05-17-2011, 12:00 AM
Lex,
When you hesitate to bring this up because the terms that St. John uses are so unfamiliar outside of that tradition. And staying outside the convention of who you are and not who you thought you to be or do and finally knowing there is no special entity or anybody inside the body making things happen. Things are happening anyway. There is freedom in this. God showed you St. John of the Cross way so you could experience that freedom within and the freedom without. The freedom of the delusion of "me".
Ninth,No you are missing my point here and blurring things together, probably because you are unfamiliar with what St John presents. Christian mysticism, of which I see St John’s work as a pinnacle, concerns itself with union with God. The work does not concern itself with the “delusion or me”as you put it. The Christian mystic considers themselves a mystery hidden in Christ. The way put forth by St John and others brings one into direct experience/knowledge of this mystery. During the process the “soul” passes through different stages, very clear land marks experienced by many others on the way. The soul is gradually stripped of its attachments until it stands naked in will/faith, (sweeping the tonal). One of the latter attachments to go is that because the soul is aware of the no small progress it has made in this work it cannot help but view itself as spiritual, no longer a novice but quite advanced and proficient in this way, the night of the spirit is a passive purging of these kinds of attachments in the forms which are most subtle, too subtle for the mind in most cases, forms of spiritual recognition of oneself as one who knows God and is known completely by God. Once this night of the spirit has been passed through the soul begins to recognize the union it has been brought into (takes years) but make no mistake this is a union of God and a very authentic self. I say authentic because the self is not deluded about itself. So there is still a very strong experience of this self in union with God. Other traditions present this same union in different terminology. (Solar lunar, father son. mother son etc).
The Buddhist no-self experience comes long after this. Where this spiritual self in union with God is lost. Both God and the authentic self in union with God and the “realm” where this activity of union took place falls away, collapses, utterly. This is only available to those who have achieved “union”. They are the only ones who would recognize it and could withstand it.
At the end of his life and work St John did glimpse this but he thought it was a glimpse of what happens after death and the heaven that awaited him. If he did understand the no-self experience he was silent about it. On a similar note; Thomas Merton after years of being a monk and teaching about these kinds of things that St John did eventually became a hermit. At the very end of his life he got permission to visit India. While standing at the foot of a huge Buddhist statute he had this break through and he wrote briefly about what happened. A silent statue speaking to a man of silence. But before he could explain what it all meant and put it into context he died on that same trip, electrocuted when a fan fell on him in his room.
When you hesitate to bring this up because the terms that St. John uses are so unfamiliar outside of that tradition. And staying outside the convention of who you are and not who you thought you to be or do and finally knowing there is no special entity or anybody inside the body making things happen. Things are happening anyway. There is freedom in this. God showed you St. John of the Cross way so you could experience that freedom within and the freedom without. The freedom of the delusion of "me".
Ninth,No you are missing my point here and blurring things together, probably because you are unfamiliar with what St John presents. Christian mysticism, of which I see St John’s work as a pinnacle, concerns itself with union with God. The work does not concern itself with the “delusion or me”as you put it. The Christian mystic considers themselves a mystery hidden in Christ. The way put forth by St John and others brings one into direct experience/knowledge of this mystery. During the process the “soul” passes through different stages, very clear land marks experienced by many others on the way. The soul is gradually stripped of its attachments until it stands naked in will/faith, (sweeping the tonal). One of the latter attachments to go is that because the soul is aware of the no small progress it has made in this work it cannot help but view itself as spiritual, no longer a novice but quite advanced and proficient in this way, the night of the spirit is a passive purging of these kinds of attachments in the forms which are most subtle, too subtle for the mind in most cases, forms of spiritual recognition of oneself as one who knows God and is known completely by God. Once this night of the spirit has been passed through the soul begins to recognize the union it has been brought into (takes years) but make no mistake this is a union of God and a very authentic self. I say authentic because the self is not deluded about itself. So there is still a very strong experience of this self in union with God. Other traditions present this same union in different terminology. (Solar lunar, father son. mother son etc).
The Buddhist no-self experience comes long after this. Where this spiritual self in union with God is lost. Both God and the authentic self in union with God and the “realm” where this activity of union took place falls away, collapses, utterly. This is only available to those who have achieved “union”. They are the only ones who would recognize it and could withstand it.
At the end of his life and work St John did glimpse this but he thought it was a glimpse of what happens after death and the heaven that awaited him. If he did understand the no-self experience he was silent about it. On a similar note; Thomas Merton after years of being a monk and teaching about these kinds of things that St John did eventually became a hermit. At the very end of his life he got permission to visit India. While standing at the foot of a huge Buddhist statute he had this break through and he wrote briefly about what happened. A silent statue speaking to a man of silence. But before he could explain what it all meant and put it into context he died on that same trip, electrocuted when a fan fell on him in his room.