A Hartian Account of theosis and Nondual Experience
Excerpts from a long discourse available on EclecticOrthodoxy.
Q: When the ego falls silent and only "I AM" seems to remain, who – or what – is saying "I"?
The great ascetical traditions do not promise the modern self a more polished version of its familiar sovereignty – they promise its undoing. And yet Christianity does not culminate in the disappearance of the person. Deification does not reveal that there was only one subject all along.
What, then, actually happens to consciousness in theosis?
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Q: If the deepest ground of every finite act of consciousness is the divine Logos, if human nature is made for deification, and if Christ is the perfect transparency of the human to the divine "I AM", what should awakening to that truth be like?
In Hart's anthropology the empirical ego is not the source of consciousness, but a finite psychological organization of a spiritual depth it neither creates nor contains. But this depth should not be imagined as a second, natureless subject hidden behind the psychological person. It is the depth of this created life, whose consciousness is received rather than self-grounding.
God is "nearer to me than my inmost parts." At the root of the creature's finite "I am" is the uncreated "I AM", the Logos through whom every rational nature exists and knows.
In Jesus the human psychological consciousness is perfectly transparent to its divine ground. There is no interval of sin, no defensive opacity, no false possession separating the human act of consciousness from the eternal Logos whose incarnate life it is. Christ is the revelation of what humanity looks like when nothing in it resists its own divine ground and end.
Theosis changes the relation between consciousness and its own depth.
Hart, in "Roland in Moonlight" distinguishes the ordinary ego from a depth that is "I more deeply than the ego is I," and speaks of the "oceanic experience of the ego's dissolution into fuller existence." What is dissolved is not consciousness into vacancy, but the ego into a more comprehensive mode of life.
The soul acts as a prism through which the light of being is differentiated into the private experience of this or that finite subject. The light is universal, the refraction is particular. Mystical consciousness may therefore feel like a return toward the light before its refraction, without requiring the prism itself to be or become unreal.
To be continued ...
Excerpts from a long discourse available on EclecticOrthodoxy.
Q: When the ego falls silent and only "I AM" seems to remain, who – or what – is saying "I"?
The great ascetical traditions do not promise the modern self a more polished version of its familiar sovereignty – they promise its undoing. And yet Christianity does not culminate in the disappearance of the person. Deification does not reveal that there was only one subject all along.
What, then, actually happens to consciousness in theosis?
+++
Q: If the deepest ground of every finite act of consciousness is the divine Logos, if human nature is made for deification, and if Christ is the perfect transparency of the human to the divine "I AM", what should awakening to that truth be like?
In Hart's anthropology the empirical ego is not the source of consciousness, but a finite psychological organization of a spiritual depth it neither creates nor contains. But this depth should not be imagined as a second, natureless subject hidden behind the psychological person. It is the depth of this created life, whose consciousness is received rather than self-grounding.
God is "nearer to me than my inmost parts." At the root of the creature's finite "I am" is the uncreated "I AM", the Logos through whom every rational nature exists and knows.
In Jesus the human psychological consciousness is perfectly transparent to its divine ground. There is no interval of sin, no defensive opacity, no false possession separating the human act of consciousness from the eternal Logos whose incarnate life it is. Christ is the revelation of what humanity looks like when nothing in it resists its own divine ground and end.
Theosis changes the relation between consciousness and its own depth.
Hart, in "Roland in Moonlight" distinguishes the ordinary ego from a depth that is "I more deeply than the ego is I," and speaks of the "oceanic experience of the ego's dissolution into fuller existence." What is dissolved is not consciousness into vacancy, but the ego into a more comprehensive mode of life.
The soul acts as a prism through which the light of being is differentiated into the private experience of this or that finite subject. The light is universal, the refraction is particular. Mystical consciousness may therefore feel like a return toward the light before its refraction, without requiring the prism itself to be or become unreal.
To be continued ...