless of the specific methods
employed, Origen’s concerns are exegetical and, to that extent, Rahner is
correct.25
As we have seen, Origen draws on scripture and, if our argument based
on Dillon’s suggestion is correct, elements in the prevailing philosophical
speculations of his day to advance the reality of the spiritual senses of the
soul. In much the same manner, Smith appeals directly to scripture and the
Neoplatonism of Plotinus as his “evidence” for the spiritual sensation upon
which all theological understanding rests. Spiritual concepts are understood
by being perceived, and this spiritual sensibility is thoroughly intellectual
and therefore not physical, and yet, somehow, still best described by way
of perceptual language. For both Smith and Origen, the spiritual senses are
capacities of mind and are both conceptual and perceptual. Perceptual in
the sense that it is by means of these senses that purely noetic (purely
spiritual) objects are perceived and conceptual in the sense that they have
146 ● Derek Michaud
to do with realities that are by their very nature concepts or ideas, not
physically sensible things.
Smith is notable for his insistence that divinity is a practical, living
enterprise.26 Divinity is a “Divine life,” rather than a “science” conveyed by
mere “Verbal description” because it has to do with things of “Sense & Life”
and thus requires “Sentient and Vital faculties.” Smith here makes explicit
his employment of Neoplatonism in the service of scriptural exegesis, and
both in spiritual guidance, by combining Plotinus’ affirmation that, in
Smith’s words, “Every thing is best known by that which bears a just resem-
blance and analogie with it,” with the biblical principle, derived specifically
from Proverbs Chapter 10, that a good life is the prolepsis for coming to
an understanding of divine things.27
A little later, Smith introduces the sixth Beatitude from the Sermon on
the Mount (Matthew 5:8) with a reference to Plotinus; “Divinity is indeed
a true enflux from that eternal light,” but this light does not merely
enlighten, but also enlivens. While the framework for intelligibility here is
borrowed from the light mysticism common to Plotinus and Origen (and
others),28 the authority for Smith’s point lies with Christ, who connects
“purity of heart with the beatific vision.” In this way, Smith offers support
for his claim that what is essential in theology is a practical, existential, and
spiritually sensitive approach and not the study or composition of dry
treatises.29 In nearly the same breath, he returns to Plotinus and the imagery
of light for the idea that just “as the eye cannot behold the sun . . . unless
it hath the form and resemblance of the sun drawn in it,” so too for the
soul to “behold God . . . unless it be Godlike.” This touchstone on the
landscape of platonic intelligibility leads back again to scripture immedi-
ately, “and the apostle St. Paul, when he would lay open the right way of
attaining to divine truth, saith, that ‘knowledge puffeth up,’ but it is ‘love
that edifieth.’”30
For Smith, no less than Origen, emotion and the will, especially love,
play a central role in the directedness of our attention. When we strive after
physical things, we are drawn by our love (or “lust) away from the inner
spiritual realities and therefore we fail to love rightly that which is more
valuable in itself (i.e., spirit not matter). When we direct our wills toward
inner spiritual things, love plays a positive role in spiritual sensation. The
spiritual senses are partly activated by, and partly cause and deepen, love of
God possible through God’s grace in creation and salvation. It is within the
inner realm of the heart that the spiritual senses operate for Smith. In this,
Smith differs slightly from Origen who stresses intellect with respect to the
spiritual senses, but for both it is the inner person, the mind or soul, which
is the locus of spiritual sensation. However, like Origen, Smith finds his
Patristic Roots ● 147
basis for spiritual sensibility in the Bible with the aid of a (neo-)platonic
framework that helps to make it noticeable and plausible.
Three additional passages form the heart of Smith’s affirmation of the
reality and necessity of spiritual sensation. The first comes from Plotinus.
After pointing out the uselessness of seeking divinity in books alone where it
is “entombed” more often than “enshrined,” Smith gives Plotinus as his
source for the sentiment that one is to “seek God within” our “own soul” for
God “is best discerned by an intellectual touch.”31 This is not allowed to stand
on its own however, and is buoyed within the same sentence by reference to
the First Epistle of John (1:1); “[W]e must ‘see with our eyes, and hear with
our ears, and our hands must handle the word of life.” Smith adds to this
that, “the soul itself hath its sense, as well as the body,” and again within the
same sentence goes on to say that it is for this reason that David recommends
in the Psalm “not speculation but sensation” as the means of arriving at an
understanding of divine goodness; “Taste and see how good the Lord is.”32
In this way, Smith follows Origen’s hermeneutical approach (as suggested
by Dillon) but as a late Renaissance Neoplatonist, Smith sees no reason to
keep his reliance on a pagan philosopher implicit. Plotinus is for Smith a
great teacher whose limits are overcome by the revelations of scripture but
whom nonetheless supplies a sure and steady guide by supplying the context
within which scriptural passages can be read in their most literal way pos-
sible.33 Like Origen, Smith denies that there is biblical warrant for a vision
of divine things with physical eyes but his allegiance to a Neoplatonism
open to the possibility of noetic sensibility allows him to affirm that these
passages are not merely poetic devices.
Smith’s initial presentation of the reality of spiritual sensation rests on
much the same combination of philosophical plausibility and scriptural war-
rant that Origen relies on. The most significant difference in this regard
seems to be the added level of expressly methodical concern in Smith. As an
early, and in some respects uncritical, admirer of Descartes, Smith seeks to
offer foundations for his theological work in ways that Origen does not, but
Smith finds his foundations not in modernity, but in Origen’s era. In other
words, Smith was urged by his present to recover a past within the tradition
of Christian Platonism, because this is a living tradition for him.34
Origen as Source
As has been demonstrated, Smith seems to follow the example of Origen’s
creative combination of platonic plausibility and allegorical scriptural exege-
sis. This move on its own, however, only demonstrates that Smith is a
Christian Platonist. His specific indebtedness to Origen is seen when one
148 ● Derek Michaud
considers the way in which Origen acts not only as a model but also as a
source for Smith’s presentation of the spiritual senses. This indebtedness to
Origen as source will in turn offer support for the preceding argument
about Origen as model.
Several specific elements in the theories of both figures might be dis-
cussed in this regard. For example, both Origen and Smith suggest that all
human beings have a natural capacity for spiritual sensation as part of our
original makeup as rational beings. However in our earthly, sinful, fallen
life most people do not realize this potential. To actualize one’s spiritual
senses requires God’s grace as well as personal effort and practice, essentially,
moral behavior, philosophical training, reflection, prayer, scriptural study,
and other spiritual practices.35 Likewise, both ascribe to the spiritual senses
the ability to perceive spiritual life and spiritual death.36 Both Origen and
Smith describe particular spiritual senses as taking for their objects various
delightful manifestations of the Divine Logos.37 Finally, both locate the
spiritual senses within an inner person as opposed to the outer, and both
suggest that one’s attention to the external senses must decrease in order for
the spiritual senses to increase.38 All of these similarities are suggestive of
Smith’s debt to Origen; however, discussion here will be limited to their
common apologetic use of the spiritual senses where Smith makes explicit
reference to Origen.
From the very start of his first Discourse, Smith is eager to show that
theology has a kind of demonstration that is different from the pure ratio-
cination of the intellect, or the dry presentations of doctrines and proofs in
books. For example, Smith tells us, “They are not alwaies the best skill’d in
Divinity, that are most studied in those Pandects which it is sometimes
digested into, or that have erected the greatest Monopolies of Art and
Science.”39 A little later Smith adds, “We must not think we have attained
to the right knowledge of Truth, when we have broke through the outward
shell of words & phrases that house it up; or when by a Logical Analysis we
have found out the dependencies and coherences of them with one
another.”40 Smith is here framing his presentation of the “True Way” in
apologetic terms against a merely logical or intellectual approach to philoso-
phy and theology. His opponents in this apologetic are the early modern
Skeptics, various types of materialists, other “atheists,” and especially
Christian scholastics.
In the midst of this apologetic, Smith repeatedly points to the true
method as that of a purified life and the awakening of a capacity for spiri-
tual sensation that grants knowledge more akin to personal encounter than
logical inference. This is the different kind of demonstration that Christianity
has for Smith, proven not in the unaffected intellect calmly accessing the
Patristic Roots ● 149
evidence but felt in a direct experience of God by the soul. It is in the midst
of this apology that Smith makes his only direct appeal to Origen. “It is
but a thin, aiery knowledge that is got by meer Speculation, which is usher’d
in by Syllogisms and Demonstrations; but that which springs forth from
true Goodness, is θειο′τερο′ντι πασης α′ποδει′ξεως, [theioteron ti pases
apodeixeos, “an entirely divine proof ” or “a more divine demonstration”] as
Origen speaks, it brings such a Divine Light into the Soul, as is more clear
and convincing than any Demonstration.”41 Examination of Origen’s
works, and the editions of Origen known to have been available to Smith,
reveals that the “quote” here is most likely a paraphrase taken from Contra
Celsum I.2.42 That Smith intends this passage specifically is indicated most
strongly by the parallel intensions at work in both texts.
In Contra Celsum I.2, Celsus is critiqued for trying to apply the criterion
of a “Greek proof ” to Christianity, and then Origen says, “Moreover, we
have to say this, that the gospel has a proof which is particular to itself, and
which is more divine than a Greek proof based on dialectical argument. This
more divine demonstration the apostle calls a ‘demonstration of the Spirit
and of power’—of the spirit because of the prophecies and especially those
which refer to Christ, which are capable of convincing anyone who reads
them; of power because of the prodigious miracles which may be proved to
have happened by this argument among many others, that traces of them
still remain among those who live according to the will of the Logos.”43
Likewise, Smith appeals to Origen in his own apologetic use of spiritual
sensation. Immediately after his reference to Origen, Smith continues his
attack on the “thin speculations” of logicians (both believers and nonbeliev-
ers).44 In addition, Origen suggests that the prophets employ the spiritual
senses and that there is a single spiritual sensibility that takes five forms
later in Book I at Chapter 48.45 Just as Origen relates the spiritual senses
to prophecy as the means by which revelation is received by human beings,
so too does Smith. Chapters 2 and 48 are thus closely related for Origen
and both play a role in defending the sensible language of scripture from
outside attack.
While it would seem from these considerations that the spiritual senses
are not merely metaphorical for Origen, it remains to be seen if they are
rightly understood to be five in number or if they are merely so many ways
of speaking of a single spiritual capacity or “intellectual sense” as Smith puts
it.46 In light of what Origen says about the inner and outer person, however,
it would seem that he indeed does intend to maintain that there are five
distinct spiritual senses. This is important because it implies that there is
something about the divine objects of these senses that could not be cap-
tured by a single noetic sense.
150 ● Derek Michaud
Conclusion
This chapter has shown that the Cambridge Platonist John Smith was
influenced by the doctrine of the spiritual senses as expressed by its first
systematic Christian exponent, Origen of Alexandria. Smith has been
shown to follow Origen’s practice as the basis for his own presentation of
spiritual sensibility. Whereas Origen relied on Middle Platonism and scrip-
ture, Smith relied on Neoplatonism (especially Plotinus) as well as scripture.
It has also been argued that Smith is indebted to Origen for important
elements in the content of his doctrine. Both employ spiritual sensibility in
a presentation of the means by which one comes to a proper theological
understanding and Smith makes explicit reference to Origen’s apologetics
as support for his own. Together this twofold influence is suggestive of a
conscious appropriation of Origen’s thought by Smith.
Patristic Roots ● 151
Notes
1. For images, see “College Chapel Windows,” Emmanuel College Website,
http://www.emma.cam.ac.uk/collegelife/chapel/windows/, accessed November
1, 2008. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dr. David Trobisch and the
helpful comments of Professors Douglas Hedley and Sarah Coakley of
Cambridge University. Mark McInroy, of Harvard University and more recently
Cambridge, read and contributed clarifying comments on drafts of the chapter.
Finally, the Head Librarian of Queens’ College, Cambridge, Karen Begg was
instrumental in the research that made this chapter possible. Any errors or
infelicities that remain are, of course, mine.
2. The best recent introduction to the Cambridge Platonists as religious thinkers
is the volume in the Classics of Western Spirituality series by C. Taliaferro and
A. Teply, Cambridge Platonist Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 2004). The
first section of Smith’s first discourse in particular will be the focus of my treat-
ment. This owes more to time and space limitations than limits in the potentially
fruitful material, which can be found throughout the Select Discourses. The first
few pages are noteworthy, however, for what J. Worthington, the editor of the
collection, describes as a wealth of “excellent Sense and solid matter well beaten
and compacted and lying close together in a little room.” J. Worthington, “To
the Reader,” in John Smith, Select Discourses . . . By John Smith, late Fellow of
Queen’s College in Cambridge. As also a Sermon preached by Simon Patrick . . . At
the Author’s Funeral. . . . (London: F. Flesher, for W. Morden Bookseller in
Cambridge, 1660), xii. A more complete discussion will be found in my dis-
sertation, “Reason Turned into Sense: John Smith on Spiritual Sensation,” PhD
Diss., Boston University, forthcoming.
3. For a fuller discussion of the complex and multivariate Christian tradition of
speculation on the “spiritual senses,” see the forthcoming collection of essays,
Perceiving God: The Spiritual Senses in the Western Christian Tradition, edited by
Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (Cambridge University Press).
4. J. C. English, “John Wesley’s Indebtedness to John Norris,” Church History 60,
no.1 (1991): 55–69.
5. See Taliaferro and Teply, Cambridge Platonist Spirituality, for a typical account
of this relationship.
6. On the extraordinarily broad interests of Smith, see J. E. Saveson, “Some Aspects
of the Thought and Style of John Smith the Cambridge Platonist,” PhD thesis,
152 ● Derek Michaud
17. While it is not usually possible to demonstrate a clear line of influence directly
to Origen (Smith makes very few direct references to Origen, for example)
Smith’s understanding of the sensible nature of spiritual understanding never-
theless echoes the Alexandrian in important ways and in at least one critical
case makes direct appeal to the Father of the spiritual senses.
18. Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition From Plato to
Denys (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 66–67. This point is
not without contention, however. Several scholars have suggested that Origen’s
language about the spiritual senses is best understood as metaphorical either
throughout his corpus or in one supposed stage or another in his developing
thoughts on the matter. The received scholarly opinion on the issue is, however,
that notwithstanding elements of metaphor here and there, Origen, by and large,
does intend to speak of five spiritual senses that function analogously to the
physical senses. See the work of Dillon, Rudy, and McInroy on this topic.
19. Origen, Contra Celsum, I.48 (Crombie, trans.). This translation is taken from
the Ante Nicene Fathers translation with corrections to match Chadwick in the
reference to Proverbs 2:5. “Knowledge” has been changed to the misreading of
the LXX that Origen actually gives, “sense.”
20. Some passages related to spiritual sensation do seem to be simply metaphorical
for Origen but clearly not all. Some of Origen’s reading of scripture seems to
indicate an analogy between spiritual sense and physical sense. For a sample of
the debate on this point, see Louth, Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition,
66–67; J. M. Dillon, “Aisthesis Noete: A Doctrine of the Spiritual Senses in
Origen and in Plotinus,” in Hellenica et Judaica, edited by A. Caquot et al.
(Leuven; Paris: Peeters, 1986), 443–55; and G. Rudy, Mystical Language of
Sensation in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2002).
21. K. Rahner, «Le debut d’une doctrine des cinqsens spirituals chez Origene,»
Revue d’ascetiqueet de mystique 13 (1932): 112–45; English translation, “The
‘Spiritual Senses’ According to Origen,” in Theological Investigations, XVI (New
York: Seabury Press, 1979), 89–103. The claim about the exclusively biblical
source of Origen’s doctrine is made on p. 83 in the ET.
22. Dillon, “Aisthesis Noete,” 455; 454–55. To Dillon’s suggestive, albeit specula-
tive, list could be added the much more ancient tradition of the postmortem
opening of the senses in order to interact with the gods found in the Egyptian
Book of the Dead and numerous additional passages in Plato that speak of “intel-
lectual vision” and inner “eyes” (e.g., Republic 519A, Symposium 219A, etc.) as
well as other passages from Plotinus of particular interest to John Smith such
as Enneads I.8.1, I.6.9, I.3.4, and VI.7.13.
23. Dillon is far more nuanced in his discussion but I argue that he need not be
in this area. This same kind of plausible warrant seems to be at work in other
decisions of Origen to limit his allegorizing. For example, his numerous appeals
to Old Testament signs for Christ only makes sense in light of a knowledge of
Christ as that to which the allegory refers.
24. The apologetic impulse in Contra Celsum is made more clear by this suggestion
as well.
154 ● Derek Michaud
25. As Mark McInroy has pointed out, in following the suggestion of Dillon against
the position articulated by Rahner, I am parting company with most observers
since Rahner’s influential treatment of Origen’s doctrine of spiritual sense.
While Rahner’s approach makes Origen’s thoughts on these matters seem more
clearly “Christian,” mine makes what Origen says more clearly intelligible.
26. See, in the first instance, Smith, Select Discourses, p. 2, but the point is made
repeatedly throughout the First Discourse and the whole of the Select
Discourses.
27. Ibid., 2. Smith’s plotinian reference is to Ennead I.8.1. The biblical allusion is
to Proverbs 10 (“the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”).
28. See Louth, Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 35–72.
29. Smith, Select Discourses, 2.
30. Ibid., 3. The Pauline reference is to I Cor. 8:1. The reference to Plotinus appears
to be Ennead I.2.4.
31. Enneads I.2.6 and V.3.17 seem to be the inspiration for Smith’s reference here
but as is often the case, his reference is not exact and does not match the words
of the passage so much as the likely meaning of it. This tendency will be
important later in our discussion of Smith’s use of Origen as a source. The
phrase, “intellectual touch,” is key to the way in which spiritual sensation is
concerned with a blending of the conceptual and the (in some sense) percep-
tual.
32. Smith, Select Discourses, 3; Psalm 34:8.
33. A good place to begin on the relationship between the Cambridge Platonists
with the Italian Renaissance in general is Sarah Hutton, “The Cambridge
Platonists,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), edited
by Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/
cambridge-platonists/, accessed October 30, 2008.
34. Saveson (1955; 1959) points to the way Smith seems to think of the French
Oratory, Descartes and Copernican astronomy as manifestations of a generally
platonic philosophy. Smith owed copies of Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy,
Meditations on First Philosophy, and The Passions of the Soul in addition to
works on geometry and music (Saveson 1955, Appendix, 17). I gratefully
acknowledge Dr. Saveson’s permission to take a copy and cite his dissertation
held by the Manuscripts Department in the University Library, Cambridge
University.
35. Smith, 3, 8, 10–11, 12, 16, 21; Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. Spirit and Fire,
trans. Robert J. Daly (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), nos. 637–658, 674.
36. Smith, Select Discourses, 4–5, 7; Origen, Cant. Co. 1, in Balthasar, nos. 545,
547.
37. Smith, Select Discourses, 3, 7, 15, etc.; Balthasar, nos. 539–40, 604–93.
38. Smith, Select Discourses, 3, etc.; Balthasar, nos. 519–21, and 536. Origen follows
St. Paul and platonic convention, and Smith follows Descartes and what he
takes to be the Christian tradition.
39. Smith, Select Discourses, 2.
Patristic Roots ● 155
40. Ibid., 8. To these quotations can be added: “The knowledge of Divinity that
appears in systems and models is but a poor wan light” (Ibid., 3). “All Light
and Knowledge that may seem sometimes to rise up in unhallowed minds, is
but like those fuliginous flames that arise up from our culinary fire, that are
soon quench’d in their own smoke; or like those foolish fires that fetch their
birth from terrene exudations, that doe but hop up & down, and flit to and
fro upon the surface of this earth where they were first brought forth; and serve
not so much to enlighten, as to delude us; nor to direct the wandering traveler
into his way, but to lead him farther out of it” (Ibid., 3–4). Others like this
can be found throughout the first “Discourse” and indeed throughout the entire
Select Discourses.
41. Ibid., 4.
42. In keeping with Smith’s general practice, the phrase is not attributed to a spe-
cific passage in Origen. Unlike most other quotations from Greek and Hebrew,
this phrase has not been “Englished” by Smith’s editor (Worthington, iv–v).
Apparently, Worthington judged a translation of this passage “was less needful”
because of the surrounding text. C. A. Patrides translates the phrase “more
sacred than any evidence” (The Cambridge Platonists [London: Edward Arnold,
1969], 130). No edition of the Discourses has offered a specific citation for this
phrase and the most recent abridged edition of the first “Discourse” offers only
the suggestion that Smith may have in mind Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel
of John, Book X, 25, in which Origen “discourses on the Divine light”
(Taliaferro and Teply, Cambridge Platonist Spirituality, 218n.378). This sugges-
tion however seems to have more to do with the English phrases that follow
Smith’s quotation from Origen and not the quotation itself.
According to the online Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, θειο′τερο′ν occurs
twenty-seven times in Origen’s corpus but this phrase is never given (http://
www.tlg.uci.edu/, accessed March 11, 2010). A review of Origen’s works in the
Patrolgia Graeca (Migne) edition also reveals that the phrase in fact does not
occur in exactly this form in Origen. Furthermore, according to Origenes, Opera
Omnia, Lexicum Propriumseu ‘Concordances,’ (http://www.documentacatholi-
caomnia.eu/1004/1001/local_general_index.html, accessed October 30, 2008),
the word θειο′τερο′ν (theioteron) occurs only once (Contra Celsum, col. 00336
[1.31]), and this phrase is not there. Chadwick’s edition has, “something divine
about him” (p. 30) in this place. Similar forms of Smith’s Greek for “divine”
and “proof/demonstration” do occur in Contra Celsum I.2, however, where the
same sentiment, though not the exact phrase, is found. Apparently, Smith has
paraphrased Origen from memory or less-than-exact notes. This is not at all
unusual for Smith; the majority of his references in the first “Discourse,” except
for the Bible, are of this sort.
It should also be noted that although the seventeenth-century manuscript list
of books from Smith’s library donated to Queens’ College Library upon his death
in 1652 does not include Origen’s Contra Celsum, both Emmanuel (where he
was a student) and Queens’ (where he was a fellow) had copies in a 1605 Greek
156 ● Derek Michaud
and Latin edition. For Emmanuel College, see S. Bush, Jr., and C. J. Rasmussen,
The Library of Emmanuel College Cambridge 1584–1637 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005 [1986]), 146. The Emmanuel volume was removed
sometime before 1693 when the current copy was donated by Sancroft. The
volume was in the collection for the first year of Smith’s undergraduate studies
in the College, however. There was also most likely a copy, of the same edition,
at Queens’ College when he became a fellow in 1644. See T. H. Horne,
A Catalogue of the Library of The College of St. Margaret and St. Bernard, Commonly
Called Queen’s College in the University of Cambridge . . . (London, 1827), 122.
The edition in both cases was that of David Hoeschelius, published in 1605 in
both Greek and Latin (sequentially but with common pagination) and copious
notes and apparatus. The Queens’ copy remains in the Old Library.
Additionally, Smith seems not to have owned a copy of Plotinus but the sheer
amount of references to him suggest that Smith worked with College Library
copies or those of others to a significant extent. I gratefully acknowledge the
assistance of Karen Begg, Librarian of Queens’ College, Cambridge, in working
with the remains of Smith’s personal library as well as the edition of Contra
Celsum most likely used by him.
43. Origen, Contra Celsum, I.2 (Chadwick, ed.), emphasis added to show Chadwick’s
English for the similar forms of the Greek offered by Smith as a “quotation”
from Origen.
44. What I am calling Smith’s “apology” runs the full length of the first numbered
section of the first discourse (Smith, Select Discourses, 1–13).
45. Smith’s treatment of prophecy occurs in his discourse number six, “Of
Prophesie” (ibid., 169–281). While in this chapter the details of the discourse
cannot be discussed, it can be said in passing that Smith’s theory of prophecy
seems to operate via spiritual sensation in ways that parallel many Patristic
sources including Origen and Gregory the Great in his Homilies on Ezekiel.
I owe the observation about Gregory to George Demacopoulos.
46. Smith, Select Discourses, 3.
47. B. T. Coolman has shown a very similar arrangement in William of Auxerre
who also poses both a single noetic sense and five spiritual senses as parts of
this whole (Knowing God by Experience: The Spiritual Senses in the Theology of
William of Auxerre [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press,
2004]). Thus, it is not at all unprecedented within the tradition to speak this
way. It should be noted, however, that I am not aware of any direct connection
between William and Smith.
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Bush, S., and C. J. Rasmussen, eds. The Library of Emmanuel College Cambridge
1584–1637 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 [1986].
Coolman, Boyd T. Knowing God by Experience: The Spiritual Senses in the Theology
of William of Auxerre. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press,
2004.
Dillon, J. M. “Aisthesis Noete: A Doctrine of the Spiritual Senses in Origen and in
Plotinus.” In Hellenica et Judaica:Hommage a Valentin Nikiprowetzky, ed. A. Caquot,
M. Hadas-Lebel and J. Riaud. 443–55. Leuven; Paris: Peeters, 1986.
Dockrill, D. W. “The Fathers and the Theology of the Cambridge Platonists.”
StudiaPatristica 17:1 (1982): 427–39.
Emmanuel College, Cambridge University.“College Chapel Windows.” http://www.
emma.cam.ac.uk/collegelife/chapel/windows/, accessed November 1, 2008.
English, J. C. “John Wesley’s Indebtedness to John Norris.” Church History 60 no.1
(1991): 55–69.
Horne, T. H. A Catalogue of the Library of the College of St. Margaret and St. Bernard,
Commonly Called Queen’s College in the University of Cambridge. . . . London,
1827.
Hutton, Sarah. “The Cambridge Platonists.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/fall2008/entries/cambridge-platonists/, accessed October 30, 2008.
Gavrilyuk, Paul, and Sarah Coakley, eds. Perceiving God: The Spiritual Senses in the
Western Christian Tradition. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
Lewis, R. “Of ‘Origenian Platonisme: Joseph Glanvill on the Pre-existence of Souls.”
The Huntington Library Quarterly 69/2 (2006): 267–302.
Louth, Andrew. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition from Plato to Denys.
Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
McClymond, M. J. “Spiritual Sensation in Jonathan Edwards.” The Journal of
Religion 77, no. 2 (1997): 195–216.
Michaud, Derek. “Reason Turned into Sense: John Smith on Spiritual Sensation.”
PhD Diss. Boston University, forthcoming.
Origen. Contra Celsum. In Patrologie Cursuscompletus, Series graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne,
vol. 11; Frederick Crombie, trans. Contra Celsum. In Ante Nicene Fathers v. 4.
Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1885, reprint, Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson Publishers, 1999; Henry Chadwick, trans. Contra Celsum.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 [1953].
Patrides, C. A. The Cambridge Platonists. London: Edward Arnold, 1969.
Plotinus. Enneads. Trans., A. H. Armstrong. Loeb Classical Library, vols. 440–5, 468
[Greek and English]. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press,
1966–1988.
Rahner, K. «Le debut d’une doctrine des cinqsens spirituals chez Origene» Revue
d’ascetiqueet de mystique 13 (1932): 112–45; English translation, “The ‘Spiritual
Senses’ According to Origen.” In Theological Investigations, XVI: 89–103.
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Rudy, G. Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages. New York:
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158 ● Derek Michaud
Saveson, J. E. “Some Aspects of the Thought and Style of John Smith the
Cambridge Platonist,” PhD thesis, Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge University,
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———, “The Library of John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist.” Notes and Queries
203 (1958): 215–16.
———, “Descartes’ Influence on John Smith, Cambridge Platonist.” Journal of the
History of Ideas 20 (1959): 258–62.
———, “Differing Reactions to Descartes among the Cambridge Platonists.”
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Smith, John. Select Discourses . . . By John Smith, late Fellow of Queen’s College in
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Worthington, John. “To the Reader.” In John Smith, Select Discourses. London:
F. Flesher, for W. Morden Bookseller in Cambridge, 1660.
CHAPTER 8
When I entered religious life and took leave of the world, I looked at my
body. It was fully armed against my poor soul. . . . I saw full well that it was
my enemy, and I also saw if I were going to escape eternal death, I would
have to strike it down; conflict was inevitable.
The Flowing Light of the Godhead, IV.21
W
ith these words, Mechthild of Magdeburg draws upon a long
rhetorical tradition pitting body against soul, flesh against
spirit. This rhetoric helped to authorize her rather unconven-
tional lay religious lifestyle as a single woman outside the cloister. As a
beguine in the thirteenth century, Mechthild was devoted to ideals of chas-
tity, poverty, and service; but because she was outside any of the approved
religious orders, her acceptance by the contemporary Church depended to
a large degree upon her ability to demonstrate her holiness. The account of
Mechthild’s war with her body occurs in just such an authorizing context.
The passage, which demonstrates her skills of spiritual discernment accord-
ing to contemporary wariness of women’s attachment to the flesh, culmi-
nates in her confessor’s blessing upon her writing.2
Numerous passages in Mechthild’s book, The Flowing Light of the
Godhead, join the anti-body chorus. Early chapters feature domestic disputes
between the trysting soul and the earthbound body. Soul calls body a “mur-
derer” (I.2), and Mechthild later refers to the body as a “beast of burden”
(I.46), a “dead mongrel” (III.5) and her “prison” (VII.65). Why? We get a
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clue when she describes the bodies of Adam and Eve as “poisoned”: the body
falls from its created state of wholeness and purity when humans drink from
the tainted well of sin (III.9). Mechthild nevertheless clings to the confidence
that something within her can still access her divine source. The visions and
ecstasies that initially draw her to God suggest that this something tran-
scends the corporeal realm; she personifies that aspect of herself as Lady Soul,
the “Mistress and Queen” of all the faculties (I.1).
Alongside her oppositional rhetoric, the ascetical prescriptions in
Mechthild’s work can be read as punishment of the body. Some of her
readers, assuming a simplistic equation of body with evil, elide the crucial
difference between the empirical body and the multivalent significance of
the “flesh” in the Christian tradition. James Franklin writes that “Mechthild
considered man [sic] to be a being composed of two completely antithetical
essences, spirit and flesh” and that Christ exemplifies for her “the means of
subjugating the flesh.”3 Before accepting this assessment, however, we must
take into account the full range of Mechthild’s sensory language, in which
she calls not for the punishment of the body but the purification of body,
soul, and senses through an ascesis of desire.
For Mechthild, the link between body and soul benefits the soul, and it
also divinizes the body. After explicating Mechthild’s ascetic practices vis-à-
vis her construction of the three “sorrows” in the Christian life, I demon-
strate that she develops a single set of physico-spiritual senses, a unified
“sensorium.” The place of the senses in her vision of divinized humanity
challenges both the lingering contemporary assumptions about medieval
antipathy to the body and a continued reluctance within Christianity to
embrace all created aspects of embodied experience.
body is essential in this process, for without it one can neither imitate the
incarnate Christ nor unite with the Trinity in the sacraments. Mechthild
describes the Eucharist as a process of divine indwelling: God’s divinity
unites with the soul, as God’s humanity unites with the body (IV.8).
Divinity meets humanity in the body through physical means.
Asceticism, too, employs the body integrally in the process of diviniza-
tion. Amy Hollywood emphasizes that, in contrast to many male-authored
beguine hagiographies, Mechthild “emphasizes the will, not the body as
central to human sinfulness” and “reject[s] bodily suffering as a primary
means to sanctity.”5 In this vein, Mechthild encapsulates her return to
divinity via ascetic practice in three “sorrows”: sorrow for guilt, penance,
and sorrowful love of God (V.1). Each aspect of this process transcends the
physical, and each has both spiritual and physical effects.
The first, sorrow for guilt, is an ascesis of the emotions. Its three defining
characteristics are a feeling of bitterness in the heart that sinned, a sense of
shame for the senses that enjoyed the sin, and an understanding of how one’s
life became enmeshed in sin. One must clearly recognize one’s failure to par-
ticipate fully in the divine life and note the extent to which the heart and the
physical senses are dishonored therein. As a result of this sorrow, Mechthild
teaches, the soul reconciles with God and is released from the punishments
of hell. The body, though complicit in the soul’s guilt, is spared the pain of
judgment in the world to come because it weeps in regret during this life.
In order for the human soul to return to its source in God, the obstacles
to this return must be removed; therefore, penance is the second sorrow.
Like the sorrow from guilt, penance presents three qualities: effort, desire,
and victory over the temptations. It, too, has effects for the life to come:
as it works to purify both physical and spiritual desires, it releases the sinner
from future purgatory. We shall investigate this process shortly as it is the
most concrete of the three aspects of Mechthild’s asceticism.
The third sorrow, caused by love of God, perfects the human being and
ultimately elevates her to heaven. In Mechthild’s metaphor, the fire of divin-
ity illuminates the soul so it shines like a golden shield in the sun; but this
elevating love of God, which has through the three sorrows lifted the soul
from hell, through purgatory, to heaven, is also a source of suffering. The
body suffers mightily during spiritual ecstasies, for (she says) “The body
cannot endure/The soul’s being there for an hour” (II.21). God tells
Mechthild, “No matter how softly I caress you, I inflict immeasurable pain
on your poor body” (II.25). The third sorrow also afflicts the soul with
periods of unquenched longing and divine absence (III.10, VII.8).
Mechthild’s ascetic practice incorporates all three types of sorrow.
Asceticism therefore amounts to much more than the atonement for guilt
162 ● Michelle Voss Roberts
through penance (the first and second sorrows). The third sorrow, caused
by the love of God, envelops and subsumes the others. Divine love impels,
supports, and rewards the redirection of human desire. With this coopera-
tive relationship in mind, Mechthild is not shy about elaborating the second
sorrow (penance) for practical application. For example, the Christian dons
a variety of “everyday work clothes,” including “fasting, keeping vigils,
scourging oneself, going to confession, sighing, weeping, praying, fearing
sin, severely curbing the senses and the body . . ., sweet hoping and ceaseless
loving desire and a constantly praying heart in all one’s works” (VII.65).
The important thing about this list is that prayers of desire and hope
envelop all other practices in the soul’s love relationship with God.
Ascetic practices, then, comprise a larger set of dispositions than the
physical deprivations often associated with the term. Inner and outer activi-
ties join in the single project of divinization, the conforming of the self to
the divine nature. Many physical and spiritual obstacles distract from the
love of God. Not only the body’s demands, but also excessive attachment to
relatives, friends, and self-will impede the flow of grace. Anger, for example,
“consume[s] our strength and drie[s] out our flesh, and . . . waste[s] our
valuable time when we should have been serving God.” It blinds the soul
and prevents it from enjoying good things (VII.3). So intractable are some
unholy attitudes (the desert monastic tradition calls them passions), that it
becomes necessary to “do violence to yourself ” (VII.3) in order to drive them
out. For Mechthild, this means that in order extract these dispositions, we
must struggle inwardly and discipline our outward demeanor not to display
our anger and other imperfections. Refusal to let the passions take root in
action withers their hold on the heart. It feels like violence to wrench away
from the anger that consumes us, yet it is the remedy that heals the soul.
The framework afforded by Mechthild’s three sorrows encourages us to
revisit the narration of her entrance into the beguine life with which this
chapter began. She employs images of violence for the initial strife she
experiences between body and soul; but as the passage continues, attention
shifts to the ways in which this training employs both body and soul in the
imitation of Christ’s passion. In lists of her “great defensive blows” against
the body, most (with the exception of scourging) are metaphorical. Except
for fasting, the rest (confession, prayers, and the like) do not deprive or
injure the corporeal self at all (IV.2). Although Mechthild sees her long
physical illness as evidence of her victory in her efforts in these spiritual
activities, most of the “weapons” consist of embodied practices that train
the body to cooperate with soul in a concerted effort to unite with God.
Ascetic disciplines and spiritual desire combine with the weakness of her
body to exercise her in Christlike virtues.
“The Body Gains Its Share” ● 163
If, despite this contextualization of this passage, we are still put off by
positive allusions to self-flagellation, we need not simply chalk it up to a
pattern of hatred and punishment of the body. The tenor of her advice to
others points not to the body as needing punishment but to a concern with
the body’s well-being and with practices that purify the whole person.
Although she may have held herself to a harsher standard than other reli-
gious people (see VI.4), when writing to others, Mechthild habitually pre-
scribes a greater degree of physical moderation than we witness in the vitae
of many other medieval women (VI.1–2).6 For example, Mechthild directs
religious superiors to make sure the community has plenty of good food,
“For a starving cleric does not sing well. Also, a hungry man cannot study
with concentration” (VI.1).
Elsewhere, Mechthild responds to a request for advice from a cleric on
how to cultivate the virtue of humility. She prescribes daily penances such
as wearing a coarse garment under his regular dress and keeping “two
switches next to his bed to chastise himself upon awakening.” Other than
this, however, he should enjoy moderate comforts. He should make up his
bed with a straw mattress, two woolen blankets, two pillows, and a fine
quilt; and he should wear “simple, comfortable clothes” over his coarse shirt
and even keep servants to help him meet his “rightful needs” (VI.2).7
Mechthild’s intent is discipline, not punishment; moderate bodily disci-
plines are meant to redirect desire and purify the soul.
refined with respect to all things” (V.4). The physical senses become benefi-
ciaries of mystical experiences. Their refinement renders them better able
to choose appropriate objects and to reject excesses that impede the human
being’s growth in love.
Although some read Mechthild as delaying the body’s participation in
union with the Trinity until the eschatological “last day,”8 the development
of her thought regarding the body creates space for its refinement even in
this life. Bodily refinement toward all things results from the ascesis of
desire. As love permeates the human person, it trains even the physical body
to respond positively to what first feels like deprivation. Thus, Mechthild
can write toward the end of her book of a fear that she might even experi-
ence too much pleasure when God touches her with his “sublime sweetness
that permeates my body and my soul utterly” (VII.50). As a result of the
disciplines, even the body comes to share in the experience of divinity.
Mechthild’s rhetoric of antagonism between body and soul in the early
parts of her book certainly reflect something of her experience, but it is not
her final stance.9 In contrast to the enmity she saw in her body at the
beginning of her religious life, Mechthild summarizes near the end of her
work a way to unite with God in which the body is integral. Union with
God comes through well-intentioned effort in the world: one must perform
every action with longing, careful examination, and the intent to be useful.
Such activity unites with God’s actions on our behalf, and it also illuminates
the true goodness of body and creation. Mechthild views such activity as a
mode of worship. Human beings are to thank God and praise him with
everything we have, including the body. The body is a gift of grace with
which to praise God in return. In expressing our humble gratitude, “our
senses are opened . . . [so] that we look into divine knowledge like someone
who sees his own countenance in a bright mirror” (VII.7). We see ourselves
most clearly in the divine image when our body is fully engaged in the
service of God.
The temptation to slip back into old habits of relating to the body is
strong. When this temptation comes to Mechthild, she identifies the nega-
tive attitude toward the body, rather than the body itself, as the true enemy.
She sees this demon with her “spiritual eyes,” and she hears his voice with
her “fleshly ears.” But she also finds that she is not afraid, for “[w]henever
God’s grace is present in the soul and occupies the senses, the body cannot
be afraid in [the enemy’s] presence” (VII.7). Physical and spiritual disci-
plines that occupy the senses with divine things guard against the tempta-
tion to blame the body.
Bernard McGinn explains that many male and female contemplatives of
Mechthild’s time
“The Body Gains Its Share” ● 165
stressed the necessity for full human experience, both carnal and spiritual, in
the path to union with God [so that] . . . the sensual language of the Song
[of Songs] begins to be used more as the referent for what eventually appears
as a single “set” of senses, a sensorium, or general activity of sensation, which
was to be progressively spiritualized in the mystical life.10
in a number of passages (e.g., VI.31); but she also enjoys God in terms of
taste or smell (smeken) (IV.12, VI.1, VI.2, VII.47) and invokes all the five
senses together (IV.13, VII.15, VII.18, VII.38). God praises the soul in
sensory terms as well, saying, “You taste like a grape. Your fragrance is like
balsam” (I.16); “You are a light to my eyes; You are a lyre to my ears”
(III.2).
Admittedly, Mechthild’s blanket employment of aesthetic vocabulary
created confusion in some of her readers. In response to opponents, she
applies a traditional way of reading scripture to the interpretation of her
visions. Following a Christian exegetical tradition dating at least as far back
as Origen in the second century, she acknowledges “physical” and “spiritual”
ways to view revelation. Mechthild and her contemporaries would have
been familiar with the use of this distinction as a way to negotiate potential
objections to the eroticism of the bridal mysticism through Bernard of
Clairvaux’s well-known sermons on the Song of Songs. Mechthild applies
this principle in response to criticism of a vision in which John the Baptist
(who, her critic points out, was no priest) presides at mass. She chastises
her “blind” critic in terms of fleshly and spiritual senses. She distinguishes
the import of her vision from what a person can “see with the eyes of the
flesh, hear with the ears of the flesh, and say with one’s fleshly mouth.” Her
experience “was not of the flesh; it was so spiritual that only the soul saw
it, understood it, and enjoyed it” (VI.36). Like many theologians in her
tradition, Mechthild interprets revelation on multiple levels; and this strat-
egy enables her to defend her writing, when necessary, as moral or spiritual
in nature rather than literal or fleshly.
When pressed, then, Mechthild resorts to the distinction between the
flesh and the spirit. She declares of her vision that the “body had nothing
from it except what it could grasp in its human senses through the nobility
of the soul. And this is why the words had to be expressed in human terms”
(VI.36).11 Notice the caveat in how she makes this point, however: despite
their final inadequacy, human terms and bodily senses can and do express
something of the soul’s experience. The spiritual meaning becomes word;
but word also becomes flesh, for the senses are not finally insensate to the
spirit.
Rather than trying to gain certainty about when Mechthild is speaking
on the spiritual or physical level, we do better to comprehend a single sen-
sorium that can develop, expand, and focus on various objects. This senso-
rium can be discerned in numerous passages throughout her text. She
writes, “The five senses have the power to determine which way they turn”
(VII.46). This is because God and the devil have equal access to the senses
“The Body Gains Its Share” ● 167
Notes
1. In this chapter, translations of Mechthild’s work follow Mechthild of Magdeburg,
The Flowing Light of the Godhead, trans. Frank J. Tobin (New York: Paulist
Press, 1998). Citations from the Middle High German follow the critical edi-
tion: Hans Neumann, ed., Mechthild von Magdeburg: “Das fließende Licht der
Gottheit,” 2 vols. (Munich: Artemis Verlag, 1990, 1993).
2. For a comprehensive survey of issues of gender and authority surrounding
Mechthild’s text, see Sara S. Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender
and the Making of Textual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2004).
3. James C. Franklin, Mystical Transformations: The Imagery of Liquids in the Work of
Mechthild von Magdeburg (London: Associated University Presses, 1978), 25, 52.
4. Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and
the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 13.
“The Body Gains Its Share” ● 171
17. For more on Mechthild’s combination of eroticism and asceticism, see Emily
Hunter McGowin, “Eroticism and Pain in Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Flowing
Light,” New Blackfriars 92, no. 3 (2011), doi:10.1111/j.1741-2005.2010.01392.
x (accessed February 13, 2011). In the scope of the world’s religions, this combi-
nation is not unique. See, for example, Wendy Doniger, Siva: the Erotic Ascetic
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
18. See Michel de Certeau, “Mysticism,” trans. Marsanne Brammer, Diacritics 22,
no. 2 (1992 [1968]): 11–25.
Bibliography
Beer, Frances. Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge, UK:
Boydell Press, 1992.
Brown, Peter. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the
Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books, 1991.
———. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval
Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
Clairvaux, Bernard of. Sermons on the Song of Songs.4 volumes. Translated by Kilian
Walsh. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2005.
Colledge, Edmund, and Bernard McGinn. Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons,
Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense. New York: Paulist Press, 1981.
Davies, Oliver. “Transformational Processes in the Work of Julian of Norwich and
Mechthild of Magdeburg.” In The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, edited
by Marion Glasscoe, 39–52. London: D. S. Brewer, 1992.
deCerteau, Michel. “Mysticism.” Translated by Marsanne Brammer. Diacritics 22,
no. 2 (1992 [1968]): 11–25.
Doniger, Wendy. Siva: the Erotic Ascetic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Franklin, James C. Mystical Transformations: The Imagery of Liquids in the Work
of Mechthild von Magdeburg. London: Associated University Presses, 1978.
Grundmann, Herbert. Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links
between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, with the Historical Foundations of German
Mysticism. Translated by Steven Rowan. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1995.
Hollywood, Amy. The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete,
and Meister Eckhart. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.
Magdeburg, Mechthild of. The Flowing Light of the Godhead. Translated by Frank
J. Tobin. New York: Paulist Press, 1998.
McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New
Mysticism (1200–1350). New York: Crossroad, 1998.
McGinn, Bernard, ed. Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant,
Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete. New York: Continuum, 1994.
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McGowin, Emily Hunter. “Eroticism and Pain in Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Flowing
Light.” New Blackfriars 92, no. 3 (2011). doi:10.1111/j.1741-2005.2010.01392.x
(accessed February 13, 2011).
Neumann, Hans, ed. Mechthild von Magdeburg: “Das fließendeLicht der Gottheit.”
2 vols. Munich: Artemis Verlag, 1990, 1993.
Ohly, Friedrich. Sensus Spiritualis: Studies in Medieval Significs and the Philology of
Culture. Translated by Kenneth J. Northcott. Edited by Samuel P. Jaffe. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Poor, Sara S. Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of
Textual Authority. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
Turner, Denys. Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs. Kalamazoo,
MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995.
CHAPTER 9
I
n his recent unabashed homage to Esalen, the Californian epicenter of
East-West integralism, Jeffrey J. Kripal enthuses that we are witnessing
the emergence of a new American mysticism. Such a mysticism operates
with democratic principles, individualist values, secular notions of religion,
and socially liberal agendas, all of which in turn attempt to liberalize the
otherwise hierarchical, authoritarian, and essentialist limitations of Asian
spiritualities. Kripal proposes that these modern American mystical traditions,
suspended between the revelations of Asian religious traditions and the demo-
cratic, pluralistic, and scientific revolutions of modernity, drew on, but are
fundamentally distinct from, their premodern Asian precursors. Recognizing,
with and after Freud, that religious experience is always related to unconscious
forces that speak with and through the body, these traditions also psycholo-
gize spirituality, respect the body as the site of spiritual experience, and aim
for more embodied and integral forms of spirituality that embrace mind and
body, psyche and spirit, transcendence and immanence.2
This chapter follows Kripal by offering A. H. Almaas’s Diamond
Approach as a contemporary American mystical movement that includes
something of both the European Enlightenment and the Asian enlighten-
ment traditions. I argue that the Diamond Approach reflects contemporary
integrative and embodied American mysticism on three accounts. First, it
reconciles American concerns with individual development with Asian
mystical goals of self-transcendence through a sophisticated incorporation
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© Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel 2011
176 ● Ann Gleig
human being” is one who achieves both these goals through the soul’s
individuation and maturation process, an essential stage of which is ego
development as outlined by psychoanalytic theory.
Different cultural, religious, and secular forms of subjectivity are implic-
itly accommodated, therefore, within a model of identity that stretches
primarily over three categories: the personal ego-self of depth psychology,
an individual soul aligned with the Socratic and Western gnostic traditions,
and an impersonal nondual absolute identified with Asian liberation tradi-
tions. The individual soul is the connecting link between impersonal Being
and the personal ego. The integration of the three—ego, soul, and Being—
is achieved in the realization of a unique differentiated aspect, the personal
essence or “pearl beyond price.” Ali describes this process as “how Being,
impersonal and eternal, becomes a person, a human being on earth.” He
privileges it over the Asian-aligned spiritual aim of identifying exclusively
as an impersonal consciousness.11
While you are inquiring, it is important to keep sensing your body—to stay
in touch with its movements and sensations. This includes the numbness, the
dullness, or the tensions you may feel. To ground your awareness in your
bodily experience is important because your essential qualities are going to
arise in the same place where you experience your feelings, emotions, and
reactions. They are not going to appear above your head, they are going to
arise within you. So your body is actually your entry into the mystery.20
The inner senses are organized by various subtle energetic centers, which
are found in specific locations in the body. Ali utilizes Sufism and the
Gurdjieff work to describe these subtle capacities or spiritual senses, which
are coexistent with yet much more subtle than the ordinary gross five senses.
He states that the most important subtle sense is that of touch, which is
located in the belly center or what Gurdjieff called the “physical center.”
The deepest function of this center is the sensing of subtle presence or what
Sufism calls the organ for touch. Described by Ali as “seeing essence by
being essence,” subtle touch is the most direct and immediate way of expe-
riencing essence.
The sensitization of the body also awakens the capacity of subtle taste,
which is located in the heart center. Ali quotes from Henry Corbin to
describe subtle taste: “The heart (qualb) is the organ, which produces true
knowledge. . . . It is the organ of a perception which is both experience
and intimate taste (dhowq).” This dhowq or inner taste is distinct from
physical taste but operates similar to it in enabling one to literally taste the
different dimensions of essence each of which has its own specific flavor.
Essential love, for example, can be experienced as a sweet taste similar to
honey and essential compassion can manifest as the taste of mint.
The inner sense of sight or subtle perception is located in the head center
in the forehead. It allows a capacity for seeing that is not bound by the
limitations of time and space. Ali states, for example, that it enables one to
see inside of the body, even as precisely as viewing atoms and molecules,
and it allows one to see the particular color of an aspect, such as the silver
of the essential will.23 There are also capacities for inner sound and smell
but Ali does not go into any specific details with these, and when I asked
him in a personal correspondence to elucidate further he declined on the
grounds that such knowledge was meant primarily for students in the
school.24 One might reasonably assume, however, that as with the other
inner senses, he draws on Sufi sources to expand upon what he claims is
knowledge derived primarily from his and his students’ experience.
In summary then, mystical perception in the Diamond Approach is a
fully embodied process that unfolds through an increasing refinement of
awareness, an uncovering of unconscious psychodynamic structures, and an
activation of the five inner or subtle senses. It is a process that is different
for each student depending upon his or her specific developmental history,
as this will determine the extent to which certain aspects of essence are
available and the order in which they arise. Moreover, Ali stresses, that this
is what fundamentally differentiates the Diamond Approach from traditional
mystical schools such as Sufism; while the latter have knowledge of the
inner senses and contemplative methods to refine awareness, the Diamond
184 ● Ann Gleig
Back then I wondered how I could give up “ego” when I was still struggling
so hard, especially as a woman, to claim one in the first place. I kept feeling
that as a woman I needed more skilful means of transporting my psyche,
such as it was, into more enlightened states. I kept struggling with my sense
that the only way out is through.47
Notes
1. Diamond Approach senior teacher Sandra Maitri quoted in Tony Schwartz,
What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America (New York: Bantam
Books, 1995), 419.
2. Jeffrey J. Kripal, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2007).
3. For critiques of the new psychospiritual traditions on the grounds of individu-
alism, commodification, and appropriation, see Jeremy Carrette and Richard
King, Selling Spirituality (London & New York: Routledge, 2005). For Kripal’s
counterdefense, see Kripal, Esalen, 399–403.
4. Biographical details are drawn from the website http://www.ahalmaas.com/. See
also A. H. Almaas, Luminous Night’s Journey (Boston & London: Shambhala,
The Enlightened Body ● 191
Bibliography
Almaas, A. H. The Inner Journey Home. Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004.
———. Spacecruiser Inquiry: True Guidance for the Inner Journey Home. Boston &
London: Shambhala, 2002.
———. The Point of Existence: Transformations of Narcissism in Self-Realization.
Boston & London: Shambhala, 2001a.
———. The Pearl Beyond Price: Integration of Personality into Being: An Object
Relations Approach. Boston & London: Shambhala, 2001b.
———. Luminous Night’s Journey: An Autobiographical Fragment. Boston & London:
Shambhala, 2000.
———. Essence with The Elixir of Enlightenment. Boston, MA: Weiser Books, 1998
Aronson, Harvey. Buddhist Practice On Western Ground: Reconciling Eastern Ideals
And Western Psychology. Boston & London: Shambhala, 2004.
Bellah, Robert, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Stephen
M. Tipton, eds. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitments in American
Life. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985.
Bhattacharyya, Kalidas. “The Status of the Individual in Indian Metaphysics.”
In The Indian Mind: Essentials of Indian Philosophy and Culture, edited by
194 ● Ann Gleig
Introduction
Do mystics and saints heal people? A recent article in the Los Angeles
Times—“The Dalai Lama Has IT, But What Is IT?”—raises this age-old
question. Interviewees described their feelings of joy and serenity when in
the presence of people like the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa. Dr. Paul
Ekman, a University of California Medical School (San Francisco) professor,
confessed that he experienced a profound healing when the Dalai Lama
held his hands: “He held my hands while we talked, and I was filled with
a sense of goodness and a unique total body sensation that I have no words
to describe.” Though not a religious believer, Dr. Ekman’s lifelong struggle
with anger left in that moment.1
This healing event was so provocative to Dr. Ekman that he conducted
and published a series of dialogues in a book with the Dalai Lama. The
dialogues, however, produced no scientific explanation for his personal
transformation. Ekman concluded that the “radiance of goodness” that had
healed him was scientifically inexplicable, yet true nonetheless: “As a scien-
tist, I do not know how to explain it, but that does not mean it is not sus-
ceptible to scientific explanation; I just do not know where to start, and
I suspect we do not yet have the proper tools to examine this phenomenon
objectively.” In the book, he emphasized the physical sensations connected
to the “radiance of goodness” that he and others felt emanating from the
Dalai Lama: “I think the change that occurred within me started with that
The brain relaxes as the rapid beta waves of analytical thinking release into
the slower theta waves of openness and waiting. I can literally sense the
power of his aura as a magnet that pulls even my brain waves into closer
alignment with his state of total inner rest. Correspondingly, there is a
realignment of the emotional state.
It is like being in an airplane flying through pockets of turbulence. Then,
all of a sudden, the plane ride is smooth because the pilot has propelled it
up to at a higher altitude. Being with Hawkins is like that. His irrepressible
love and joyous humor pull me up to a high altitude of happiness so that
(temporarily) I do not experience the usual bumps of emotional turbulence
(insecurity, anxiety, anger, guilt, self-pity, etc.). For those moments, there is
emotional freedom and lightness of being.
As a mystic, Hawkins is intriguing for several reasons. First, his pursuit of
ultimate truth was primarily as a scientist, not as a religionist. Without an
available religious “framework” by which to understand the ego-shattering
mystical experience that spontaneously occurred to him at age thirty-eight, he
was not able to contextualize the radical shift in consciousness—whether to
himself or to others—for thirty years. Second, when he did contextualize the
shift, the explication came through the “Map of Consciousness,” a framework
that is unique in two important ways: (1) the integration of a scientific founda-
tion (quantum physics, nonlinear dynamics, chaos theory, and applied kinesi-
ology) into our understanding of mysticism; (2) the notion that, similar to
electromagnetic energy, spiritual energy has different degrees of power within
the progressive “fields of consciousness,” such that the higher levels of con-
sciousness (those of the mystics and saints) carry with them a frequency that
is innately beneficent, healing, and peace-transmitting. Finally, unlike many
mystics, he does not define his awareness in relation to an existing belief system
or place himself within a specific religion. His understanding of the path of
the mystic is that, ultimately, it is the pathless path, transcends all doctrinal
differences, and is the culmination of all of the various “yogas” or “tariqas.”
The first part of the chapter gives a biographical narrative of Hawkins,
and the second part applies his framework to the practical realm of healing.
Here is his story.
Time stopped and the awareness of Oneness with eternity replaced all
thought or sense of a personal self. The “I”-ness of the Presence revealed itself
as Allness. It was knowable as being beyond names.
He realized that “what” he ultimately was did not differ from the formless,
timeless Universal Self, an Infinite Love that had no beginning and no end.
The ensuing peace was indescribable and rock-solid. Suddenly he became
aware of his father tugging his leg. The boy David “came back into the
body” only out of love for his father who was terrified of losing his son and
would feel responsible for his death. He returned to the body to save his
father from this suffering.6
Compared to this Infinite Love, the “God” of religion seemed irrelevant,
untenable. His belief in religion, in fact, disappeared at age sixteen. One
day, while walking in the woods, an awareness of human suffering through-
out the ages suddenly overwhelmed him; he could no longer believe in a
God who (it seemed to him at the time) willed such suffering. This revela-
tion marked “the end of belief in God as a belief system.” Yet, there
remained a relentless inner drive to get to the core of Reality:
Up until that time [age 16], religiosity had prevailed, but in shock and dis-
may at the revelation, the belief in a God who would allow or be the cause
of all that suffering was unsustainable. . . . Despite the collapse of religious
belief in God, there persisted a drive to get to the core and source of Truth
itself. That led to searching within during four years of deep classical clinical
psychoanalysis, followed by three more years of depth analysis focused on
uncovering the roots of the ego itself. The inner search then continued reach-
ing the very depths of the ego and the lower levels of Hell that, too, are
experientially beyond the limitations of time. It was from the pits of eternal
spiritual darkness that the call to God was answered, for it took that extreme
of agony and despair to crack the ego’s hold.7
professional life, he suffered from a fatal disease, which had propelled him
to the edge of physical death and the depths of inner agony.8 He recalled
lying on a hospital bed, aware that physical death approached. Physical
death produced no fear. Far worse was the existential agony that the hope-
lessness and despair would be never-ending. It was as if he had seen, via
inner vision, the signpost: “All ye who enter here—abandon every hope.”
Although an agnostic at the time, a cry of surrender arose from within:
“If there is a God, I ask him to help me now.” What followed was a trans-
formation so dramatic that he did not speak of it for thirty years. It was a
sudden and complete dissolving of his individual personhood:
Other mystics throughout history have described this state of ego dissolu-
tion, when all sense of a personal self dissolves—somewhat like sugar melt-
ing into warm water, or a rain drop falling into the ocean. What remains
is a stunning silence, void of all thoughts, no inner talk, and a rock-solid
awareness that one is not separate from anything or anyone else. The world
has become completely transformed into an “Infinite Oneness” in which
Love and Beauty radiate with a magnificence that defies description.
Many people may have a personal knowledge of a temporary timeless
“flow” or “being in the zone,” a moment in which the constant self-
monitoring of the ego-mind is muted, and the ordinary orientation in time
and space is lost. This happens, for example, when people are engaged in
creative work, lovemaking, athletic or stage performance, the birth of a
child, religious ritual, meditation, or other peak experiences. But few people
exist in this timeless state as a permanent inner reality.
A recent and compelling example of ego dissolution is the experience of
the Harvard University brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor. Her account
gives us a glimpse into the nondual realm of awareness about which the
mystics speak and write as their permanent reality. She, like Hawkins,
emerged from her mystic experience to dedicate herself to the work of
The “Map of Consciousness” ● 203
healing in the world.10 As a stroke erupted in her brain and voided her
left-brain functioning, Taylor underwent a spontaneous breakthrough into
the “euphoria” of “Silent Mind” and the “nirvana” of “being one with All.”
In this state, she felt a “connection to the omnipotence and the enormity
of that which is God.” This experiential “oneness” was an indelible noetic
insight that had nothing to do with religion. Like Hawkins, she was not
religious. She realized that the concepts of her thinking, personal mind had
always blocked the splendor of Universal Mind. With left-brain thinking
consciousness gone, the loving consciousness of the right-brain revealed
itself. The experience was so exquisitely beautiful and expansive that she
(i.e., her nonphysical consciousness) did not want to “squeeze” back into
her body, choosing to do so only because she knew that her account of the
experience would be helpful to others. Her mystic experience lasted a few
weeks, but its impact was unforgettable and sustained her during eight long
years of recovery when she had to relearn how to walk, talk, and other basic
human functions.11 Dr. Bolte-Taylor had heard about such experiences, but
it was not until her stroke that she was certain of their validity. Because she
had spent her career researching the brain phenomena of schizophrenia, she
was also certain that her mystic experience differed radically from psychotic
and other pathological states of consciousness.12
Hawkins is unique as a modern mystic because, as a trained M.D., he
has been able to speak self-reflectively and scientifically of mystic states of
consciousness with a clarity that can be of clinical assistance. Still, it took
him a number of years to integrate the nonordinary state of consciousness
into ordinary living. After the breakthrough in consciousness that occurred
in 1965, Hawkins’ experience of life was completely and radically
different.
For one thing, because he no longer saw himself as an individual person,
he felt bewildered when people referred to his body as “David,” and he
himself was not sure what pronouns to use with reference to himself:
“Somebody would ask me a question and I would wonder who they were
talking to. . . . When I look in people’s eyes, there is only one Self. . . .
There isn’t any separate ‘you, there, and me, here.’” It took years to accli-
mate to the inner condition of Enlightenment, with its lack of a personal
self.
His physical body felt very different as well. Not only was there a healing
recovery from the many diseases that had plagued him, but there was also
such a “voltage” of energy that his nervous system felt taxed and frazzled:
“[T]he nervous system felt like it was fried . . . full of holes like Swiss
cheese.”13
204 ● Fran Grace
Each time it is extremely difficult to come back into the body. It is like one
is home and as you come back into the body, you feel homesick . . . like one
has left one’s home for some kind of a task one has agreed to, I guess.
Whenever I go into that state, there is no form. One just dissolves into
infinite, golden love. It is so exquisite that it makes one cry to have to come
back into the body again. The only reason you can leave it is because you
know it is there forever, and that you will return forever.14
One time, for example, he slipped into this bliss state while alone in the
woods. He was aware that vultures were circling his body, poised to descend
as soon as the last bit of life energy was relinquished from the body. But
something in him realized that he might as well stay in the body if it helped
others, because the bliss was forever and always. He surrendered the body
completely to be an instrument of service in the world, allowing it to be
reenergized. As soon as this happened, the vultures flew away. He frequently
refers to the body as a “karmic wind-up toy” that will expire when it is no
longer needed.15
Hawkins gradually became acclimated to the absence of a personal “me”
and returned to his psychiatric practice in the late 1960s. But the mystic,
nondual consciousness prevailed. Indeed, seven years later, there was no
reference to a “me” even in his clinical work. His brilliantly integrative sur-
vey of clinical research on schizophrenia, published in the book he coedited
with double Nobel Laureate chemist Linus Pauling, Orthomolecular
Psychiatry, is notable for the complete absence of the pronoun “I” in over
one hundred pages of writing.16 Readers of his later spiritual works (eight
books to date) often complain that he writes in the third person without
The “Map of Consciousness” ● 205
for schizophrenia: “[T]he amount of side effects that a doctor’s patients have
depends on the consciousness of the doctor.” The patients of one particular
doctor in New Jersey, for example, all manifested a type of skin discolor-
ation with the use of Vitamin B-3. However, the patients of other doctors
had no side effects at all and, in fact, responded well to the treatment.19
What was the secret of the successful doctors? He intuited that the healing
effect related to an inner state of awareness or level of consciousness, but
he needed to find a way to confirm and measure it.
In pursuit of this question and to live a more contemplative and unencum-
bered life, Hawkins left his expansive clinical practice and multi-million-dollar
life in New York, driving in a pickup truck to a remote area in the Southwest.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he lived the life of a hermit, sleeping on a
thrift-store cot, rarely eating, and reading mystical texts. The solitude allowed
for an unrestrained surrender to spiritual ecstasy and bliss. He describes, similar
to accounts by Ramakrishna, being “danced” by the powerful energies of
devotional climax, dancing alone in ecstatic surrender all night at a local
cathedral. Living alone permitted him the freedom to exist solely as formless
consciousness, without having to interact and verbalize. His consciousness was
so accustomed to its formless, nonphysical reality that he was shocked when
suddenly his body hit against a wall he was walking through, or when he
caught a glimpse of a “person” in the mirror and realized it was himself ! 20
The years of solitude allowed for a thorough exploration of advanced
states of consciousness. He experienced that there were several subtle spiri-
tual bodies beyond the gross (physical), emotional, and mental bodies; each
of these spiritual bodies (Atmic, Christic, Buddhic) had seven chakras.
When the third eye of the Buddhic body opens, according to his experience,
the sage is able to discern the essence of all things as they truly are, beyond
perception or mentation. He verified for himself the truth of the experience
of Brother Lawrence, a well-known sixteenth-century Catholic monk and
author of Practicing the Presence of God, that the Presence of God is continu-
ally discernible as a spiritual sense that radiates the felt energy of Love.
Eventually, Hawkins reluctantly agreed to have a public teaching life
because he saw that his physical presence activated an awakening in the subtle
spiritual bodies of spiritual aspirants, a phenomenon often referred to as “silent
transmission” (e.g., Sri Ramana Maharshi). According to Hawkins’ experience,
the aura of an advanced sage can awaken a spiritual sense within a consenting
seeker so that the knowledge, which had been held only in the mental body
as “information,” now is alive in the higher spiritual bodies as “realization.”
Having explored the nature of his transformed consciousness and the
reason for its healing effect on others, Hawkins re-entered ordinary life. In
1987, he wrote a letter to his famous friend in science, Linus Pauling,
The “Map of Consciousness” ● 207
This difference is intuitively true. We can often sort through our friends
or family members by asking: Which ones deplete me and which ones uplift
me? Some people in our lives are basically negative; they swirl around in
self-pity, anger, guilt, fear, constant craving, blaming, or arrogance. They
have little concern about how their behaviors affect others. Other people
are basically positive; they are thoughtful and caring of others, can get over
things easily, acknowledge their part in an unpleasant situation rather than
blame everyone else, and they have a basic confidence in themselves that
does not require our constant assurance. Everyone, of course, has a “bad
day.” But as a general rule, the Hawkins research found that people have a
composite orientation or “level of consciousness” that is either uplifting or
draining in its effect.
Harvard brain scientist, Jill Bolte-Taylor, made the same discovery. In
describing her long recovery from the stroke that left her unable to talk, hear
language, or see people, she was “energetically” able to divide the people who
walked into her hospital room into two groups: those who drained her life
energy and those who increased it. She learned to turn away from nurses,
doctors, and visitors who were anxious, self-focused, and preoccupied
because they sapped her fragile life energy. But she would force herself to
rouse for loving, thoughtful, and kind people. She instinctively knew that
the inner energy they radiated would have a healing effect on her recovery.
Hawkins’ work confirms this insight as a measurable fact. While the
“Map of Consciousness” has obvious correlations to the “Great Chain of
Being” and to the classical Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and Sufi
“levels” or “stages” of spiritual mastery or evolution, it is also accessible to
clinical and educational settings because it is mostly free of religious
nominalizations.25
Hawkins brings together findings from many fields in order to strengthen
the explanatory value of the Map of Consciousness. First, from the field of
nonlinear dynamics, he draws the idea that there are hidden patterns or
“attractors” behind apparently random or chaotic natural phenomena. The
most famous example of such a hidden coherence in seemingly random data
is Lorenz’s butterfly based on weather patterns. Instead of viewing all of the
events, thoughts, and feelings of a person’s life as “accidental,” “coinciden-
tal” or random, the attractor field theory suggests that everything one wit-
nesses in one’s life is part of the coherence of the particular “level of
consciousness” or “energy field” that they are “tuned in to,” somewhat like
a television channel.
For example, the person who lives on the level of consciousness “Fear,”
will experience life events as scary, strangers as threatening, the future as
frightening, God as a terrifying judge, and relationships as wrought with
210 ● Fran Grace
fear of loss and fear of rejection. This person will look at a homeless person
and feel afraid, perhaps calling 911. On the other hand, a person who lives
in the more benign energy field of “Willingness,” will see the homeless
person with optimism and may attempt to “help” the person with money
or a kind word. This person in “Willingness” is hopeful about life, con-
sciously intends to be a positive influence in the world, sees God as benevo-
lently supportive, and experiences relationships as offering opportunities for
growth, caring, and loyalty. The “Fear” person may travel to New York City
and conclude that there are muggers everywhere and the streets are uni-
formly unsafe; however, the “Willingness” person may travel to the same
area and conclude that New Yorkers are quite friendly. When we are in the
presence of “Fear,” we feel drained; when we are in the presence of
“Willingness,” we feel uplifted.
Secondly, in addition to attractor field theory, Hawkins draws upon the
metaphysical discussions instigated by quantum mechanics over the last
several decades. There is little agreement among quantum physicists and
philosophers of science as to what quantum mechanics actually “means.”26
Hawkins aligns with the approach of physicist David Bohm because Bohm’s
theories of “wholeness,” “implicate vs. explicate orders,” “holographic uni-
verse,” and “infinite potentiality” correspond so closely to his subjective
awareness as a mystic. Bohm’s metaphysics went beyond the linear causality
of the Newtonian paradigm by postulating a “field” effect in which the
“hidden variable” held within the “implicate order” (i.e., formless conscious-
ness) unfolds into the material, “explicate order” (i.e., world of form).27 Thus,
the physical world that is witnessed by the human eye as linear sequence is
merely a world of effects, not causes. The money I receive every month as
an electronic deposit in my bank account from the University of Redlands
is ultimately not “caused” by any single catalyst in the “objective” world of
form. If this were so, it would be an infinite regress along the lines of: Was
it the contract I signed that “caused” my paycheck? Was it the decision of
the search committee that hired me? Was it my completion of the Ph.D.
that credentialed me for the job? Was it my second grade teacher who told
me I would be a professor one day? One could go on and on, yet never
identify the single “cause” of an event. Rather, all of these factors or seeming
“causes” in the physically visible world actually issue from an invisible
“attractor field” or “level of consciousness,” and it is this “energy field” that
attracts to itself all of the above and everything else that I experience,
including the affirmations by school teachers, the resources and intelligence
required for doctoral work, and being hired by a university.
Hawkins and Bohm would agree with the Dalai Lama that there is the
possibility with quantum physics to move beyond the limited framework
The “Map of Consciousness” ● 211
people experience the realms of love and unconditional love throughout life,
but few attain to these levels as a permanent inner state. At this level,
a person is loving all the time, no matter what—in thought, speech, and
action (what Gandhi called the “triple purity”). And the Love is not per-
sonal: “There is a desire to use one’s state of consciousness for the benefit
of life itself rather than for particular individuals.”32 Unconditional Love is
obviously different from romantic love, and wholly devoid of the emotion-
ality and sentimentality popularized in Hollywood depictions of passion
and romance. Unconditional Love never falters, no matter what the other
person does or says. This level of love can also characterize certain group
alignments as well, such as the recent decision of the Amish not only to
forgive the gunman who brutally murdered several Amish school children
but also to offer concrete support to his family.
Hawkins uses the word “Ecstasy” to denote the highest level of love, at
the cusp of the state of nonduality, Peace, Union, and Enlightenment. At
the state of Ecstasy, the saint or mystic is vibrating with intense longing to
unite with the One, the Beloved, and is willing to bear personal suffering
for the benefit of other beings. Padre Pio, Franciscan friar and well-known
modern stigmatist, is a good example of this level of consciousness.
The loving radiance of the advanced mystic, saint, or sage is often pic-
tured as a “halo” and described classically as a “transmission.” Paul Ekman
described the Dalai Lama’s transmission as a “radiance of goodness.” Such
a transmission has long been intuitively known in the history of religions,
noted in the arduous trips undertaken by pilgrims to visit saints and sages,
either in person or as relics. In modern times, hundreds of thousands of
seekers have waited in line to be in an auditorium with, be touched by, or
sit in the presence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa,
Mahatma Gandhi, Ramana Maharshi, Padre Pio, and others, including
Hawkins himself. Often the trips are made from across the world, and with
great sacrifice. Over 20,000 people will line up in a stadium simply for the
unusual “darshan” of a hug from the “hugging saint” of India, Amma Mata
Amritanandamayi.33 Certainly in the case of some “gurus,” infamous for
sex and money scandals, the positive experience felt by the seeker is a
product of the seeker’s own imagination or projection.34 However, in the
case of truly realized saints and mystics, there is indeed a powerful
transmission.
The healing power of Unconditional Love is confirmable in the body.
Before I became familiar with Hawkins’ work, I observed the effect of
Mother Teresa’s loving energy field on my students’ physiology when
I showed them the documentary film “Mother Teresa” (directed by Ann and
Jeanette Petrie) during class, and the college students reported, “I feel so
The “Map of Consciousness” ● 213
much better”—even those who think she is a “fake.” In one recent case,
a student’s migraine headache went away. This response correlates to the
study conducted by Harvard Medical School professor, Dr. David McClellan,
who discovered through a saliva test that students who watched this docu-
mentary about Mother Teresa experienced enhanced levels of immunoglobin-
A, the body’s first order of defense against flu and cold. Dr. McClellan
named this life-enhancing impact the “Mother Teresa Effect.”35 In the pres-
ence of Unconditional Love, not only does the body emit life-supportive
hormones, but also the muscle response is strong rather than weak, even in
the case of involuntary muscles such as the pupil.36
Scientists are beginning to study the “physics of silent transmission” and
finding ways to measure such frequencies. According to this emerging
research, the true mystic, saint, healer, or sage emanates a “field” of “energy
coherence” so that seekers who enter the mystic’s “energy field” (often called
“aura”) benefit from the healing capacities intrinsic to that energy coher-
ence.37 This physics of transmission helps to explain the testimonies of
healings and “miracles” that have been attributed to the saints and avatars
throughout history.
In her lab at UCLA in the 1980s, for example, Valerie Hunt pioneered
a way to measure the auric frequencies of healers using radio-wave signals.
She was measuring the level of coherence within the energy fields of the
healer and the patient. The high-energy fields of the healers catalyzed a
phenomenon of “coherence” in the auric frequencies of the patients, which
facilitated physical healing. Her research demonstrated that the healing
effect came from the high level of energy coherence in the healer and not
from the treatment modality that was used.38
energy simply by being in places and doing things that radiate an energy
that is unconditionally loving, joyful, peaceful, and devoted.
For example, Hawkins found that most spiritual practices—done with
sincerity and devotion—have a healing effect on the body and mind. This
is true for the Native American sweat lodge, Tibetan prayer wheel, Christian
labyrinth walking, Hindu ritual bathing in the Ganges, Jewish prayers at
the Wailing Wall, chanting OM, and most other commonly known spiri-
tual practices. The form is not fundamentally important. Rather the healing
effect comes from the energy field of loving devotion, an energy field that
has often been honed by centuries of practice by devotees. Moreover, certain
places, writings, and pieces of art and music radiate a healing energy field
which has a beneficial effect on the body, for example: Stonehenge, Chartres
Cathedral, Tibetan stupas, the Bhagavad Gita, the Psalms, the Heart Sutra,
the Declaration of Independence, Mozart, Louis Armstrong, “Ave Maria,”
Rembrandt, etc.
Hawkins found that healing and health are activated as soon as a person
or energy field crosses over the “critical factor point” of integrity and hon-
esty, which is the level of consciousness called Courage on the Map of
Consciousness. One enters a healing energy field simply by stating the
truth. For example, the person who suffers from alcoholism or drug addic-
tion immediately shifts the valence of their energy field when they tell the
truth: “I have a problem.” They have moved beyond shame, denial, pride,
and fear; stating the truth now invites in supportive energies that will help
to overcome the problem.
At the level of Courage, according to Hawkins, there is a basic commit-
ment to integrity. The kundalini (“life energy”) begins to move throughout
the acupuncture-meridian system to support health. This energy also begins
to alter the brain so that negative external stimuli are processed through the
amygdale (emotional center) with lesser speed, leading to more even-
tempered responses. The neuro-hormonal response is anabolic, releasing
endorphins rather than stress hormones throughout the system, and releas-
ing oxytocin and vesopressin to the amygdale in particular, a neurochemis-
try that fosters maternal instincts, paternal caring, and bonding.39 As one’s
level of consciousness increases, the “kundalini” energy grows stronger,
magnifies intellectual and creative capacities, and eventually, in crossing
over into the level of Love, it becomes physically detectable by actual sensa-
tion (the energy is felt moving through the acupuncture-meridian lines).
Finally, in the higher levels of Love (Joy, Healing, Unconditional Love,
Ecstasy), the energy has a spontaneously healing effect on those who inter-
act with it. This explains, Hawkins says, the thousands of claims throughout
history of “miraculous” healings that occur in the presence of “saints” (e.g.,
The “Map of Consciousness” ● 215
This observation is not different from what the Dalai Lama told Paul
Ekman when the latter recounted his healing experience. As expected, the
Dalai Lama’s response to Ekman’s queries about the reasons for the healing
focused on the “the karmic factor” rather than anything related to his own
“radiance of goodness.”43 Mystics such as the Dalai Lama and Hawkins
deflect attributions of any personal role in healing events. They seem to be
aware that they, like the step-down transformer for electric voltage, are
simply conduits of an energy that is spontaneously coming through them
to those around them whose circumstances are propitious for a healing
event. The healings are not “willed” by the mystic, but the mystic is the
vehicle for them.
According to Hawkins’ work, every person can cultivate this capacity
for healing. We do this by: (1) telling the truth and living with integrity;
(2) exposing ourselves to positive energy fields (e.g., spiritual practices,
uplifting music and art, caring and loving people and animals, inspiring
literature, nature, expressions of gratitude); (3) avoiding negative energy
fields. Integrating the work of John Diamond, M.D., and other applied
216 ● Fran Grace
Notes
1. Louis Sahagun, “The Dalai Lama Has It, But What Is ‘It’?” Los Angeles Times,
December 9, 2006.
2. Paul Ekman, Emotional Awareness: A Conversation Between the Dalai Lama and
Paul Ekman, Ph.D. (New York: Henry Holt, 2008), 231–33.
The “Map of Consciousness” ● 217
their favorite guru is “the real McCoy” or a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” See
Hawkins, Power vs. Force, for a fuller explanation.
35. David C. McClelland, “Some Reflections on the Two Psychologies of Love,”
Journal of Personality 54:2 (1986): 334–53.
36. Carol Davis, M.D., “The Pupillary Response,” unpublished paper, 2007.
37. Russell Targ and Jane Katra, “Close to Grace: The Physics of Silent Mind.”
Spirituality and Health (July/August 2003), http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/
spirit/archives/close-grace-physics-silent-transmission (accessed December 8,
2009).
38. Valerie Hunt. Infinite Mind: Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness
(Malibu, CA: Publishing Company, [1989], 1996).
39. Hawkin’s theory of brain changes corresponds well to some of the recent find-
ings by neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists. See, for example, A. Lutz
et al., “Long-Term Meditators Self-Induce High Amplitude Gamma Synchrony
during Mental Practice,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101
(2004): 16369–73; Sarah Lazar et al, “Functional Brain Mapping of the
Relaxation Response and Meditation,” Neuroreport (May 15, 2000): 1–5;
Richard Davidson, “Towards a Biology of Positive Affect and Compassion,” in
Visions of Compassion, ed. Richard Davidson and Anne Harrington (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002),107–30; Wolf Singer, “Link Between Meditation
and the Synchronization of Oscillatory Activity in Cerebral Cortex” (paper
presented at the Science and Clinical Applications of Meditation, Washington,
D.C., 2005).
40. David R. Hawkins, “Physiology of Truth,” in Truth Vs. Falsehood (Sedona:
Veritas Publishing, 2005), 51–72.
41. Lee Sanella, The Kundalini Experience: Psychosis or Transcendence? (Lower Lake,
CA: Integral Publishing, [1987], 1992); Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: The
Evolutionary Energy in Man (Boston: Shambhala, 1997); ibid., Higher
Consciousness and Kundalini (Kundalini Research Foundation LTD, 1974).
42. Hawkins, Truth vs. Falsehood, 70–71.
43. Ekman, Emotional Awareness, 232.
44. John Diamond, M.D., Your Body Doesn’t Lie (New York: Warner Books,
1979).
45. Hawkins, Transcending Levels of Consciousness, 333.
46. For example, Anna Tacon, “Meditation as a Complementary Therapy in
Cancer,” Family and Community Health 26:1 (January–March 2003): 64–74;
Jon Kabat-Zinn, “Mindfulness-Based Interventions in Context: Past, Present,
Future,” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 10:2 (Summer 2003): 144–56;
James Austin, Zen-Brain Reflections: Reviewing Recent Developments in Meditation
and States of Consciousness, (Cambridge: MIT, 2006); “The Science and Clinical
Applications of Meditation” hosted by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine,
Georgetown University, and Mind and Life Institute (presentations on DVD,
2005); Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (New York:
Ballantine, 2007).
220 ● Fran Grace
Bibliography
Austin, James. Zen-Brain Reflections: Reviewing Recent Developments in Meditation
and States of Consciousness. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.
Begley, Sharon. Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain. New York: Ballantine, 2007.
Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. New York: Routledge, 1980.
Coward, Harold, and Terence Penelhum, eds. Mystics and Scholars. Atlanta: SR
Supplements, 1976.
Diamond, John. Your Body Doesn’t Lie. New York: Warner Books, 1979.
The Dalai Lama. The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and
Spirituality. New York: Morgan Road Books, 2005.
Davidson, Richard. “Towards a Biology of Positive Affect and Compassion.” In
Visions of Compassion, edited by Richard Davidson and Anne Harrington,
107–30. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Davies, P. C. W., and J. R. Brown. The Ghost in the Atom. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, [1986], 1999.
Ekman, Paul. Emotional Awareness: A Conversation Between the Dalai Lama and Paul
Ekman, Ph.D. New York: Henry Holt, 2008.
Harokopos, Efthimios. “Power as the Cause of Motion and a New Foundation of
Classical Mechanics.” Progress in Physics 2 (July 2005): 82–91.
Hawkins, David R. Personal Interviews with the Author. May 8, 2008, October 15,
2010.
———. Transcending the Levels of Consciousness: The Stairway to Enlightenment.
Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 2006.
———. Discovery of the Presence of God: Devotional Nonduality. Sedona: Veritas
Publishing, 2006.
———. I: Reality and Subjectivity. Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 2003.
———. The Eye of the I. Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 2001.
———. Interview with Yun Kyung Huh of Dahn Meditation Center, Korea.
September 1996. Transcript in Dialogues on Consciousness and Spirituality.
Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 1997.
———. Landberg Lecture. University of California San Francisco Health Sciences
and School of Medicine. Transcript in Dialogues on Consciousness and Spirituality.
Sedona: Veritas Publishing, 1997.
———. Power Vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior. Sedona:
Veritas Publishing, 1995.
———. With Linus Pauling, eds. Orthomolecular Psychiatry: Treatment of
Schizophrenia. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1973.
———. Correspondence with Linus Pauling. Folders 152.8, 1973b.2 of the Ava
Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, Oregon State University.
———. “Giving Up Illness” and “Death and Dying” lectures. No date. Available
in audio from Veritas Publishing.
Hunt, Valerie. Infinite Mind: Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness.
Malibu, CA: Malibu Publishing Company, [1989], 1996.
The “Map of Consciousness” ● 221
A
t the end of this collection of articles, one should pause to consider
the significance of the ongoing interest in the spiritual senses for the
discipline of religious studies and theology. In recent years, the
notion of embodied spirituality has attracted the growing attention of theo-
logians and scholars of religion, possibly as a reflection of deeper social trends
that increasingly see the body as a pivot of consumerist self-gratification or
as a locus of scientific—medical, biological, psychological—experimentation.
These different tendencies, while operating under a whole variety of assump-
tions, share a tendency to commodify the human body, and, paradoxically,
to strip it of any claim to uniqueness. Turned into one object among many,
beautified, transformed or mutilated at will, the surgically enhanced body
reveals the human resentment toward death by seeking to conceal the aging
process. One seeks refuge in identifying the self with a mind that is less
clearly vulnerable, and deploys every strategy of resistance to protest the
inevitable slippage toward dissolution.1
Bereft of a theological or philosophical interpretation, illness and mortal-
ity become the ultimate paradigm of embarrassment, as they uncover the
appalling truth that one is, after all, one’s own body. The most sophisticated
analyses of the body as a social construct, or as a symbolic system that
channels individual identity, melt like snow in the sun as one is forced to
face the body’s biological rootedness in the impersonal world of nature,
which mocks the claims to absolute control cherished by the Cartesian ego.
As the Narrator of Remembrance of Things Past comments when confronted
by his grandmother’s death, one tends to view the body as a lodger to whom
one gives sustenance, only to discover that the body is actually one’s land-
lord, who, on a day of his choice, will evict us for good, and sometimes
without notice. In Proust’s own words, “[W]e each carry our own death
within us, and we feel when it is there”.2
When confronting the human body, contemporary scholars of theology
or religious studies who operate within the context of Western societies find
themselves confronted by a two-fold approach to embodiment and sensual-
ity, one alluring and enticing, the other menacing and merciless. On one
hand, the body promises access to the consumerist paradises of endless
consumption. On the other hand, the very same body threatens exile into
the fallen world of suffering and death. Ascetic practices of fasting and self-
denial are no longer geared toward self-transcendence, nor do they attest
the intention to practice a spiritualizing flight toward a supernatural realm,
but rather promise an extension, or a deferred intensification of the same
material pleasures. All of this unfolds within a self-enclosed horizon, where
one can no longer see beyond material gratification.
Within the terms of this dichotomy, the body is either a source of pleasure,
or alternatively a locus of pain and suffering. What becomes difficult to sus-
tain is the claim that the body—as opposed to the mind, or the soul—can
itself be the locus of spiritual practice, or indeed, that it could become the
portal for knowledge of ultimate reality. Within the Christian tradition, for
instance, the body was problematized from the very inception as a locus of
temptation that had to be subject to harsh discipline. The strenuous penances
of Indian sādhus and the path of monastic renunciation codified by the
Buddhist vinayas attest the same perceived need to discipline the body and
restrained it within certain boundaries. And yet, within each tradition, suspi-
cion toward the embodied condition was always tempered by the awareness
that the incarnation of the Son of God in the person of Christ, the descents
of the Hindu deities in the form of avatars, and the manifestations of the
different Buddhas and bodhisattvas throughout history, had necessitated the
vehicle of a human body. In the Christian case, this body had not even been
exempted from the most harrowing of deaths. In each of these religious cul-
tures, the body of the individual practitioner is called to become a mirror of
the virtues that are embodied in the founder of the respective tradition, or in
some specifically hallowed teaching. In this perspective, the body can acquire
a third possible significance beyond its role as a source of pleasure and pain,
and become the springboard for spiritual progress and ultimately knowledge
of what different traditions would call either ultimate reality—or the divine.
If this is the case, the whole panoply of sensory perception—taste, sight,
smell, touch, hearing—is involved in this process of spiritual transformation
and becomes a channel of divine knowledge.
Among other things, this collection of articles shows how the Christian
mystical tradition, as well as the traditions of the East, have preserved
The Virtues of Sensuality ● 225
(if sometimes only implicitly) the notion that the whole psycho-physical
makeup of the individual plays a central role in his or her own spiritual
life, expanding the boundaries of cognition beyond the merely deductive or
intuitive. The growing popularity and acceptance of this notion is indicated
by the last articles in the collection, which show how the paradigm of the
spiritual senses and embodied spirituality is now being deployed in contem-
porary American discourse on “spirituality,” even without any explicit com-
mitment or reference to particular religious traditions. The virtues of
sensuality are finally being rediscovered.
A fundamental question ought to be raised at this point. How is it that
Western culture, so deeply shaped by Christianity, has been able to let go
of the notion of the spiritual senses for so long and with such apparent ease,
and how is it that the notion is now experiencing a comeback? I would
argue that there are two reasons for this, both of which emerge in different
ways in the articles of this volume. One reflects the fluctuations in the
construction of subjectivity that characterized Western European philoso-
phy in the wake of Descartes, and the other follows the encounter of
Western—European and North American—culture with the religions and
cultures of Asia. Let us spend a few words on each of these two themes,
noting how the legacy of Kantian philosophy contributed to the marginal-
ization of the teaching of the spiritual senses, and how Asian traditions such
as many currents of Mahāyāna Buddhism, on the contrary, preserved a
strong belief in the spiritual potential of our bodily faculties.
How the Christian tradition would finally articulate its understanding
of the body in the context of spiritual practice—or in other words, how a
specifically Christian tradition of asceticism would displace, and eventually
replace, the classical tradition of self-mastery (enkrateia)—was the result of
a protracted struggle between opposing views of the relationship between
individual identity and embodiment. This struggle between the tendency
to identify the individual with her noetic, intellectual dimension, and the
readiness to view the subject as having a spiritual as well as a bodily com-
ponent, is illustrated by the presence during the first centuries of the church
of widely divergent approaches to spiritual practice. The struggle between
these two distinct visions, the victory of the more incarnational approach,
and the eventual marginalization of the latter until its contemporary redis-
covery mirror the importance ascribed to the notion of the spiritual senses
in the context of practice. Let us consider two important figures of the early
Christian period: Evagrios Pontikos (345–399) and Maximos the Confessor
(580–662).
Evagrios’ vision of the spiritual life is characterized by a deep mistrust
for the world of matter, which entangles the monk in its snares like a bird
226 ● Thomas Cattoi
caught in a trap, and thwarts his efforts to ascend to God. The One
Hundred and Fifty-Three Texts envisages the way of prayer as comprising the
practice of the virtues and contemplation; the soul is purified through
the keeping of the commandments, thereby making the intellect (nous)
“steadfast and able to receive the state needed for prayer.” In the same way
that Moses had to loosen his sandals from his feet to approach the burning
bush, so did the monastic wishing to commune with God have to let go of
all sense-perception and concept, so as to free himself from every impas-
sioned thought. The practice of the virtues enable one to engage ordinary
reality with detachment, but even the condition of apatheia is not the cul-
mination of spiritual progress, because the dispassionate soul may still be
occupied by the contemplation of the created world. The ultimate goal is
to let go of the multiplicity of the created order, so as to ascend to the
undivided divine reality.
It is clear that in such a vision there is no room for a developed teaching
of the spiritual senses, since the goal of the spiritual life is merely to tran-
scend the created order that is grounded in the realm of multiplicity.
Evagrios warns his audience that “the immaterial ought to be approached
in an immaterial manner.” Whenever one tries to pray, one should be on
one’s guard against “the tricks of the demons,” who bring up before the eyes
of your mind “some strange and alien form, making you imagine in your
conceit that the Deity is there.”3
A more Christocentric approach to spiritual practice would of course
object that according to the Christian tradition, in these “last times” God
has freely chosen to assume a human body, and so God now has quantity
and form. If the individual exists from the very beginning as a unity of
body and soul—a unity that is broken by death, but that, according to the
Christian scriptures, will be restored at the end of time—this suggests that
the body and the senses, with all their attendant passions, cannot be con-
sidered obstacles, but rather tools to facilitate one’s ascent to the divine.
This is what we find in the teachings of Maximos the Confessor, where
those individuals who have come after Christ and have conformed their life
to his example are compared to “most transparent mirrors” (eidōla ), as they
possess the very pattern (morphē) of the divine Logos.4 For Maximos, the
senses of touch, of sight, of hearing, even smell and taste are not burdens
that we are to shed to return to an undifferentiated, purely intellectual
unity; rather, they are gifts that we must train so that they may lead us to
discover the divine. Apatheia is not incompatible with a continued “move-
ment” of the passions, but actually presupposes it. A text known as Amb.
38, referring to an apocryphal account of the holy family’s flight into Egypt
to escape the persecution of Herod, tells us that the divine Logos “tramples”
The Virtues of Sensuality ● 227
upon “the motions and passions of the flesh” and grants us apatheia as a
reward for “fleeing with him.” Later on, after this initial struggle is over,
the practice of the virtues will guide us back from Egypt to “the Judea of
the virtues,” introducing us to the depths of Christ’s mystery.5 As a result,
one’s own sensory perceptions become channels of the divine reality, accom-
plishing an ontological transformation in the individual that simultaneously
preserves their original ontological makeup. This teaching of theōsis , or
deification, has continued to play a major role in the theology and spiritual-
ity of the Eastern churches until the present.
The reason why the notion of deification, and its more embodied
approach to spirituality eventually faded away from the religious horizon of
Western modernity, is largely due to a shift in the understanding of subjec-
tivity whereby the passions (pathē ) that Evagrios and Maximos posited in
the lower levels of the soul are increasingly located in the body. The ten-
dency of scholastic theology to identify the soul with the mind, in sharp
contrast with the more integrated Platonic vision, would find its paradoxical
culmination in the Cartesian dichotomy between the intellectual realm (res
cogitans) and the sensory realm (res extensa).6 In the third of his Meditations
on First Philosophy, the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650)
argues that all ideas belong to one of three categories: innate (coming
directly from God), adventitious (based on our experience of the world), or
factual (invented by our own imagination). As the source of an idea must
have at least as much formal reality as the idea has objective reality, and the
notion of God has infinite objective reality, neither the human mind nor
the created order are able to develop the notion of God, since neither of
them is invested with infinite formal reality. Therefore, Descartes argues,
since we all have a “clear and distinct” idea of God, and this idea, like all
other ideas, must have a cause of its own, God must necessarily exist. The
God of Descartes could not possibly be perceived by the senses, as the
senses can only come to know created reality. Rather, God is the object of
a direct and unmediated intuition.7
The argument is developed further in the Fourth Meditation, where
Descartes tackles the question of how human beings can still make mistakes
if, as he maintains, God is the ultimate source of all knowledge. Descartes’
answer is that God did not invest humanity with the faculty to make mis-
takes, but He did provide every individual with a free will, which cooperates
with the intellect in the formulation of judgments about reality. Thus, when-
ever our understanding of a certain aspect of reality is insufficiently “clear
and distinct,” and yet we choose to pass a judgment about it, the mistaken
result reflects an inappropriate use of free will. Descartes is adamant in stress-
ing that all our errors of judgment are our own responsibility, and there are
228 ● Thomas Cattoi
the phenomenal realm (open to experience) and the noumenal realm (open
merely to intuition), notions such as the immortality of the soul, the exis-
tence of pure spirits, or divine omniscience come under the purview of the
latter, and may only be accessed by practical reason. In this perspective, the
notion of God may be speculatively or theoretically empty, since it is
beyond the reach of experience, but it is not cognitively empty, since our
moral intuition can fill the vacuum left by pure reason, and sustain human
faith in God’s existence. As noted by Allen Wood in his study of Kant’s
rational theology, the resulting notion of God can no longer serve as a
vehicle of empirical knowledge; in fact, there is very little that one may say
about the divine attributes at all. In Wood’s words, “[A]ll the properties of
which we can form any determinate conception are phenomenal realities,
which are necessarily limited in their degree,” whereas, “we have no
acquaintance with any of the realitates nooumena which lie behind these
appearances.”10 There is certainly no way that our sensory apparatus can
reach any knowledge of the divine; the ancient cathedrals of theologia glo-
riae, where the universe reflected the glory of God, and a perfect congru-
ence existed between the natural and the moral orders, have crumbled at
the stroke of Kant’s very pen.
Can there be a theology after Kant? As this volume shows, contemporary
scholarship in the field of religion has grown impatient with philosophical
and theological approaches that radically sever the divine from the sensory
realm, and has rediscovered the inextricably embodied dimension of prac-
tice. This rediscovery of “the body” in theology would come from the ser-
endipitous confluence of a number of different phenomena, both of which
have greatly helped in the retrieval of the earlier tradition. The Heideggerian
deconstruction of Cartesian subjectivity and the existentialist challenge to
the dichotomy between res cogitans and res extensa—such as the worldview
expounded by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception—have
helped to subvert the Kantian distinction between pure reason and practical
reason, offering a new integrated vision of the subject. Around the mid-
twentieth century, Roman Catholic theology also turned once more to the
writings of the Eastern Church Fathers, finding there an alternative to the
often-barren Scholasticism that was taught in Catholic seminaries. Within
the broader world of scholarship in religious studies, however, a major role
was played by the second of the two themes mentioned at the outset,
namely the “discovery” of Eastern religions in the West, and the ever grow-
ing popularity of practices such as yoga and meditation, which in itself
could be seen as a reaction to the dichotomy between the bodily and the
spiritual—which, for understandable historical reasons, had come to be seen
as a staple characteristic of Christianity.
230 ● Thomas Cattoi
It would of course be a typical Orientalist error to see “in the East” all
that is lacking in our tradition, but if one were to turn for instance to cer-
tain traditions in Mahāyāna Buddhism—to choose one among the many
Asian traditions—one can find a fully developed theory of the spiritual
senses, albeit one that does not explicitly make use of this term. This
emerges clearly if we consider the divide between the Theravada and the
Mahāyāna tradition (or in other words, between the School of the Elders
and the Great Vehicle), which in many ways mirrors the tension between
the writings of Evagrios and the vision of Maximos the Confessor.
Theravada Buddhism emphasizes how our ordinary existence is inescapably
characterized by imperfection, dissatisfaction, and impermanence. In this
perspective, the goal of spiritual practice is to ensure that the causes and
the conditions that maintain this situation are removed, and thereby sam-
sara gives way to nirvāna . The purpose of attaining conceptual realization
in Theravada is to grasp that there is no such thing as a self, but rather the
self is nothing but a series of impersonal, momentary events (dharmas), even
if what we ordinarily call “ego” continues to manifest itself through the
feelings and perceptions that accompany each moment of experience. In
general, the attitude toward our shared embodied condition is colored by
pessimism and disparagement: the ideal practitioner is the monastic who
flees the world and subjects the body to a strict discipline so as to break
the dominion of the senses.
Mahāyāna Buddhism comprises a whole variety of schools of thought,
some of which—like Pure Land Buddhism—emphasize devotional practices
over philosophical speculation. What sets Mahāyāna apart from Theravada,
however, is the fact that Mahāyāna offers a distinct reading of the relationship
between samsara and nirvāna, and argues that the latter is the true nature of
the former, though its nirvanic reality is often obscured by adventitious defile-
ments. Mahāyāna insists that not only is the individual “I” empty of inherent
existence, but all aspects of reality (including the dharmas) are lacking an
inherent essence. Yet this does not mean that reality is nonexistent; rather, all
elements of conventional reality are manifestations of the enlightened nature
of the Buddha that undergirds all sentient beings. In this perspective, where
every individual is a conventional embodiment of the Buddha, one’s own
embodied condition becomes the starting point whereby one becomes the
channel of the Buddha’s wisdom and compassion. The bodhisattva is the one
who consciously embraces the Mahāyāna path and engages in the practice of
the virtues ( paramitās), thereby shedding any conceptual vision of the self
and taking the flourishing of all sentient beings to heart.
Within the Great Vehicle, speculative reflection on Buddhahood as an
all-encompassing force that sustains the cosmos while becoming more
The Virtues of Sensuality ● 231
the bosom of the absolute. Ann Gleig and Fran Grace show that this
tendency, perhaps consistently with the posttheistic character of the “new
other,” is also very much a characteristic of the new religious movements.
At the end of this collection, one might very well conclude that perhaps
the spiritual senses have only been “vestigial organs” for a limited period of
Western history, even if the alleged normativity of Western modernity has
certainly exerted its influence beyond the boundaries of Europe or North
America. The articles in this volume show how the teaching of the spiritual
senses has shaped the spiritual practice of early Christian writers, medieval
women mystics, followers of Daoism in China, and Tantric practitioners in
India and Tibet. In the present day, this notion is being reinterpreted for a
contemporary audience by new spiritual leaders, and its presence in
Scriptural texts is rediscovered using new hermeneutical tools. To para-
phrase David Gray’s conclusion, if spiritual progress is bliss, and bliss is
accomplished through the body by embodied beings, the spiritual senses are
the channels of this bliss, through which the practitioner and the divine are
lured into an eternal game of union.
Notes
1. See Sarah Coakley (ed.), Religion and the Body (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 2–10.
2. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, Vol. III, The Guermantes
Way, 3. 1. 3, trans. Mark Treharne (London and New York: Penguin, 2005).
3. Evagrios, One-Hundred Fifty Three Texts on Prayer, 55, in Philokalia, Vol. 1, ed.
G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber & Faber,
1979).
4. Maximos, Amb. 10 (PG 91: 1137c). The theme of the mirrors probably comes
from the Pseudo-Denys, De Divinis Nominibus 4, 22 (PG 3: 724–5).
5. Maximos, Amb. 38 (PG 91: 1300bc).
6. See Rene Descartes, Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings, trans.
Desmond Clarke (London and New York: Penguin, 1999).
7. Ibid., 30–44.
8. Ibid., 44–51.
9. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), A636, B664.
10. See Allen Wood, Kant’s Rational Theology (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1978), 80.
11. Of course, even within Vajrayā na, there is a plurality of positions on the ques-
tion on the Buddha bodies: the Gelug and the Nyingma schools, for instance,
will have different theories on the number and the significance of the Buddha
bodies. See Paul Williams, Mahā yā na Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations
(London: Routledge, 2008), 172–87.
236 ● Thomas Cattoi
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Contributors
Ann Gleig completed her PhD in the area of Asian Religions in America at Rice
University in December 2010, and is teaching in the Department of Religious Studies
at Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi. She is currently working on a book project
called Homegrown Gurus: From Hinduism in America to American Hinduism, which
will trace the emergence of American-born gurus in Hindu lineages. She is also editor
for Religious Studies Review.
Fran Grace is Professor of Religious Studies and Steward of the Meditation Room
at the University of Redlands, California. Her current teaching and writing examine
different methods for spiritual development and healing, as well as the paths to
self-realization taught by the sages and mystics of the world’s mystical traditions.
With Judith Simmer-Brown, she has edited a volume on Meditation and the
Classroom (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011). She also serves as a
consultant on teaching contemplative-based courses that integrate meditation into
academic learning.
published numerous articles in the field of Buddhist Tantra, with particular atten-
tion to Tibet.
Michelle Voss Roberts is Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture at the Wake
Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her
interests lie in the area of interreligious dialogue, with particular attention to the
conversation between the Hindu and Christian tradition. She is the author of
Dualities: A Theology of Difference (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010) and has
published articles in the fields of comparative theology, feminist theology, and
Hindu-Christian studies. She has also served as cochair of the Comparative
Theology Group of the American Academy of Religion.
Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice The Sermon on the Mount According to
(Ames), 70 Vedanta (Prabhavananda), 19
self-actualization, 107, 115–16 Seven Apertures (qiqiao), 74, 87
self-conception, 50, 52 Seven Po (qipo), 72
self-cultivation, 106–12 sexual activity, 8–9, 29–41, 54–6,
self-development, 178 62n37, 232–3
self-mastery (enkrateia), 225 and meditation, 54–6, 62n37
self-realization, 178, 198 and spirit marriage, 29–41
senses, 1–14, 18–24, 41n4, 45–58, 69– See also Tantra
75, 85, 87–8, 90–2, 96n30, 107, shamanism, 8, 29–41
110, 118, 124–5, 141–6, 148–50, See also spirit marriage
151n3, 152n11, 12, 153n17, 18, Shangqing (Highest Clarity), 10, 71–2,
20, 22, 158n47, 160–70, 176, 74, 81, 98n48
178, 182–4 shangqing zhenmu (Perfect Mother of
in Daoism, 69–75, 87–8, 90–2, Highest Clarity), 86
96n30 Sharf, Robert, 49
and the Diamond Approach, 178 siddha (saint), 3
divinizing the, 45–58 siddha deha (spiritual body), 4
inner. See inner senses siddhi (spiritual perfections), 34
and Mechtilde of Magdeburg, siddhis, 215
160–70 sight/seeing, 1–2, 7–10, 13, 18–22, 36,
physical. See physical senses 47, 62n38, 74, 111, 144, 150,
and purification, 9, 47–55 165, 183, 224, 226, 233
and somatic mysticism, 70, 73–5, 85, “silent transmission,” 14, 206–7, 213
88, 90–2, 96n30 Sima Chengzhen (647–735), 86–7
spiritual. See spiritual senses sinologists, 105–6
See also sight/seeing; smell; sound; Śiva, 34
touch; taste Six Thieves (liuzei), 74
sensuality, virtue of (Christianity), Smart, Ninian, 30
223–35 smell, 5, 13–14, 62n37, 74, 144, 150,
and Amb.38, 226–7 166–7, 178, 182–4, 224, 226
and apatheia, 226–7 Smith, John E., 12, 141–51, 151n2,
and deification (theosis), 227 152n11, 12, 16, 153n17, 22,
and dualism, 223–35 154n25–7, 31, 34, 155n42,
and God, 224–9 156n43–5, 47, 232
and intellect, 225–8 and Descartes, 147
and Kant, 225, 228–9, 231, 233 and emotion, 146–7
and reason, 227–8 and First Epistle of John (1:1), 147
and subjectivity, 223–35 and Origen, 144–50
and Western culture, 223–35 and patrism, 141–51
See also Evagrios Pontikos; Maximos and the “sense of the heart,” 142–3
the Confessor and Sermon on the Mount (Matthew
Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:8), 5:8), 146
146 The Sociology of Religion, 39
Index ● 251