A Christian Theurgy? Ritual deification in Orthodox Christianity and Neoplatonism

  

                          

Recently a paper of mine was published, I have uploaded it on academia HERE and reproduced it below with very cool art work. Enjoy.

                                     Liturgical mysticism: a Christian Theurgy?

                       Ritual deification in Orthodox Christianity and Neoplatonism

                                                                 by
                                 

                                                  Jonathan McCormack


"Man is not satisfied with solutions beneath the level of divinization."

- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1



      One usually thinks of ritual as antithetical to mysticism, yet in Neoplatonism we find the ritual practice of theurgy, or “god-work,” enacted to achieve henosis, union with the divine. As Pierre Hadot has pointed out, rather than intellectual analysis, philosophy for the ancients was a way of life, complete with chanting, prayers, and ascetic practice. It’s no secret Christianity has become an anemic, dying wraith in the West; yet in Orthodox Christianity, there still lives the idea of theosis, or divination, as the goal of the Christian life. Indeed Orthodox Christian liturgy today may be described as a Christian theurgy, perfectly in tune with the deepest of  mysticisms.

For some, the theurgical strain within Neoplatonism begins in Plato’s Symposium. There Socrates relates how the Priestess Diotima staved off a plague by means of sacrifice. Already in place we find a hidden mystical tradition in the initiations of Eleusis. In the fifth century CE, Proclus explains that these initiations do not grant knowledge, but a change of mind. He writes:

“Initiations bring about a sympathy (sympatheia) of souls with the ritual actions in such a way that is incomprehensible to us yet divine, so that some of those initiated are stricken with fear, being filled with divine awe; others assimilate themselves to the holy symbols and, having left their own identity, become completely established in the gods and experience divine possession. 2

Theurgy would eventually come into its full power under the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, born around 245 AD. That was not its beginning however, as Gregory Shaw says,

"Within this esoteric tradition, theurgy was neither an innovation nor a degradation; it was Iamblichus’ attempt to protect the integrity of genuine mystagogy.” 3

Iamblicus himself claimed he was merely following Plato. This may come as a surprise since scholarship until recently tended to ignore the more embodied aspects of philosophy, but as Paul Tyson shows, for the ancients philosophy wasn’t about thinking, which can bring no real truth:

“….right action and right feeling in an actual lived life are clearly a more significant measure of philosophical validity to Plato than smart thinking. Merely intellectually “believing” in the transcendent existence of the form of “The Table” does not make you either a philosopher or a Platonist.

Plato refuses to put his philosophy in clear propositions before us for the very specific reason that he mistrusts written statements as being “dead” propositional substitutes for the communal and individual spiritual practices of the truly philosophical life.

Other than as an active, affective, aesthetic, and embodied existential stance… such spiritual formation cannot be imposed by mere argumentative force and cannot be 'obtained' with a mere proof.

Thus receptive prayer, quiet attention, and right worship are keys to truth and success in the active pursuit of meaningful knowledge.” 4

For Iamblicus the Greek intellectuals had translated traditional mystagogy into sophisticated philosophical concepts, but no longer had the power to transform. For Iamblicus, the gods had to be approached through a specific place in the material world. Sacrifices were not simply ‘sent heavenwards’ but also drew the divinities downwards, specifically by actions and symbols that might invoke those resonances and sympathies which hold the cosmos together. Mysticism for Iamblicus was entirely liturgical.

                                                       

People have criticized such Pagan practices as low magic, however Iamblichus is insistent that theurgic rites are never intended to change the minds of the gods, rather they bring the practitioner into the divine presence. Why ritual? Because it allows us to resonate with the divine. Iamblicus says,

"…by the practice of supplication we are gradually raised to the level of the object of our supplication and we gain likeness to it by virtue of our constant consorting with it.” 5

Prayer and invocation enacted such bodily and spiritual dispositions to receive more fully the divine flow of grace by way of attunement. The gods need nothing from us, Iamblicus says, therefore it is not about service, as many prior Greek and Roman rituals were. He tells us that,

“…earthly things, possessing their being in virtue of the pleroma of the gods, whenever they come to be ready for participation in the divine, straightway find the gods pre-existing in it prior to their own proper essence.”6

Thus it is not to influence God, but rather to attune ourselves to a greater receptivity of the divine. This involved purification. Although not a terribly sexy subject, ascetic renunciations of the passions, as for Christians, were utterly essential for the Neoplatonists. They followed a triad path of purgation, illumination, and finally union, similar to Christian asceticism. Although it’s true that Iamblicaus with his embracing of matter as a means to the divine is often opposed to Plotinus and his more “disembodied” platonism that attempted to escape the world, David Litwa reminds us,

"For Plotinus, godhood is attained by moral and physical purification, which he conceives of as the removal of everything alien to us. He uses the image of a sculptor who continually chisels off pieces of marble in order to reveal the lovely face of a cult statue within. ” 7

Let’s not forget, also, Porphyry’s attestation to a number of occasions when Plotinus engaged with ritual practices during his daily life, including the famous ‘Séance at the Isium’, when his guardian daimôn was called into visible appearance, only for Plotinus to discover it to be a god.

Prayer too is vital for the ascent of the soul. Proclus tells us,

"It is through prayer that the ascent is brought to completion and it is with prayer that the crown of virtue is attained, namely piety towards the gods…" 8

We become what we worship, and for Christians it is found in Christ Himself, the coinciding resonance of God, binding the temporal to the eternal, man to God, earth to heaven, and the material to the spiritual. 

                                                              

To Western ears, the idea of Christian deification may sound blasphemous, yet it was the common language used in early Christianity. In Eastern Orthodox Christianity it survives still. In St. Dionysius’ own words, he defines theosis as, “Now the assimilation to, and union with, God, as far as attainable, is deification.”

We read the Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature”(2 Pet 1:4), “He became human that we might become divine” says Athanasius.9 The ancient pagans and Egyptians are ripe with stories of mortals and kings becoming divine. Plato himself was referred to as a god by many Neoplatonists.

The Christian seeks to become one with God, not by discarding his humanity, but by grafting himself onto Christ. Second Temple Jewish literature has many prophets, from Moses to Enoch, becoming winged divine beings, and there are even icons of St John the Baptist with wings. Man is to take over the place of the angels, ruling alongside God in His Divine Council. It is our end and telos to become gods in the very image and form of the dying and risen God Jesus Christ.

Like the Neoplatonists, it is the chanting of scripture and songs of praise that pattern our the Christian soul harmonizing man's being to that of Christ. This is the purpose of fasting, prostrations, and asceticism. St Dionysius tells us that persons have union with God and participate in His likeness “in proportion to their aptitude for deification.” 10

For the Christian, it is from Scripture and historical memory that symbols are taken. For the Neoplatonist, it is objects from nature, the Cosmos as a whole being a divine theophany. Which symbols are more life-giving? Which preserve form most fully? A Christian might point out that St Dionysius, as kind of "Christian Iamblichus" succeeded where Iamblichus himself had failed--in building a theurgic society.

Augustine in The City of God X 9-10 did indeed criticize theurgic practices as mere black magic, however he did so simplistically, and many have pointed out the theurgic strains in his own theology. Gregory Shaw is surely correct when he says,

"Unless we choose to dismiss the role of experience in the rites of the Church, we must follow Dionysius in seeing the liturgy as theurgy, a rite that affects a cognitive, perceptual, and ontological shift so profound in receptive participants that it culminates in theosis , the deification of the soul. For both Iamblichus and Dionysius this deification was effected in rites that united the "fallen" soul with divine activities (ta theia energeia).”

St. Thomas Aquinas describes sacrifice as the act of returning the creature back to its first principle, God, celebrated in the Sacrifice of Praise and the Eucharist. Likewise for Iamblicus the creatures of the material universe are referred back to their divine archetypes during ritual. Iamblicus says,

"The deeds themselves make plain what we hold to be the salvation of the soul: in beholding blessed spectacles the soul acquires another life and operates by another energeia, regarding itself as no longer even human, and rightly so; often indeed, when it has put aside its own life it receives in exchange the most blessed energeia of the gods.” 12

This is not biological life, Bios, but Zoe, a greek term that means the “God-kind of life.” For Christians Christ came to give Zoe spiritual life. "I am come that they might have life (Zoe), and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). The Christian is not called to change his morality but his being. Literally, like a force, like electricity, we must be remade to exist in a way that continuously receives love (Zoe, spiritual life) that then flows out to others. The Trinity exists this way, an economy of self-giving and receiving, and in Christ's resurrection our human nature that he took on will be grafted onto that circular movement of love we call God.

For the Neoplatonists the philosopher’s task was not to demonstrate that the gods exist, but to recover this knowledge as an active principle, entering into the union with the gods. Iamblicus says,

“That which is divine and intellectual and one in us . . . is then actively aroused in prayers, and when it is aroused it seeks vehemently that which is like itself . . . The gods do not receive prayers through powers or organs, but embrace in themselves the energeiai of pious utterances, especially such utterances as have been established and unified with the gods through sacred rites.” 13

For many Neoplatonists the person in theurgic union with the divine might be considered as a mere receptacle of the god, and so lose their humanity in a sense, at least temporarily. For Christians deification is actually the assumption of our true humanity, as exemplified in Christ. Still, Neoplatonic theory does have some comparisons to the Christian notion of the Incarnation. Gregory Shaw may be exaggerating the similarities, but there are some correspondences, he says,

“The theurgist remains human yet takes the shape of the gods. The language of Chalcedon is remarkably similar. Christ is described as possessing two natures, divine and human, that remain unmixed despite their “union” in the person of Christ. The theurgist also possesses two natures, divine and human, that remain distinct while being embodied by the theurgist.” 14

                                                        

Both Christianity and Neoplatonism also share a concern with desire. The Christian liturgy, for example, is meant to shape our desire. Our hearts must be educated, both toward what to love and then how best to love it. A person must learn to want a relationship with God. The Christian story is one great love affair. Just so, Gregory Shaw reminds us,

"….for the ancient mystagogues, it is eros—the soul’s primal desire—that deifies us.” 15

Plato writes about the erotic madness that affects the soul’s assent and deification, and Plotinus tells us that all living things, even plants and animals, are carried by their desire for the One.

“Contact with divinity is an erotic, not an intellectual, experience”, Shaw says. 16 As Iamblichus put it, “the Intelligible appears to the mind not as knowable but as desirable.” 17 This erotic presence, Iamblichus said, is “more ancient than our nature” and is awakened in theurgic ritual and prayer. 18 Iamblichus refers to this more ancient principle of the soul in principle of the soul.

A close study will reveal even more similarities. Christians are often criticized for emphasizing their own weakness. In 2 Corinthians 12:9 we read Paul saying:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

However, many forget it is only in comparison to God, not other men, that Christians affirm their nothingness. Something like this Christian humility, this emptying of self so that Christ may make His home in the Christian heart, can also be found even in Plato, for whom, in erotic terms, the soul is always poor, ugly, indelicate, homeless, lying on the dirt without a bed. In Plato’s Symposium 203d we find Diotima’s description of Eros, from his mother’s side, portraying the poverty of the human soul. Scholars have noted that it is also a description of the historical Socrates:

“In the first place, he is always poor, and he’s far from being delicate and beautiful (as ordinary people think he is); instead, he is tough and shriveled and shoeless and homeless, always sleeping on the dirt without a bed, sleeping at people’s doorsteps and in roadsides under the sky, having his mother’s nature, always living with Need.” 19

"In plain terms,” says Shaw, “for the gods to become human, the theurgist must remain human, and this means recognizing our weaknesses, our insignificance, our utter nothingness.” 20 Indeed for Iamblicus it is precisely the recognition of our impurity and weakness that allows the gods to become present. He says:

“The awareness of our own nothingness when we compare ourselves to the gods, makes us turn spontaneously to prayer. And from our supplication, in a short time we are led up to that one to whom we pray, and from our continual intercourse we obtain a likeness to it, and from imperfection we are gradually embraced by divine perfection.” 21

                                                         

Still, one of the most puzzling things for modern people is the very act of ritual itself. The rest of this essay will address the justification of ritual in the soul's spiritual assent to God.

“We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.”

-William Butler Yeats 22

The average Orthodox Christian is most likely ignorant of their own theology. We might ask though, is that a problem? And if so, why? Protestantism has so engulfed the modern imagination that people today cannot imagine a Christianity before the reformation, nor the life practiced in a modern Orthodox Church. Whereas traditional Catholicism found salvation in participating in the sacraments, Protestants would invent a new category of religion based on beliefs, not transformative participatory knowledge, but simple information and assenting to propositions about God.

By the 1700s “Creedal orthodoxy” in the West replaced a living community of social practices. Christianity became a system of beliefs and moral behaviors. This was also compounded by the change from transformative knowledge (being formed into a certain way of being by liturgical attunement) to informative knowledge with the coming of the Gutenberg Press and mass literacy.

Instead of faith being a mode of perception, it became about concepts not resonance, information over initiation. Early Christianity was not primarily about doctrines or dogma, but ritual. You shared a meal with your God, there was a communion, a give and take, perhaps even an exchange of life - your life exchanged for the living Spirit of Christ.

However, Christ did not come to give doctrines, but His body, the Church, and the Orthodox live a faith wherein they are enfolded into His divine body, practicing asceticism in order to receive and share in His Divine life (Zoe).

Modern anthropologists, such as Cathrine Bell, have characterized ritual activities as aiming at generating a socialized agent within a “ritualized body,” which is to say that participation in ritual tends to structure one’s senses, including one’s very “sense of reality.” 23 She says,

"On this understanding, ritual metaphysics is a matter not (or not just) of giving participants a mental image of a larger world, but of giving them the experience of participating in the very patterns and forces of the cosmos. 24 For example, she writes,

“Hence, required kneeling does not merely communicate subordination to the kneeler. For all intents and purposes, kneeling produces a subordinated kneeler in and through the act itself.” 25

                                                

Liturgical living is, in fact, not optional. Secular ritual shapes us as surely as any religious ritual. As the anthropologist Talal Asad reminds us, intentional “unbelief” may be just as much the result of “untaught bodies” as it is of untaught (rational) intentionality.

For the Anthropologist Roy Rappaport ritual does not merely identify that which is sacred—it creates the sacred. 26 The sanctifying ritual of holy water, he says, collectively alters the participants’ cognitive schema of water itself, rendering them with a template for differentiating holy water from profane water.

Modern Christianity has been fractured and practice, theology, and poetry broken into separate pieces. Such wholeness can still be found though. The Catholic theologian David W Fagerberg writes of this living wholeness,

“Faith is not mere assent to a doctrine, it is a living relationship to certain events, events that can only be understood (theology) by participating in those mysteries (liturgy). Asceticism is the capacitation for this liturgical state; theology is union with God.” 27

This conception is not absent from the Ancients, David Bradshaw notes that in Platonic theology,

"Faith is in fact the highest member of the so-called Chaldaean triad of love truth, and faith. Just as love joins us to the divine qua beautiful, and truth to the divine qua wisdom, so faith joins us to the divine qua good….

One – and thereby sharing in the divine energeia – is in Proclus no longer conceived as a magical or theurgical rite, save in a very broad sense, but as reaching out to God in love and silent trust. The resemblance on this point between Proclus and Christianity can hardly fail to be noticed.” 28

The Christian liturgical scholar Paul Holmer writes,

“What we know depends upon the kind of person we have made ourselves to be.” 29

Fagerberg adds, “Conversion consists of becoming a new person, learning new passions and training our wants, being re-capacitated, being re-capitulated as we are en-thralled to a new head. There are things that can only be known by becoming a new kind of person.” 30

Thus to be taught how to love is not a matter of being taught certain theories or theological positions, rather Christ through the Church teaches by making His followers into a loving people.There are differences of course. For the Christian liturgy is usually done in a community, whereas Pagan theurgy can be practiced by the individual. It is the community of individuals in relation that properly make Christian persons, and provide the arena to practice the virtues of love.

Many modern people tend to see mere empty ceremonies in the liturgy. It is the individual, they think, who experiences the mystic. This is a false dichotomy. Church liturgy is indeed corporate and symbolic, but it is the individual who experiences the effects, hence liturgical mysticism is personal and spiritualized.

Liturgical mysticism is personal as the mystery of Trinitarian love is produced in an individual person’s soul, but the soul of a liturgical person receives personhood from the corporate, sacramental body which acts upon him or her. The outer liturgy becomes one with the inner liturgy of the heart.

Just as in Platonism, one must ascetically prepare to rightly receive the experience offered by the liturgy. Without asceticism, the world tends to captivate the passions, arousing gluttony and anger, and vainglory. With asceticism, we learn to receive the world as sacrament. Our perceptions always require a prior aesthetic education to receive truth in beauty. Love is necessary first, for love is that essential "mood" capable of receiving Truth once beauty awakens the desire to know it. Only then will the world arouse praise, gratitude, and worship.

Beliefs in fact arise from ritual practices. To become certain of the resurrection, for example, requires more than a movement of the mind. It requires a movement of the heart. Pascal points out that path to belief: “Endeavour, then, to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions.”31

Fagerberg puts it this way,

“Ascetical mysticism plays liturgical theology in an erotic key by stirring a thirst for truth, beauty, and goodness in a transformed mind that can only be slaked when man’s eros has been purified and straightened in its trajectory.” 32

Divo Barsotti makes a similar point when he writes, “In theology Christianity finds its doctrine, but in liturgical cult Christianity finds its very self. The Church could never be equated with her theology, but she may be equated with her liturgy, because in cult she finds her doctrine and her life, all her doctrine and all her life.” 33

The proper discourse of God is praise, poetry, and song; otherwise we try to cram God into dead concepts. It is by participating in the rhythms of ritual that we order our hearts to receive God. This is the old Christian formula: Right praise = right knowing. Liturgy trains us to see the Truth of God, it forms us into the type of people who can perceive the signs of transcendence all around us.

Hence Iamblichus will say,

“…the invocation makes the intelligence of men fit to  participate in the Gods, elevates it to the Gods, and harmonizes it with them through orderly persuasion.” 34

Later he explains,

“…it is the perfect accomplishment of ineffable acts, religiously performed and beyond all understanding, and it is the power of ineffable symbols comprehended by the Gods alone, that establishes theurgical union. . . . In fact, these very symbols, by themselves, perform their own work, without our thinking. . . .” 35

                                                       

Conclusion

For both Christians and Neoplatonists, human beings are first and foremost lovers. You become what you love, not what you think. Practice, not belief, is primary - our doings precede our thinking.

Thus, God must be sung to be known. It is our practices that liturgically shape disciples into a certain type of people. There are things that only certain types of people can know. For Orthodox Christians and Neoplatonic theurgists, “religion” is about initiation, not information. Religion is a habitus, a disposition of the soul to be in the world a certain way. For both Christians and Pagans, the grammar of God is spoken in communal performance of song, praise, and thanksgiving.

Our present cultural liturgies shape our perception to occlude the presence of wonder and the Divine. This type of knowing requires the preparation of our hearts. Rituals do not express belief, they shape how we know and the liturgy is to form us into the types of people who desire to know God, and then are capable of receiving His spirit. In this sense, I think we can say Orthodox liturgy is indeed a kind of Christian theurgy.

The major difference between Pagan henosis and Orthodox Christian theosis, however, is the person of Jesus Christ. It is in the shape of this God, union with the Triune God, who sacrificed Himself, who became poor and wretched, who became man that we may become god, whose being we are to assume. The difference Christ makes is the very difference of a new Cosmos.


                                            

Footnotes




1) Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Address to Catechists and Religion Teachers (December 12, 2000), II.3,




2) LIVING LIGHT: DIVINE EMBODIMENT IN WESTERN PHILOSOPHY by GREGORY SHAW




3) ibid




4) Paul Tyson. “Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for Our Times” pg 130




5) Iamblicus, On the Mysteries, (I. 15 pp. 58-61).Emma C. Clarke, Society of Biblical Literature (November 1, 2003)




6) ibid, (I.8. pp. 36-7)




7) M. David Litwa. Becoming Divine: An Introduction to Deification in Western Culture, pg 108

Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2013.




8) Proclus, '𝘖𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘈𝘳𝘵' [𝘋𝘦 𝘚𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘰 𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘢] 148.1-18, trans. Copenhaver, 1988, p.103.




9)Athanasius On the Incarnation 54.




10) Dionysius the Areopagite, Works (1899) vol. 2. p.67-162. The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy




11) Neoplatonic Theurgy and Dionysius the Areopagite (Journal of Early Christian Studies, Winter, 1999)Gregory Shaw




12) ibid (i.12.41).




13) (i.15.46–47) DeMysteriis




14) Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 57, cf. 53-57.




15) LIVING LIGHT: DIVINE EMBODIMENT IN WESTERN PHILOSOPHYGregory Shaw




16) ibid




17 ) Cited by Damascius, Traité des Premiers Principes II, text and translation by L.G.




18), Dm 270.9, and “the one in us”, Dm 46.13.




19 Plato, Symposium, translated with introduction and notes by A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1989).




20) DIVINE EMBODIMENT IN WESTERN PHILOSOPHy by Gregory Shaw




21) Myst. 47.13-48.4


22) Yeats, Memoirs, 1972, p.195-96


23) Bell, C. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. (1992:80, 221)


24) ibid (1992:160 n.206)

25) ibid 100-101.


26) Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. By Roy A. Rappaport. Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology


27) Liturgical mysticism by  David W. Fagerberg, pg 108 Emmaus Academic (December 27, 2019)

28) pg 152 Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom Cambridge University Press; 1st edition (March 26, 2007)

29 Paul Holmer, C. S. Lewis: His Life and His Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 90.

30, Liturgical mysticism by David W. Fagerberg, pg 208 Emmaus Academic (December 27, 2019)

31) Blaise Pascal, Pensees tr. by WE. Trotter (Mineola, NY: Dove Philosophical Classics, 2003), #233, pp. 65-69.

32) David Fagerberg Provisions for the Journey February 4, 2020, St Paul Center for Biblical Theology


33) Divo Barsotti, Il mistero Cristiano nell’anno liturgico (1951; Cinisello Balsamo, Italy: San Paolo Edizioni, 2006); in English as The Christian Mystery in the Liturgical Year


34) (DM 42.9-15)


35) (DM 96.17-97.6)

A History of Knowledge Revealed in Dreams

                                         

"He said, 'Listen to my words: When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams.'"

Numbers 12:6

It’s not at all obvious that there really is that great a difference between the conscious and unconscious minds, to that one is really rational and the other irrational.

Indeed, modernity is utterly out of synch with how the ancients viewed dreams. For them, there was/is the Dreamtime and the time of Maya.

Schelling even had ascending stages of dreaming, ending in the state of free communion with the spiritual, archetypal, angelic world at the very apex, though recalled only in fragments.

For them, the great “fall” was in departing from this realm in the wrong manner.

Think of the vision of the Hindu sage, creations very ground is Viṣnu blissfully asleep, dreaming all things into being… and also the divine awareness asleep in each of us, so that we’re nearest God in dreaming within his dream, as put in the book Roland in Moonlight by David Bentley Hart, from which much here is taken.

Perhaps we are all dreaming this world, for is not dreams, for the Freudian, the place where desires are acted out?

Is this entire world not the staging ground for man, away from Heaven and God’s Way, to indulge in whatever desire he might fancy?

Wasn’t this world, Maya, born when Adam and Eve acted on their desire? Isn’t the world, phenomenologically, reconstituted each time we desire and seek to satisfy some lust?

Perhaps the Buddha was on to something, the world is desire, at least grasping desire, desire to take instead of receive as gift, and the end of self-centered desire the end to the illusions of this world…

Of course Jung and Plato have been compared, and indeed Plato's forms seem to be hypothesized as supra-conscious onto-noetic paradigms of all particular instances of a predicated property (e.g. the largeness of large), while Jung's archetypes are these forms as they have been sub-consciously embedded in the subterranean recesses of our individual and collective consciousness. The Platonic forms can thus be conceives as the primary analogue, or universal paradigm, of the psychologically embedded Jungian archetypes.

In any case, David Bentley Hart muses:

“At one time, the fluid boundary between the waking and sleeping worlds was much better appreciated, and hadn’t petrified into a wall of granite.

People understood so much more keenly that the dreaming intellect is simply one open to deliverances from other dimensions of reality… other regions of universal mind.

Everyone felt it rational to view dreams—or consider the possibility of viewing them—as objective communications from somewhere beyond the close boundaries of waking consciousness.

Aristotle wrote three separate treatises on the topics of sleep and dreaming and of prophecies that come in one’s sleep, even though he was inordinately disposed toward a naturalizing explanation for most of the phenomena he considered.

So too Cicero, in his treatise on divination: he may ultimately have rejected most oneiromancy as fanciful speculation, but he nonetheless reverently recorded Poseidonios’s three classifications of dreams inspired by the gods…

As I recall, the classifications are as follows: dreams in which the mind really perceives certain truths by virtue of its innate kinship to the gods; dreams prompted by incidental contact with the deathless spirits that naturally throng the air, who are bearers of symbols of truths otherwise hidden from us; and then dreams in which the gods directly address the sleeping mind, particularly when the dreamer is nearing death, in which they communicate truths about the future....

We have dream guides from Egypt and Babylon and Assyria that are millennia old—some as many as four millennia, in fact. And think of how many ancient oneirocritical theorists applied themselves to delving into those shadowy depths… those divinely nocturnal mysteries.

Antiphon, Demetrios of Phaleron, Philochoros, Chrysippos, Poseidonios again… Artemidoros, of course.

And think of those wise souls who heeded the messages their sleeping minds received in the night:

Marcus Aurelius taking medical advice from the gods in dreams, Dio Cassius discovering his vocation as an historian by virtue of a divine communication in his sleep, Plutarch taking the advice of a dream-augury to abstain from eating eggs, Galen receiving instruction on surgery from the gods while sleeping…”

                                              

Hart notes one the ancient oneiric taxonomies of Macrobius :

“…he enumerates five species of dream. The two most trivial or incidental forms are the phantasma, the enhypnion or insomnium

—‘nightmare’—neither of which should be accorded any prophetic meaning, and either of which one may safely dismiss as no more than a perturbation of the senses and imagination.

But then, in more or less ascending order, come the three orders of dream that convey truths that must be heeded. There’s the oneiros or somnium proper, a nocturnal ‘perplexity’ or ‘enigma’ wherein truths are couched in strange and baffling shapes, under palls of ambiguity; such a dream is always in need of interpretation by someone adept at the art.

Then there’s the horama or visio , the dream that’s really a prophetic vision, wherein one glimpses events that will—and do—come to pass in the future, whether consequential or inconsequential. Finally, there’s the chrematismos or oraculum , the ‘oracular’ kind of dream, sent directly by the gods, in which a god, or at least a divine messenger garbed in the form of a priest or a trusted relative or a man revered for his piety, directly and lucidly “communicates to the sleeper something that is both yet to happen and of the greatest moment.

It’s enough to know, as Porphyry says, that that veil grows thin before the attentive soul, and betrays glimpses of what lies beyond it.”

Hart also references Synesius of Cyrene, the bishop of Ptolemais, who affirms that dreams often foreshadow or disclose the shape of the future, and at other times impart vital information, like the correct cure for a certain malady.

At still other times, he says, they reveal things to us about ourselves that otherwise we wouldn’t know—the way a dream of the for example, might apprise the dreamer of his poetic vocation.

                    

There is the entire Chinese science of shenyou - ‘spiritwandering.’

For the ancient Chinese, dreams were seen as ventures out of the flesh into other realms of reality, and all reality as we know it is simply a matter of how the spirit wanders, in the landscapes both of dreams and of the waking world.

And even today the spirits still can guide us. One of the wildest case studies in medical history I've seen is titled "Diagnosis by hallucinatory voices” HERE.

In 1984, a woman starts hearing voices in her head saying things like, "Please don’t be afraid, we would like to help you.” She goes to doctor, is given psychiatric medication, voices stop.

But the voices reappear, they tell her to get immediate treatment, giving her a specific address, which turns out to be the tomography department of a London hospital. The voices tell her to get a brain scan done because of a tumor and just to reassure her, her doctor requests a brain scan.

Well, the scan actually identifies a brain tumor !

They remove it, and after the operation the voices say "We are pleased to have helped you. Goodbye."

The woman discontinues the antipsychotic medication, voices never return.

Some proposed explanations for this from the article:

- some form of telepathic communication

- the patient made it all up, she already knew she had a tumor and wanted to get free health coverage (author says it's unlikely, given her initial relief from the voices subsiding + she had already been living in UK for 15 years)

- * this was a case of "confabulation" by the brain, where the disturbance by the lesion was detected subconsciously and bubbled into awareness in the form of a hallucination, integrating knowledge she had previously learned about e.g. tumors and the location of hospitals.

                               

Cormac McCarthy, the great writer, has a central thesis he calls The Kekulé Problem HERE :

"Something inside us understands and answers things beyond language far more efficiently than our intellect.

He points out that the unconscious solves math problems without numbers, and you don't actually use language to solve anything.

Yet obviously the unconscious must understand those things, even though its loathe to speak to us with them, often using images, metaphors, pictures instead. He writes,

"Did language meet some need? No. The other five thousand plus mammals among us do fine without it....

“Language crossed mountains and oceans as if they weren’t there. …We might further point out that when it arrived it had no place to go.

The brain was not expecting it and had made no plans for its arrival. It simply invaded those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated.

I suggested once in conversation at the Santa Fe Institute that language had acted very much like a parasitic invasion and David Krakauer—our president—said that the same idea had occurred to him.

....The difference between the history of a virus and that of language is that the virus has arrived by way of Darwinian selection and language has not. The virus comes nicely machined...

"....What is at work here? And how does the unconscious know we’re not getting it? What doesn't it know?

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the unconscious is laboring under a moral compulsion to educate us. (Moral compulsion? Is he serious?)

"The unconscious is concerned with rules but these rules will require your cooperation. The unconscious wants to give guidance to your life in general but it doesn't care what toothpaste you use.

And while the path which it suggests for you may be broad it doesn't include going over a cliff. ....The unconscious intends that they be difficult to unravel because it wants us to think about them. "

                                                   

Considered by many to be the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, look at Grothendieck; he decided to meticulously analyze the phenomenon of dreams HERE.

He eventually discovers there is an external being, the "dreamer", who knows the people and sends them dreams so that they will recognize themselves.

Next, he analyzes the nature of the "dreamer" and comes to the conclusion that God exists and is the dreamer.

Philosopher Erik Haynes claims what we think of as dreams are

constructed mentally from emergent unstable minds and reality while awake is a hyperdream, which is more vivid and consistent while being constructed mentally from a fundamental stable mind. He writes:

“This philosophy argues for a unified consciousness at the core of reality. Humans are primarily conscious beings (or souls) with a tangible sense of reality provided by, and connected through, God's consciousness.

This can be compared to the way in which the dream world seems to incorporate everything that reality does yet one would not say that the dream world contains matter since dreams exist completely in the mind. Since the mind is capable of producing a tangible reality in the dream world, then how much more so would God's mind be capable of creating a tangible reality for His creation?”

Haynes references ‘Death is but a dream’- a book by Dr. Christopher Kerr who, as a doctor in a hospice in Buffalo, wrote down the dreams of the dying.

It was very striking that the patients could not distinguish the dreams from the waking state and that in the dreams beloved already deceased people appeared who wanted to accompany them across to the afterlife.

The people who wanted to pick them up were as real to them as the doctor and the hospice staff. They were in a state where the dream reality and the material reality coincided with each other.

Haynes writes,

“From here we can assume that we dream ourselves into the other world. Arrived on the other side the dream disconnects from the body and we dream through the beyond until the dream connects again to a body.

During pregnancy, the fetus continues to be in the dream state which coincides with the bodily sensations, and after birth, the body disconnects from the dream.

However, the dream is not completely gone but still penetrates into our perception at night during sleep.

At the end of life, we come again into a state where dream reality and physical reality become one and after the transition, the dream disconnects from the body and we dream ourselves again through the afterlife.

What happens now if we become lucid in this bodiless dream state in the afterlife? I imagine this could endow us with the power over our fate and we could incarnate into any life we dream of.

                                                                        

I’ll end with a serious of quotes on dream for various Church fathers, who affirm much of what others have said.

Clement of Alexandria:

 In discussing the nature and meaning of sleep, Clement urged: “Let us not, then, who are sons of the true light, close the door against this light; but turning in on ourselves, illumining the eyes of the hidden man, and gazing on the truth itself, and receiving its streams, let us clearly and intelligibly reveal such dreams as are true…. Thus also such dreams as are true, in the view of him who reflects rightly, are the thoughts of a sober soul, undistracted for the time by the affections of the body, and counseling with itself in the best manner…. Wherefore always contemplating God, and by perpetual converse with Him inoculating the body with wakefulness, it raises man to equality with angelic grace, and from the practice of wakefulness it grasps the eternity of life” (Stromata, or Miscellanies).

Thascius Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage in 250 A.D.:

 In a letter to Florentius Pupianus he said, “Although I know that to some men dreams seem ridiculous and visions foolish, yet assuredly it is to such as would rather believe in opposition to the priest, than believe the priest.” In another letter he wrote that God guides the very councils of the Church by “many and manifest visions.” He commended the reader, Celerinus, because his conversion to the Church had come through a vision of the night.

Athanasius :

“….but in death-like sleep, the soul keeps awake by virtue of its own power, and transcends the natural power of the body, and as though traveling away from the body while remaining in it, imagines and beholds things above the earth, and often even holds converse with the saints and angels who are above earthly and bodily existence, and approaches them in the confidence of the purity of its intelligence; shall it not all the more, when separated from the body at the time appointed by God Who coupled them together, have its knowledge of immortality more clear?” (II.31.5 and 33.3)

Gregory of Nyssa:

 In his major philosophical work, On the Making of Man, Gregory deals directly with the meaning and place of sleep and dreams in man’s life. He believed that when man is asleep the senses and the reason rest, and the less rational parts of the soul appear to take over. Reason is not, however, extinguished, but smolders like a fire “heaped with chaff” and then breaks forth with insights that modern dream research calls “secondary mentation.”

He went on to say that “while all men are guided by their own minds, there are some few who are deemed worthy of evident Divine communication; so, while the imagination of sleep naturally occurs in a like and equivalent manner for all, some, not all, share by means of their dreams in some more Divine manifestation….” His reasoning was that there is a natural foreknowledge that comes in an unknown way through the nonrational part of the soul — the “unconscious,” according to modern depth psychology — and it is through this part of the soul that God communicates Himself directly.

Gregory then enumerated the other meanings that dreams can have, offering quite a complete outline of the subject. He suggested that dreams can provide mere reminiscences of daily occupations and events. Or, they can reflect the condition of the body, its hunger or thirst, or the emotional condition of the personality. Dreams can also be understood in medical practice as giving clues to the sickness of the body. Indeed, far from stating a superstitious belief, Gregory laid out quite well the principle upon which today’s analytical study of dreams is based.

Gregory also told, in a sermon entitled “In Praise of the Forty Martyrs,” of a dream that occurred while he was attending a celebration in honor of the soldiers who had been martyred. In the dream, the martyrs challenged Gregory for his Christian lethargy, and it had a profound effect upon his life.

It is clear that philosophically, practically and personally, Gregory of Nyssa believed the dream could be a revelation of depths beyond the human ego.

Basil the Great:

 In his commentary on Isaiah, Basil states, “The enigmas in dreams have a close affinity to those things which are signified in an allegoric or hidden sense in the Scriptures. Thus both Joseph and Daniel, through the gift of prophecy, used to interpret dreams, since the force of reason by itself is not powerful enough for getting at truth” (S. Basilii Magni, Commentarium in Isaiam Prophetam, Prooemium 6f., J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Graecae, Paris, l880, Vol. 30, Col. 127-30).

That Basil believed in continuing to consider dreams is indicated by the letter he wrote to a woman in which he interpreted the dream she had sent him. He suggested to her that her dream meant she was to spend more time in “spiritual contemplation and cultivating that mental vision by which God is wont to be seen.”

Gregory of Nazianzen:

 In his second book of poems, Gregory writes: “And God summoned me from boyhood in my nocturnal dreams, and I arrived at the very goals of wisdom” (S. Gregorii Theologi, Carminum, Liber II, 994-95O). In another place he told that this nocturnal vision was the hidden spark that set his whole life aflame for God. In one of his poems, he spoke of the ability of demons to also speak through one’s dreams. “Devote not your trust too much to the mockery of dreams, nor let yourself be terrified by everything; do not become inflated by joyful visions, For frequently a demon prepares these snares for you” (Carminum, Liber I, 608-9, lines 209-12).

St. John Chrysostom:

 In his commentary on Acts, volume one, he states, “To some the grace was imparted through dreams, to others it was openly poured forth. For indeed by dreams the prophets saw, and received revelations.” According to Chrysostom, dreams are sent to those whose wills are compliant to God, for they do not need visions or the more startling divine manifestations, and he mentioned Joseph, the father of Jesus, and Peter and Paul as examples of this truth (Homilies on Matthew, IV. 10f., 18; v. 5)

What about the single? How to live without connection?

                                                        

“Humans connect to other humans at so basic a level that when we disconnect, our souls shatter into a thousand little pieces.”

- Peter Leithart

"If loneliness didn’t exist, we could reasonably assume that psychiatric illnesses would not occur either.”

- Psychiatrist J.H. van den Berg

 Before WW II society was more naturally integrated, people needed other people. The spiritual people would say the Divine was in control. In fact, in Christianity, there’s large strain that says one ought to abandon oneself to divine providence. The Eastern religions as well. God will put things in your life as you need them.

Is this true ?

Our man made world today is premised upon the opposite of the humane, connections make us human, and we’ve created a society of isolation.

One can't take it for granted one will have friends, or a partner. We’re not embedded in social systems that way anymore.

If one wants friends, one has to work at it! Books describe how to intentionally find people, join groups, and then, since we no longer simply bump into one another, how to intentionally maintain those relationships.

They don’t just happen. Often, same with marriage. Generation Z is the first to witness this new world.

Can you simply allow God to provide? Or do you need to go out, and work hard to get a community?

In most longterm marriages each person has on average 5 close friends, you need a social nest to hold people together.

The spiritual will say, put God first, you need only God.

The psychologists say no. Family is the number one thing people get meaning from.

In fact, you need 4 or 5 things, and without these you’ll be depressed and lonely. Also you need them to regulate the negative emotions we all have.

We regulate through other people.

Jordan Peterson, despite his various short-comings, in an able psychologist, he says,

“We experience much of our positive emotion in relation to goals. We are not happy, technically speaking, unless we see ourselves progressing—and the very idea of progression implies value. Worse yet is the fact that the meaning of life without positive value is not simply neutral. Because we are vulnerable and mortal, pain and anxiety are an integral part of human existence.

We must have something to set against the suffering that is intrinsic to Being. We must have the meaning inherent in a profound system of value or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount. Then, nihilism beckons, with its hopelessness and despair.”

He’s right.

Johann Hari, in his best-selling book Lost Connections, identifies 7 kinds social causes, disconnection from:

Meaningful Work

Other People

Meaningful Values

Childhood Trauma

Status and Respect

Natural World

Hopeful and Secure Future (faith)

He writes HERE,

“Everyone knows human beings have natural physical needs,” he added. “Well, there’s equally good evidence that we have innate psychological needs. We need to feel we belong to a group; we need to feel we have a stable future; we need to feel that we are valued; we need to feel we have meaning and purpose in our lives.”

                                                               

In general I think we have about 9 needs, and you kind of need at least 3 or 4 to start any real movement:

Security — safe territory and an environment which allows us to develop fully

Attention (to give and receive it)

Sense of autonomy and control — having volition to make responsible choices.

Feeling part of a wider community

Emotional intimacy — to know that at least one other person accepts us totally for who we are,.

Privacy

Sense of status within social groupings

Sense of competence and achievement

Meaning and purpose.

The spiritual people will answer that those things will not lead to happiness or real fulfillment.

They are right. You get the job, wife, and house and…..then what?

However, you will be secure, and regulated. Your psyche will not be thrown to disintegration, it will withstand the ups and downs of life much more easily.

Today, many young have problems forming attachments to people.

If they wish to, they must today work at it. Perhaps see a therapist, make a plan, work hard, one’s job is rarely one’s stability or meaning these days.

It’s harder. But they ask, why not just focus on a spiritual path?

It used to be a monk or a “householder,” otherwise you need some overwhelming passion to fill up your days.

Think of the artist or obsessed mathematician on a mission to express what only they might express.

So, we have a 4th new class of people.

A monk in the world ? Will God provide ? Ought we abandon ourselves to divine providence? Let go of "me and my life ?"


What about all those social needs for connection? Not for ultimate meaning or happiness, but biologically to regulate the nervous system.

                                                       

HERE

The best predictor of happiness in America? It's Marriage, read HERE .

Many psychologists and researchers go as far as saying marriage is THE key to happiness, after 50 years of hard data, read HERE, it's hard to argue.

                         

I hear the Guru’s saying you need only spirituality, then I look at “enlightened” teachers like Robert Spira, or even high Guru’s in Vedanta, like Papaji….and they’re all married !

Or in a communal monastery setting.

Priest's too - they have a meaningful job, purpose, pastors have families….

Who exactly is living this way, with only God, and no friends, partner, or meaningful activity ?

Yet this is the advice often given.

Others will say work hard for the things of the world…

And, if these young people choose a non-materialstic life, are they avoiding the hard emotional work of relationships?

In Christianity the spirituality is to find God through and in people, we grow through relationships, as individuals we become persons in community, thus community is vital. Persons are born by *sustained loving in relationships marked by ritual/repetition - in marriage by weddings, birthdays, baptisms, anniversaries etc

The man outside of love is a bundle of dissolutions and instincts.

Paul Tournier, a brilliant Christian psychologist, argues that untold damage is done in Christian communities by curating “premature renunciation.”

He explains how nonbelievers and Christians alike (while they may not have language to express it) seem to “know” the Two Gospels of both worlds, which seem in opposition to each other. The gospel of psychology, as he calls it, is one of “self-fulfillment” and “self-assertion,” while the Biblical gospel is “self-denial” and “renunciation.”

"To how many generations of miserable exploited people has the Church preached resignation, acceptance of one’s lot, surrender, and submission?”

“We have all seen so many of those men and women who have never grown up because they have been repressed by a religious upbringing, and have been trained since infancy in systemic renunciation.”

“How many mediocre personalities are there in our churches – people who have not the courage to live full lives, to assert themselves and make the most of themselves, and who look upon this stifling of themselves as a Christian virtue, whereas faith ought to create powerful personalities?

He sees the necessity for self-actualization and self-fulfillment to come *before renunciation - first you need a healthy sense of self and self-assertion.


First you need a place. He says,

"It is readily understandable that to be denied a place is to suffer a serious moral trauma. It is a sort of denial of one’s humanity.”

Without this sense of place, the church’s language of renunciation, to “deny oneself,” becomes painful and confusing.


It is to this person that the church says, “Give yourself to the service of others, for in the service of others you will find yourself.” Tournier responds in a resounding, “No!” for he understands that since the client “has not been loved, or not loved well, he can neither love nor believe in and accept love.”

Tournier notes, the type of person it was who God “called” in Scripture; ones with a well-formed sense of place. 

Abraham was well-established in Ur of the Chaldees when God called him. Moses was asked to leave Midian, where he was tending his father-in-law’s flocks. Jesus called Simon and Andrew to leave their well-established fishing profession etc etc all well-situated in society.

                                                                    

- Abraham Bids Farewell to Hagar and Ishmael

This often can lead to denial - oh, I'm simply too spiritual to even think about getting sex or other "base" desires.

Renunciation is only possible for those who possess. The Buddha was a prince before he was an ascetic.

Premature renunciation denies and suppresses fundamental human drives. It leaves people frustrated with life and themselves.

“Base” can mean low and ignoble, but it is also something that is foundational. Our primary needs move up Maslow’s hierarchy from the concrete to the abstract. Our desires might be ignoble but refusing to pursue them out of fear is no noble example of renunciation.

So Tournier sees the necessity for self-actualization and self-fulfillment to come before renunciation, and the former movement can only occur when children experience attachment in their family of origin – when they have a sense of place within their family. It is out of this sense of place that attachment forms, which is the starting point for young people to develop a healthy sense of self and self-assertion. It is this personhood, this self, which then interacts with a spiritual movement as an adult, when they, as fully formed adults, make true commitments of faith and willingly give themselves up to appropriate renunciation and self-denial.

                                                                          

In 1980, just 6% of 40 yr olds had never been married...and after Covid these numbers will surely skyrocket.

Tournier discusses a kind of anxiety that clients must overcome as they leave the first movement of self-actualization (and its accompanying supports) and enter authentic renunciation. (This anxiety may also be experienced in a preliminary stage of self-actualization, wherein a client may realize their false renunciations and exchange them for authentic self-actualization). Situate yourself within these movements, especially in the context of this comment by Tournier: “The person who has had the benefit of a solid support in childhood from which to launch out into life, will have no difficulty in letting go of that support, and in finding fresh support somewhere else”

Ramesh Belekar, awakened disciple of Rama Maharishi would only teach those who already had material comfort, and could release the world and practice the highest Vedanta.

Psychologist too, say this is a biological need.

When you break it down, marriage does yield much more fulfillment and happiness - although mainly for the more well off, In this article HERE it reports :

"....the subtler truth seems to be that finances, family, and social fitness are three prongs in a happiness trinity. 

They rise together and fall together. 

Low-income Americans have seen the largest declines in marriage and experience the most loneliness.
High-income Americans marry more and have not only richer investment accounts but also richer social lives...

The deeper question is why the trinity of happiness is so stratified by income—and whether well-being in America is in danger of becoming a luxury good."

                          

Relationships otherwise are frankly burdens and sources of stress. You need friends and family and money and security. 

Recently a survey asked if people 1) Viewed parenthood  as a joyful vocation and 2). If they've experienced it.

Not surprisingly, the younger generations found this question baffling, after all, their own uprising, perhaps by a single parent, or with both parents workings, was quite consciously perceived as a burden and frustration to their own burnt-out overworked parents. The message was loud and clear - as children they are in the way.

Since love becomes equated with unsolicited obligation, one avoids love.

Of course, a mothers love doesn’t just confirm the self but confers spiritual fulfilment on the self. When I am truly met by the other, which I experience as being loved by the other, this recognition provides meaning in my world.

So, how can one value a world in which the founding people in ones life have refused to recognise and mirror who one is. He is not valued, so he cannot care about anyone or anything.

If a man has no external proof of value; no mentor or father figure, no compensation of his worth from society in the form of a job, no recognition of his worth simply as a man from a woman, no communal approval in the form of friends....Can he really simply overcome the world ? 

Can an experience of God be so strong, sustaining, and real, that all other evidence is counteracted and he can find peace ?

And without the world and relationships, does this make us more or less human?

Vedanta spirituality will say no to the world, let the dream would alone, focus on knowing who you are, give yourself to Isvara. Yet….India has customs - monk or family householder.

What of the third class?

Is the world, in this man made society, too closed off to the divine ?

                                                       

Orthodox Christianity will mention synergy, you work with God. He puts things in front of you, you work with them. So, go out and try, and God will do the rest.

However, there are much fewer opportunities today, and people launch an incredible effort to even create a network of friends, and this on top of jobs and responsibilities.

What society effortlessly had engineered to make easy, connection, takes real effort and energy, almost as if we have to re-create the world and society in miniature for ourselves.

Of course, one needs support, and skills, even for this. I've written on the dating scene HERE.

Or, one can take all these longings, and put them toward the Divine. Men are opting out of marriage, Men Going There Own Way groups spring up, and are told instead focus on excellence.

Easy to say, yet, I see people who do not intentionally plan, they end up all alone, perhaps in a retirement home, rotting away, with no support at all - no 401 K, no family or children, no one; and they’re message is to work hard, build those social structures and maintain them.

One of the clearest descriptions for achieving a secure life are the 4 pillars of meaning described by Emily Esfahani Smith as Belonging, Purpose, Narrative, and Transcendence. These are convergent with the (interestingly, also 4) loci of meaning John Vervaeke describes in psychological research as: 

A sense of connectedness to others and the world; to something “bigger” than oneself (Transcendence)
A sense of mattering or having significance on things (Narrative)
A sense of being cared for which includes developmental relationships (Belonging)
Purpose (Purpose)

A meaningful life is appraised by the one living it as coherent (narrative), significant (transcendence), directed (purpose), and belonging (belonging).


                                                           

So, go, get what you need, or, focus on the Divine, and things will be added, even if you do not have a base security ?

I asked a Buddhist monk who also was a youth counselor, he said in his society the eternal bachelor is despised. The single person never matures, they don’t have the responsibilities to do so. Instead of excellence or spirituality, they end up being enslaved to their own desires.

Without family, or a special social position, inevitably they yield to various temptations. Without friends, they will self-soothe with alcohol.

On the need for a social framework, Carl Jung once wrote :

"I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world, leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, if it is not counteracted either by a real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above and isolated in society cannot resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the Devil.”

                                                    

Shabbat Of Lonely Man Drawing By Melita Kraus

Unfortunately, this paradigm is not understood by the older generation. They have things for granted that provide support that they’re not even aware of.

It’s like this old farmers watching their kids play in the mud at Woodstock, it’s such an alien social sphere that they simply couldn’t understand.

Often they think young folks are depressed because the secular world offers them nothing, but go to the forums, and it’s angst over having no partner, or place in society, of not having any recognition of their with as a human being.

Without this things, no matter how advanced, unless you are a monk, you will feel shame; the one emotion that psychology tells us is almost unbearable.

For most of human life, he needed to know you were accepted, a part of the group, or else you were in danger of being kicked out, and would die if left to yourself.

Alone, the nervous system is always stressed, sending out a signal that something is wrong, you are in danger, and you are - without social support even today things are hard.

For example, being married with no medicine you have a better chance of surviving cancer than being single and having chemo !

This study HERE shows for “prostate, breast, colorectal, esophageal, and head/neck cancers, the survival benefit associated with marriage was larger than the published survival benefit of chemotherapy.”




Loneliness is worse than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Lonely people need more painkillers, they heal much slower, they have more health problems etc etc

This is survival.

Plus, what does the world have to offer for the single and rootless people? Adventures often aren’t meaningful unless you share them with someone. 

Yet....Marriage is insecure these days, think of no-fault divorce, or the jealousy, insecurity, and envy rampant in couples obsessed about their partner’s past relationships, or how the pat 10 years have seen a 300% increase in men exclusively relaying on their wives for support as friendships melt away, and the incredible pressure that puts on the marriage.

It takes far more work and resources to make a marriage work today than it did in the past.  

So, just do God?

Psychologists warn that this is merely the “monk’s defense” , a kind of “spiritual bypassing” you can read more about HERE, where you use spirituality to deny the hard work of relationships and even one’s own inner purpose.

But then what of growth?

People will aks, “Isn’t this celibate life self-centred, obeying their own will and whims? Husbands and wives have obediences and responsibilities in their families and their parishes. Singles has no official obediences or responsibilities beyond themselves. It would seem that such a state would almost certainly result in self-will as a guiding principle.

Now, some have realized the “new category”, neither monk nor married, and have understood it’s unique position, one former Orthodox hermit writes HERE :

“First of all there must be firm spiritual discipline for the sake of a lively interior life. The single person must have a rule of prayer which is diligently kept, with the reading and pondering of wholesome and edifying words and images. Great attention must be given to keep oneself free of all thoughts and images which lead to spiritual and physical defilement and disintegration. The “spouse” and “life partner” for the single person in the most direct and specific way must be the Lord himself….

…these conditions are particularly necessary for the single person precisely because of their single state in a world which renders them particularly vulnerable to self –centeredness and loneliness on the one hand, and lack of commitment and accountability on the other, with the additional cross of often being misunderstood and taken advantage of by those around them because of their single status.”

Now, we all know groups like AA work became it is one small will joining itself to many other wills to become strong. Hence William James wondered why military men could will themselves to fun headstrong into a hail of bullets but couldn’t quit smoking - it turns out we need a community.

So, although an individual could make Church, or spirituality, his entire life, with so many temptations, and on their own, it seems like a possible, but awfully difficult, proposition.

   

Adam Lane Smith, the attachment specialist, explains things like this:

“Have you ever asked yourself why so many men today seem insecure or lost?

To understand where this all started, let's go back to before World War I.

Life in the West and America was much different—more people lived out on the land, on family farms than in cities.

Indeed, people often stayed within ten miles of their birthplace, creating deep and very close relations out of necessity.

For the first 190,000 years of the human species, we lived in loose-knit family groups.

We weren't meant to keep secrets or have separate identities from our tribe.

We lived openly, bonded deeply, and relied on each other for survival.
The wiring of our brain is in connection with living.

The 20th century, however, was an entirely different story and unlike any other in the past.

World War I threw an entire generation of young men into a meat grinder, many coming out shell-shocked or not coming out at all.

The survivors returned home—often feeling broke.

The following cultural upsets —such as the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and World War II—continued to strain family connections.

Post-war Baby Boomers were growing up in a new world where the family farm had been replaced with city living and long hours worked by both parents.

This tended to foster feelings of abandonment and disconnection and created massive insecurity.
Each generation intensified this cycle of disconnection and insecurity.

Today, men are brought up in cultural conditions where deep family bonds and community connections are pretty rare. 

They are placed in daycare from childhood, deprived of the close parental contact their brains are wired to expect, and grow up in a critical, competitive society trying to gain affection, approval, and stability.

If not for the above reasons, then it is the context of coming from broken families, a backdrop of cultural nihilism, that drives them into this constant state of hyper-competition, drawing them into deep insecurity.

Men feel estranged from their own cultures, and nothing seems to fit or belong in a significant way.

The result—men's anxiety, depression, and, in many cases, suicide rates soaring out of proportion.”

                                                           

  I leave you with a devastating poem Tin Ujevic, Croatia's great bohemian drunkard poet :

DAILY LAMENT

How hard it is not to be strong,

how hard it is to be alone,

and to be old, yet still be young!

and to be weak, and powerless,

alone, with no one anywhere,

dissatisfied, and desperate.

And trudge bleak highways endlessly,

and to be trampled in the mud,

with no star shining in the sky.

Without your star of destiny

to play its twinklings on your crib

with rainbows and false prophecies.

– Oh God, oh God, remember

all the glittering fair promises

with which you have afflicted me.

Oh God, oh God, remember

all the great loves, the great victories,

the wreaths of laurel and the gifts.

And know you have a son

who walks the weary valleys of the world

among sharp thorns, and rocks and stones,

through unkindness and unconcern,

with his feet bloodied under him,

and with his heart an open wound.

His bones are full of weariness,

his soul is ill at ease and sad,

and he’s neglected and alone,

and sisterless, and brotherless,

and fatherless, and motherless,

with no one dear, and no close friend,

and he has no-one anywhere

except thorn twigs to pierce his heart

and fire blazing from his palms.

Lonely and utterly alone

under the hemmed in vault of blue,

on dark horizons of high seas.

Who can he tell his troubles to

when no-one’s there to hear his call,

not even brother wanderers?

Oh God, you sear your burning word

too hugely through this narrow throat

and throttle it inside my cry.

And utterance is a burning stake,

though I must yell it out, I must,

or, like a kindled log, burn out.

Just let me be a bonfire on a hill,

just one breath in the fire,

if not a scream hurled from the roofs.

Oh God, let it be over with,

this miserable wandering

under this dome as deaf as stone.

Because I crave a powerful word,

because I crave an answering voice,

someone to love, or holy death.

For bitter is the wormwood wreath

and deadly dark the poison cup,

so burn me, blazing summer noon.

For I am sick of being weak,

and sick of being all alone

(seeing I could be hale and strong)

(and seeing that I could be loved),

but I am sick, sickest of all

to be so old, yet still be young!