#148. Struggling with Henri Corbin

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Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

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This post contains two short sets of notes about the work of Henri Corbin. It's in two parts: some thoughts about Corbin's basic ideas, and my attempt to express what I think is one of his most central ideas.

Part One: SOME OF CORBIN's BASICS

1) The most basic of Corbin's ideas is simple enough: humans are non-dual with the Ultimate, so that every person is a unique theophany (epiphany, expression, manifestation).

2) Just as our awareness of the external world comes to us via experiences of sound, light, smell, etc., so our awareness of our "theophanic non-duality" comes to us via the experiences of the energy of the cosmos expressing itself within us via images.

3) This is the experience of only a minority in a patriarchal culture such as ours, and we have no readily understandable words to talk about it easily. The closest available are words from non-Western cultures such as the Native American "vision quest" or the Australian "walk about." Corbin uses the Sufism term "recital."

4) While patriarchal culture seems almost to require a world-negating (i.e., matter-negating and body-negating) language, and even though Corbin affirms the non-duality of anthropos-theos, he uses strongly dualistic words with regard to anthropos-cosmos.

5) More easy communication of these ideas awaits two significant cultural advances: an increased awareness of the dynamic and emergent worldview, and the recovery of the mandalic nature of human consciousness.

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Part Two: "PERSON-TO-PERSON"-- thoughts on pp 93-94 of Corbin's Introduction to his book on the "recitals" of Ibn Arabi

The main issue here is the question of what the Abrahamic traditions have in common. Corbin says that the non-conventionally religious or spiritual people of every tradition-- he calls them the "disciples of Khidr"-- constitute a "community of perception."

They see reality differently than do the more conventional literalists and dogmatists, because they perceive reality via that function of the conscious mind called "Intuition" by Jung and "Imaginality" by Corbin. With it, they "penetrate" into the depths of reality, so that what they-- the "disciples of Khidr"-- have in common is the "perception of an over-all unity."

Corbin doesn't expand on the nature of this experience. Here, he only says that Ibn Arabi will provide us with a fine description of it-- in the texts to which this essay is an Introduction.

He moves, instead, in two different directions. One is to offer some brief comments about the visionary nature of Imaginality. The other-- which I think is, in fact, the central point of this whole 100 page Introduction-- deals with what the phase "alone to alone" means. He refers to it a "much misunderstood 'mystical anthropology'."

He begins by saying that each individual person has a two-fold aspect. In addition to the who/what we are (our "self"), we have an other aspect which is not really an other. Here he calls it a "celestial counterpart." Previously he has referred to it by many names, of which I think "angel" and "holy spirit" are the most prominent.

What the names for this other aspect of each person are, in fact, are references to the imaginal images by which we perceive the mystery of human-divine non-duality. And they are "much misunderstood" because, says Corbin, in the conventional context, that divine creative source-- here called Allah-- is thought to be an objective reality separate from-- and equally distinct from-- each created person.

But, he notes, Ibn Arabi says there's also a non-dualistic understanding of the creative source, called "Rabb" in the Quran. Corbin doesn't explain the term, but we have its meaning from Wiki:

It is an Arabic term, found in the Quran as one of the traditional Names of God, meaning Lord, Sustainer, Cherisher, Master. It comes from a root word, yurabbi, which has to do with raising (as in "raising a child") and means something like "fostering things in such a manner as to make them attain one condition after another until they reach their goal of completion." What a delightful evolutionary understanding of the divine-human relationship!

So Rabb is the non-dual divine creative source, specifically understood as being totally active in a most intimately personal promotion of the mystery of ourselves. The role of Rabb-- if "role" is anything like an appropriate word here-- is "fostering, bringing up, nourishing, regulating, completing, accomplishing, cherishing, sustaining and bringing to maturity by evolution from the earliest state to that of the highest perfection" of each of us as utterly unique personal beings. All this certainly sounds like Divine Sophia, as well!

And Rabb is "Lord of all the worlds." He "takes care, nourishes, fosters through every stage of existence, everything that exists."

I think this emphasis on Rabb-- as the divine creative source taking care of, nourishing, fostering through every stage of existence, each human person in the most uniquely intimate manner-- is the essence of Corbin's "mystical anthropology." And what great value it has in the evolutionary context of the New Cosmology and Big History!)

Corbin uses the Feeling function language of the fedele d'amore to take it all a bit further. He says that the particularized (personalized, individualized) relationship between the Lord and his vassal of love goes in both directions. The roles are exchanged, so that the Lord depends on the vassal as much as the vassal depends on the Lord.

I see this as helping "up-date" Louis de Montfort's idea about Divine Wisdom, where Montfort says that "without us, she is nothing." And also Alexander Schmemann's thoughts about our role in the "actualization of the divine potentialities." But Corbin adds something more, an emphasis which, as far as I know, even they don't.

The real secret here, says Corbin, is the Lord's sadness, nostalgia and aspiration to know Himself via those beings who manifest His being. He needs the vassal's theopathy-- that is, the vassal's passionate theophanic experience-- to reveal Him to Himself.

In words a bit more general that of the language of the fedele d'amore, we might say something like this: Rabb so needs each of us that He lets each of us uniquely be rabb for Him.

And this is always in an "alone to alone," says Corbin. I think those words simply-- and awesomely-- mean that the experience is a one-to-one ("man-to-man," "person-to-person") kind of thing.

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#141. The Seven Pillars of Coyote

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ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

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Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

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Post #141 is a first attempt, made in 2004, at relating basic ideas about trickster aspects of Sophia with the help of Jung and Eastern thought.

1. INITIATION. Initiation to, and attestation for, endurance (of opposites within) is intrinsic to the trickster worldview and to the sophiological perspective.

As Louis de Montfort says, the Divine Energy "gives us the courage to be creative. It inspires us to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored. That we should become all that we can be. That’s what it wants from us!"

And its greatest lesson is that, in that on-going process, we can endure anything. Nothing good will get lost. Its most significant spokesman says, 'Don’t be afraid'."

2. HEALING TRANSFORMATION. Understanding of healing transformation via the union of opposites within is not part of the worldview of static-dualistic religion. It is unconventional, even in Bulgakov's sophiology, and tends to be found only within contemporary psychology and still-radical religious-psychology thinkers. It is thus within the realm of Coyote.

3. UNDERSTANDING and COMMUNICATION. Sophia is defined in the Old Testament as perception and understanding. And a definition of Coyote-consciousness definitely includes awareness of our limitations in understanding things well.

The modern field of hermeneutics knows, as Coyote teaches, that we have to dance around things in order to understand them well.

Louis de Montfort stresses communication as a gift of Eternal Wisdom: "Divine Energy gives meaning to our lives especially by serving us as a mentor and teacher. The wisdom it gives us is a profound understanding of the nature of things and a deep intuitive insight into what life is all about. It also gives us powerful communication and relational skills, so that our hearts can reach out to touch the hearts of others."

A hermeneuticist is by definition a communicator across cultural boundaries. And the (phallic) herm stands at every cross roads.

4. ROOTS. Jung's psychology, Bulgakov's sophiology, and at least some aspects of the dynamic evolutionary worldview of modern science all have the same philosophical roots in those western thinkers, the Germanic Romantics, who first brought Eastern thought to western consciousness.

5. PSYCHE and RELATEDNESS. Jung speaks of psyche and Bulgakov of relatedness as essential aspects of reality; both make use of the same language to say that neither the conscious psyche nor the divine-human inter-relatedness are "derived" in any sense but are fundamental "aspects of being."

6. OUR WORK OF WORKS. Individuation, as the process of becoming who-what we have been called into existence to be, is not a significant aspect of dualistic religion. But in the dynamic worldview-- of Jung, Sophia and Coyote-- growth and development is what life is all about.

Louis de Montfort says of Eternal Wisdom: it "gives us the courage to be creative. It inspires us to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored. That we should become all that we can be."

Jung says this is the one really important factor: "the salvation of the world depends on the salvation of the individual soul." And this is of course precisely to what Coyote serves as teacher and guide. And it's also found in Grail legend.

7. ENDS (PURPOSE is MEANING). We have many names for the one same reality: the Tao, how the world works, the cosmic ordering principle, Sophia as God's creative helper-craftsperson, the counselor of the Creator, the angel-guardian of the cosmos, etc.

The point of it all is that there is direction to the evolution of the universe and to what Coyote directs our growth and development: unity-in-diversity: all that can be said of eternal cosmic wisdom can also be said of the wisdom of the body.

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#105. "The Love of Eternal Wisdom"

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This is the 5th in my series of blog entries beginning with #101-- a collection of notes and essays from my files all dealing in one way or another with the emerging new religious consciousness. They are mostly things I've written over the last decade to clarify my own thoughts but which I want to make available for anyone who might be interested. This post (#105) was originally a follow up to the letter in post #104.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

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Dear D&M:

What follows should really be called something like "Sam’s one-page 'contemporary' version of Barbara Moore's translation of Louis de Montfort's The Love of Eternal Wisdom." I wrote this a couple of summers ago; I did it primarily for my own benefit, as a way of better understanding the ideas connected with Sophia.

This introductory page is an integral part of the effort. As I said earlier, I'm sending this in conjunction with the long essay on Bulgakov from the St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly to give you an example of the "opposite ends of the sophiological spectrum."

The one thing I need to add to the Intro and text that follow is that while the language of my one-page summary is not one de Montfort would (or could) have used, I think I have been able to be fairly faithful to the 'flavor' or 'spirit' of what he has to say. It is complicated, however: in his opening prayer, for example, he addresses Sophia as “my princess,” and yet equates her with Jesus. Hmmm.

I think the most interesting thing about all this is not how odd it seems, but that it exists at all. -Sam

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Introduction

I have been having fun with Barbara Moore's book. I tried to do a one-page summary of Louis de Montfort's commentary about Eternal Wisdom.

Moore says Montfort’s book is probably based on notes for a retreat he was asked to give for the youthful members of a newly founded religious order devoted to the Holy Spirit. Montfort himself was a young and enthusiastic missionary priest at the time, so the resulting text is filled with the breezy slang of a youthful but charismatic leader trying to speak in a hip style to an even more youthful audience. All set within the context “baroque piety of 17th century France.” The result is dreadful.

So why bother with it? No one had done anything like it in western Christianity since the time of the early church fathers. And it would be another hundred and fifty years before the earliest Sophiologists appeared in Russian Orthodoxy. It's definitely worth looking at.

I probably spent as much time trying to come up with a good name for what Montfort calls “Eternal Wisdom” as I did in trying to summarize his text. What works best for me, so far, is “the Divine-Cosmic Energy." It’s appropriate and contemporary, and has the key advantage of putting Montfort’s thought in the perspective of a dynamic cosmos, utterly absent from the 18th century worldview. 

But I'm not really happy with “Cosmic Energy,” either. Sometimes, I think “the forces of nature” would be best. And I’m even less content with my summary. Above, I said “it's definitely a fun project.” Here, I’m thinking, “what a drag.”

Early on in his text, Montfort (writing around 1700 AD) quotes the author of the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon (writing roughly 100 BC), saying “I’m very confused. I feel like my mind is going in a half-dozen directions at once.” That is exactly how I feel. I have much admiration for Barbara Moore for taking on such a difficult project! 

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THE LOVE OF THE DIVINE-COSMIC ENERGY

Divine-Cosmic Energy takes priority before anything else. It pervades the universe and is responsible for everything, and all the good that it is, is ours for the taking. We humans are just like it; we are its supreme creation, its unique representative and living portrait. Its equals. Yet without it, we’re nothing. But-- without us-- it, too, is nothing. Its whole meaning and purpose is to be “for” us. It delights in us and needs us-- we, human persons at the heart of cosmos-- for its own fulfillment.

If what it’s all about is our happiness and enjoyment and we’re unhappy, that means we must be missing something. Maybe we’re just unaware. “Clue-less.” Or maybe we’re too distracted. Society has never been so bad, with its focus on externals and trivia, in making it easy for us to forget what life is about and to ignore the fullness of life which the Divine-Cosmic Energy offers us.

However, if we do pay attention to it, everything good is ours. It fulfills our heart’s desires. But we have to be attentive. We need to focus on it as much as a man does when he’s out looking for a woman. When we do, it responds like a woman happy to be found. She gives herself to us, totally.

This Divine Energy is such an amazing thing! There is nothing greater, nothing more important. And no violence, pain or bitterness is connected with it in any way. We really can’t put it into words. But we can experience it. It’s like food or music: we can tune in, taste it, know it by experience.

And it really does have a profound personal desire to belong to us. It personally cares about us, especially if we’re unhappy. It wants to share everything with us. It is so positively oriented towards us that it’s like a stalker. The Uncreated Energy is always pursuing us! But there’s no reason to be afraid of it. What it wants is that we should be its friends and fellow workers.

We can see its effects in people who befriend it. They stand out clearly as enlightened, inspired, encouraged, protected. It’s obvious they are being guided, that their lives are meaningful and happy. If we are open to it, the Divine-Cosmic Energy will guide us, too. Its goal is nothing less than riches and fullness of life for us; if we befriend it, it will supply us with everything we need.

Although it is in charge of the whole world, it works unobtrusively. This means that often we don’t recognize it, especially in life’s difficulties. But it’s the Cosmic Energy that, in fact, gets us through rough times. It so intensely wants to give itself to us that, if it’s ours, we never really lack anything.

Divine Energy gives meaning to our lives especially by serving us as a mentor and teacher. The wisdom it gives us is a profound understanding of the nature of things and a deep intuitive insight into what life is all about. It also gives us powerful communication and relational skills, so that our hearts can reach out to touch the hearts of others. Perhaps most important of all, it gives us the courage to be creative. It inspires us to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored. That we should become all that we can be. That’s what it wants from us!

Its greatest need, from its point of view, and its greatest gift, from our point of view, is our collaboration with it in the on-going creation of the world. Together, we and the Divine Energy bring about the New Creation. And its greatest lesson is that, in that on-going process, we can endure anything. Nothing good will get lost. Its most significant spokesman says, “Don’t be afraid.” 

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#43. Morning Wisdom: Sophia as Guide

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This blog entry is the second of four about biblical images of Wisdom/Sophia. The main purpose of these four related posts is to look at western culture's religious tradition in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution, and to do so with the help of the four-fold perspectives on the human mind I've described or mentioned in many previous posts.

As unlikely as it seems, and as unfamiliar as the Bible's wisdom literature is to most of us, these biblical images of Wisdom/Sophia can help us to move beyond the lopsidedness of the static, dualistic and patriarchal worldview of recent centuries and help us move toward a better understanding of ourselves as creative participants in the evolution of the universe.

I've called this post "Morning Wisdom" because it's about that group of wisdom images which relate especially to the East on the Medicine Wheel. "East" includes morning, springtime and the Thinking function of our conscious minds.

I've also included "Sophia as Guide" in the name because this group of wisdom images especially expresses one of the most central aspects of the anthropos-theos relationship: that Divine Wisdom not only fashions us to be who-and-what we are but also guides and directs us in our efforts to become all that we have been fashioned to be.

The primal element connected with the east is air. As wind and breath (pneuma, spiritus, ruah, vayu, chi), it is in us as much as we are in it. The animal associated with the east on the Medicine Wheel is the Golden Eagle of the Dawn, an image of our mind's Thinking function which focuses on the dynamic flow of time. In Native American tradition, the Morning Star, the Rising Sun, is also connected with knowledge and growing self-awareness.

All of these images-- the freshness of the breeze on a springtime morning, the eagle flying high in the sky at dawn, the sharp piercing rays of the rising sun-- evoke new beginnings.

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Old Russian icons show Sophia as the Guardian Angel of the Universe, the "wisdom from on high who orders all things mightily," as the old Advent hymn says. We have a familiar phase, "the wisdom of the body," expressing the idea that, while we don't understand much that goes on in our anatomy and physiology, the innate wisdom of the body knows what to do; it heals cuts and digests food, for example, without any conscious effort on our part. In the same way, there is a wisdom of the universe: Divine Sophia guiding and directing all things "mightily."

It's easy to forget that "all things" includes you and me. Just as modern science helps us to see that we are the "universe become conscious of itself," so the Bible's wisdom literature helps us to see that as participants in the cosmic process, our personal growth and development is no less "ordered" by the same Divine Wisdom that guides the sun and moon and stars. Our individuation process-- our "ontogenetic development" in the jargon of biogenetic structuralism-- is guided in the same way.

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All of this is what these "morning" images of Sophia express. The view of God which western culture inherited from the Enlightenment period sees a distant and alien divinity who created the world but then abandoned it, to let it flounder on its own. It's such a culturally pervasive viewpoint that it makes it difficult for us to appreciate the very different perspectives offered by the wisdom images.

In contrast, post-Enlightenment evolutionary science helps us appreciate these 25-century-old wisdom perspectives, to appreciate that Sophia/Wisdom is not a clockwork creator and that we have not been brought into existence out of nothingness and darkness only to be hung out to dry.

We are not alone, we're not on our own, Creative Wisdom does not abandon us. These wisdom images picture the master artisan of the universe as active here and now, not only in our bodies but also in our minds, hearts and psyche.

Another reason why it's so hard for us to appreciate these images of divine Sophia is that for many centuries religious authorities have presented us with a picture of a creator who treats humanity as children and who does not expect us to be able to be in charge of ourselves. (It's really those patriarchal authorities who want to be in charge of us, of course.) So we especially need these "morning" images of a Creative Wisdom which not only respects human initiative but calls us to be nothing less than what we are: the "world become conscious of itself"; to be, in Karl Rahner's words, free and conscious "persons in the world."

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In the previous post (on Evening Wisdom: Sophia as Architect) I shared many thoughts from the work on Raimon Panikkar about the mood of evening. With modern technology and instant communication-- not just electric lights but especially TV and now iPhones!-- we have lost the earlier sense of what happens within us as the daylight hours draw to a close and darkness comes on. But I don't need to do that with regard to the mood of morning.

Each of us knows by experience that morning means a new start to our lives, just as we know by experience that each springtime marks a new start for the life of the earth. Many non-western cultures still have their new year in spring, and even western culture once did, until Julius Caesar transferred it to the time just after the winter solstice. The New Year used to begin on March 25, which in those days was the date of the spring equinox, when after many months of winter cold and darkness the hours of daylight begin to be greater than the hours of darkness.

We don't need science to explain to us the mood of springtime or morning. Think of that special morning in early spring when we first hear birdsong again and when we first can smell the life oozing up out of the earth. For many of us perhaps the strongest image of springtime newness is sunrise on Easter morning, but all of us still experience every morning's dawn and sunrise as a new start to our lives.

In the morning, we "rise and shine," as people of earlier generations used to say. We get up and go to work. Not just to a nine-to-five job, but to the larger task of making something of ourselves and of making something of our world.

Even though western culture doesn't have the idea-- yet-- that each of us is "the universe become conscious of itself" and that we have, therefore, a participatory, creative task in the cosmic process, the mood of morning and spring is clear enough: we are called to take responsibility for our selves and our lives, our loved-ones, our jobs and our interests. In making a new and better world, we have a lot of work to do.

And what these morning images of Sophia tell us is that, just as we can trust the wisdom of the body, so we can trust the wisdom of the universe to guide us in our work of creative participation in the cosmic evolutionary process.

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It's this same experience of newness and creativity that Karl Rahner is talking about when he says that one of our primary "existential" experiences of being a person is that we experience ourselves as free. Freedom has to do with "our place in the vast scheme of things."

As I said in post #36 (on Aspects of the Immense Transition), "the experience of freedom means that, although we know ourselves to be limited in so many ways, we also experience ourselves as being able to make choices. Probably the best word we have to describe this existential aspect of our personal experience is self-determination."

In terms of neurological functioning, the main idea is what biogenetic structuralist jargon refers to as the cognitive extension of prehension: because of the structure and function of the human brain, our actions are not controlled totally by our instincts. We can choose, in ways our animal relatives can not. And it's in making these free choices that we "actualize"-- make real and actual-- our individual uniqueness which is our personal contribution to the evolution of the universe. We have a place, indeed, "in the vast scheme of things."

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In Jungian terms, it is the conscious mind's Thinking function that allows us to see the world as dynamic rather than static. Thinking is a judgment function, based primarily on the activity of the brain's Temporal lobe and concerned with distinctions, differentiation and diversity. It is concerned especially with the flow of time and, just like the Golden Eagle of the Dawn, it flies high and sees vast distances.

Sequence-- the flow of time from past to future-- is the key. The Thinking function's orientation to sequence and flow is what keeps us moving forward. Its energy is always directed toward newness, growth and development. And not just to the evolution of the cosmos and of life on Earth, but especially to our personal evolutionary development -- via what Jung calls "the individuation process" and what biogenetic structuralism calls our "ontogenetic development."

It's important to keep in mind that the main activity of the Thinking function isn't logical reasoning but questioning. As I mentioned in post #30 (on Ways of Being Religious), the Thinking function's orientation to the dynamic flow of time (and thus to cosmic and personal evolutionary development) has been wonderfully described by the artist-psychologist Steven Gallegos. He calls it "the psyche's relentless search for wholeness and the 'not yet'."

It's this "relentless searching" which explains why being religious via the Thinking function has to do with effort ("asceticism" in the classical sense), the discipline we need to become all that we can be. The most fundamental ascetic practice is simply being attentive: paying attention, being aware-- being "mindful," as the Buddhist tradition emphasizes.

And at the heart of the Thinking function's way of being religious is courage: the willingness to courageously follow that inner generative drive for enterprise and exploration which we experience as personal freedom.

That impetus-- that "inner generative drive"-- is a way of describing the work of Divine Wisdom who guides and directs us-- by our genes, our cultural background, our personality and the circumstances of our lives-- to become all that we can be.

And "to become all that we can be" is precisely what Sophia wants of us. Back in post #19 (on Diversity: Our Service to God) I mentioned the work of the 17th-century Catholic saint Louis de Montfort who wrote of Divine Wisdom long before the modern re-discovery of the wisdom perspectives. Montfort was a young and enthusiastic missionary priest when he wrote The Love of Eternal Wisdom and, as I said in that post, the resulting text "is filled with the breezy slang of a youthful but charismatic leader trying to speak in a hip style to an even more youthful audience."

Montfort describes Sophia as almost like a stalker; she is always pursuing us. "Divine Wisdom inspires us to do everything, to go everywhere, to try every new thing, to leave nothing unexplored. That we should become all that we can be. That," says this young visionary saint, "is what the Wisdom of God wants from us!"

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Montfort also says that Eternal Wisdom "gives us the courage to be creative." He says that Wisdom's "greatest need, from its point of view, and its greatest gift, from our point of view, is our collaboration with it in the on-going creation of the world."

As I mentioned in the second of my two posts on the Immense Transition (#36), an emphasis on creative transformation, especially on having the courage to be an explorer or pioneer, is not something that was stressed in the religious writings of the past. But as we move beyond the limitations of the Thinking function's imprisonment in the patriarchal perspectives of former centuries, we are coming to recognize, as Matthew Fox notes in his book on Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet, that it's precisely our creativity, via our free choices, that defines us.

"Human creativity," says Fox, "is not frosting on the cake" but "integral to our sustainability." Creative newness is our "survival mechanism... it is the essence of who we are."

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There's one more image of Sophia that goes along with "teacher," "guide" and "counselor." It, too, is unfamiliar, but it's especially important. It's the one that shows up when we are most in need of becoming more aware of ourselves. I mentioned it in one of my very earliest posts (#3, High School 50th Anniversary Report) and also more recently in post #36 (on the second of two posts on Aspects of the Immense Transition): the image of the trickster.

Native American peoples and all the earlier pre-industrial cultures which daily honor the first rays of the sun know about the trickster image. Even Louis de Montfort saw it in 17th-century Catholic France. Montfort says that "although Eternal Wisdom is in charge of the whole world, it works unobtrusively." And "This means," he says, "that often we don’t recognize it, especially in life’s difficulties."

This divine guidance that we "often don't recognize" is described in many religious traditions with animal names such as Coyote, Raven, Brer Rabbit or Anansi the Spider. Although they are often presented in a negative way, these trickster figures don't put obstacles in our path just for the fun of it. They are ways that help us to become more aware of ourselves, to be more conscious of what's needed in our efforts to become all that we can be. And they always promote cooperation rather than competition as the way to our creative transformation.

Trickster images especially help us in one additional way: in recognizing our need to face evil, death and tragedy as aspects of the cosmic flow. In the words of Claude Tresmontant, the author of the book on Hebrew Thought who I quoted back in post #39, transformation "often comes to us via boredom or suffering."

As director of the way the world works and guide to our personal growth and development, Sophia tests us; in her role as trickster-guide in our path to creative newness she helps us to accept our woundedness and vulnerability and to make the right choices in our efforts to become all that we can be. The Book of Ecclesiasticus says explicitly that "She will lead us over rough, narrow and winding ways."

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Here are some thoughts from Hal Taussig's book, Wisdom's Feast, Sophia in Study and Celebration, that I mentioned in the previous post which are especially interesting and relevant with regard to this morning/guide aspect of Divine Wisdom.

Taussig begins by noting that "because she is at the heart of all things coming into being, Sophia is Wisdom itself." It's not, he says, "an obvious connection for the twentieth century mind."

In chapter 4 of the book of Proverbs the author talks about Sophia this way: "Listen my children, to a father's instruction; pay attention, and learn what clear perception is. Acquire Sophia, acquire perception; never forget her. Do not desert her, she will keep you safe, love her, she will watch over you."

Wisdom will not only watch over us; Sophia is identical with "perception" itself, with being a conscious person. Taussig spells it out: "The relationship a person has to Sophia is virtually the same as their own relationship to the process of understanding."

Sophia is also imaged as the process of learning in chapter 6 of Wisdom: "Quick to anticipate those who desire her, she makes herself known to them." Sophia means learning!

At the heart of the creative process, Sophia "pervades and permeates all things" (Wisdom 7). She is at the heart of all that one studies.

Wisdom 6 proclaims: "She is readily seen by those who love here and found by those who look for her. In every thought of theirs, she comes to meet them." As participants in the cosmic process, our conscious growth and development results, in Taussig's words, "in a personal encounter with the One at the heart of the creative process."

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Taussig also notes that most of the texts about Sophia have to do with her relationship to humanity. The first chapter of Proverbs, for example, says of her: "Sophia calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the public squares; she calls out at the street corners, she delivers her message at the city gates."

Wisdom wants to be our teacher! Proverbs 8 says: "Does Sophia not call meanwhile? On the hilltop, on the road, at the crossways, she takes her stand; beside the gates of the city, at the approaches to the gates she cries aloud, 'O people I am calling you; my cry goes out to the children of humanity'."

"Listen, I have serious things to tell you," she adds. "From my lips come honest words. My mouth proclaims the truth. All the words I say are right, nothing twisted in them, nothing false, all straightforward to the one who understands, honest to those who know what knowledge means."

Taussig notes that Sophia gives the impression of being impatient with Earth's children: "Her main complaint is that they will not listen to her."

Taussig also points out that the most interesting thing here is that Sophia never teaches anything specific. What she teaches is herself. Sophia is something and someone to obtain and possess. And the reward is fullness of life. In Proverbs 8 she says, "With me are riches and honor, lasting wealth and justice." And the first chapter of Ecclesiasticus says: "She fills their whole house with their heart's desire, and their storerooms with her produce. The crown of Sophia makes peace and health flourish... [for] those who hold her close."

Sophia and her rewards are identical. Proverbs 4 says, "Acquire Sophia, acquire perception. Hold her close, and she will make you great; embrace her, and she will be your pride." And Wisdom 8 says, "If in this life wealth be a desirable possession, what is more wealthy than Sophia whose work is everywhere?"

Taussig says that as the learning process itself, Sophia "calls us to a life of seeking understanding of the world in which we live. Since she is the One who participates in bringing everything into being, she is the natural teacher and the natural content." He spells it out explicitly: "The learning process is a way that humans share in the creative process." Our personal growth and development, and our growth in awareness of the world, are Divine Wisdom.

In the previous post, I remarked, "Can science and religion converge more explicitly?" Here I would put it in more personal terms: Can our personal growth and development be understood any more explicitly as being convergent with the activity of Divine Sophia "whose work is everywhere"?

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Chapters 10 and 11 of Wisdom offer not just an dynamic view of our personal transformation but also of human history itself as it is guided by Sophia. There, as Taussig says, "the writer retells the sacred history of the Hebrew people from Sophia's point of view." In the stories of "Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham and Lot, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses," Sophia is seen as the designer and guide/director of human history and cultural development.

Wisdom 11 even describes the Exodus event as the work of Sophia: "She herself was their shelter by day and their starlight through the night. She brought them across the Red Sea, led them through that immensity of water, while she swallowed their enemies in the waves, then spat them out from the depths of the abyss."

Taussig notes that the familiar images of the pillar of cloud and fire (which guided the slaves through the desert in their escape from Egypt) are described here as shelter and starlight. And Sophia not only leads the Hebrews through the sea, she is also described as a kind of sea monster swallowing the Egyptians and spitting them out.

Fascinating stuff!

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My main point in the previous post (on Evening Wisdom: Sophia as Architect) is that Sophia fashions us to be who-and-what we are; as creative artist, architect, artificer and designer of our identity, the Mystery gives itself to us. My main point in this post on Morning Wisdom is that as counselor, teacher and trickster-guide, Divine Wisdom calls to each of us personally, asking for our free and full cooperation in the work of the creation of the world and of ourselves.

The question once again is, in Karl Rahner's words, "Are we willing to make the effort to be sensitive and responsive?"

sam@macspeno.com

#41. Four-fold Wisdom

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This post is the latest in my attempts to share thoughts about the Judeo-Christian tradition in the context of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution. It's the first of five (hopefully short) posts offering an introduction to the four-fold aspects of Divine Wisdom, with a separate post on each.

In posts #38 (Exodus) and #39 (Hebrew Thought) I made the point that the Exodus event, the Great Escape from Egypt, marked the beginning of the western world's evolutionary worldview and that we owe our modern dynamic-evolutionary perspective to Hebrew thought. As the French philosopher Claude Tresmontant whom I mentioned in several recent posts observed, the realization of the Hebrew sages that it is the nature of whatever exists to be continually evolving was as significant in human history as the discovery of fire.

Post #40 (Wisdom/Sophia) deals with an additional aspect of Hebrew thought especially important to the Immense Transition humanity is currently undergoing: our movement away from the patriarchal worldview which we inherited from ancient classical culture. The Bible's wisdom literature offers help in moving our understanding of God beyond the older image of a harsh patriarchal divinity.

The accumulated insights of the Hebrew scriptures with regard to Divine Wisdom are especially important at this time in history because they are at the core of the Judeo-Christian tradition and thus of western society. While the wisdom perspective was lost after the Dark Ages, and so seems unfamiliar to us in our still-rationalist and patriarchal situation, it is in fact nothing less than the religious source of the western evolutionary view of cosmos and life on Earth, and so is of tremendous relevance to our continued cultural development at this crisis time in our history.

So far, Western culture has shied away from dealing with the meaning and purpose of our existence in a non-static and non-patriarchal context. But the wisdom literature provides us with just what we need: an in-depth understanding of the significance of our lives in an evolutionary perspective.

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While many religious traditions have a feminine divinity dating back to Neolithic times, in the Judeo-Christian tradition the image of Divine Wisdom seems to have emerged first among the Diaspora Jews living in Alexandria, Egypt, several centuries before the Common Era. It apparently emerged as a way of tempering the more rigid and harsh aspects of the distant and transcendent-only divinity of earlier Judaism. It is an important part of the evolution of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and more generally of western culture's understanding of God.

Jesus and the early Christians understood themselves in the wisdom context, but patriarchal perspectives within Christianity have kept it submerged for many centuries. It has appeared spontaneously, however, many times throughout Christian history. Byzantine art and architecture in the earlier Christian centuries are good examples. Other examples include the famous Lutheran shoemaker Jacob Boehm, the French Catholic saint Louis de Montfort, and the early 19th-century German Romanticist philosopher Frederick von Schelling.

An especially significant example of the spontaneous appearance of Divine Wisdom is the 20th-century religious thought of Russian Orthodoxy. Russian Orthodox thinkers led the way from the mid-1800s right up until the end of World War II. Some of their names may be familiar: Feodor Bukharev, Vladimir Soloviev and, especially, Sergius Bulgakov.

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The wisdom perspective is emerging once again in our day, as we move-- ever so slowly-- beyond the values and attitudes of patriarchy. It is especially relevant to the insights and perspectives of the New Cosmology because this dynamic religious understanding converges with the scientific-evolutionary view. It allows us to bring together our contemporary concerns for peace, social justice and environmental integrity into a non-static, non-dualistic, and non-patriarchal perspective.

As Tresmontant observed, violence and war are a distortion of the cosmic process. A recovery of the wisdom perspective which lies at the heart of our western culture can bring us back to valuing human life, individual persons and our relatedness to the Earth. In the wisdom literature, Divine Wisdom not only helps to fashion the world but also delights in it. "How happy I was with God's earth and its people," says Sophia in The Book of Proverbs.

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The loss of the wisdom perspective is especially clear in the variety of names and words we need to express these ideas. We're not yet comfortable with either the words or the insights presently available to us. Wisdom is called hochma in Hebrew, sophia in Greek, for example, but referred to as logos by the gospel writers.

In the old-fashioned language of the King James Bible, The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon says: "Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily: and sweetly doth she order all things." ("Sweetly" here has the old meaning of "skillfully" or "proficiently." We still have this meaning today, although it sounds to us like slang, as in "He has a sweet golf swing.")

When Wisdom herself speaks in Ecclesiasticus (also called The Book of Sirach), she says: "Then the creator of all things commanded [and he that made me, rested in my tabernacle. And he said to me]: Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, and thy inheritance in Israel, and take root in my elect."

It's not easy to connect that sentence with the words from the Prologue of the Gospel of John which say: "The logos pitched its tent (his tabernacle) among us." (That's the literal translation of the familiar words, "the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.")

So the archaic words and the old languages don't help as much as they might. One thing that can help us a lot, as I see it, is our contemporary quaternary understanding of human consciousness which I wrote about in post #29 (The Four-fold Mind). The quaternary perspective can help us to a far richer understanding of that Divine Wisdom which pitched its tent among us.

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Because of my long-time interest in the fact that our minds function in four different ways, I was delighted to find references to it in the work of Brad Blanton which I described in post #27 (Radical Honesty: The "How-to" of Ontogenesis). I found Blanton's work a help in understanding the Biogenetic Structuralist view of the stages of human development which I described in three earlier posts on ontogenesis, #23, #24 & #25.

As I said in post #29, "We may not know exactly what the mind is, but we do know that it's not something static: it's not so much a thing as a dynamic process. We also know-- although it's less commonly understood-- that it operates in four distinct ways."

As I also said in that post, "The basic idea of the four-fold mind comes from the human sciences, specifically psychology and cultural anthropology." In the Immense Transition we are undergoing-- from the static worldviews of rationalist science and dualistic religion to the dynamic, evolutionary and unitive perspectives of the New Cosmology-- the quaternary perspective is invaluable for our self-understanding.

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Both the Jungian view of the four-fold mind and the teachings connected with the Native American Medicine Wheel insist that, if we are to be complete persons with an integrated rather than lopsided consciousness, all four functions are needed. It is the lopsidedness of western culture which accounts for the great damage that patriarchal attitudes inflict on women, children and the environment, and is the cause of much of our racial and religious conflict.

So what I'm hoping to do in the next four posts is to bring together the various quaternary perspectives of Jung and the four directions of the Native American tradition with the wisdom of the wisdom literature of the Hebrews. I also want to link those views with the four traditional ways of being religious that I described in post #30 (Ways of Being Religious) and with German theologian Karl Rahner's existential analysis of human experience as self-presence, freedom, transcendence and grace that I described in post #34 (Talking About Us).

In Rahner's language we experience ourselves as aware, open, free and given; but those four words can only hint at the depth of Rahner's understanding, just as C. G. Jung's names-- Thinking, Feeling, Intuition and Sensation-- for the four functions of consciousness can only give us tags for the concepts and insights Jung provides. In contrast to these ideas and concepts, the Bible's wisdom literature provides us with images of Divine Wisdom, just as the Medicine Wheel teachings provide us with images of ways of being human.

And images touch us at a very deep level.

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As I mentioned above, I described the Biogenetic Structuralist understanding of the ontogenetic process in posts #23-25. It is a scientific understanding of the growth and development of human consciousness as it takes place in the context of a culture's cosmology; it happens via the three stages of belief, experience and participation. That participatory phase of conscious development is also referred to by the term "contemplation" and, perhaps surprisingly, it has the same meaning there that it does in a religious context.

In post #26 (Help from Uncle Louie), I described some of Thomas Merton's especially helpful ideas about religious experience available to us via images. He says, among other things, that it is "the result of personal experience at a deeper than rational level" and he calls it "the highest form of cognition." It brings us, he says, "into living participation with an experience of basic and universal human values."

While ideas provide us with understanding, something else results from images: communion. Images, says Merton, "put us in communion with our deepest selves." They "deepen our communion with the concrete" and they put us in communion with the real world: images "bring us to an awareness of our place in the scheme of things."

And they empower us to participate in the cosmic process: "images bring us into harmony with world and its energies," says Uncle Louie. In contrast to concepts, images give "a privileged status as a conscious participant in communion with the energies of the cosmos."

That's what the biblical images of Divine Wisdom can do for us. And they are especially valuable because they come from the same Hebrew source that provides us with humanity's initial insights about evolutionary development and creative newness.

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Back in post #34 (Talking About Us), I mentioned the work of a contemporary pioneer in matter-mind studies in the realm of the psychotherapy, Jungian analyst Michael Conforti. He observes in his book Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, & Psyche that "The patterns of reality are continually being incarnate in space and time." I noted there that this insight sounds a lot like Karl Rahner's analysis that we experience ourselves as the "embodiment" of an "incomprehensible source." And it sounds a lot like the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov's phrase that we are "actualizations of the divine potentialities."

In chapter 9 of Conforti's book he notes that "every nation and culture has recognized the presence" of the archetypal energies of the cosmos (in the form of gods, spirits, powers) and that "we too need to find some way for including again in our notions of consciousness the relationship between the personal and the non-personally acquired transpersonal."

As he says, "In this way, we create the opportunity to reconnect to the generative matrix of human and global experience" and this "capacity to recognize and understand the meaning of archetypal fields offers important opportunities for resolving conflicts on the personal and collective, or global, levels."

"Clearly," says Conforti, "the time is ripe to apply our understanding of archetypal dynamics to global concerns." As I see it, the biblical images of wisdom at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition provide western culture the opportunity to do just that.

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The Bible's images of Divine Wisdom fall into four main groupings. They correspond, as I've said, with Jung's four-fold functions of consciousness, with the four traditional ways of being religious, with Rahner's analysis of human experience, and with the images of the Native American Medicine Wheel. My plan is to spell out one of these four groups of correspondences in each of the next four posts. (I'm well-aware that this is an ambitious project!)

If you're also feeling ambitious, there are innumerable web sites dealing with Sophia from every imaginable slant-- New Age, Feminist, Christian, Gnostic, Sophiological-- except, as far as I know, the quaternary perspective. Meanwhile, I want to mention three especially good books about Wisdom which you might like to know about.

For a strong academic perspective on the history of wisdom, there's Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza's In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (Herder & Herder, 1994). Fiorenza is a feminist Catholic theologian and Professor at Harvard Divinity School.

In terms of depth, breadth and vision, the best book I know of is The Future of Wisdom: Toward a Rebirth of Sapiential Christianity (Continuum, 2007) by Bruno Barnhart. Bruno is a monk at the Camaldolese Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California. I visited him there in the spring of 2002. [Bruno and his fellow monks were evacuated from their monastery during the recent fires in June-July 2008. So were the monks of the near-by Buddhist monastery at Tassajara. Both sets of buildings were still standing, last I heard. (Update: As of 22 July, the evacuations were lifted for both monasteries.)]

And for a wonderful collection of texts from the Bible's wisdom literature, with lots of practical down-to-earth ideas for making use of them, see Hal Taussig's Wisdom's Feast: Sophia in Study and Celebration (Harpercollins, 1989). It's coauthored with Susan Cole, Marian Ronan and Susan Cady. Taussig is a New Testament scholar, Near East historian and Methodist pastor. I heard him speak at few years ago at a Jungian gathering in Media, Pennsylvania. It's a sign of the times that he's been interviewed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

In the Byzantine churches, before the scriptures are read aloud the deacon cries out, "Wisdom! Let us attend!" Bruno notes in The Future of Wisdom that it's as if the Earth itself is ripening in our time. "The time is ripe," Michael Conforti says. Indeed! Let us attend!

sam@macspeno.com