Remain in Me: The Theonoias, Belief and Beliefs

While Christianity has defined different types of prayer, it lacks an account of their effect on cognition. The most they’ve done is talk about the faculties involved: Christian Vocal prayer involves the voice, Christian Meditation involves the mind—contrasting, here, with Buddhist meditation—and Christian contemplation involves neither. All traditions, though, struggle to sustain, in daily activity, the prayerfulness of the Eucharistic Adoration Chapel, the Yoga Mat, the meditation cushion.

It’s the custom of Under the Influence to use the strengths of one tradition to highlight the areas of growth necessary for another. In that vein, a comment following the post “He Aint Heavy, He’s my Brother” clarified that "Absence is an ontological quality, opposite is a logical quality." Thinking is optional, the physical confines of our consciousness are optional, but merging back into cosmic consciousness is not optional. It goes on to clarify that the “Nens”—the Buddhist name for the movements from pure perception to cognition—have no Christian equivalent. Claiming that Mother Church would benefit from it, the post defines the 3 Theonoias—or theonoiae, if you’re a greek nerd. The first theonoia is pure perception: “The table in the center of the room” would be a fine answer to a theoretical or paradoxical question. The second theonoia gives names to phenomena, differentiating in the process: this is a table, that is a chair, each has its function. The third theonia weaves together theories about tables and chairs.

Too much thinking, as Christianity proves, conflates verbs with nouns, confuses “belief” and "beliefs.” The post “Emptiness in the Life of God: Resurrecting a Concept” talked about Faith as if, to quote Ram Dass, it was “what was left when all your beliefs have been blown to hell." Belief is trust in God, but it is too often assumed to be "the mental activity that comes from that trust". We have associated our identity with that mental activity, and trust with its own conceptual byproducts. We can, and should, trade in our “beliefs” for belief, and our “thoughts of self” for Being Itself.

Indeed, as was clarified post "Staying with Suspension: Christian thoughts on Wisdom, Cognition and Enlightenment,” we do well, who allow our mental activity to remain at the first Theonoia, the level of unexamined perception of reality. The point is, here, that only when it remains at the first theonoia does our believing express trust, rather than the panicked enumeration of “beliefs” that can be merely the ramblings of a threatened ego.

John’s gospel is paramount here, when it emphasizes intimacy with Christ, rather than imitation. "Remain in me” it says. “Stay with me.” This is a Christological expression of beliefs similar to the originally-Zen concept of “interbeing.” “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Later this message applies to the church. The Gospel of John portrays Jesus saying to God "I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." That means communion with God is the point--in this life--rather than “doing God’s will”. Remaining at the first Theonoia is a sharing in God’s being which, once we have learned what we can from our physical existence, becomes the non-dual and self-extinguishing full-personhood of Divinization.

Remember: Christianity has a Monistic, or unified view of God and Personhood, and a dualistic view of selves and incarnations. This leads to something that, for lack of a better term, we could call "The “I AM” predicament.” When God said his name was “I AM” he was talking about shared personhood here on the level of being, not shared selfhood, on the level of thinking. Selves are separate, self-conscious manifestations that can become idols when we cling to them. Because selves are constructs, God’s “self” and our “self” will have difficulty sharing the sandbox. Personhood is a locus of consciousness, but it isn’t dualistically opposed to cosmic consciousness, or the Divine nature. The “I AM predicament” arises because we’ve confused selves with our personhood, and in the process we’ve made a few errors that history is right not to let us forget.

Aided by dualism, I can too easily mistake personhood (being made in God’s image and likeness) for “selfhood” (separate self-conscious bastardizations of my own existence). This leads too easily to divinizing my own selfishness. Conversely, it helps me bypass personal responsibility. Divinized human flaws range from “slavery must be God’s will, because it’s biblical” to “women must be silent in church” to “we’re only certain Jesus ordained men, so women can’t be ordained.” All of these are egotistical statements endowed with divine will.

The “fragmented nature of selves” is the problem here. Instead of figuring out “what parts of me become God,” the solution’s to be found in the Dark Night of the Self. The answer to many Koans involves allowing the query’s illogicality to get rid of the “me” who’s asking. After all, Ego is just this incarnation’s best defense mechanism. As I work out my purgatorial predicament, I troubleshoot my thoughts: I will cling to being “immoral” less as I let go of substituting a projection of myself for “being myself.” Lacking a self, I don’t cease to be. I simply cease to be divisive. The dark night of the senses, of the soul, and of the self—all of these are spiritual movements that can cleanse belief of its errors. We fight them because non-belief threatens our self concept, but the self concept needs to go, too.

Lets return to the above statement about “belief” and “beliefs.” Belief is remaining at the first theonoia. It’s ontological. But whether you are a Theist or an Atheist or an Agnostic, whether a jew or a hindu or a Jain, your “beliefs” are intellectual movements: an expression of the third theonoia. When we’re ontologically detached, living on the level of being, . That is to say, for those who don’t cling to the business of thinking because your focus is on merging back into cosmic consciousness, atheism doesn’t affect God’s existence in any way. Atheism isn’t a threat, identifying our being with our thoughts is. Being open to the coexistence of opposites is, in fact, a sign of the dark night of the self. Non-belief is a state in which one increasingly depends upon God, in which one increasingly leans on the Christ till he’s ultimately identified with the self. The man in Mark’s Gospel who, through tears, said “I believe, help my unbelief” is to be envied for his doubt, not just his confidence. He was obviously in the midst of the dark night of the self, and was all the more prepared for divinization.

There’s a confusion here about what constitutes love, and it affects belief negatively. Obsession, when its positive, produces the feelings we call “being in love.” When obsession is negative we learn the truth, that obsession comes from insecurity, and giving up “being in love” is the key to loving. If I am in the living room, but I’m worrying about whether my sleeping spouse really loves me, I’m unable to be with myself. If we’re both in the kitchen, if she’s telling me what she thinks about something, and I nod and smile while I’m mentally differing with her, I’m being with my own opinions instead of with her.

In love, as in belief, we’d be well served to eliminate blame, projection, dualism, superstition and egoism. The hazards of blame and dualism are obvious--and Under the Influence has treated them elsewhere. But when I attribute insecurity onto a sleeping spouse, I need to seriously question whether I’m not simply projecting, foisting my own insecurity onto her. If I'm a married man, and my taking out the garbage is done with an implicit expectation that I can later obligate my spouse to do the laundry for me, I’m reducing love to superstition.

When love is purged of these errors, our homes become a space of spiritual practice. When our God concept is purged of those five errors, we’re able to rest in God more easily. When that happens, God first becomes impersonal—we relate to him as a cosmic consciousness or ground of being. Later he disappears altogether. A short exercise will show, by analogy, the truth of the matter. If my eyes work well, I don’t spend all day long thinking about them. Only in the presence of a mirror (or ocular pain) do I even realize I have them. It’s similar with the distinctions between persons. Selves and desires that differ, (sometimes violently) are the way people substitute separate self consciousness for the reality of being a person, a locus of consciousness.

To vamp on a couple of helpful bits from the gospels: duality is the “Log in my eye” that separates me from others. I can’t see my enormous faults because I’m too busy noticing the tiny faults of others. Non-duality is the light that is within me because my eye is clear. It is also the “great darkness” of which Jesus spoke when he said “if the light that is in you is darkness, great is that darkness. It is both because the God we’re communing with on the altar of reality is presence in absence, both being and non-being.

Keep in mind that, from the bits about love, onward, I’m dealing with the “Third theonoia.” I’m dealing with a unity of God and self, (the first theonoia) that’s first “abstracted and objectified by being named” (the second theonoia). Then I've theorized about it. The task of returning to the first theonoia is why I need disciplines such as what the west calls “metathinking,” or what the east calls jnana yoga. These help us to ask if our thinking is divisive. In short, the Logos leads to adjusted thinking—concepts like “self” and “Holy Spirit” and “heaven” and “forgiveness”--the “right concepts” addressed in “Emptiness in the Life of God” that lay the foundation for the permanent humility.

It’s a strength of Christianity, the way remote goals are relocated in immanence. In teaching about heaven, Jesus links eternal reward, or lack thereof, with the most minute shifts in disposition. Call you’re brother a fool, he says, and you’re in danger of hell. Therese of Lisieux took it a step further, saying “All the way to Heaven is Heaven.” The theonoias take it a step further. If your mind and perception are clear, you and the cosmos and others are all one. Christians are apt to substitute being for a sort of bastardized “thinking about being.” Taking pure perception with us, and we will avoid the abstractions involved in sin—we may be “good and evil” but we won’t mull over “knowledge of good and evil” constantly in our heads. Remaining at the first theonoia, we will simply exist, and have a chance to fulfill Jesus request. “Remain in me,” he said, “and I will remain in you.” If, in the present, this is the object of our meditation, the future will be fruitful indeed.