"BreakingThrough" the Clutter: Meister Eckhart, Boehme, & Christian Mysticism

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"BreakingThrough" the Clutter: Meister Eckhart, Boehme, & Christian Mysticism 

“The light shone in the darkness. He came to his own, and all who received him became sons of God by reason of power; power was given to them to become Sons of God.”     Jn. 1:5, 11, 12

Recently, I watched an excellent video on YouTube presented by the Ritman University in Amsterdam about the life and works of Jacob Boehme. The speaker, Dr. Wouter J. Hanegraaf spoke at length about Boehme’s work and provided a keen understanding of the 17^th century mystic. However, when he spoke of perhaps the most important concept in Boehme’s repertoire,Ungrunde, he moved past it without barely a remark on what it is or what it entails. But what is it? What is this strange German word? I researched the term and discovered that Ungrunde is translated as “groundless”. It is the dark emptiness before creation. Andrew Weeks describes it as the “uncertainty which precedes the divine Will’s arousing itself to self-awareness (though in the deity this “happens” in eternity.”[1] Ungrunde is an aspect of Via Negativa or darker paths of experiencing divinity. It may be compared to the Kabbalistic Ein Sof, the “infinite” in which all union and wholeness are secreted in the secrecy that cannot be grasped and cannot be known…the only one that knows, yet without knowing, is the highest desire, concealed of all concealed, nothingness.[2] Ungrunde is a terrifying thing. It is a void. True and utter nothingness. A place the mind really doesn’t want to familiarize itself with. But why did Professor Hanegraaf  refrain from discussing the nuances of Ungrunde? I believe it is due to the stigma attached to dark or negative theology. Many are wary to speak of things like left-hand magick, dark aspects of the godhead, or the Other. They prefer to stay in the light. And this is understandable certainly in light of the fact that the same legitimacy afforded to traditional avenues of experiencing God must be afforded dark theology if any concept of the reality of belief is to be accepted.

Via Negativa has a variety of currents that describe its processes and method yet many are largely shunned even by practitioners of the esoteric arts. The concept is made up of cautionary tales, legends of broken minds, and even death. I call it the conspiracy of Harpocrates due to the lack of discussion on the subject. But perhaps it’s time to shed a dimming light on Via Negativa in order to better understand occult interactions that many deem horrifying. Why? Because the avenues of Via Negativa inhabit the undiscovered content of the Other. It is truly a landscape of mystery and uncharted oceans. There are some that have claimed to have explored these areas. They return with descriptions of opaqueness, scarecrows, unnamed entities, demons, emptiness, and terror. Via Negativa is without any coherent system at all. It is chaos and the only way out is to be lostand manage to find a way back. In addition, describing Via Negativa is no easy task. Because of the limitations of language, discerning the idea becomes an exercise in naming. But naming ‘what it is’ doesn’t provide insights into the concept because by its very nature, Via Negativa is a journey from what the mind can grasp into something that is hidden and silent. It is sometimes thought of as the pathless path of contemplating God.

Judaic mystics call it ‘Ayin’ or nothingness. David G. Abraham ha-lavan in masoret ha-berit  (end of 13^th century) defined the Ayin as having more being than any other  being in the world, but since it is simple and all other simple things are complex when compared with its simplicity, so in comparison it is called nothing. [3] Daniel Matt also elucidates the concept when he states that “Ayin is a window on the oneness that undermines the manifest appearance of the world. The ten thousand things are not as independent or fragmented as they seem. There is an invisible matrix, a swirl that generates and recycles being. The ego cannot abide Ayin, you cannot wallow in nothingness. In Ayin, for an eternal moment, boundaries disappear.[4] The dissolution of boundaries is really an ontological emptying of divinity. During an event of this kind, either by ritual or self-activation, the boundaries of our and God’s understanding of the self are dissolved.

Jewish mystics also contemplate Via Negativa in the notion of the Abyss of Abada. On the Tree of Life there exists what is known as the Supernal Triad. The triad is made up of the first three emanations on the Tree, namely Keter, Binah and Chokhmah, Each emanation is a part of God’s and our own consciousness. The Tree then is a glyph for all of creation. But the Supernal Triad cannot be grasped due to the absence of duality amongst the three Sephiroth. Separation from the Godhead or ‘duality’ doesn’t occur until the emanation known as Chesed. Furthermore, the Supernal Triad is separated from the rest of the Tree by a double-row of veiled curtains called the Paroket. The abyss is a liminal space between these veils. And the abyss is also the unitary experience of being one with the Godhead. It’s clear why so many religious and occult ceremonies use the ‘veils’ in both method and symbology. The veils are a way of keeping hidden and secret that which is beyond explanation.

There is also danger in slipping the veil. This is why there is a stopping-point or limit that initiates must adhere to. The stop point is the bifurcation of knowledge and understanding. Those that study Via Negativa are encouraged to grasp conceptually how the abyss unfolds but to stop before an experiential discerning of its nature. In many descriptions, the abyss is called Daath or ‘false Godhead’. A hidden Sephiroth, it is knowledge without understanding. To occultist Kenneth Grant, Daath is the “outer gateway” to the Mauve Zone. It is a kind of anti-Sephiroth.[5] It is also a trap. Daath is everywhere and is the abyss. Some claim that it is infinities within infinities within infinities and so on forever.

Insanity or worse can be the end result of traversing the abyss and there are abundant tales of fragmented minds in both religious history and folklore. The legend of Rabbi Akiva is testament to this. While he was able to cross over into the abyss and reintegrate unscathed, he had colleagues that died, went insane, or became dangerously heretical due to the process. This is because one cannot bring psychological baggage into at-one-ment with God. There can be no ego and this is what the lower emanations on the Tree are designed to prepare us for. Only pure divine love can be brought past the veils.

With the caveat of danger now discussed, there are also aspects of Via Negativa that are luminous in their darkness. Boehme’s Ungrunde encourages an exploration of dark theology as a means to experience sublimity. He states that “the truth seeking believer stands closer to the divine indefiniteness of the Ungrunde than to the false personal God who is thought to have predestined chosen individuals for grace.”[6]  Similar to Gnostic thought, those that seek Ungrunde i.e. the Abyss have the same potential for unitary consciousness as anybody in the Bible.

The ontological emptying of divinity that begins with duality also has peculiar effects on the Godhead itself. As Boehme asserted, “the conjunction of Will and Desire severs itself into two properties, viz. into joy and sorrow, light and darkness; for it makes two worlds- a dark fire-world and a light fire-world…in the shining of the fire in the original the deity in understood, and in the dark fire the original of nature is understood.[7] A separation of wills into negative and affirmative wills is also a separation of wrathfulness and goodness. Wrath is of the self, goodness the unity of God. The separations though are reflections of one another. There is a mirroring that reconciles the original separation. Boehme remarks that “although what grows out of the dark ground is not causally determined by the darkness, the light-world is a positive mirror image, a sublimation, of the forces operating in darkness.”[8]

Medieval mystic Meister Eckhart also practiced a form of Via Negativa in his idea of Durchbrach or ‘Breakthrough’. When we break on through, our soul penetrates beyond the trinity into divine wilderness. Another liminal status, this is the Godhead beyond God. No uniting, no identity. A naked God. For Eckhart, Via Positiva (creation) plus Via Negativa (letting go) results in Via Creativa. When we let go of fear and death we are free to be re-conceived into another consciousness. Let’s think on this. What does it mean to be conceived? We clearly get ideas of birth and conception and creation of even distillation and extraction. The awakening of birth then is the ‘breakthrough’ of his theology. Eckhart exclaimed,

“Oh, Lord, where is the silence and where is the place where this Word was spoken? We say, as I have already said, that it is the purest place that the soul has to offer- in its most notable place, in the soul’s foundation; yes, in the soul’s being, that is, in its most hidden part. There the “means” is silent, for neither a creature nor an image can enter there. The soul knows in that place neither action nor knowledge. It is not aware in that place of any kind of image, either from itself or from any other creature.”[9]  

Eckhart shows the inadequacy of trying to describe with language the ‘Breakthrough’ of being birthed into another consciousness. The passage also has some of the most important key words to describing Via Negativa. In words like ‘silent’ and ‘hidden’ and in Eckhart’s distressing plea to God, we are shown the status-less condition of somebody ‘betwixt and between’. Eckhart goes on to say “Now note here, finally, the value and fruit of this secret Word and of this darkness. Not only is the Son of the heavenly father born in this darkness, but you also are born there as a child of the same Heavenly Father and no other; and he also gives that power to you.”[10] Breakthrough is penetrating the door’s that oppose God’s entry. And because God is “already there”, the breakthrough is one of consciousness.

The reflection or mirroring that leads to re-conception manifests most importantly in the idea of love-play. As any occultist will attest, the study of the bride-groom or sacred marriage is an essential aspect of the initiatory structure. Sometimes we forget that falling in love and renewingthat love with talk and play is the closest thing to divinity. For God, this love-play comes in Sophia. As Boehme remarked, “As the mirror she generateth [sic]  nothing and is the Chaste Virgin. [11]Did you catch that? Sophia generates nothingness. She is the abyss the darkness and also a part of God. It’s in the “delight” of this image that the spirit of God plays with itself for this is now God’s companion to the Honor and Joy of God.[12]

I know it seems counterintuitive and a horrid blasphemy to equate nothingness of the abyss with Sophia but this is Christian mysticism. And indeed it gets even weirder. Because Sophia is a dark mirror of God. An examination of Grunewalds’s altarpiece (1515) shows some powerful imagery in this regard. In the second level of the piece, an alchemical elixir is being blessed by the ecstatic Virgin with a crown of flames. Purportedly, this liquid has curative powers and is also the source of Gnosis. In this apotheosis, “Mary has become identified with Sophia, the personification of knowledge. We can now understand her bizarre and somewhat demonic union with Satan in the enigmatic scene in heaven. Sophia and Satan were interpreted as the two S’s, the two contrary serpents, male and female, entwined on the caduceus staff of Hermes, the Greek God, who with his Latin name Mercurius presides over the silvery poisonous metal, the hydagyros, quicksilver or “silver-water.”[13] With clear alchemic connotations, it’s fascinating to follow this trajectory. If Sophia is equated with Mary and is a mirror reflection of God, then not only is the Christ story a hell of a lot more interesting but so is God’s relationship with Saturnian influence.

It’s become apparent that Via Negativa is much more than its common misconceptions. The act of naming the methodology is grossly inadequate and ultimately refutes the idea that epistemology can grant us access to its secrets. Knowledge and knowing just isn’t the key. The final act is experiential. A true experience of Godhead requires God himself to acquire experience. It is a translation. Through a process of making two differing things equivalent, God as an entity can colonize the undiscovered continent of the Other.[14] This continent takes form through ontological negation of divinity itself. By dissolving Being with Un-being, knowing with un-unknowing, light with darkness, we can annihilate traditional theistic metaphysics and open new doors of consciousness. And although these experiences are displayed in the alien darkness of true vacuum, they are rich in liminal impulses and contain profound exchanges with what I can only describe as Another.   

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[1] Boehme. Andrew Weeks. State University of New York Press. 1991. Albany. pp. 148.

[2] Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment. Trans. By Daniel Chanan Matt Ramsay. Paulist Press. 1983. New Jersey. pp. 147.

[3] Kabbalah. Gershom Scholem.

[4] “Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism” Daniel Matt. In Problem of Pure Consciousness. Ed. Robert K. C. Forman. Oxford University Press. 1990. New York.

[5] The Dark Lord. Peter Levanda. Ibis Press. 2013. Lakeworth, Florida.  pp. 265.

[6] Weeks. Ibid. pp. 149.

[7] Signature Of All Things. Jacob Boehme. 2.17

[8] Weeks. Ibid. pp. 182.

[9] Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality In New Translation. Intro. And Commentaries by Matthew Fox. Doubleday & Co. 1980. Garden City, NY. pp. 294

[10] Ibid. pp. 301.

[11] Jacob Boehme (TLM 5.41) and (TP 14.85).

[12] The Three Principles of Divine Essence. Trans. John Sparrow. 1948. London. pp. 14.86.

[13] The Hidden World: Survival of Pagan Shamanic Themes In European Fairy Tales. Carl AP. Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples, Jose Alfredo Gonzalez Celdran, Mark Alwin Hoffman. Carolina Academic Press. 2007. Durham. pp. 39

[14] See Nick Lee and Steve Brown. Otherness and the Actor-Network: The Undiscovered Continent. 1994. American Behavioral Scientist. 36: 772-790. 

Intimacy & the Godhead: Being Unveiled

Intimacy & the Godhead: Being Unveiled

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What is it to know Being in the Other? Is it the study of treatises and tractates? Is it wholly conceptual or is there an element of the personal in these encounters? Augustine once called humans “The Great Deep”- Grande Profundum. It is in the abyss of the human heart that we are able to perceive the depth of Being in other humans as well as Other entities. Ralph Harper equated it to intimacy when he wrote, “mystics draw analogies between the feeling of the presence of God and the feeling of the presence of another person, particularly in the dark.”[1] It is in the dark of the abyss as well as the moments of intimacy that occur in the dark that we become consumed and wholly possessed in the Being of another. This is how we know true presence.

And it is these experiences that assimilate us into the godhead as well. It is the pure unitive state of being at-one and entangled in union that we know the deity. Sufism understands this perfectly well in its request:

‘O God If I love you for fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I love you for hope of heaven, deny me heaven. If I love you for yourself alone, give me yourself.’[2]

Presence of the divine is no different in experience than presence conjured in intimacy. Yes, perhaps there are conceptual discrepancies, unless of course you worship your loved one and negate any inconsistency whatsoever. And maybe that’s the point. Perhaps all along religion and its appellations of the sacred were meant to be experienced in the dark. In the ‘deep’ there is no need for prayer or faith because we know the presence of Deity.        

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[1] Harper, Ralph. On Presence: Variations and Reflections. 1991. Trinity Press International. pp. 58.

[2] Arberry, A.J. Sufism. 1970. Penguin Books. New York. pp. 42.

Assembling the Supernatural: Quantum theory and the Paranormal

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ASSEMBLING THE SUPERNATURAL

 

            The study of the supernatural begins with a sense of awe. Something spectral, outside the norm or different. Often times, the supernatural defies the empirical and is based solely on experiential happenings. And always it is attached to a sense of wonder. However, anthropologists, folklorists, and students of religion sometimes disagree as to whether the supernatural is in a system or if the system is made up of the supernatural. It is the classic macro/micro debate. For example, a scholar of the supernatural needs an office, a place to investigate, laboratory, tech equipment, an archive of narratives, cameras, witnesses, an audience, and ‘evidence’ or variances of the phenomenon. This structure is formed from local narratives that are collected, classified, changed, and performed in a myriad of ways. the supernatural begins at the local level then moves globally as it shifts and traded through dissemination.

            What this means is that a student of the supernatural has a choice of routes and can focus on either the local or the global aspects of the supernatural. We can either study the spirit of the phenomenon as a whole or render an inquiry into a local paranormal investigative team. Just as Capitalism has a ‘spirit’ but no plausible opposite since its everywhere, a trading room on Wall Street has many competitors inShanghai, London etc…Wall Street is connected in many ways and it is bigger only in this sense. As Latour has remarked, it is not wider. The point is to not focus on Capitalism but don’t stay stuck in the trading room either. We must follow the connections. After all, “what is acting at the same moment in any place is coming from many other places, many distant materials, and many faraway actors” (Bruno Latour,Reassembling the Social. 206). The paranormal also fits this pattern. Although researching the spirit of phenomenon is essential, we must also hone in on local teams that help make the narratives a viable piece of folklore.

            This idea of faraway entities interacting on the local arena also finds its place in quantum physics. According to Capra, “In the framework of quantum theory, distinct physical entities are therefore idealizations which are meaningful only to the extent that the main part of the interaction has a long range” (Capra, The Tao of Physics. 137). In other words, each transaction involves effects extending over great distances. This was the essence of the Einstein/Bohr debate of the 1920s. Einstein was convinced that there are no nonlocal connections. He believed that there must be some external reality consisting of independent spatially separated events. Bohr opined that nonlocal connections do exist. In quantum theory, particles transcend usual information transfer and two separated particles (even by space and time) can influence one another. John Bell settled the matter once and for all. He devised an experiment where two electrons are brought close to each other. At the instant we perform a measurement on particle 1 and set its rotational spin, the second particle automatically began to spin along its opposite axis thus giving the pair of total spin of 0. But would this happening occur if the electrons were separated by long distances? Einstein said ‘No’ because since no signal travels faster than light, it is impossible that a measurement on 1 will ‘instantly’ determine spin on the other. There must be some lag time. Bohr posited that a two-particle system is an indivisible whole. Even if their separated, the pair of electrons will continue to act on one another. Bells’ theorem proved consistent with Bohr’s theory and showed that electrons, and by extension the universe, is interconnected.

         

   

The paranormal also shows ideas of interconnection or unification. If we postulate the probabilities of potentialities based upon measurement, we can surmise the legitimacy of paranormal phenomenon. It’s not hard. Television is full of ghosthunting investigators utilizing a potential ‘Haunted House’ as a laboratory. Experiments are run in a myriad of ways to capture evidence of some supernatural entity. Often times, the ghost or specter is used as an ethnographic informant and structured interviewing is implemented to form a dialogue with the unseen. If we postulate that consciousness of spirit has some corresponding mechanism in our ordinary sphere of influence, the system can be seen as a pair of interconnecting parts. For example, if we use a voice recorder to measure the probability of spirit talking and we capture an anomalous recording on the device, can we find a corresponding sound vibration or band-width to use as a mechanism or catalyst for the happening? Probabilities can be mustered by using quantum thinking in areas of the paranormal. Sure, its difficult to verify. But is difficulty a justifiable reason to not explore these potentialities?

            Inherently, the problem of the supernatural is one of Existence. The whole point of studying anomalous entities is to come to grips with our wanting to believe in something outside normal circles of space and time. We conjure narratives of myth and folklore. We apply reason and rationality in an attempt to explain scientifically what the anomalous re-presents to us. Probabilities and potentialities are the new symbols of the paranormal entity. More than an estimation of an occurrence or true statement, probability has become synonymous with the entity itself. Furthermore, the entity sits betwixt and between Being and Nothingness. Like the appearance of Schrodinger’s Cat, the supernatural creature cannot be said to ‘Be’ or ‘Not Be’ really there. As our perspective changes, so does the behavior of the entity. As Capra remarked, “The introduction of probability waves, in a sense, resolves the paradox of particles being waves by putting it in a totally new context; but at the same time it leads to another pair of opposite concepts which is even more fundamental that of Existence and Non-Existence. We can never say that an atomic particle exists at a certain place, nor can we say that it does not exist. Being a probability pattern, the particle has tendencies to exist in various places and thus manifests a strange kind of physical reality between Existence and Non-Existence” (Capra, Tao of Physics. 154). The particle recalls the supernatural entity in that it enjoys a liminal existence. As it is measured or as it is ethnographically studied, the particle sits without a status and is inbetween shifts in agency. Is it a limbo or purgatory existence? It is process of becoming and the state just before objective knowledge and subjective experience is unified into a new assembly? It is all these things and more.

            The quantum is a sufficient metaphor for the supernatural. After all, many supernatural creatures can only be said to be perceived indirectly. Such in the case of the voice recorder or shadow on film. Particles exhibit similar behavior. Again Capra remarks that there are “Other particles that belong to a category called resonances. They live for a considerable shorter time, decaying after a few ‘particle seconds’, so they can never travel farther than a few times their own size. This means they cannot be seen in the bubble chamber; their existence can only be inferred indirectly” (Capra 228). Supernatural creatures also show the tendency to be indirectly perceived. For example, ceremonial magicians perform highly ritualized and formal invocations of the anomalous. Sometimes the rite consists of a complex magical circle, liturgy, and intense visualization. As the invocation progresses, sometimes a change of air pressure or strange sound is all that announces the entrance of the desired Being. Like the particle, the existence of the entity can sometimes only be inferred indirectly. A resonance and a supernatural entity cannot be said to be objects or events. They are an experience or happening…..    

Religious Re-newal: Eros, Alchemy and "Love-Speak"

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Karl Jaspers once wrote, “A look at the beloved is like a look at Being itself.” I never forgot that bit. It is in the rapture of love, of Being in the grip of it that we gift presence to an ‘Other’. Latour called it a form of renewal. He has reiterated time and again that religious affirmation has been lost on those who go through the motions of ritual without consciously ‘renewing’ the love that makes gift of presence possible. He likened it to “love-speak” in couples. I think everybody would agree that humans innately know when a partner’s love-speak is sincere. It’s when these words evoke chills or the hair on the back of your neck stands up; that filling of absolute affirmation when your lover expresses words of love. Likewise, we also know, sometimes inexplicably, when these same words are counterfeit. There are times when loves-speak is said without the feeling of renewal.

It’s utter affirmation of sincerity that we should strive for in our religious ritual. It’s that renewal that is the basis for ideas of the ‘alchemical wedding’ and marrying the Sophia in godhead. Our religious rites are designed to evoke ‘love-speak’ and in doing so grant metaphysics of presence to our deities. But often times, religious ritual is a monotonous droning of liturgy and unfelt, unconscientious habits that fail in delivering the evocation of presence. Being cannot erupt into existence without a conscious interaction between Man and the beloved. It is these interactions that Couliano described as Eros and should be the goal of any so-called religious person. 

Science & Spirituality: What is the 'Gravity' of the situation?

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It’s really no surprise esoteric thought is drawn to the cosmos. There is something precious about the cold infinity of abyss set afire with clusters of life-giving suns. The ancient saw no distinction whatsoever with the cosmos of Nuit and their god-forms. They were one and wholly the same. Have we lost this in modern times? I often wonder whether it’s the cosmologists and physicists that are now the only real proponents of religious thought. That perhaps the trajectory of religious feeling has been lost on religions and preserved in those that traverse space. Listen to them talk. When NASA landed a spacecraft on the Rosetta Comet in 2014, the press conference revealed much of the state of mind of these off-world travelers. They spoke with reverence. With an air of excitement, these scientists evoked a sense of the sacred much more than anything I’ve seen from current religious milieus. The tone of these scientists reminded me of Wickes when he remarked, “I looked upon space and I beheld darkness. In that darkness moves mysterious forces. Not like the gods of man’s conceiving were they, but strange primeval beings born before the gods of human form. They were hooded in darkness. Through their fingers they drew the threads of blackness and even wove them back and forth.”[1] A plea for the intangible and ethereal and bewildering, these men of science were not unlike their god-fearing predecessors such as Copernicus, Galileo, or Newton.

Hollywood has begun to catch on. Although Kubrick’s 2001 certainly had religious overtones, the more recent Gravity boggles the mind in its blatant use of esoteric paradigms. Watch it again. And for god sake listen to the music. Bullock’s character is separated from the world, undergoes a liminal set of Ordeals and comes blazing back to earth a new Being. The experiences this character has in the vacuum effectively leaves a wreckage of her former self. We bear witness to her dissolving as every possible thing that could go wrong does. Nuit herself is a catalyst and agent of change. It is in the expansiveness of the abyss that we are confronted with the terrifying purge of form that leads to recognition of the immanent. The film is a mystery teaching. Watching it evokes Bendyaev when he wrote that “The absolute is a definitive mystery. God is transcendental; an abyss separates man from him. But the transcendental nature of god is our immanent experience.”[2] In the film’s concluding sequence we see the transformation and utter bewilderment of emerging a new Being. Bullock looks up in almost disbelief of what she just underwent.

It’s a sad state of affairs when our representatives of religion are no more spiritual than the atheists they pretend to despise. When they are paid millions to deliver spiritually empty prayers, ask for more millions, and provide ‘spin’ on secular issues having nothing at all to do with renewal. But it is equally baffling and indeed encouraging to know that science has taken up the mantle. That we can find honest spiritual milieus in government space programs and in privately funded manufacturers such as SpaceX. Who would have thought given the history of science and religion that it would be the scientists that embody the ineffable and mysterious? Perhaps this is what the ancients knew. They knew that in preserving child-like grace they retained the wonder and awe of the numinous event. And while doing so, honor a time before religion became a slave to man. Somewhere, Giordano Bruno and Galileo are having a well-deserved laugh.

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[1] Wickes, F. The Inner World Of Man. 1950. Boston. Siglo.

[2] Bendyaev, N. Spirit and Reality. 1946. London. Geoffrey Bles.