Christian Mysticism in Relation to Eastern Mysticism - Part 7

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Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 6 with:

 

(P.242) In all this God is represented as inaccessible, dwelling in the

darkness, in that inner sanctuary where the divine presence reveals itself.

(P.243) The equivalent in Hinduism is the lotus within the heart where the

Infinite dwells. So this is the inner sanctuary and Gregory speaks of it as the

'ousia', the essence or ultimate substance and ground of everything. The process

is to pass beyond all diversities into the darkness, into the inner sanctuary

and there discover the very being of God. There are two movements here, 'eros'

and 'agape'. 'Eros' is the urge towards God, which is rather like 'bhakti' in

Hinduism. This is love drawing one out towards God. The other movement is

'agape', which is God's love pouring into one. And the two meet. As one goes out

to God, so God comes into one, and vice versa. And this, in Gregory's view, is a

constant movement. The more one loves, the more one knows God, the more there is

to know. So one is constantly going out to God and returning to oneself and then

having to go out again because there is infinite growth taking place. This

constant going beyond is what Gregory means by 'epekstatis' and it is a very

original conception. Finally we should say that this awareness of the presence

of God in the darkness, is always related both to Christ, the 'logos', who

reveals God, bringing him to light, as it were, and to the sacraments of the

Church by which we open ourselves to the presence of Christ and through him to

the Father. So Gregory always works with this total vision of the Father as God

beyond creation, and the 'logos' and the Holy Spirit penetrating the whole

creation and humanity, and then leading human persons back through the Church

and the sacraments to the divine.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and Christian

Faith), Chapter 11, P.242

 

Here now, is Part 7.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

Christian Mysticism in Relation to Eastern Mysticism - Part 7

 

(P.243) We come now to Dionysius the Areopagite who is generally supposed to

have been a Syrian monk of the sixth century. [6] He wrote under the name of

Dionysius, the disciple of St Paul, and as a result came to be accepted as of

supreme authority in the Church. In him we find for the first time a radical

criticism of language. In this respect he is very close to Shankara and to

Nagarjuna. (P.244) Nagarjuna was the great Buddhist philosopher of the second

century who made the most thorough analysis of language concerning the Absolute

and came to the conclusion that no language was even remotely adequate. All

language defeats itself and one has to go beyond words and experience God beyond

thought. Dionysius' radical criticism here is a good example of the rational

Greek mind being exercised on mystical experience and rejecting every term that

might be used as a definition of the Godhead. He says that " the Godhead

surpasses all condition, movement, life, imagination, conjecture, name,

discourse, thought, conception, being, rest, dwelling, limit, infinity,

everything that exists ... " Consequently all language used about God is

defective. Dionysius says that one has to " go beyond all these, beyond name and

form, beyond being and concept, into the divine darkness " and he speaks here of

" knowing by unknowing " . This became a traditional phrase, 'The Cloud of

Unknowing' being the title of a great work on mysticism produced in the Middle

Ages, and this doctrine passed into the tradition of the Church. So in Dionysius

we find this process of going beyond being and beyond all concepts into the

darkness and there knowing by unknowing, by transcendent knowledge.

 

On the other hand, this infinite Beyond is manifesting in the whole creation and

particularly, for Dionysius, it is manifested in the celestial hierarchies, the

hierarchies of the angels. So again we have this understanding that from the

absolute, infinite One there comes forth, through the Word, this spiritual

creation, the world of the angels. Dionysius speaks of nine orders of angels.

This concept of the angelic hierarchy is based on the biblical tradition but it

indicates an awareness of a cosmic order representing different levels of

consciousness above the human. For him this whole celestial hierarchy comprises

angels ranging from the lower level of the angels related to man and the

universe, to the highest angels totally absorbed in God, the cherubim and

seraphim, the angels of knowledge and of love. (p.245) Then there is the

ecclesiastical hierarchy. This hierarchy of the angels descending from the

Trinity is reflected in the church and forms the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In

the Greek Orthodox Church this understanding still remains, and it comes out in

the liturgy with its magnificent rituals and the profound symbolism reflected in

the paintings and mosaics and in the whole structure of the church. So there is

a total mystical reality of the Church as a reflection of the divine mystery on

earth. There is a famous story worth recalling of how, in the eighth century,

some people came from Russia to learn about Christ. They went to Rome and were

taught there about the doctrine of the Church, and then they went to

Constantinople and there saw the liturgy. They returned to Russia saying, " We

have seen heaven on earth. " And so Russia joined the Orthodox Church. For

Dionysius it is fundamental that the one infinite reality is manifesting at all

the different levels of creation, of humanity, of the angels and finally in the

Trinity.

 

Dionysius says about the language we use to speak of God, that all words like

Father, Son, being, light, Word, Spirit, are communications or revelations, but

" their ultimate nature which they possess in their own original being is beyond

mind and beyond all being and knowledge. " So all words we use about God are

symbols in which divine reality is present but is beyond the grasp of the mind.

This is an extremely important point. Here we are at the heart of mystical

theology. God cannot be known directly. He is only known through signs and

symbols by which the divine mystery makes itself known. All the terms of the

biblical revelation are symbolic of that which utterly transcends them. This

links with the Buddhist and the Muslim view, no less than with that of Hinduism,

that in the Ultimate Reality, in 'sunyata' (the void) of Buddhism and in the 'al

haqq' (the truth) of Ibn al Arabi as in the 'brahman' of Hinduism, both unity

and difference are recognised. It is not a matter of simple unity because all

the differences of the universe are somehow present in that Ultimate Reality. So

Dionysius says that all this creation with all its differences comes forth from

the divine being and in this way " it is differentiated without loss of

difference and multiplied without loss of unity, and from its oneness it becomes

manifold while remaining in itself. " That was exactly what Suzuki said of

'sunyata', the void, as was said of 'brahman' in Hinduism and the 'al haqq' in

Sufi doctrine. It is one total unity and yet all the differences of the universe

come out from it while it remains the same. This is a paradox which cannot be

properly expressed. The reason it is insisted upon is that if it is not held -

and in each tradition there is a continuous movement of thought seeking to

express the paradox, to balance the opposites - the implication is that

ultimately the whole material universe and the whole human universe are unreal.

'Brahman' or 'nirvana' alone is real, all else is unreal. But in this more

profound view all the multiplicity of creatures and of humanity, with all their

differences and distinctions, have reality in the Absolute. They are present not

in the way they appear here to our limited human time-space consciousness, but

in their eternal, absolute Ground of being and consciousness, and therefore all

human and created realities have real being in the Absolute.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith) Chapter 11, P.243-246

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0

 

Notes:

 

[6] The edition of Dionysius, 'Divine Names and Mystical Theology' from which

these quotations are taken is that of C.E. Rolt (SPCK, 1940).