HISTORY OF NON-DUAL

MEDITATION METHODS

Javier Alvarado Planas

Madrid, 2014
HISTORY OF NON-DUAL MEDITATION METHODS
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HISTORY OF NON-DUAL MEDITATION METHODS

Javier Alvarado Planas

 to Pedro Rodea

Special thanks:

The readings and reflections contained in this book are the fruit of several
years of work, during which I have been so lucky as to count on the friendship and
support of many people whom I want to thank. José Manuel and Paco for their
constancy. Ángel for his hospitality. Benjamín, Rosa, Pedro, Ismael, José Luis,
David, Mari Paz, Ángel... for so many things. My father and Joaquín, who had the
patience to read the original of this text. Iván, Erik and Jesús. Friar Ernesto… Car-
los, for supporting this English translation of the book.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

page
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 17

ADVAITIC PREFACE 21
I.- I AM NOT THE BODY 26
II.- I AM NOT THE MIND 28
III.- BUT I AM NOT CONSCIOUSNESS 29
IV.- THE “I AM” AS A WITNESS OR THE PARADOX 30
OF THE METHOD
V.- GOAL OF THE MEDITATIVE PRACTICE 33
VI.- MEDITATION ON “I AM” 35
VII.- TIME AS AN APPROPRIATION OF OBJECTS 39
1.- There is no past but the memories from the present. 40
2.- There is no future but the expectations from the pres-
ent. 41
3.- What is the now? 42
4.- Time is ego. 44
5.- How to break free from the chains of time? 46
VIII.- THE INSUBSTANTIALITY OF THE “I” 49
IX.- WHAT IS THERE BEYOND CONSCIOUSNESS? 51
X.- THE “EXPERIENCE” OF AWARENESS IS THE
EXPERIENCE OF THE NOTHING. 55
XI.- A DAILY “EXPERIENCE” OF THE NOTHING;
THE DEEP SLEEP 57

SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT
IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM 59
I.- THE HERMES DOCTRINE AND THE CORPUS
HERMETICUM 59
II.- THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE EGYPTIAN
ORIGIN OF HERMETISM 64
III.- THE CULTURAL CENTER OF ALEXANDRIA 67
IV.- THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE EGYPTIAN
HERMETISM 68
1.- “Poimandres” and the technique of the etymological
masking. 72
2.- Cosmogonical accounts. 76

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

3.- The Egyptian sapiential genre. 85

V.- EGYPTIAN METAPHYSICS AND POPULAR RE-
LIGIOSITY 87
VI.- SPREAD OF HERMETISM DURING THE MID-
DLE AGES 93
VII.- ON THE ESOTERIC TEACHINGS IN EGYPT:
METHOD TO ACHIEVE ENLIGHTENMENT 95
VIII.- FIRST DEGREE OF THE WAY OF THOTH-
HERMES: THE GENERAL PREPARATORY EDUCA-
TION 97
1.- Nous and logos. 100
2.- The sidereal journey and the eusebeia. 102
3.- Prayer, meditation and contemplation. 103
IX.- SECOND DEGREE: THE DOCTRINE OF RE-
GENERATION (MENTAL SILENCE AND SUSPEN-
SION OF SENSES) 109
X.- THIRD DEGREE; THE “GOOD END” (SOLARI-
ZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT) 115

MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION

(KABBALAH) 123
I.- SOURCES AND TEXTS 126
II.- AIM OF MEDITATION 131
III.- MEDITATION TECHNIQUES 135
IV.- STAGES AND FORMS OF MEDITATION 139
1.- Starting point: the mental flow. 140
2.- Forms or stages of meditation. 146
V.- MEDITATION TOPICS 148
1.- Meditating on Solomon’s Temple. 148
2.- The quest and recitation of the Sacred Name of God. 150
3.- The chariot of Ezekiel. 159
4.- The ten Sephirot. 167
5.- The Proto-Sephirot and the three mother letters: 172
6.- The 32 paths of Genesis 1. 174
7.- Meditating on the Nothing. 176
VI.- THE TRANSMISSION OF THE KABBALAH AND
THE CHRISTIAN KABBALAH 180

THE PYTHAGOREAN MAXIMS 185

I.- SYMBOLIC AND ACOUSMATIC METHOD 189

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

II.- GEOMETRY AND NUMBER 196

III.- MEDITATION AMONG THE PYTHAGOREANS 200

PURIFICATION OF THOUGHT ACCORDING TO

PLATO 205
I.- THE INITIATION OF SOCRATES AND PLATO
INTO THE GREEK MYSTERIES 206
II.- THE QUEST FOR GOD (THE BEING) 208
III.- SOUL’S REMINISCENCES BEFORE ITS BIRTH
INTO THIS WORLD 209
IV.- DOES OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE EXIST? 211
V.- THE KNOWLEDGE OF REALITY THROUGH
CONTEMPLATION 214
VI.- METHOD TO PURIFY THE THOUGHT 217

THE VISION OF LIGHT ACCORDING TO PLOTI-

NUS 225
I.- MAN EXILED IN THIS WORLD 227
II.- BUT MAN CAN RETURN 229
III.- THERE ARE NO ATTRIBUTES, THOUGHTS OR
OTHERNESS IN GOD 232
IV.- THE TRIAD URANUS-KRONOS-ZEUS AND THE
ASCENSION OF THE SOUL 234
V.- WHAT IS CONTEMPLATION? 237
VI.- HOW TO CONTEMPLATE? 239
VII.- FIRST STEPS IN THE CONTEMPLATIVE
PRACTICE 242
VIII.- ECSTASY, ENLIGHTENMENT, VISION AND
OTHER CONTEMPLATIVE EXPERIENCES 245
IX THE VISION OF LIGHT AND THE UNION IN THE
NOUS 248
X.- THE NEOPLATONIC INFLUENCE 250

THE PRACTICE OF ATTENTION AMONG THE

STOICS 253
I.- METHOD TO ATTAIN PEACE 256
II.- METHOD TO DIVIDE AND DISCRIMINATE 261
III.- FROM THE ATTENTION TO THE PRESENT TO
CONTEMPLATION 270

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

AN INITIATE INTO THE GREAT MYSTERIES:

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA 275
I.- THE ALLEGORICAL METHOD 278
II.- GOD CANNOT BE THOUGHT 279
III.- ADAM (THE MIND), EVE (THE SENSES), ABEL
(THE DETACHMENT) AND CAIN (THE APPROPRI-
ATION) 285
IV.- BEGINNER’S MISTAKES 288
V.- STAGES OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 294
VI.- MOSES AND THE THICK DARKNESS 300

SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRIS-

TIANITY 305
I.- WHAT IS CONTEMPLATION? 305
II.- GOAL OF CONTEMPLATION 309
III.- DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEDITATION AND
CONTEMPLATION 312
IV.- CONTEMPLATION IS ACCESSIBLE TO EVE-
RYONE 316
V.- THE BEGINNING OF MEDITATION IN THE
CHRISTIAN TRADITION 317
VI.- THE CONTEMPLATIVE METHODS 326
VII.- THE EXPULSION FROM PARADISE 330
VIII.- THE NON-APPROPRIATION OF THE
THOUGHT AS A RETURN TO THE STATE OF NA-
TURE 336
IX.- THE RECOVERY OF THE INTIMACY WITH
GOD BY MEANS OF SUPRARATIONAL MEDITA-
TION 340
X.- THE CORRECT MEANING OF “THINKING OF
NOTHING” AND OTHER TREMENDOUS EXPRES-
SIONS 345
XI.- HOW TO KEEP A CONSTANT ATTENTION? 350
1.- Constant meditation and the remembrance of God. 351
2.- Hesychastic meditation and breathing rhythm. 359
XII.- STAGES OF THE SPIRITUAL PATH: PURGA-
TIVE, ILLUMINATIVE AND UNITIVE 363
XIII.- OTHER MISTAKES AND OBSTACLES OF THE
SPIRITUAL SEEKER 372
1.- The suitable attitude. 376

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

XIV.- THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING AND THE RAY

OF DARKNESS 382
XV.- THE REVIVAL OF THE MEDITATIVE PRAC-
TICE IN THE 20TH CENTURY: THOMAS MERTON,
THOMAS KEATING, WILLIGIS JÄGER, FRANZ
JALICS... 387

SEEING IN NON-SEEING; A NON-HUMAN FORM

OF KNOWLEDGE: SAINT GREGORY OF NYSSA 391

SAINT AUGUSTINE AND THE METHOD OF

SELF-ATTENTION 397
I.- SAINT AUGUSTINE’S ECSTATIC EXPERIENCES 400
II.- TRACES BEFORE HUMAN EXISTENCE 402
III.- THE QUEST 405
IV.- THE METHOD OF SELF-ATTENTION 407

KALĒ APODĒMIA (THE BEAUTIFUL MIGRA-

TION): THE CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE AC-
CORDING TO EVAGRIUS PONTICUS 415
I.- ENTRANCE TO THE BEAUTIFUL MIGRATION 418
II.- OBSTACLES THAT HINDER CONTEMPLATION:
THE LOGISMOI 420
III.- HOW TO COMBAT THE LOGISMOI 423
IV.- THE METHOD OF THE OBJECTLESS PRAYER 424
1.- Praying without thoughts. 425
2.- Praying without images. 426
3.- Praying without memories. 426

AN ANCIENT SECRET OF INCALCULABLE

VALUE: THE FORMULA OF SAINT JOHN CAS-
SIAN 429

THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO

SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE 435
I.- THE INEFFABILITY OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF
GOD 438
II.- HOW TO ACHIEVE THE SUPRARATIONAL
KNOWLEDGE? 441
III.- THE THREE STAGES OF THE MEDITATOR 447

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

IV.- THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS 450

V.- LATER INFLUENCE OF DIONYSIUS THE ARE-
OPAGITE AND THE TOPIC OF THE MYSTICAL
DARKNESS 456

ECKHART AND CONTEMPLATION 461

I.- SUFFERING CAUSED BY THE SEPARATION
FROM GOD 464
II.- THE QUEST FOR THE HIDDEN GOD 466
III.- GOD AND GODHEAD 470
IV.- GOD IS IN THE GROUND OF THE SOUL 475
V.- OBSTACLES TO DETACHMENT 477
VI.- HOW TO UNDERSTAND? THE MODELESS
MODE 481
VII.- HOW TO ACHIEVE THE ETERNAL BIRTH?
THE REFUSAL OR DETACHMENT 484
VIII.- THE WORK TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND
THE DETACHMENT FROM THE OWN WILL 491
IX.- OBJECTLESS CONTEMPLATION 498
X.- EMPTYING THE TEMPLE OF THOUGHTS 501
XI.- THE DARKNESS THAT COVERS THE FACE OF
GOD 510

PRIVY COUNSEL OF AN UNKNOWN ENGLISH

MONK TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF
UNKNOWING 517
I.- THE ROOT OF MAN’S UNHAPPINESS 518
II.- WHAT SHOULD WE DO? THE WAY OF THE
MYSTICAL THEOLOGY 520
III.- THE CONTEMPLATIVE WAY IS AT EVERY-
ONE’S DISPOSAL 523
IV.- HOW TO DETACH OURSELVES FROM THE
THOUGHT? 524
V.- WHY DOES CONTEMPLATION REQUIRE THE
SUSPENSION OF THE MENTAL ACTIVITY? 527
VI.- IT IS NECESSARY TO PASS FROM MEDITA-
TION TO CONTEMPLATION 530
VII.- HOW TO GATHER THE DISPERSED BY
MEANS OF THE MEDITATION ON “I AM”? 531
VIII.- THE TECHNIQUE TO DETACH OURSELVES

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

FROM THE THOUGHT 535

IX.- HOW TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF
UNKNOWING? 541

TO SEE HIM IS TO SEE YOU; THE VISION OF

GOD ACCORDING TO NICHOLAS OF CUSA 547
I.- THE INABILITY OF KNOWLEDGE 548
II.- THE MIND CANNOT SEE 550
III.- BUT GOD WANTS TO BE KNOWN 551
IV.- THE VISION OF GOD. IF HE SEES ME, I SEE
HIM TOO 553
V.- HOW TO SEE THE FACE OF GOD? THE
LEARNED IGNORANCE 554

SAINT TERESA OF JESUS AND THE REVELA-

TION “I AM, BE NOT AFRAID” 557
I.- VOCAL AND MENTAL PRAYER. PRAYER OF
QUIET 557
II.- A DETERMINED DETERMINATION; THE WILL
GUIDED BY HUMILITY 563
III.- STEPS TO ATTAIN RECOLLECTION AND THE
HELP OF “I AM” 565
IV.- THE SEVEN MANSIONS OF THE INTERIOR
CASTLE 568
V.- THE FIRST THREE MANSIONS 572
VI.- THE FOURTH MANSIONS: THE BEGINNING OF
RECOLLECTION OR PRAYER OF QUIET 574
VII.- THE FIFTH MANSIONS: THE SIMPLE UNION 577
VIII.- THE SIXTH MANSIONS: THE FULL UNION 580
IX.- SEVENTH MANSIONS: THE STABLE AND IN-
DISSOLUBLE UN-ION 584

MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION AC-

CORDING TO SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS 589
I.- THERE IS A PATH BECAUSE GOD IS WITHIN US 591
II.- IT IS NOT THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE, BUT
THE SECRET SCIENCE OF LOVE 592
III.- THE PATH IS BEYOND THE UNKNOWING 593
IV.- OLD MAN’S DEATH (THE DETACHMENT
FROM THE MEMORY AND THE UNDERSTAND-

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

ING) 596
V.- THE SUITABLE ATTITUDE TO CONTEMPLATE 598
VI.- THE THREE STAGES: SENSITIVE, PURGATIVE,
UNITIVE 601
VII.- MEDITATION (WAY OF THE SENSE) AND
CONTEMPLATION (WAY OF THE SPIRIT) 603
VIII.- THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SENSES; THE
TRANSITION FROM MEDITATION TO CONTEM-
PLATION 606
IX.- THE SWEET SCIENCE OF CONTEMPLATION 609
X.- STAGES OF CONTEMPLATION 614
1.- The Night of the Spirit. 618
2.- Perfect or luminous contemplation. 620

MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION AC-

CORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS 625
I.- THE FIGHT BETWEEN MEDITATORS AND CON-
TEMPLATIVES 626
II.- THE INSUFFICIENCY OF MEDITATION AND
THE NEED TO PASS TO CONTEMPLATION 633
III.- THE PRACTICE OF THE PRAYER OF QUIET:
THE SILENCE OF THE MIND 636
IV.- THE SUSPENSION OF THE SENSES AND THE
THOUGHT 637
V.- SOME OBSTACLES TO MEDITATION 639
VI.- HOW TO ENTER THE TEMPLE OF THE SOUL:
THE DETACHMENT AND THE NOTHING 641

SUFI EPILOGUE 645

1.- Recollection. 651
2.- Dhikr or remembrance of God. 653
3.- On ecstasy (fanā’) and other non-dual states 656

BIBLIOGRAPHY 661

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 INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The aim of this book is to study certain meditation methods fol-

lowed not only by religious traditions or metaphysical movements
that are still alive nowadays like Advaita Vedanta, Kabbalah (within
the Jewish tradition), Christianity or Islam (particularly Sufism), but
also practiced by other currents or schools that, even though already
gone, significantly influenced the West. This is the case of Neopla-
tonism or Stoicism, whose influence was felt by ancient and medie-
val Christianity, or Greco-Egyptian Hermetism, which played an im-
portant role in the European cultural Renaissance from the 15th cen-
tury on. A special consideration has been given to Christian tradi-
tion, introducing some of the most representative authors of recollec-
tion and their meditation methods.

The objective of this study may seem paradoxical. On one hand,

it is usually admitted that the methods are transmitted from master to
disciple and guarded within spiritual brotherhoods and lineages.
However, on the other hand, it is also stated that there is no method
and that all of it is just an invention of the mind or, if preferred, of
the ego, which enjoys entertaining itself with the ideas of “seeking”,
“spiritual progress”, “Enlightenment”, etc. In fact, some wise men
talk about the method as a non-method, since, strictly speaking, what
method can there be to go from myself to myself? But, if the Spirit
does not need to progress or find anything, who is then the one who
seeks and who is the one who is found? At the end, it seems that the
method is not directed to achieve anything (since we already have
what we are seeking), but to make us get rid of what, erroneously,
we think we are... Facing such questions, the enterprise of writing a
book about this issue seems, at first glance, too ambitious. Firstly, it
is to be warned that, however, when adopting the historical point of
 JAVIER ALVARADO

view, it is not even necessary to solve the enigma... it is enough to

point out the existence of the paradox.

The historical-critical point of view is precisely the most suitable

to introduce oneself from outside into this subtle universe. Neverthe-
less, it is to be warned that the timeline exposition reflects just mere-
ly practical purposes that do not prejudge or imply the acceptance of
an evolutionary history of spirituality, mysticism and esoterism, or
that such an evolution is exclusively a product of the influence and
borrowings that have passed from one tradition to another. On the
contrary, the similarities in the descriptions of the so-called mystical
experiences are also due to the existence of supraindividual dimen-
sions or states out of the human time and space that can be hic et
nunc transcended or overtaken under certain circumstances. There-
fore, those who have nowadays lived or reproduced such an experi-
ence and have connected with That or have been taken by that
Source have done it in the same way in which ascetics, wise men,
magi or philosophers of past centuries had experienced it. The
Source is the Same and Only one, and the moment is always Now.

In my wish to respect the original thought of the here-studied au-

thors, the most significant texts of certain works have been selected
in order to guide the reader through a particular itinerary together
with some glosses, trying to stay always behind the original dis-
course. With this respect, one of the difficulties we find when trying
to go deeper into the thought of ancient authors comes from the dif-
ferent meaning they give to concepts such as “God”, “soul”, “mys-
tic”, “method”, “spiritual knowledge”, etc. When facing such a plu-
rality of meanings, it seemed more suitable to respect the vocabulary
used by each author, making, in certain cases, some clarifications.
This is the case, for example, of the nowadays so-multifaceted word
“mystika”, which has been recovered here in its most strictly etymo-
logical meaning. Indeed, words such as “mystic”, from the Greek
mystikos, as well as “myth” or “mystery”, mystērion, or silence,

18
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE

myeō, relative to mysteries (ta mystika), that is, to mysteric ceremo-

nies, the initiate (mystes), the adverb mystikos (secretly), come from
the verb myō. This verb comes from the onomatopoeic sound de-
rived from the action of strongly closing the lips not to articulate any
sound. For that reason, the word “mysticism” has traditionally de-
scribed the “science of mystery”, the “science of the initiates” and,
more expressively, the “discipline of silence”, understanding as si-
lence or secret not only that spiritual “experience” which is, by its
own nature, “inexpressible” or “incommunicable”, but also a certain
method or technique used to facilitate the transition from the medita-
tion on shapes and objects to the contemplative or pure meditation,
that is, the one exempt from thoughts. Distinguished wise men, like
Guénon, have shown their rejection to use the word “mysticism” re-
ferring to the metaphysical field with the reasoning that “the current
meaning of the word mysticism is too far from its etymological defi-
nition as to allow us to use it now”, proposing the use of “esoteric”,
“initiatic” or “metaphysical” instead. However, the word “eso-
terism”, acceptable in Guénon’s time (first half of the 20th century),
does not seem so clarifying at the beginning of the 21st due to its
random use in all kind of fields. The same, though to a lesser extent,
happens to terms such as “initiatic” or “metaphysical”, which have
been deprived of all their spiritual content and are mainly used in a
speculative, philosophical sense, if not vulgar. This explains why the
words “mystika” and “mystēs”, in their original meaning, are taken
up again here. The same happens with the confusing usage of the
words “spirit” and “soul” that is found in many ancient and modern
works, despite being two absolutely different concepts. The termi-
nology of each author has been respected here as well. It is true that
the Judeo-Christian religious tradition distinguishes between ruach
(spirit), soul (Heb. nefesh) and body, so that, whereas the soul or
nefesh dies with the body, the ruach (spirit) is immortal. However,
since ruach and nefesh were both translated into Greek as ψυχή
(psychē) and into Latin as anima (soul), many mystics have used the
words “soul” and “spirit” as synonyms. The Stoics distinguished be-

19
 JAVIER ALVARADO

tween body (sōma), soul (psychē) and spirit (hēgemonikon) as well.

Likewise, some traditional authors draw a distinction between the
“Being that causes the Being” (that is, God before the appearance of
God, who is referred to as Yahweh in the Old Testament) and the
“Being” itself, fact that equals the distinction drawn in India between
Parabrahman (that is, what is beyond “I am”) and Brahman (“I
am”), or the one Eckhart drew between Godhead (before the appear-
ance of Creation) and God (as a Creator). Whether these distinctions
respond to a metaphysical reality or rather to mental constructs for
pedagogical purposes is a question that will be dealt with later.

Given these considerations, let us proceed to analyze some repre-

sentative authors, episodes and texts of the metaphysical way.

20
 ADVAITIC PREFACE

“Like the worms in the cow dung, men, the

moment the dung dries, are finished, however
much progress they have made” (Sri Nisargadat-
ta, Seeds of Consciousness, p. 67).

Why an Advaitic preface? Given that this work deals with the
history of meditation methods, it seems appropriate to start with the
Advaita Vedanta, for it is considered as one of the most ancient man-
ifestations that, however, still keep their purity and vitality.

In this introduction, it is not intended to present a history of met-

aphysics in India in general1, nor even one of its most complete,
deep and effective creations, the Advaita Vedanta (ad-vaita= non-
dual). Instead, some reflections on some texts of ancient masters like
Sri Sankaracharya or contemporary representatives like Sri Ramana
Maharshi and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj will rather be made.

Advaita Vedanta is neither a philosophy, nor a religion, nor a

mixture of both; it is a metaphysical doctrine2. Veda comes from vid-

1
As an approach to Indian metaphysics, the work by René Guénon is still an ob-
ligatory reference: Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, Hillsdale
(NY), 2001; Man and his Becoming according to the Vedanta, Hillsdale (NY),
2001. It is useful as well: H. Zimmer, Philosophies of India, London, 1952; and
Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, Princeton, 2009.
2
Several classic works have been used, like Ribhu Gita, Madrid, 2007 [English
version, The Song of Ribhu, Santa Cruz (CA), 2000]; other works by ancient
Advaita masters like the ones by Sri Sankaracharya, for example, Dieciocho Trat-
ados Advaita, Madrid, 2011 (from now on, it will be referred to as Sri Sankara-
charya, 18TA) or by contemporary masters like Sri Ramana Maharshi, Be as you
are, New York, 1985, (referred to as BYA); Conversaciones con Sri Ramana Ma-
harshi, 2 vols., Madrid, 2006 (referred to as CRMI and CRMII); Sri Nisargadatta,
Prior to Consciousness (referred to as PC), Seeds of Consciousness (referred to as
SC), Durham (NC), 1990; I am That (referred to as IAT), Durham (NC), 2012, Yo
 JAVIER ALVARADO

“to see” (like videre in Latin) or “to know”, from where vidyā
(knowledge, being Vedanta the end of knowledge) is derived, since
such a knowledge consists in an “inner vision” of the oneness of the
Being or, if preferred, of the non-duality of the Absolute that ends
with the quest for knowledge. According to this, human individuality
is but one state of the Being, out of an indefinite number of states,
the addition of which does not equals the whole Being, since those
states of existence an illusory reflection superimposed onto the Be-
ing. Only the Being is, whereas the states exist (ex-stare), that is,
they are supported or vivified by the Being, which is the Only real
one. The Only one is the One without a second, being the second a
mere mirage. That said, the non-duality of the Absolute does not
mean that we do not exist, but, more strictly, that we are not like we
think we are. What really are we?

The Advaitin teaches that, when someone starts his quest for
transcendental knowledge, he must examine the real purposes that
lead him to it, in order to relinquish, if necessary, those prejudices or
preconceived ideas that prove to be a real burden. One of the most
common prejudices lies in believing that the metaphysical Way will
grant advantages such as enlightenment, peace, powers, someone
else’s recognition, knowledge (even though about himself), etc. to
the seeker. In sum, he is seeking for something that comes from out-
side and may provide him with satisfactory experiences. Another
common mistake takes place when someone falls victim to his own
mirages. For example, from the moment when someone considers
himself as a spiritual candidate or seeker (sādhaka), or even a com-
prehensor, he starts to indulge in autosuggestion, imposing and su-
perimposing on others a particular conceptual image or model; “I
must adopt this pose”, “I must not eat this”, “I must look like this”,

no sabía, Madrid, 2011; Michael James, Happiness and the Art of Being, 2012 (re-
ferred to as HAB); David Carse, Perfecta brillante quietud, más allá del yo indi-
vidual, Madrid, 2009 [original English version: Perfect brilliant stillness, beyond
the individual self, Saline (MI), 2006] (referred to as PBQ) and other texts that will
be opportunely quoted.

22
 ADVAITIC PREFACE

“this is bad”, “this is good” and, in conclusion, “this is ignorant”, “I

am the only one who is on the right path”, “I have the knowledge”.
And so he lives on, strangled by the concepts he himself has created.
Other of the most widespread mistakes is voluntarism. A voluntarist
believes that “liberation” is the result of applying a specific method
based on ascetic, devotional, meditative practices and intricate meth-
ods of pure lineages that will facilitate him to make his desires come
true. Thus, for example, he will learn to control his breath and take it
to some point of his body in order to briefly enter Samādhi and reach
the certainty of being a fulfilled man. However, those who practice
these or other techniques to go inside and outside of Samādhi or any
other supraindividual state rarely understand that this is not the aim
of the quest, and that such a temporary state does not necessarily in-
volve true knowledge.

What is true knowledge? For the Advaitin, dual knowledge pro-

duces ignorance and suffering, whereas non-dual knowledge, which
could strictly be considered as non-knowledge, is the only reliable
one. An ancient Advaitic text explains that, since the world of
knowledge is endless, it cannot provide true wisdom by itself be-
cause all knowledge implies duality, that is, a separation between
knower and known; “If there is bondage, there is liberation; in the
absence of bondage, there is no liberation. If there is death, there is
birth; in the absence of birth, there is no death either. If there is
‘you’, there is ‘I’; if there is no ‘you’, there is no ‘I’. If there is ‘this’,
there is ‘that’; in the absence of ‘that’, there is no ‘this’ either. If ‘it is
there’ implies something not being there; ‘it is not there’ implies
something being there. If there is an effect, there is some cause; in
the absence of effect, there is no cause. If there is duality, there is [a
concept of] non-duality; in the absence of duality, there is no [con-
cept of] non-duality either. If there is something to be seen, a seer is
also there; in the absence of anything to see, there is no seer at all ei-
ther” (Ribhu Gita, p. 22). Reality is neither subjective nor objective,
neither mind nor material, neither time nor space.

23
 JAVIER ALVARADO

However, even though all these divisions are only creations of

the human mind, it is true that there must be something or somebody
that is here to witness them and that is not part of the mirage. To be-
come aware of the problem is the first step to go out of the problem;
“Just as the perceiver of a pot is ever distinctly different from the pot
and can never be the pot, so too, you, the perceiver of your body, are
distinct from your body and can never be the body... Similarly, be
sure in yourself that you, the seer of the senses, are not the senses
themselves, and ascertain that you are neither the mind, not the intel-
lect, not the vital air” (Sri Sankaracharya, 18TA, p. 73-76).

The paradox is that, though the metaphysical seeking lies in get-

ting rid of Māyā (etymologically, “what is not”), the desire to escape
from it is Māyā itself. If one understands that he is living a dream
called “wakefulness” or “world” and that the quest is part of that
dream, then he stops looking for exits or, at least, he stops his anxie-
ty to seek. The idea itself of going beyond the dream is illusory be-
cause it is part of the dream. Sri Nisargadatta stated that the problem
is not to be aware that one is dreaming, but to like some parts of the
dream and reject others.... We insist on resisting and fighting those
parts of the dream and we even start a crusade to improve this dream
we call world without considering that, maybe, the universe is not
what needs to be improved, but only our way to look at it (PC, p. 3).
If the knowledge about all we see is as false as a mirage (Māyā), for
duality is both its cause and its consequence, it is deduced that true
knowledge is the non-dual one, that is, the knowledge about the Self.
This self-knowledge has a special flavor and scent that make it dif-
ferent from other supposed forms of indirect or mediate knowledge,
since it is not based on the usual, dependent paradigm of a knower
(mind), a known object and the action of knowing (thought). On the
contrary, non-dual knowledge is direct and immediate because, since
the subject is its object of knowledge, it disregards the thought in or-
der to place itself in another domain of the Being. Some call it Nous,

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others pure intellect, others attention or self-consciousness, others “I

am”... Be that as it may, it is a state, as superior or transcendental as
one may want, but, after all, another state. At this point, once again,
it is to be noted the panic, not to say horror, that the Western seeker
feels when he hears talking about overtaking, sublimating or “annihi-
lating” the mind. He is so identified with his mind and its thoughts
that it seems to him extraordinarily difficult to understand that it may
be just one tool among others. He generally considers spiritual pro-
gress to be something like mind strengthening and the development
of his parapsychological and mental powers. In line with this mis-
take, he embarks on a frantic race to hoard readings and experiences
about the “transcendental”, which may provide him with enough in-
tellectual “authority”.

Against this kind of widespread attitudes of seeking for

knowledge, the fiercest self-criticism is to be recommended. Firstly,
it must be found out whether what is sought is a knowledge that, be-
ing acceptable for the mind, may be an object of appropriation and
exhibition before others, so that they may recognize his superiority.
In that case, he must understand that that kind of knowledge consists
in no more than repeating what has previously been read or heard,
and that mere erudition will only fill his mind with countless con-
cepts that will reinforce his vanity. On the contrary, the metaphysical
way it is not about knowing, but about being, it is not about strength-
ening the mind, but about transcending it so that it may not block
another instrument that is considered to be superior: consciousness.
It must be highlighted that, for the Advaitin, erudition itself does not
affect the metaphysical Way if it is at the service of the quest for the
Truth. This does not happen if it leads to the desire to be admired, if
it feeds the mirage of duality, that is, the fact of supposing that there
is “someone”, an individual identity, who “knows” and others who
“do not know”.

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Therefore, the progress through the Advaitic Way does not lie in
hoarding knowledge and experiences, but in relinquishing or detach-
ing oneself from everything that is considered to be a foreign at-
tachment to the true nature of the Being (Spirit, Self, Ātman). More-
over, it is to be warned that, according to Advaita Vedanta, the or-
ganism we usually think we are, that is, the body-mind, is not but a
brief, temporary attachment that is not the Self. Each body-mind or-
ganism has some latent conditionings that must be known, redirected
and finally sublimated. In India, such conditionings or psycho-
mental latencies are denominated saṃskāras or vāsanās, “impregna-
tions” or “residues” that, like we would nowadays say, find their
origin in the “genetic memory” and the cultural environment. As
long as our vāsanās or latent desires are not weakened, the body-
mind organism will go on wandering unfocused. If it is about the
rider (our real nature) breaking in the horse (vāsanās of our body-
mind) so that it may help him quickly reach his destination, what
does breaking-in consist in? One thing seems clear; it does not con-
sist in compelling or forcing anything. In India, the usual example
given to illustrate this is the cow that escapes from the cowshed and
goes grazing on the surrounding fields. If it is forced to stay at the
cowshed, it will escape again, but if it is fed with good grass, it can
finally be left free since it will only want to graze the fodder of the
cowshed. Likewise, the mind that is used to paying attention to the
external objects due to the force of the latent vāsanās that reveal
themselves as thoughts, if adequately educated, will finally stop pay-
ing attention to Māyā and will focus on the Self.

I.- I AM NOT THE BODY

Where was “I” before being born? Where will “I” be in a hun-
dred years? “That”, which remains unchanged and beyond the space-
time conditions and beyond shape (the body) and individual names,
is “I” (that is, “I” without “me”).

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It is usually said that we are neither the body, nor the mind, nor
the feelings, nor the desires, etc., but that reflection-negation (neti,
neti) is all the same a conceptual process. Indeed, there is nothing
bad in the idea “I am the body”, as long as it is understood that we
are not only a body (or a mind) that has a name and was born in a
certain date. It is simply to be understood that the one who errone-
ously takes this body as “me” is the mind, because “I” is an all-
embracing, transcendental (transmental or supramental) reality that
encompasses not only “me”, but also “you” and “it”, that is, All (and
thus it is also Nothing).

The Advaitin usually answers the question “who am I?” with the
metaphor of the bowl with water that is given back to the lake, or the
one of the stream that flows back into the sea. Can anyone distin-
guish the water from the different rivers that flow into the sea?
Likewise, how to distinguish that particle of “individual” conscious-
ness that “me” consists of when it immerses itself in the total con-
sciousness, which is “I” or “That”? Moreover, there is no difference
between the water of the sea, the water of the lake, the water of the
river or the tap water after all. All of them are water that carries salts
and other mineral components or additions depending on the places
it flows through. Therefore, as well as water has no separate parts, to
think that one is separate from the Essential Source is but an ambi-
tion created by the ego.

For the Advaitin, the individual consciousness, considered as the

sense “I am an individual or a soul imprisoned within the limits of a
body”, is a distorted form of the pure awareness “I am” that aspires
to prolong the “desire to be someone; someone separate, someone
special; someone with his or her own story. The dream character is
completely caught in this spinning of a personal web, building and
maintaining the personal story, driven by that unknown, unexamined

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wanting to assert and continually reconfirm the individual self” (Da-

vid Carse, PBQ, p. 101).

In sum, for the Advaitin, it is not the individual who is conscious,

but the Consciousness that takes countless shapes. However, we are
so accustomed to consider ourselves as conscious bodies, that we
may not conceive that it is the Consciousness that supports the bod-
ies.

II.- I AM NOT THE MIND

It is stated, “Mind only is itself the pollution, always. Mind itself

is marvelous magic. Mind itself is the great illusion. Mind is like the
son of a barren woman. Mind itself is thought, and mind itself is ego-
ity” (Ribhu Gita, p. 59). A paradox is found here again: although the
Advaitin distrusts knowledge, he however states that it is the
knowledge itself that can help us flee from the labyrinth of concepts,
so that we may find out what or who we really are. Indeed, the mind
is necessary for the daily life, but to try to understand metaphysics
by means of concepts is like to try to find the horns of a hare: “The
organs of knowledge, the senses, the group of organs of action, wak-
ing, dream, deep sleep, and any other such state are all like the horns
of a hare. All bondage, all ‘liberation’, God, all time, and all instruc-
tion are all like the horns of a hare” (Ribhu Gita, p. 51). The seeker
recreates so transcendental concepts such as God, karma, reincarna-
tion, salvation, and thus he feels compelled to hold them, defend
them and even impose them on someone else, living anxious to per-
petuate them. Nonetheless, as the world (our world) is a mere projec-
tion of our thoughts, the question would rather be how to save such a
world from ourselves. The main step lies in experimentally verifying
that the mind is nothing but the thought “I”, that is, that the mind and
the ego are the same; “The mind is a bundle of thoughts. The
thoughts arise because there is the thinker. The thinker is the ego.

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The ego, if sought, will automatically vanish. The ego is the root-
thought from which all other thoughts arise” (Sri Ramana Maharshi,
CRMI, p. 442). At this point, one may wonder; what is above the
mind? Or, using the Advaitic language, who observes the mind?
Who witnesses the thoughts? Doubtlessly, the consciousness.

III.- BUT I AM NOT CONSCIOUSNESS

One of the most transcendental contributions of Indian mysticism

is the experience of the consciousness-witness, that is, the con-
sciousness free of psycho-mental and physical attachments and from
their individual genetic and cultural conditionings. Whereas the con-
sciousness is involved in the thoughts, the mind seems to have its
own autonomy, but when we stop paying attention to all the
thoughts, we just find out that the mind is not our ultimate reality:
there is life beyond the mind. We all experience the fact of thinking;
we can even witness thinking, that is, be aware that we are thinking.
But we can go one step further when we are aware that we are
aware. In that moment, a loop occurs that stops the mental flow and
makes us remain in a state of self-consciousness or pure awareness.
There are no thoughts or, should any remain, it is seen with an abso-
lute disregard and neutrality. But we immediately realize as well our
inability to remain stable in such a state, because thoughts require
our attention. Well, that state of individual consciousness “it is me”,
free from thoughts, is what, in religious terminology, is defined as
“soul” and constitutes the door or preliminary toward the state of
universal3 and unlimited consciousness “I am”, which is defined as
“spirit”, “heart”, “the center of the soul” or “God”. And it is called
God because such a consciousness “I am” is the original source
where duality arises from, that is, God-world, Creator-Creation.

3
It is to be warned that universal consciousness is not collective consciousness.
Whereas the former is the homogeneous, partless source, the latter, which is a crea-
tion of modern psychology, would imply an addition of parts that still keep their
individuality.

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This fact explains that the name of the god Brahmā comes from
brahm-aham, literally “I am”. Thus, the mahāvākya or “great say-
ing” “I am Brahman” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad 1.4.10) precisely
means, “I am I am”. This coincides with the secret name of God that
appears revealed to Moses in Ex. 3:14: “I AM THAT I AM” (EHYEH
ASHER EHYEH), whose importance can be inferred from the fact
that it is the only one time when a name of God appears in the Bible
written in capital letters, in Latin script languages, including English.
Moreover, in the Gospel of Saint John and other passages of the Bi-
ble, it is said, “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn. 8:58), placing that “I
am” at the end of the sentence in order to stress the meaning of “I
am” intended by Jesus. Well then, this “I am” is not a thought; “I
am” does not consist in thinking of “I am”.

That is why it is convenient to distinguish between the “I” as a

pure Self, and the thought “I am”. One thing is to experience the
self-consciousness or “I am” and another thing is to think “I am”. Up
to a certain extent, they are two incompatible situations, since the
self-consciousness “I am” overtakes or transcends the thought. In
sum, the consciousness “I am” is not a thought, but a state from
where the thoughts are observed.

IV.- THE “I AM” AS A WITNESS OR THE PARADOX OF

THE METHOD

How to stop being the rat in the labyrinth? How to gain access in-
to the heart (hṛdaya)? Chāndogya Upanishad (3.14.3) explains that
the Being, the Brahma Awareness, is in the vital center of the human
being, which is symbolically located in the smallest ventricle (guhā)
of the heart (hṛdaya), though its true location does not depend on
spatial conditions. Therefore, it is explained that Ātman, when adopt-
ing the domain of the individual existence, is Jīvātma (jīva=life, that
is, the life of Ātman) and that it is subtler or “smaller” than a mustard

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grain. But that small grain is bigger than the earth (domain of subtle
manifestation), bigger than the sky (domain of informal manifesta-
tion) and bigger than all these worlds together (beyond all manifesta-
tion, since it is unconditioned).

Nonetheless, the universal Consciousness is apparently identified

with an individual body, so that, as long as this identification re-
mains, we will only think about doing good to that pseudo-
personality. It is initially enough to understand, even though just in-
tellectually, that one is neither in the body nor in the mind, yet pre-
sent at both them, and that, therefore, as the individual consciousness
is a false or illusory consciousness, by paying “attention” to that
form of individual, limited consciousness that we feel to be “I”, we
will end up finding that it is but a distorted reflection of the real, un-
limited consciousness “I am”, which is God. Thus, once understood
that all we see is just the performance of the universal Consciousness
and that there can never be any individual entity, the problems of
liberation, birth or death, and even the one of the doer who does
something, disappear (Sri Nisargadatta, PC, p. 152). In fact, the mere
intellectual understanding implies that one is already beyond. To ac-
cept that it all is a concept implies that the mere conceptual level has
been overcome. However, we must not stop there, since the certainty
is just a mental state. “That” is beyond the mind.

The Advaitin insists that the methods to stimulate or improve the

concentration on the “I-am-ness” are not directed to achieve any-
thing. Therefore, those approaches that urge us to broaden our “con-
sciousness focus” or to grow spiritually, and that convert the Ātman
into a mobile object under all kind of conditionings must be avoided,
since they are false. Firstly, the Advaitin insists on something evi-
dent: we are not more or less Being or “spirit”, because That is not
acquired; we already are.

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In that case, what is meditative practice for? Advaita masters

agree that no method can lead us to the truth or to the Self. At the
most, the method may contribute to discipline the mind for a certain
period. Sri Ramana taught that the realization of the Self does not
admit a progress because, if it were something to be gained in the fu-
ture, it would have the same possibility to be lost. The true aim of
the practice is not then to make us be aware of the Being we already
are, but to unmask who we are not, to empty or relinquish our genet-
ic and cultural attachments (vāsanās). The paradox of all this is that
the practice itself is no longer part of the “I am” and may become
another bonding or vāsanā. That is why it is said that the practice
can produce athletes or champions of bliss blinded because of their
spiritual pride. And that is also why it is said that the aim of the prac-
tice finally lies in giving up and accepting that no effort gets you
closer to That and thus that practice only works in the field of duali-
ty, which is the field of the “I am”.

Indeed, one of the most important certainties that arise after a

restless meditative practice is to come to understand who is the one
who seeks and what is sought. Quoting David Carse, “struggling is
instinctive, and we think it helps, but actually it is itself the problem.
The struggling, the seeking, is the sense of individual self trying to
keep telling its story. There is nothing to seek. Separation is the illu-
sion; there is nothing to be separate, nothing. There is only One, not-
two, and That Is. All else is not” (PBQ, p. 110).

Therefore, up to which extent is not our seeking motivated by the

need to experience supposed superior states of consciousness? Up to
which extent does the practice of rituals, meditations, prayers… try
to feed the ego? Real liberation starts by accepting that, as an indi-
vidual, we are nothing and that, hence, the point of view of an indi-
vidual doer is a mere suggestion or a mirage that continuously recre-
ates the events of life, giving them an imaginary causality. The con-

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clusion is that no effort leads to realization... though it does help to

quiet the mind.

V.- GOAL OF THE MEDITATIVE PRACTICE

There are different methods and techniques proposing the non-

duality experience, but they all agree in the need to quiet the mind
and detach ourselves from the thoughts, so that the reality that lies
beyond them may become evident.

The main method to experience the non-duality is meditation.

Like Sri Nisargadatta said, “Meditation is a deliberate attempt to
pierce into the higher states of consciousness and finally go beyond
it” (IAT, p. 305). Advaita Vedanta prevents the seeker to worship
meditation methods excessively. What should be an aid or prop for
the beginner might become an unbeatable burden. When meditation
is practiced, it is advisable to wonder, who meditates? The Self, the
I, Ātman, does not need to meditate; it is the unsettled mind that em-
barks on that activity looking for emotions. Indeed, meditation helps
the “unaware” layers of our psyche arise, accept and get over old
memories and repressed frustrations providing a certain relief, pre-
paring the basis to practice self-inquiry (Nisargadatta, IAT, p. 385).
To understand these essential rules of game (Līlā) of Māyā helps us
not keep false expectations when the desired results are not achieved.

Among the diverse ways to improve our attention, one of the eas-
iest ones is the concentration on only one object. The aim of the
meditator is to put his thoughts away and widen the space-time of his
self-consciousness by means of sustained attention. However, since
sustaining the attention is as difficult as trying to stop the smoke
from an incense stick, the Indian thousands-year-old experience has
developed certain techniques to improve the ability to sustain the at-
tention on oneself; fasting (yama), body discipline (āsana), breath

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rhythm (prāṇāyāma), sensory inhibition (pratyāhāra), concentration

(dharnā, from the root dhr, “to keep tight”, meaning “focusing the
thoughts on only one point” (Yogasūtra4 III, 1)), etc. Therefore, for
example, the concentration on an only object (ekāgratā), either a
physical object (the space between our eyebrows, the tip of our nose,
a light source, etc.), or a thought (a metaphysical truth or a verse
from a sacred text), or even God, has the goal to momentarily inhibit
the activity of the senses (indriya), the activity of sub-consciousness
(saṃskāra) and the activity of thoughts. By concentrating on or sup-
port only one thought, we facilitate the dispelling of the rest of the
thoughts and, little by little, the mind becomes more attentive. Like-
wise, by means of the breath discipline or prāṇāyāma, the profane
man stops breathing in an arrhythmic way and concentrates on a par-
ticular rhythm with notable psycho-mental effects (Bṛhadāraṇyaka
Upanishad, for example, 1.5.23)5. Similarly, the unceasing repetition
of the name of God or sacred words (mantra-japa), for instance,
AUṂ (Maitrī Upanishad 6.5 and 23), helps us control our mind,
mainly if practiced with devotion and certainty. The four
mahāvākyas or “great sayings”, contained in each one of the four
Vedas, are especially worshiped in India. Rig-Veda mahāvākya is
“prajñānam brahma”, that is, “pure awareness is Brahman”
(Aitareya Upanishad 3.3); Yajur-Veda one is “aham brahmāsmi”,
which means “I am Brahman” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad 1.4.10);
Sāma-Veda one is “tat tvam asi”, which means “you are that [Brah-
man]” (Chāndogya Upanishad 6.8.7), and Atharva-Veda one is
“ayam ātmā brahma”, which means “this self is Brahman”
(Māṇḍūkya Upanishad 2). On the other hand, with this and other
techniques, many sādhakas expect to activate the kuṇḍalinī, the
chakras, etc. in order to acquire powers or some kind of psychic or
mental advantages. But all this is zero, nothing (Sri Nisargadatta, SC,

4
F. Tola and C. Dragonetti, The Yogasūtras of Patañjali on Concentration of
Mind, Sanskrit text with translation into English, introduction and commentary,
Delhi, 1987.
5
Breath rhythm and breath retention also have an important role in Taoism (taīxí
among others) and Islamic mysticism (for example, when reciting the Dhikr).

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p. 110), since, as Sri Ramana explains, the powers called parapsy-

chological provide no peace or happiness, but, on the contrary, will
make us completely miserable; “Moreover, what are these powers
for? The would-be occultist (siddha) desires to display the siddhis
(powers) so that others may appreciate him. He seeks appreciation
and, if it is not forthcoming, he will not be happy. There must be
others to appreciate him. He may even find another possessor of
higher powers. That will cause jealousy and breed unhappiness”
(CRMI, p. 37). It is quite clear that the non-duality experience cannot
be based on assumptions that accept duality; “I want powers to be
admired”. But, who is there but Brahma? Who wants powers but the
ego? The sādhaka must refuse those “magical mirages”, “only desir-
able to the ignorant ones”.

In any case, these techniques, even though they produce only a

temporary immersion of the mind, help us experience the joy of
dwelling in the state of consciousness free from thoughts and there-
fore feed the mind, so that it may go on practicing self-nullification.

VI.- MEDITATION ON “I AM”

One of the main revelations of the meditative practice is that,

when we attend to external objects, our attention takes the form of
“thoughts”, “but, when we attend to our ‘essential being’, our atten-
tion remains as being” (M. James, HAB, p. 170). Indeed, this fact
must not be a “thinking” of ourselves, but an attending to “I am” that
will cause the mind to unroll like a sock until we can realize the
amazing fact that our thought stops and remains in the state of only
being. Whereas, in conventional meditation, an object to meditate on
is required, in the “I am” meditation, there is only a subject without
an object. Or, if preferred, the subject makes himself his object of
observation until he gradually experiences that there is no subject or
object, but only impersonal observation.

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The starting point is our verification that we are-exist or, in other

words, our sense of aware presence. Meditation is no more and no
less than paying attention to that sense of presence that is blocked by
a curtain of thoughts. “Meditation is to reject all experience and be in
the experienceless state” (Sri Nisargadatta, SC, p. 194). It is im-
portant to insist that the attention to that sense of oneself must be
paid in a patient, calm way, avoiding any exertion or violence. It is
attention without tension. In this sense, any physical or intellectual
effort is always a body-mind one. True meditation, like true aware-
ness, is always effortless. Therefore, it is not about fighting against
the thoughts, but about not paying attention to them. To face them
would be like to expect to put fire out with gasoline; when fought,
they are given life. It is simply enough to realize, each time with
greater frequency, that whatever happens happens because “I am”.
We do not need to stop thinking, but just stop being interested in
thoughts. And this is only achieved by experiencing that we are a
consciousness that is beyond, witnessing thoughts. The detachment
from the external objects, that is, the thoughts, provides us with the
strength and certainty needed to go through the metaphysical way.
When asked, is the thought “I am God” helpful? Ramana answered it
was not, because “‘I AM THAT I AM’. ‘I am’ is God, not thinking ‘I
am God’. Realize ‘I am’ and do not think ‘I am’. ‘Know I am God’,
it is said, and not ‘Think I am God’” (Sri Ramana Maharshi CRMI,
p. 105).

How to sustain the attention on “I am” effortlessly? Sri Ramana

recommended sustaining or recovering the attention by unceasingly
inquiring, to whom? “If other thoughts rise, one should... inquire ‘to
whom did they rise?’. What does it matter however many thoughts
rise? At the very moment that each thought rises, if one vigilantly
inquires ‘to whom did this rise?’, it will be known ‘to me’. If one
then inquires ‘who am I?’, that is, if we turn our attention to our-
selves and keep it firmly and carefully fixed on our essential self-

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conscious being in order to discover what this ‘I’ really is, the mind
will turn back to its source and, since we refrain from paying atten-
tion to it, the thought which had risen will also subside” (Who am I?
11)6.

Advaita Vedanta states that, being the Self (Spirit) the only exist-
ing reality, the individual “I” that we believe we are is an erroneous
entity that assumes a false identity when appropriating the objects.
As “I” is but another thought (it is actually the first thought), when
other thoughts rise, the thought “I” appropriates them and assumes
that “I think”, “I do”, “I want”, etc., recreating a personal story made
of appropriations of memories and expectations. But, since there is
really no individual “I” that can exist independently from the objects,
should we separate the subject “I” from the objects, as the thought
“I” cannot exist without objects, then the individual “I” will vanish,
giving way to the Self (the Being).

Ramana explained that the best method to isolate the “I” was the
self-inquiry. Of course, he did not discredit the various previous
techniques of concentration or meditation. But always keeping in
mind that, as all of them remain in the subject-object duality, they
must be given up in a certain moment of the practice, since “medita-
tion requires an object to meditate upon, whereas there is only the
subject without the object in self-inquiry (vichāra)” (BYA, p. 78).

How is self-inquiry (vichāra) practiced and what does it consist

in? The reader may find the best exposition of such method in the
second part of the systematized compilation of Sri Ramana’s teach-
ings published under the title of Be as you are. There, it is explained

6
From this point of view, when Jesus Christ states “I am the way, the truth, and the
life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (Jn. 14:6), this sentence can be in-
terpreted in the sense that “The spirit ‘I am’ is the way, the truth, and the life: no
man comes unto the spirit ‘I am’, which is the Father or source of all things, but by
this same spirit” (M. James, HAB, p. 30). That is, “I am is the way, the truth, and
the life”.

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that the self-inquirer has to pay attention to his sense of being as long
as possible. In order to avoid constant distractions caused by
thoughts, Sri Ramana proposed a simple auxiliary method that con-
sisted in inquiring “to whom did this thought rise?” as many times as
necessary in order to focus our attention on the sense “I”; “What
does it matter however many thoughts rise? At the very moment that
each thought rises, if one vigilantly inquires ‘To whom did this
rise?’, it will be known ‘to me’. If one then inquires ‘who am I?’, the
mind will turn back to its source [the Self] and the thought which
had risen will also subside... If you are vigilant and make a stern ef-
fort to reject every thought when it rises, you will soon find that you
are going deeper and deeper into your own inner Self. At that level it
is not necessary to make an effort to reject thoughts” (BYA, p. 85-
86).

It is possible that, during the first few moments of practice, the

attention to the sense “I” takes the form of a mental activity where
attention is focused on the thought “I”, but gradually, the thoughts
will ease up until they give way to the experience of thoughtless self-
inquiry, that is, to a natural, effortless consciousness of being, since
vichāra is not an intellectual activity, but, on the contrary, a method
to transcend or isolate the mind and recover the original peace or pu-
rity. As Sri Ramana stated, the great sayings, such as “I am Brahman
[aham brahmāsmi]”, were not meant for “thinking ‘I am Brahman’,
since Aham [‘I’] is known to everyone. Brahman abides as aham in
every one. Find out the ‘I’. The ‘I’ is already Brahman. You need not
think so. Simply find out the ‘I’ and all will be well” (BYA, p. 109).

And this easy method of self-inquiry is compatible with the daily

duties, since “the life of action need not be renounced. If you medi-
tate for an hour or two every day, you can then carry on with your
duties. If you meditate in the right manner, then the current of mind
induced will continue to flow even in the midst of your work... As
you go on you will find that your attitude towards people, events and

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objects gradually changes. Your actions will tend to follow your

meditations of their own accord...” (BYA, p. 87-88).

Let us explain this process with more detail.

VII.- TIME AS AN APPROPRIATION OF OBJECTS

Our conception of time is quantitative; we believe that time is the

measure of reality, so we suppose that the longer something lasts or
remains, the more real it is. And when the object is unstable, as long
as we project our feelings or expectations on it, a part of us seems to
die after the objects disappear. The truth is that the universe and eve-
rything that is subject to the becoming cannot be real. If it were real,
that is, if it were immutable, it would remain perfect and identical to
itself and, in that very moment, it would disappear. That is why Plato
stated that our life is a succession of instants of consciousness, of
which no two are the same; that is, a man is never the same man
from one moment to the next. But “it is only because the changes that
take place in any brief period are usually small that we mistake the
incessant process for an actual being”7. Therefore, it is illogical to af-
firm that something is if that something never remains, but finds it-
self in constant change, that is, it seems to be being. What Is can
never stop Being, it never changes. (Plato, Symposium 207d, Phaedo
78d).

I do not consist of time. Our Real Nature does not consist of

time. If we formed part of the temporal becoming, we could not real-
ize its apparent movement the same way we do not notice the speed
of a plane or vehicle when we are inside them. This means that it is
because the observer is not part of time that we are aware of the be-
coming. That is, time is a state of existence; it is being held, wit-

7
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, “The Meaning of Death”, in Metaphysics, ed. by
Roger Lipsey, Princeton, 1977, p. 426.

39
 JAVIER ALVARADO

nessed or experienced by someone. From the physical or phenome-

nic point of view, it seems that we are time, that we were born and
that we will die. But, metaphysically, that is, as a Being, we are nei-
ther past nor future because we are not subject to temporal or spatial
conditionings. We are pure atemporality that is expressed in the al-
ways present Now.

1.- There is no past but the memories from the present.

The past does not exist as a succession of events that are record-
ed and petrified somewhere. It is only a theoretical construction that
lacks an independent existence, that is, that needs someone to re-
member it. It only exists as an accumulation of different impressions
recorded in the memory. In effect, the past is only a thinking modali-
ty that we call memory. Memories, as a personal biography, are
thoughts in which I have recorded experiences that basically consist
of desires (memories of pleasure) and fears (memories of sufferings).

Past facts are not archived anywhere, even in the human brain,
following a chronological order. It is the mind that, when recalling
them from the now, sorts the memories sequentially, giving them a
particular sense. Continuity is thus another fiction created by the
memory. Therefore, every succession of events is just an arbitrary,
fragmented selection of thoughts with which the mind builds an ap-
parently logical chain of memories to which it attributes a certain
causality. Time is sequential, intemporality is simultaneous. Balsekar
explained this with the example of the thousands of frames of a huge
movie shown on a large wall hundreds of feet wide. Whereas pure
awareness can witness all the frames simultaneously from its just
perspective, perceiving their essential oneness, the speculative mind
needs to approach the wall in order to see the frames, so that, unable
to perceive them all, it will imagine and recreate sequences or stories
to which it will attribute a temporal connection or a logical argu-
ment, depending on the visual itineraries carried out in the different

40
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frames. But that sense or causal link is merely fictional or arbitrary,

because it is only in the observer’s mind.

To the individual, the personal memories that form his small sto-
ry give him a false feeling of continuity. Thus, the past provides us
with the sense of identity and the future gives us the hope of a cer-
tain personal realization. But we do not actually exist in the past; we
just exist in the now, so it is the memory that configures the individ-
ual’s personality. Or, in other words, without the memories of the
past and without the expectations of the future, the individual is nul-
lified, because the “I” is so as far as it has a past and a future. Out-
side the common temporal field, the sense of identity is suspended.

In conclusion, the sense of the “I” cannot remain in the “now”

because, in the present, there is no sense of appropriation of memo-
ries or expectations.

When the memories are collectivized or socialized, they are call

general History, local history, histories of all sorts. Such Histories
are but a subjective connection between certain events. Even the so-
called remains or documents of archeological value are so as far as
we think and value them in the now, that is, we interpret and use
them with the mental or ideological categories of the present. The
past is an artificial construction built from the present. Every History
is always presentist.

2.- There is no future but the expectations from the present.

The thought can only be born and spread along time. Its main ac-
tivity consists in imagining projects and planning objectives. Its es-
sence is the tomorrow. It spreads its strategy and activity expecting
to get results in the tomorrow. However, the future is an imagined
present. The future is a thought by means of which a person guides
his activities or expectations realized in the now, expecting to get re-

41
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sults. But the future only exists in the mind because, when that sup-
posed future comes, it will always be now. In fact, a great deal of
nowadays man’s frustrations is caused by his obsession to avoid liv-
ing the present and keep the mind concerned about an imaginary fu-
ture, that is, living with the hope to get results tomorrow. That is pre-
cisely a fertile field for the ego, because aims and goals need time to
be achieved and provide the speculative mind with the opportunity to
design its plans, enjoy its projects, develop their execution and ob-
tain satisfaction after achieving them. However, the concept “future”
is just a strategy of reaffirmation of the mind in order to avoid facing
the present because it knows it must give control to the pure aware-
ness there. It knows that desires, expectations, projects, etc. cannot
survive in the present because they need time to be achieved. This
way, many people live autosuggested by a continuous expectation
with the idea of being improved in the future. But that imaginary fu-
ture never comes, is never enough or never remains because it is a
mere concept invented by the mind, as impossible to reach as the
horizon. No one has ever reached the horizon; thus, between projects
and hopes, life seems to turn its back and slip out over and over
again.

In short, the past is “now” a memory; it is an experience that

takes place because it is recalled in the present in order to provide us
with a sense of identity opposite the rest of the world. And the future
is a thought as well, arisen in the “now” about a present that has not
yet “come”, on which we pin our hope to obtain happiness. There-
fore, as the future never comes (because the mind needs the idea of
“future” in order to survive), happiness will never be achieved either.

3.- What is the now?

“Now is the favorable time” (2 Cor. 6:2). Time is experienced as

a past or a future because the speculative mind is identified with the
thoughts (memories and expectations) of the imagined character that

42
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tries to find usefulness, pleasure or sense in external objects. On the

contrary, when the mind is placed in the present and pays attention to
itself, that is, when there is consciousness of being conscious or, in
other words, when it realizes it is thinking, and it does with a sus-
tained intensity, it becomes pure awareness. Actually, one of the
biggest discoveries or revelations in the history of spirituality is the
discovery that the “ego” cannot survive in the now. The present
voids the sense of appropriation. In such a state of consciousness that
pays attention to itself, as the flow of thoughts is stopped, the ego is
left with neither food nor borders to refer experiences to; there is no
“I” that may appropriate anything. As there is no identification with
the thoughts, there is neither attachment to the past in the form of
memories, nor sense of future in the form of expectations. A clean,
natural consciousness remains: a vision that witnesses things without
projecting the ego’s desires and ambitions on them. In conclusion,
when there is no sense of appropriation of things, time is abolished
and the sequences of continuity, with which the mind identifies itself
or builds a character, cease. When the hoarding mind is absent, that
is, when we stop identifying ourselves with the flow of thoughts, we
access a sort of atemporality. That is why it is said that the Now is a
door to eternity. But eternity, rather than a chronological magnitude,
that is, an undefined or unlimited temporal duration, must be under-
stood as an intemporal condition. The true “Now” is not an instant in
time but an access door to the immutable Being, not conditioned by
time. Therefore, for the Advaitin, true immortality is not eternal life,
but the realization that one has never been born, since only what has
never been born can never die8.

What is not the Now? “The Now that flows away makes time,
the Now that stands still makes eternity” (Boethius, De Trinitate).
The dual nature of the mind has imaginarily divided time in two op-
posite directions: the past and the present. But it has also imagined

8
The concept of eviternity (what has been born but will never die) regarding soul
is a forced way to combine theology and metaphysics.

43
 JAVIER ALVARADO

the opposite of time itself: the eternal present. And when conceiving
or imagining that eternal present, it is automatically changed into an-
other mental construction: a thought. That is, when the present is
conceived as an idea, it is introduced into the past, and stops being
now. Thus, here is one of the mind’s subtlest maneuvers to keep on
hoarding experiences and maintaining control over the character it
believes it plays. When noticing that there is no “I” who appropriates
the experiences in the Now, the mind designs a subordinate model of
the present in which it imagines grandiloquent concepts such as
“non-mind”, “dissolution of the ego”, “Paradise”, “personal realiza-
tion”, etc., which serve as substitutes. But it is not the same to think
about the Now and to Be in the Now, since only then is there no ap-
propriation of thoughts. It is not about an already-thought Now, but
about a Now without thought.

On the other hand, the present is a door to Reality, but it is not a

means to achieve a goal. We would make a mistake if we converted
the present into another mental object, that is, into a chronological
stage within a temporal sequence that is to be concluded in the future
realization of an individual. In that case, the “now” would not be
other than a mere thought created to satisfy the ego. It is to be con-
sidered that there is no sense of appropriation in the Now. If there are
expectations, aims, desires... there is “ego”. If there is “ego”, there is
no Now.

The present must not be mixed up with its contents; sight must
not be mixed up with witnessed objects, the same way the frames of
the huge film must not be mixed up with the screen.

4.- Time is ego.

Mind and time are inseparable because the action of knowing in-
volves a mental movement, that is, the shifting of thought through
time. Thought needs to shift through time in order to spread out. For

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explanatory purposes only, Sri Ramesh Balsekar used to distinguish

between the thinking or speculative mind, which moves within a
productive or rational time (in the sense that it just analyzes as it
seeks for its “ration”) and the working mind, which moves within an
inert time.

The hoarding or speculative mind, the egoist “I”, cannot remain

in the present. It needs time (that is, the past and the future) in order
to move and appropriate objects. There is an individual conscious-
ness in the present, but there is no sense of appropriation because the
mind does not have enough space-time to identify itself with the ob-
jects. Or, in other words, if the time strip of the consciousness is nar-
rowed, then the “ego” is weakened and ends up dying. The specula-
tive mind moves within a productive time in which every action ex-
pects a result, whose benefits are to be taken. Two are the character-
istic elements of the thinking mind: there is a sense of the becoming
of time, and there is a sense of appropriation of objects. Thus, the
thought “I” strives to hoard objects, design projects, achieve goals
that provide it with a stable happiness. But, since the objects are mu-
table, the pleasure they provide is ephemeral, fact that causes an in-
satiable desire to hoard objects. Therefore, this escape forward will
only cause negative emotions, since, if it believes to be winning the
race, its ambition, arrogance, pride and vanity will increase; but, if it
believes to be losing, it will feel full of envy, anxiety and frustration.

On the contrary, the working mind acts from the Now, which
means that, when recalling memories, imagining future situations or
planning projects, it does it with no sense of appropriation. The
working mind deals with the situations without an added component
of passion; it observes the events as mere occurrences, and not as
problems. It does not torment itself trying to study pros and cons, nor
does it get distressed by the results even before performing the ac-
tion. In sum, the working mind is not pre-occupied, but occupied
with the issues. It is the natural, basic mind. It establishes relation-

45
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ships with the objects with no sense of appropriation. Consequently,

the goals, as well as the result of its actions, are not products of am-
bition, fear, greed, etc. Therefore, for example, before the sight of a
large green meadow, whereas the working mind can feel the peace
and beauty of the place without issuing any judgment or comparison,
the speculative mind will imaginarily take over the field and design
its house in the middle or calculate how much profit it would make if
able to sell it once divided and urbanized. Whereas the working mind
would go for a walk through the forest, feeling the oneness of the
apparent plurality, the thinking mind would see no more than timber
to be felled and sold. For the speculative mind, the relationship with
people and things is always selfish because it is conditioned by the
profit they can provide.

5.- How to break free from the chains of time?

To Advaita Vedanta, the taming of time seems to be simple; it is

enough to break free from the sense of appropriation. However, it
may seem paradoxical to talk about breaking free from the time-ego
because that would precisely imply a process... in time. Could we
perhaps break free from the time-ego using what precisely feeds it,
that is, the time itself? The idea itself that “I have to know myself” or
that “I have to realize myself” is confusing, since it implies that I am
not realized now. Should that realization be progressive, that is, sub-
ject to time, it is not true, because the authentic Realization cannot
change or be subject to time. Consequently, the so-called “spiritual
realization” is outside the temporal dimension. From the metaphysi-
cal point of view, no one can acquire, achieve or realize anything
that he does not already have by nature and that is inherent in him-
self. But the mind wants processes, goals, experiences and compari-
sons between yours and mine with which to establish imaginary bor-
ders and reaffirm its sense of identity. The mind flees from vertical
time, that is, from the present, because it depends on horizontal or
chronological time, on the feeling of continuity of the events, in or-

46
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der to maintain the mirage that there is an individual being who pro-
gresses in time by means of hoarding experiences and who competes
against other individuals for being more or different from them.

It might be supposed that the abolition of time equals its stop-

ping. However, how to stop anything that does not exist but as a
thought? What has an objective existence can be stopped, but time
lacks an objective existence. Actually, the suppression of time is just
a concept of the mind, which immediately builds its polar opposite.
Against Time, it proposes atemporality (eternity). And maybe that is
the key. If time is a modality of mental activity dedicated to external
objects, its abolition or transcendence implies the mind’s inwardness
by means of what is known as meditation or attention to the present.
It is about facilitating the detachment from the past and the future,
about shortening the ego’s attention span to the past and the future,
by means of an increasing, gradual attention to the Now. In sum, it is
about Being, about replacing the “I was” or “I will be” with the pre-
sent form, that is, “I am”.

On the other hand, words such as “liberation”, “realization”,

“happiness”, etc. are concepts produced by the mind in order to stay
active and feel useful. The mind, when identifying itself with a par-
ticular sequence of events, recreates or builds a character. That char-
acter believes to be subject to temporal and spatial conditionings,
and thus he believes that he was born, that he will die and that he ur-
gently needs to make the most of his time in order to hoard experi-
ences that may make him happy. However, he is aware that nothing
in this world is permanent and that he cannot retain the happy mo-
ments. Just after a moment of joy, time sinks him into a desperate
quest for pleasant experiences that may bring his lost happiness
back. Therefore, man aspires to a happiness that he can never retain,
fact that causes him impotence, distress and unease, that is, suffer-
ing. Thus, days go by in the middle of a frustrating duality between
pleasure and suffering. All man’s ills can be defined in time coordi-

47
 JAVIER ALVARADO

nates; fear is a form of refusal of the future; remorse or guilt is a

chain to negative memories; anxiety is an obsession with the future;
nostalgia is the attachment to pleasant memories.

As the ancients warned, time is a region of duality; you cannot

bathe twice in the same river; everything flows, nothing stands still.
Man lives caught in a time loop woven just from thoughts. Those
thoughts are dual: the past as a memory, and the future as an antici-
pation. This way, man, while keeping the hope to achieve happiness
in the future, just delays the solution to his problem because the fu-
ture does not exist, but only the now exists. It is to be insisted that
the future is but a mirage, created by the mind, which prevents us
from remaining in the present. If one believes that the future will free
him from the past, the solution will only move further away, since
time will not free us from time. Just the present frees us from the
past and the future.

The Advaitin teaches how to dwell in the present. But remaining

in the present is not a kind of mental escapism; it is not about fleeing
from family or work responsibilities; it is not a way to look “away”
or hide our head like an ostrich to evade problems. On the contrary,
there is no worse escapism than fleeing from the present on the pre-
text of a better future. Actually, the continuous quest for aims and
projects for future is usually a way to escape from the past or to
avoid facing the present moment. And the mind avoids the Now by
resorting to the comfortable daydream of waiting, since to wait is to
deny the present. The ostrich hides its head precisely because it fears
the future. The Advaitin does not praise the idle, relaxed life, nor
does he condemn the attitude of planning projects and achieving
goals. They are unavoidable and even necessary to simplify and
make daily life easier. On the contrary, what he suggests is the need
not to add a pre-occupation to the normal, daily occupation. It is
about not adding more confusion to the already existing disturb-

48
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ances, about not overimposing more suffering upon the unavoidable

pain.

In sum, the liberation from the chains of time, the “conquest of

immortality”, is achieved when ceases the sense of appropriation of
objects, of all objects including that imaginary character (the body-
mind organism) that daily plays a role in our name. Ultimately, the
abolition of time implies breaking free from the idea that the past
gives us an identity, that is, from the erroneous assumption that the
“I” has a personal story made of memories. And it also implies
breaking free from the idea that the future contains the hope to
achieve happiness.

VIII.- THE INSUBSTANTIALITY OF THE “I”

The Advaitin warns: That which we define as universal Con-

sciousness, “I am”, “God”, “Brahma”, is a temporary, impermanent
state that is being witnessed. Or, in other words, that Consciousness
is part of Duality: “Whatever experiences you have in meditation are
confined to the realm of consciousness. Consciousness is born and it
will go. You are prior to it” (Sri Nisargadatta, SC, p. 101). The state
“I am” is but that, just a “state” of the Being, something that is being
experienced and that will sooner or later disappear. Certainly, as Sri
Nisargadatta stated, “bringing the mind to the feeling ‘I am’ merely
helps in turning the mind away from everything else” but, even “I
am” is something contingent. (IAT, p. 230, and also Sri Muruganar,
Guru Vachaka Kovai, verse 716). Beyond the mind is the state “I
am”, free from thoughts, but beyond “I am” is the I am free from “I
am” (Sri Nisargadatta, PC, p. 123).

As Nirvāṇa and Samādhi imply a loss of individuality, the persis-

tence of the “I” and the Realization are incompatible. As the Realiza-
tion is a supraindividual “state”, if the “I” (the identification with a

49
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body-mind) remains, peace or “enlightenment” will not happen.

Patañjali defined the state of dhyāna (expression from which the
word Zen is ultimately derived) as “a current of unified thought”
(Yogasūtra III, 2) sustained long enough as to “penetrate” beyond
the veil of the mind and remain in the state of consciousness free of
thoughts. Samādhi expresses another indescribable “experience” or
“state” in which the differences between subject and object are
transcended. For most people, such a state might only be experi-
enced shortly or at certain intervals [manolaya]9. Only a minority
pointed by the Grace will make that state a mansion, that is, a per-
manent situation [manonasa] (Sri Ramana Maharshi, BYA, p. 94).

Consequently, the so-called “spiritual awakening” can be a mi-

rage of the consciousness if such a Realization implies the duality of
a subject who seeks to realize something, or a realized subject, and a
non-realized subject. And it is not to be forgotten that, as the so-
called “Realization”, “Enlightenment” or “Understanding” is neither
a process nor an experience that may take place in the space-time, if
we see that idea through to the bitter end, we will come to the con-
clusion that the idea of “Liberation” or “Bliss” itself is just an exclu-
sive concept of the world of consciousness. There is no “Liberation”
or “Realization beyond Consciousness, because there is no room for
a difference between an “enlightened” being and a “non-
enlightened” one in the Oneness. Some Advaita masters teach that
“we all are realized” beyond Consciousness, statement that equals
saying that “nobody is realized”, since There is no room for distinc-
tions. When this idea is accepted, it is finally understood that there
was never anything to seek or find, since there was nothing lost. No
one needs to reach the Absolute or get to the Being, because we al-

9
Advaita masters advise against the Way to those meditators who only look for the
trance experience, since the spiritual practices such as meditation try to eliminate
the psycho-mental and cultural tendencies of man (vāsanās), and not to momen-
tarily suspend them as long as the meditative practice lasts. They also advise
against the use of certain narcotics, since the result will not be peace or liberation,
but drug addiction.

50
 ADVAITIC PREFACE

ready are what we try to find. Not to see it is just another mirage cre-
ated by the mind.

In sum, there are not realized individuals, since, as the so-called

Realization, Liberation or Gnosis is supraindividual, what character-
izes such an event is the absence of the sense of individuality itself.
There are not liberated individuals because “the Realized one” has
stopped considering himself an individual, has understood and veri-
fied not only that there are neither individuals with consciousness
nor Consciousness to be manifested by individuals (Nisargadatta,
IAT, p. 218), but that there is Nothing, a mere illusion or mirage.
That is why the awakening is the realization that there is no one who
may awake. In sum, as far as the “Realization” involves an overcom-
ing of individuality, there cannot be an “I” who may reclaim that
“state”. To affirm, “I am realized” is a contradiction in terms, since
“Liberation” is a “supraindividual” state beyond the “I”. And that is
precisely why, in such a transpersonal state, there is no room to talk
about experience of God or experience of Consciousness.

IX.- WHAT IS THERE BEYOND CONSCIOUSNESS?

Who witnesses the Consciousness? We erroneously suppose that

the Consciousness is the final state or the non-state beyond all condi-
tioned states, in which the consciousness is observing the conscious-
ness. The truth is that “I am”, the “spirit”, “God”... is not the Su-
preme Reality because it is time-bound (Sri Nisargadatta, SC, 19).
On the contrary, the “I am-ness” is part of the universal mirage.
Nonetheless, it is to be understood that this is not a form of panthe-
ism or immanentism, because, although God is in all things, things
are not God. Brahma contains and penetrates the manifestation, but
is different from it, since “all beings are in me but I am not in them...
My being is the maintainer of all beings but I am not part of them”
(Bhagavad Gita 9.4-5). Certainly, it is stated that the God who can

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call Himself God is not a true God, though He were attributed with
omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, since we would still
be in the dual world of concepts: there is God because there is Crea-
tion; without Creation, there is no God. Well... however, what is
there beyond duality? What or who was there before Creation? ...

Consciousness is the desire to “be” that wants to last longer. Its

quality is the desire to live and keep on creating the suitable condi-
tions to continue its activity in the world. Actually, the supposedly
highest happiness (sat-chit-ānanda) is a form of superior happiness
that, however, is not permanent; it is just a state of consciousness.
Sat-chit-ānanda, being-consciousness-bliss, is actually a state of
happiness that, however, is still a “state” subject to the space-time,
that is, it is being held or witnessed by “someone” as long as there is
a body available for the Only Consciousness. Consequently, the so-
called Realization has nothing to do with Consciousness, no matter
how much Unique or Universal it may be. It rather looks like a neu-
tral state without quality or shape, a state of non-mind, where the
supposed individuality is permanently zero, Nothing (Sri Nisargadat-
ta, Beyond Freedom, Mumbai, 2007, p. 49).

Therefore, Advaita Vedanta answers the question: is there a

higher reality than consciousness? Yes. Beyond consciousness, there
is Parabrahman, the Absolute. But, as the Absolute is beyond all
experience, it cannot be conceived or explained by the mind; “The
Absolute cannot be experienced. It is not an objective affair. Any
manifestation, any functioning, any witnessing, can only take place
in duality. There has to be a subject and an object, they are two, but
they are not two, they are two ends of the same thing” (Sri Nisar-
gadatta, PC, p. 81). Or, in words of Chinese esoterism, “The Tao that
can be spoken of is not the true Tao” (Tao Te Ching, 1).

In order to solve this conceptual problem, the Advaitin distin-

guishes between consciousness and awareness. Consciousness be-

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longs to the world of duality and thus to the “ego”. All aspiration to
self-consciousness is but a refined modality of the desire to obtain
something, and it is therefore a subtle dodge of the ego. Conscious-
ness is, ultimately, consciousness of duality, whereas there is no du-
ality in awareness. On the contrary, when the mind or “ego” is ab-
sent, the awareness takes place. It is a state of non-duality in which
there is no one conscious. It is the original state before consciousness
appeared. Nevertheless, who is aware in the awareness? To state, “I
am aware” implies that “I am aware of experiencing that I am
aware”, which is a contradiction, for there is no “I” in Awareness.
Certainly, in order to be aware, there has to be someone and some-
thing to be aware of and, therefore, we are still in the world of duali-
ty: witnesser-witnessed-witnessing.

However, lacking a better expression, the word “Awareness” is

conventionally used to refer to the Supreme State, the original state,
without a beginning or an end, immutable and causeless. Such a
“state” is called Parabrahman, beyond Brahma or beyond “I am”.
As a pedagogical concession, some wise men have defined the natu-
ral state of non-dual awareness or self-knowledge as the “fourth
state” (turīya) in order to highlight that it is beyond the three ordi-
nary states of waking, dream and deep sleep. Thus, turīya is that
which witnesses the three states. However, it might be wondered,
who witnesses turīya? The mind can imagine another higher witness
that transcends the fourth state (turiyatita, literally, beyond the
fourth). But such conceptualizations, which the mind likes so much,
are endless because, following that path, there will always be a high-
er level of awareness. And the truth is that calling it the state without
states, the state beyond the states or the fourth state (turīya) does not
stop being absurd, since, strictly speaking, as it is earlier or higher
than the mind, it cannot be described or experienced; one can only be
It. As Sri Nisargadatta clarifies, one cannot even be It in this state,
because it is rather a state that is not (Sri Nisargadatta, PC, p. 32).

53
 JAVIER ALVARADO

If there is neither anything to be witnessed nor anyone who wit-

nesses, nor anyone who claims or assumes any action, do experienc-
es stop being there? No. Awareness becomes a state where the pres-
ence or absence of the experience seems to be recorded, but, as there
is no “one” who assumes the action of experiencing, every action
becomes impersonal. Going deeper into the differences between
consciousness and awareness, Sri Nisargadatta explains, “there can
be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness
without consciousness (as in deep sleep). Awareness is absolute,
consciousness is relative. Consciousness is partial and changeful,
awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. Awareness is not of
time. Time exists in consciousness only. Parabrahman has no be-
ginning and no end, whereas this consciousness is time-bound: it has
a beginning and an end. The Absolute, the Awareness, is the sup-
porting principle for the consciousness” (Sri Nisargadatta, IAT, p.
29).

Awareness is not achieved with effort or attention, because that

would imply a movement at the level of the mind. At the most, we
may think that we are practicing the fact of witnessing; in that case,
it is the mind that thinks that it is witnessing... but then, we will have
fallen into Māyā’s clutches again.

That being said, the seasoned Vedantin knows that, no matter

how much sharpened are the concepts, these cannot stretch enough
as to clearly define the topic that is being discussed. Strictly speak-
ing, the concept “Awareness” is but a pedagogic concession to fa-
cilitate the comprehension of something impossible to experience
and that does not reflect, even by a long shot, the real Nature of the
Being. In fact, rather than “Awareness”, our authentic Reality
would be more strictly defined as “Absence”, considering that
Nothing is not inert.

54
 ADVAITIC PREFACE

X.- THE “EXPERIENCE” OF AWARENESS IS THE EXPE-

RIENCE OF THE NOTHING.

Some people have a quite odd concept of what an enlightened,

“realized” or wise man really is, which may be explained by the pro-
liferation of false “masters” and impostor “gurus” who take ad-
vantage of the good faith of naïve seekers. It is deplorable to watch
the show of those false prophets, truly ego-saurs, who only seek to
feed their own mirage by means of adulation. The fact that they re-
quire the worship to individuality is itself a clear evidence of their
hypocrisy. Firstly, it is to be pointed out that a jnani (comprehensor
of the real nature) does not boast, since, if he is beyond duality, be-
fore which other individuals could he brag?

What is a jnani? Whereas the common individual is identified

with the body-mind and is happy or unhappy as the daily events
change, the jnani just witnesses unbiasedly without being individual-
ly interested in what happens. Whereas the world of the ordinary
humankind is made of dreams and nothing stands still, the world of
the jnani is real and nothing changes. For the jnani, the three states
of waking, dream and deep sleep are all of them a mere dream. The
Sāmadhi itself is but a kind of dream. The Ribhu Gita explains, “Of
just one nature, the Self in peace, devoid of thoughts of anything be-
ing separate, such a one who does not, in the least, have anything, is
called a jīvanmukta (freed in life). All this is none of mine. I have no
merit. I have no demerit. I have no body. I have nothing auspicious. I
have nothing to see. There is no lineage for me, no race for me, and
no knowledge for me. There is no existence for me. There is no birth
for me. There is no aging for me. There is no fame for me, and no
philosophy for me. No old age exists for me. No childhood exists for
me. No death exists for me” (Ribhu Gita, ch. 8). With such a descrip-
tion, it can be understood that the “experience” of awareness may be
compared with the experience of the Nothing. Nevertheless, whereas
in the Western thought, terms such as “emptiness” and “nothing”

55
 JAVIER ALVARADO

have a negative nature, in the Eastern thought, they show a positive

dimension. That is because of the anthropological point of view
adopted in the West, that is, that man is considered to be the center
of the universe, whereas, in the East, the metaphysical point of view
is adopted; Creation and creatures are appearances within the Only
Reality; the isolated, independent “I” not only does not exist, but al-
so not to understand such a mirage causes great frustrations. From
this viewpoint, the Eastern emptiness or nothing (even though a tran-
scendental concept of “nothing” also exists in certain Western mo-
nastic orders) is defined as the absence of an “ego” or “I” that is ex-
perienceable like something real and that claims the authorship of its
actions. That is to say, for the individual mind, whose nature is built
on the appropriation of personal memories and expectations for the
future that may provide it with a comfortable, false feeling of per-
sonal identity, any supraindividual or transpersonal state in which
the experience cannot be referred to an individual is considered as
Emptiness or Nothing. What is more, without memories or projects
for the future, deprived the mind of its food, it should theoretically
end up dying of starvation. For the individual, the Nothing is the
death... but the death of the “ego”. However, is the Emptiness or the
Nothing the ultimate Reality? More clearly, do I consist of empti-
ness? Obviously, no. Emptiness is witnessed10. But it will still be a
game of concepts if it is not accepted that Awareness is, more strictly
speaking, Absence.

The attachment to a name and a form is what feeds fear. But, af-
ter a process of detachment, I am nothing, and the nothing has no
fear. On the contrary, who is attached to everything is afraid of the
Nothing because he fears losing his world made of appropriation and
because, when something touches the Nothing, it becomes nothing.
The “nothing” scares because there is still “someone” who can be

10
Likewise, Buddhism talks about “emptiness” or “nothing” (śūnyatā), considered
as non-mind (mu-shu) or non-I (mu-ga), similar to Taoist non-action (wú wéi), as a
mental state free or empty of thoughts.

56
 ADVAITIC PREFACE

scared. But the truth is that “Nothing exists at any time. Neither does
‘only one’ nor ‘this’ exist. There is nothing inside, nothing outside;
there is nothing at all. There is no duality either. There is no creation.
There is nothing to be seen, no knowledge, no separate body, noth-
ing like a comprehensor, no transmigration” (Ribhu Gita, ch. 8).
Without “ego”, the “nothing” becomes “Everything”.

XI.- A DAILY “EXPERIENCE” OF THE NOTHING; THE

DEEP SLEEP

The deep sleep is, in Advaita Vedanta, a state with an enormous

pedagogic value. Of course, such a state is not separable from the
fact of sleeping. On the contrary, during innumerable moments of
the day (waking state), consciousness becomes self-absorbed and the
sense of individuality shortly disappears. It is the case, for example,
of situations such as walking, listening to music, cooking, etc., in
which our inwardness sometimes takes us to a state of peace, unin-
terrupted by any thought, that we leave when we recover the sense of
individuality. Actually, the deep sleep while awake (or waking dur-
ing deep sleep) is considered as the state of the wise or realized man
(jnani) because it makes compatible the consciousness of the waking
state with the stillness of the deep sleep, or even beyond waking
(atijagrat) and beyond deep sleep (atisushupti) (Sri Ramana Ma-
harshi, CRMII, p. 337). It is obvious that I am not conscious of my
body or the world during deep sleep, but I cannot affirm that I cease
to exist. Therefore, I can conclude that there is no individual or con-
sciousness “I am” in deep sleep (M. James, HAB, p. 93). Therefore,
as a gap in memory is not necessarily a gap in consciousness, deep
sleep may consist in a state of supraindividual consciousness (or ra-
ther, awareness) in which we disappear as individuals and feel free
of memories. Nevertheless, as we are what supports and, at the same
time, what is beyond the three states, this means that the Self does
not consist of consciousness. In fact, no one can deny that we keep

57
 JAVIER ALVARADO

on being or existing during deep sleep even though that form of in-
dividual consciousness that knows objects may not exist that way in
that state. Although we stop having memories in the deep sleep state,
however, we keep on being-existing and we can even affirm that, af-
ter waking from deep sleep, despite having no memories about it, we
however experience the peace and relief of having slept deeply and
of having known nothing while asleep; “In deep sleep, all beings are
united with Brahman and enjoy bliss. That supreme bliss can be en-
joyed forever when a person realizes his identity with Brahman” (Sri
Sankaracharya, 18TA, p. 118-119). There is thus a continuity of the
Being through all the three states, though there is no continuity of the
individual or the objects (M. James, HAB, p. 190).

In conclusion, as René Guénon explained, our true nature is that

Fourth “state without states” (turīya or chaturtha), pure and immacu-
late, homogeneous, identical to itself, uncontainable (because it con-
tains all), immutable (because it is not acting), unthinkable (because
it takes no shape) and indescribable (because it has no particular at-
tribute or characteristic).

Only That, Ātman, the Self, is who supports and goes through the
states like a thread that strings the beads of a collar. We are not the
states, but the ones who witness and give life and breath to the states.

You are That (Tat tvam asi).

58
 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT
IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

“There is no way, no place about thee, nor any

other thing of things that are. All are in thee; all are
from thee” (Corpus Hermeticum V, 10)

I.- THE HERMES DOCTRINE AND THE CORPUS

HERMETICUM

The word “Hermetism” comes from the Greek name of the

Egyptian god Thoth. Theúth, Thōúth, Thōth, means “messenger” or
“interpreter”, because the herald of the gods is, consequently, the in-
terpreter of the word; and so comes his association with the Greek
Hermes, both as an “interpreter” (hermeneus) and as a herald of the
gods. For the Egyptians, he represents the heart of Re, and he ap-
pears in the myth of Osiris as a scribe or lord of the Maat, of the Jus-
tice and the cosmic Order. As the god of wisdom and writing, he is
represented with an Ibis head (ḏḥwty, Thoth, means “messenger”)
because this bird eats crocodile eggs, that is, it destroys the evil and
the ignorance. That is why he is the patron god of knowledge in gen-
eral and, especially, of the initiatic literature produced in the “Houses
of Life” of the Egyptian temples, that is, the initiatic centers.

The epithet Trismegistus comes from the Egyptian title of Thoth;

aā aā, great great, that is, greatest, which, since the time of Ptolemy
IV Philopator (221-205 BC), was translated into Greek with a super-
lative thrice repeated. In fact, the twice-great Thoth is worshiped in
the ancient Egyptian texts of the Dynasty XIX (13th century BC), al-
so referred to as the only one. Amongst the ostraca collection (in-
scriptions on ceramic), written in demotic, registered by W. B. Em-
 JAVIER ALVARADO

ery, dated between 168 and 164 BC and most likely left by the peo-
ple who came to consult the Saqqāra oracle, there is one that con-
tains the following inscription: “τὰ ῥηθέντα μοι ὑπὸ μεγίστου καὶ
μεγίστου θεοῦ μεγάλου Ἑρμοῦ” [the things that I was told by the
greatest and greatest god the great Hermes]. Likewise, about 172
BC, during the reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor, Hor of Sebennytos,
servant of the goddess Isis, dictated the following ostracon in demot-
ic: “Dare not anyone fail in a duty concerning the god Thoth, the
personified god who brings his influence to the temple of Memphis,
and Harthoth with him as well. The blessing he receives from Ibis,
the soul of Thoth, the thrice great, is also received by the hawk, the
soul of Ptah..., the soul of Horus”11.

On the other hand, at the beginning of the 9th century, when the
monk George “Syncellus” writes his Universal chronicle and pro-
ceeds to summarize the work Aegyptiaca or History of Egypt written
by the Egyptian priest Manetho (3rd century BC), states that this
priest knew “inscriptions which had been written down by Thoth, the
first Hermes, in hieroglyphic script, had been interpreted after the
Flood by Agathodaemon, son of the second Hermes and father of
Tat, and had been deposited in the houses of life of the temples of
Egypt... [Manetho] dedicated [them] to... Ptolemy... with these
words: ... As you are making researches concerning the future of the
universe, in obedience to your command I shall place before you the
sacred books which I have studied, written by your forefather, Her-
mes Trismegistus”12. Apparently, this text by Manetho (or Pseudo-
Manetho, as other specialists prefer to call him) distinguishes be-
tween a first Hermes –identified with Thoth– and a second Hermes,
who was the Trismegistus. Likewise, Saint Augustine of Hippo,
managing information from Varro, says that Hermes Trismegistus

11
Discovered and registered by W. B. Emery, “Preliminary Report on the Excava-
tions at North Saqqāra: 1965-1966” in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 51
(1965), pp. 3-9.
12
Manetho, Appendix I (ps-Manetho, apud Syncellus), p. 72. tr. by W. G. Waddell,
(Loeb Classical Library, repr. 1964), p. 208.

60
 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

was the “grandson” of Mercury the Elder13. From all this, it can be
deduced that the monk Syncellus echoed a tradition that affirmed the
in-illo-tempore existence (that is, “before the flood”), of steles in-
scribed by Thoth, the first Hermes, as a transmitter of a teaching of
non-human origin under the shape of a dialect and sacred characters,
afterwards translated into hieroglyphics. This Thoth first Hermes
might be the equivalent to the “Demiurgic Logos”, the god Ptah,
who, in the Corpus Hermeticum, is denominated Nous-Poimandres
and who reveals the tradition to Hermes “Trismegistus”. The second
Hermes seems to be a hierophany of the first one destined to set and
update the original teaching. The preface of the first book of the col-
lection titled Kuranides explains that “the god Hermes Trismegistus
received this book from the angels as God’s greatest gift and passed
it on to all men fit to receive secrets (mystika)”. It is also insisted that
Agathodaemon, son of the second Hermes (the Trismegistus) and fa-
ther of Tat, carried out the systematization “in books” of all these
materials. In some paragraphs of the Corpus Hermeticum, this teach-
ing of divine origin is denominated message (kērygma) or proclama-
tion (kēryssō), and its bearer is described as herald (kēryx), all of
which are names that the authors of the New Testament will use as
well in order to refer to the prophecy. Finally, the text by the priest
Manetho warns that the writing of the texts was carried out in the
“Houses of Life” of the Egyptian temples, residence and production
place of the initiatic, sacred and technical literature, whose symbolic,
tutelary head was the god Thoth himself. Are there more evidences
that support this tradition? The truth is that one of the hermetic man-
uscripts of Nag Hammadi, The discourse on the Ogdoad and the En-
nead14, most likely composed at the end of the 3rd century, seems to

13
In City of God, XVIII, 39, it is mentioned: “As regards philosophy... studies of
that kind flourished in those lands [Egypt] about the times of Mercury, whom they
called Trismegistus, long before the sages and philosophers of Greece... At that
time, indeed, when Moses was born, Atlas is found to have lived, that great astron-
omer, the brother of Prometheus, and maternal grandson of the elder Mercury, of
whom that Mercury Trismegistus was the grandson”.
14
The discourse on the Ogdoad and the Ennead (NHC, VI, 6), in Antonio Piñero,
Textos gnósticos. Biblioteca de Nag Hammadi, vol. I (from now on, referred to as

61
 JAVIER ALVARADO

confirm part of this. The procedure used by masters, philosophers

and priests to prevent the teachings from being profaned or misun-
derstood is described there. Specifically, it is prescribed that they had
to be written in the script used by the scribes of the “Houses of Life”,
that is, in hieroglyphic characters, engraved on a stone of a particular
type, shape and color (steles, obelisks) in order to be placed in the
temple, inscribed in a particular astrologic moment and, finally, to
write the sacred name of God on the top of the inscription. Nonethe-
less, which books contained that divine teaching transmitted and
guarded by Hermes?

About the year 200, Clement of Alexandria affirmed to have

knowledge of “forty-two books written by Hermes”, considered as
essential for the rituals of the Egyptian priests. About the year 300,
the Neoplatonist Iamblichus commented in his treatise On the Egyp-
tian Mysteries that, “in the books of the ancient writers of sacred
concerns, many and various opinions concerning these things are
circulated... [Based on] many essences... differing from each other,
the all-various multitude of the principles of these, and which have
different orders, ... delivered by different ancient priests, as Seleucus
narrates, therefore, Hermes described the principles that rank as
wholes in two myriads of books; or, as we are informed by Manetho,
he perfectly unfolded these principles in three myriads six thousand
five hundred and twenty-five volumes”15. More reticent about fig-
ures, Lactantius records in his Divinae Institutiones, written about
305, that Hermes “gave laws and letters to the Egyptians. The Egyp-
tians call him Thoth; and from him first month of their year... He
was a man... most fully imbued with every kind of learning, so that
the knowledge of many subjects and arts acquired for him the name

NHC), Valladolid, 1997, p. 416 ff. [an English version can be found in James M.
Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, San Francisco (CA), 1990] The quotations
of the Corpus Hermeticum (from now on, referred to as CH) follow the translation
by G. R. S. Mead, Thrice-Great Hermes, vol. 2, 1906. For the texts that are not col-
lected in the aforementioned works, I will use Textos Herméticos, introduction,
translation and notes by Xavier Renal Nebot, Madrid, 1999.
15
Iamblichus, On the Egyptian mysteries, VIII.1.260-261.

62
 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

of Trismegistus. He wrote books, and those in great numbers relating

to the knowledge of divine things, in which he asserts the majesty of
the supreme and only God...”16. Likewise, Cyril of Alexandria and
Johannes Stobaeus managed some collections of short treatises or
logoi that they attributed to Hermes.

However, in spite of that supposed amount and variety of texts,

only a few manuscripts have gotten to us. Actually, for the first edi-
tion of the Corpus Hermeticum in 1471, Marsilio Ficino used a
manuscript of the 14th century that contained only fourteen logoi or
treatises. Some decades later, in 1554, Turnèbe would rely on a dif-
ferent manuscript that contained “seventeen” logoi: the same four-
teen used by Ficino, plus other three, as well as excerpts or frag-
ments coming from Stobaeus. In 1574, Flussas (François Foix de
Candelle) reproduces the Turnèbe edition, assigning the number XV
to the fragments of Stobaeus17 and giving the other three treatises the
numbers XVI, XVII and XVIII18. To this traditional version of the
Corpus Hermeticum, other documents recently recovered should be
added. In particular, the Coptic texts found in Nag Hammadi19, other
three texts published by Mahé, some Hermetic Definitions preserved
in their Armenian version20, some unpublished hermetic extracts
preserved in one of the Oxford Papyri21, and the texts known as “Vi-
enna fragments”22.

16
Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, I, 6, 1; The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. VII, New
York, 1896.
17
In particular, ten of the forty fragments from the work by Johannes Stobaeus
(5th-6th century), known as Anthologion. The most famous of these passages pre-
served by Stobaeus is the 23rd, titled Korē Kosmou. The pupil of the eye of the
world [or The virgin of the world]. Published in Textos Herméticos, cit., p. 257 ff.
[this work was translated into English by A. Kingsford and E. Maitland in 1880]
18
Therefore, it is wrong to use the name of the first treatise, CH I “Poimandres”, to
refer to the whole collection.
19
An English version of these texts can be found in Marvin Meyer ed., The Nag
Hammadi Scriptures, New York, 2007.
20
J-P. Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte, Quebec, 1978 (vol. I) and 1982 (vol. II).
21
J-P. Mahé, “Extraits Hermétiques inédits dans un Manuscrit d’Oxford”, Revue
des Études Grecques, 104 (1991/1), pp. 109-139.
22
J-P. Mahé, “Fragments Hermétiques dans les Papyri Vindobonenses Graecae
29456r et 29828r”, in Cahiers d’Orientalisme, Geneva, 10 (1984), pp. 51-64.

63
 JAVIER ALVARADO

II.- THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE EGYPTIAN ORIGIN

OF HERMETISM

It has been largely discussed about the so-called Egyptian origin

of these texts. Could a thorough examination of their contents shed
light on who the true authors of the denominated Corpus Hermeti-
cum were? Given the unusual interest arisen by Hermetism from the
15th century in Europe and the rebuilding of its doctrines in versions
that would later constitute a Christian Hermetism, some scholars en-
tered the fray trying to “canalize” or “redirect” this interest by at-
tempting to demonstrate that all what was called “Egyptian”, that is,
“pagan” within Hermetism was really an “artificial addition at the
service of fashion” or a “propaganda device”. Already in 1614, Isaac
Casaubon23 tried to demonstrate that the logoi of the Corpus had
been written by Christian authors close to the Gospel of Saint John.
And, in 1866. Louis Ménard, in his work Hermès Trismégiste. Tra-
duction complète, précédée d’une étude sur l’origine des livres her-
métiques, proposed placing the hermetic treatises in the context of
the Hellenistic mysticism that competed against Christianity. Thus,
in a few years, there were at least three theses regarding the filiation
of the hermetic writings: the supporters of the “Judeo-Christian” the-
sis, the defenders of the “Greek” origin, and the ones who kept the
Egyptian roots24.

In 1904, Reitzenstein25 placed the cause of inspiration of the

hermetic texts again in the theology of Ptah and other Eastern
sources. In particular, Reitzenstein maintained that the Corpus
proved the existence of an Egyptian community that used those trea-

23
Isaac Casaubon, De Rebus Sacris et Ecclesiasticis Exercitationes XVI ad
Cardinales Baronii Prolegomena in Annales… London, 1614. In the Exercitatio I.
10, p. 70.
24
R. Pietschmann, Hermes Trismegistos, nach ägyptischen, griechischen und
orientalischen Überlieferungen, Leipzig, 1875.
25
R. Reitzenstein, Poimandres. Studien zur griechisch-ägyptischen und
frühchristlichen Literatur, Leipzig, 1904.

64
 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

tises in their religious worship. Reacting against this hypothesis,

Thaddeus Zielinski hurried up to refute this “Egyptomania” placing
the Hermetica again in the context of the Greek philosophical trends,
basically the peripatetic, Platonizing and pantheistic ones26. Almost
immediately, Josef Kroll27 would oppose Reitzenstein as well as
Zielinski, connecting Hermetism with the philosophy of Plato, Aris-
totle, Posidonius and Philo, giving an essential role to middle Stoi-
cism. For his part, Bausset explored the Eastern sources of Gnosti-
cism and set as key element the Greek reception of the Iranian influ-
ence. This made Reitzenstein change his mind about the Egyptian
Hermes and maintained that Iran was the cradle of the hermetic doc-
trine28.

In the middle of this controversial panorama, the Jesuit

Festugière publishes La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste29, main-
taining, because of his religious prejudices, a philhellenistic, anti-
Eastern position. His aim was to demonstrate that there was nothing
valuable in Hermetism whose origin was Egyptian or Eastern, com-
piling information from any source that could allow him to dilute
that Egyptian and Eastern influence on Hermetism. The reactions to
Festugière’s thesis did not take long to appear. The first one was
suggested by B. H. Stricker when commenting the denominated
“Letter of Aristeas”30. In it, it is narrated how, by suggestion of the
peripatetic librarian of Alexandria, Demetrius of Phalerum, Ptolemy
II Philadelphus asked the High Priest of Jerusalem, Eleazar, for a

26
Th. Zielinski, “Hermes und die Hermetik I: das Hermetische Corpus” and
“Hermes und die Hermetik II: der Ursprung der Hermetik”, in Archiv für
Religionswissenschaft, 8 (1905), pp. 321-372, and 9 (1906), pp. 25-60.
27
J. Kroll, Die Lehre des Hermes Trismegistos. Beiträge zur Geschichte der
Philosophie des Mittelalters (TU 12). Münster 1914.
28
R. Reitzenstein, Erlösung Mysterium. Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen,
Bonn 1921.
29
A-J. Festugière, La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, Paris, 1944-1945.
30
B. H. Stricker, De Brief van Aristeas. De Hellenistiche Codificaties der
Praehelleense Goddiensten, Amsterdam, 1965. An English translation of the men-
tioned “Letter” can be found in R. H. Charles ed., The Letter of Aristeas, Oxford,
1913.

65
 JAVIER ALVARADO

genuine version of the Jewish Law in order to have it translated into

Greek by a team of wise men. The result was known as the Old Tes-
tament LXX version. Well, for Stricker, this was just one episode in
a wide project of translation of the different religions practiced in
Egypt, among which there should be “the Greek adaptation of the
Egyptian religious thought, which constitutes the Corpus attributed
to Hermes Trismegistus”. With this, Stricker placed the birth of
Hermetism in the 3rd century BC, since “only this age knew a mutual
interest between Greek and Egyptian thoughts strong enough as to
produce such a work”. Mahé contributed to this reinforcement of the
“Egyptian” hypothesis too, in his two volumes about Hermes in Up-
per Egypt, establishing that the Gnostic contents of the Hermetica
were a secondary feature in comparison with the strictly speaking
Egyptian cultural influence. After Stricker and Mahé, other scholars
(Doresse, Krause, François Daumas, Philippe Derchain, Cumont,
Serge Sauneron, J. D. Ray, B. R. Rees and others) provided new ar-
guments for a tinged version of the Egyptian thesis. In fact, regard-
ing the mentioned authors, it could be talked about a Greco-Egyptian
synthesis, in the sense that there was a transposition of Egyptian im-
ages and symbols into the Greek cultural categories, fact that some-
times involved a deep “reinterpretation” of the Egyptian hermetic
thought.

In sum, when transferring the Egyptian metaphysics to the Greek

philosophical language, the analysts of that time carried out the de-
tailed task of synthesizing the elements from the one and the other
shore. The “universalistic” cultural program developed by Demetrius
of Phalerum, centralized in the Library of Alexandria, explains that,
during that task of “re-writing” the Egyptian thought, other cultural
elements were incorporated, besides the mentioned Hellenic influ-
ence, such as, for instance, Jewish ones. About this subject, Marc
Philonenko, Birger Pearson, William Grese and others have contin-
ued studying the biblical and Jewish connections within the Hermet-
ica. But, doubtlessly, the most suggestive studies about Hermetism

66
 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

are the ones carried out by Fowden31. With a notable erudition and
lucidity, he has pointed out that the hermetic authors combined an
open attitude toward Hellenism with a deep consciousness of their
Egyptian roots.

III.- THE CULTURAL CENTER OF ALEXANDRIA

There had been cultural relationships between Greeks and Egyp-

tians since ancient times. Already in the 7th century BC, Pharaoh
Psammetichus I allowed the Milesians to found a colony called Nau-
cratis at the delta. However, the most representative moment of this
relationship was when Alexander the Great annexed Egypt in 332
and decided to found the city that would be called after himself.
Once again, as a paradigmatic example of hermeneutical and synthe-
sis work, it is to be mentioned the cultural project of the librarian of
Alexandria, the peripatetic Demetrius of Phalerum, fully dedicated to
the collection of texts and to the study of the sources of the religions
practiced in Egypt. Actually, it is stated that, since then, the prestige
of the Hellenic culture was spread in Egypt as a fashion that influ-
enced everything. Perhaps, that was why, in mid-3rd century BC, lit-
erary signs claiming an Egyptian “nativism” appeared against the
Hellenizing trend. This is the case of the Demotic chronicle, which
narrates nostalgic stories about the glorious days when the Pharaohs
used to hold power with true authority and free from foreign influ-
ences. Or the Oracle of the Potter, which claimed back the age of
Pharaohs; it was released at the end of the 2nd century and later, dur-
ing the Roman period, in order to announce an apocalyptic promise:
Alexandria, the city of the hated foreigners, shall fall. In sum, up to
which extent did Egypt adapt to the beliefs of its foreign residents
and not the opposite? The truth is that the Greek and Roman colo-

31
Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan
Mind, Cambridge, 1986. F. Samaranch Kirner has also reliably declared himself a
supporter of the Egyptian thesis, Filosofía y teúrgia. Una interpretación del Her-
metismo, Madrid, 1999.

67
 JAVIER ALVARADO

nizers were also intellectually colonized. An example of this symbi-

osis is the fact that Hellenic equivalences to Egyptian divinities are
found: Thoth-Hermes, Imhotep-Asclepius, Zeus-Amun, etc.

One of the most noticeable examples is the fusion between Osiris

and Apis under the shape of Serapis32, whose association with
Hades-Pluto was reinforced by the identification of Isis with Deme-
ter, as Heraclides of Pontus and Archemachus of Euboea33 had
pointed out. It is possible that the consolidation of Serapis’ worship
could be motivated by Ptolemy’s interest in creating a worship that
could be accepted by the Egyptian community as well as by the
Greek one34. For that reason, he was consecrated as the tutelary di-
vinity of Alexandria, assuming the qualities of the agathos daimon35,
the beneficial daemon with the shape of a snake that, according to
tradition, had died as a consequence of the city founding works.
Boosters of this religious syncretism were, amongst others, the
Egyptian priest Manetho and Timotheus of Eleusis (member of the
Eumolpid family). Because of the latter, Isis was Hellenized by in-
troducing certain particularities of the Egyptian worship into the
Eleusian mysteries.

Therefore, since the Eleusian mysteries had the disadvantage of

not traveling, for their worship was only possible at its site, in Eleu-
sis, the identification of Isis with the Eleusian Demeter allowed the
development of a Mediterranean repercussion of the Egyptian god-
dess under a Greek appearance.

32
Already pointed out by Clement of Alexandria, Protreptic IV, 48, 6.
33
As Plutarch refers to in Isis and Osiris (Is) 27.
34
Not only with the aim of achieving a greater social cohesion around his person;
Plutarch, Is. 28, 362a; Tacitus, Histories IV, 83, 2.
35
Agathos Daimon is a form of the Egyptian Thoth, the nous of the Hermetica that
appears in CH XII, 1.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

IV.- THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE EGYPTIAN HERMET-

ISM

The most clarifying and, at the same time, the most controversial
text about the Egyptian origin of Hermetism can precisely be found
in the Corpus Hermeticum itself. Certainly, in CH XVI, 1-2, Ascle-
pius mentions something that he had heard from Hermes Trismegis-
tus himself: “Unto those who come across my books, their composi-
tion will seem most simple and clear; but, on the contrary, as ‘tis un-
clear, and has the meaning of its words concealed, it will be still un-
clearer, when, afterwards, the Greeks will want to turn our tongue in-
to their own, for this will be a very great distorting and obscuring of
what has been written. Turned into our native tongue, the sermon
keepth clear the meaning of the words. For that its very quality of
sound, the power of the Egyptian names, have in themselves the
bringing into act of what is said. As far as, then, thou canst, O King –
and thou canst all things– keep our sermon from translations; in or-
der that such mighty mysteries may not come to the Greeks, and the
disdainful speech of Greece, with its looseness, and its surface beau-
ty, so to speak, take all the strength out of the solemn and the strong,
the energic speech of Names. The Greeks, O King, have novel
words, energic of argumentation only; and this is the philosophizing
of the Greeks, the noise of words. But we do not use words; but we
use sounds full-filled with deeds”.

From all this, it can be deduced that the Egyptian Hermetism

considered itself as a metaphysical, philosophical and magical teach-
ing, apparently clear but concealing a hidden meaning that could on-
ly be transmitted by people previously instructed or “initiated” in its
true interpretation. This mistrust of the Greek translation points out
that the books were written in a certain native language, and that this
refusal tried to preserve the sacred doctrine from any adulteration,
the way it would happen with the “translation” to another language
different from the original one.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

Could it be supposed that this vision of Hermetism was a mere

invention of Greek or Greco-Egyptian philosophers who wanted to
justify a new doctrine by means of connecting it with the ancient
teachings of the god Hermes? In such case, how to explain that those
same Greeks depicted a so negative, pessimistic panorama of the
Greek culture or mentality, describing it with terms such as “disdain-
ful”, “looseness”, “noise of words”, etc.? The reason why the authors
of the hermetic text, either Greeks or Greco-Egyptians, decided to
discredit their culture so deeply cannot be explained. Rather, it
should be believed that the text is reliable and be accepted that the
statements attributed to Hermes, regarding the refusal to translate the
texts to profane languages and about his derogatory vision of the
Greeks, formed part of the mentality of the Egyptian priests of that
time. It is to be reminded how Plato, in Timaeus (21e), has his
Critias tell the anecdote starred by Solon during his stay in Egypt.
Solon was boasting about the ancient origin of Athens when an old
Egyptian priest replied: “Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always like
children... you keep in your soul no ancient opinion...”, explaining
him that mankind was periodically destroyed by water or fire, and
then restarted again their path without remembering anything from
the previous stage lived. The historical memory of those peoples that
do not keep annals of such events is, therefore, very limited. Howev-
er, according to the Egyptian priest, this did not happen in the lands
of the Nile.

On the other hand, documented interest, if not even cultural de-

pendence, of the Greeks regarding Egypt is found, especially about
the journeys of Greek intellectuals to know and even learn at the
Egyptian “Houses of Life”, to be “initiated” in the Mysteries of Isis
and Osiris. Diodorus of Sicily, whose source seems to have been
Hecataeus of Abdera36 in this subject, provides, in his Bibliotheca, a

36
Diodorus Siculus (1st c. BC), Bibliotheca, I (96-98). Hecataeus of Abdera (4th-3rd
c. BC) was in Egypt under Ptolemy I Soter (362-304 BC).

70
 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

list of some of the Greek wise men who, according to the “archives
of the temples” of that country, were to Egypt: Orpheus, Melampus,
Daedalus, Homer, Lycurgus, Solon, Plato, Pythagoras, Eudoxus,
Democritus, Oenopides, the Anax (Anaxagoras, Anaximedes, Anax-
imander)...

Other sources confirm the existence of hermetic texts or books

that were originally written in Egyptian language. For instance, due
to a journey to Egypt between 24 and 20 BC, Strabo states that “the
priests of Thebes, who called themselves the wisest philosophers and
astronomers, attributed all their wisdom to Hermes”37. Likewise,
Clement of Alexandria, a Christian writer of the 2nd-3rd century,
within the Alexandrian context and well informed about Hermetism,
says that “there are forty-two books of Hermes; of which six-and-
thirty contain the whole ‘philosophy of the Egyptians’... and the oth-
er six are the ‘pastophoroi’: they are medical books treating of the
structure of the body, and of diseases, etc.”38. These testimonies sup-
port the already mentioned narration of monk George “Syncellus”
who, about 800 AD, collected the last historical-religious writings of
the Egyptian priest Manetho of Sebennytos, who lived in the 3rd cen-
tury BC and was the author of the works Aegyptiaca and The Sacred
Book, in which he let the Greeks know the history and the religion of
his native country. Monk George says, “In the time of Ptolemy Phil-
adelphus, Manetho was styled high-priest of the pagan temples of
Egypt, and wrote from inscriptions in the Seriadic land [Egypt],
traced by Thoth, the first Hermes, and translated after the Flood...
When the work had been arranged in books by Agathodaemon, son
of the second Hermes and father of Tat, in the houses of life of
Egypt, Manetho dedicated it to the above King Ptolemy II Philadel-
phus in his Book of Sothis”39. Another special text is to be mentioned
here: In the work On the Egyptian Mysteries, attributed to the priest

37
Geographia, XVII, 1, 46.
38
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata VI, 4,35.3/37.3
39
Manetho, Appendix I (ps-Manetho, apud Syncellus), p. 72. tr. by W. G. Waddell,
(Loeb Classical Library, repr. 1964), p. 208.

71
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Iamblichus, it is said that “the ones [books or writings] that go round

under the name of Hermes contain hermetic opinions, no matter if
they are often expressed in the language of philosophers; they have
been, actually, transcribed [or translated: metagegraptai] from the
Egyptian language by people inexperienced in philosophy” (VIII, 4).
However, if the mentioned hermetic text affirming the Egyptian
origin of the Hermetica can be considered as reliable, it should be set
out, up to which extent were not the Egyptian metaphysical, esoteric
or magical texts that passed to the books of Hermes recognizable,
once flooded within the philosophical vocabulary? Up to which ex-
treme was not that result yet “translation”, but rather “re-writing”?
Iamblichus himself provides a subtle piece of information: that, un-
der an apparently philosophical language, the hermetic texts “con-
cealed” Egyptian doctrines wisely masked by experts. This introduc-
es us the technique of concealment by means of a language with
double etymologies, so abundant in the Corpus Hermeticum. Let us
study some examples of what is has just been said.

1.- “Poimandres” and the technique of the etymological masking

“Poimandres”40 is mentioned twice in CH XIII, with the same ti-

tles and adjectives with which he appears in CH I: “for thy Nous is
the shepherd to thy word [or shepherds thy word]”41. This composi-
tion seems to contain a word game with poimēn (shepherd) -
poimainō (I shepherd) and the first syllable of the name Poim-
andres. This way, “Poimandres” would seem to come from the
Greek terms poimēn (shepherd) and anēr, andros (man); thus,
“Poimandres” would be “shepherd of men”. However, this Greek et-
ymology of the name is linguistically insufficient.

40
P. Kingsley, “Poimandres: the etymology of the name and the origins of Hermet-
ica”, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 56 (1993). The Warburg
Institute, Univ. of London, pp. 1-24. Poimandres has been the wrong title of the
Corpus Hermeticum since Marsilio Ficino until 1854.
41
CH XIII, 15 and 19.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

Truly, “Poimandres” is the Greek version of an expression that,

in Coptic, would be “P-eime n-Re”, whose meaning would be “The
knowledge or thought of Re”. P is the definite, masculine, singular
article in late Egyptian. In turn, “eime” is the knowledge or intellect.
For its part, –Res is the standard way to translate into Greek the
Egyptian names ending with the divine name –Re. Only the genitive
form is left, which should be here nte, because the step from nte-Re
to –ndres is easier and more reasonable. That gives us the following
translation of “Poimandres”: “the knowledge / intellect of Re”. But
even the Coptic eime may mean something more than “knowledge”,
and had better be translated as nous-noein. Therefore, etymological-
ly, “Poimandres” means in Coptic: “I am... the absolute Nous”. Ac-
cording to Kingsley, the double etymology of Poimandres is not ac-
cidental, but complies with a deliberate strategy to mask the hidden
meaning of an Egyptian concept under Greek terms. This leads us to
consider the possibility that the Corpus Hermeticum, “as a whole,
could in a sense be a huge example of double etymology: of ideas
being re-interpreted, re-etymologized, as it were, through being
transferred into the terms of Greek culture and language”42.

On the contrary, in other cases, the double meanings are more

clearly shown. In effect, the title of one of the hermetic texts refer-
ring to the goddess Isis, Korē Kosmou, can be understood under a
double etymology as well. Korē means “girl, maiden, virgin” and al-
so “pupil of the eye”. The problem is to define what Korē Kosmou
means as a description of Isis43. Certainly, the use of the term “Korē”
to describe the pupil is an ancient metaphor explained by the fact
that the eye pupil reflects a small image of those who look at it. Latin
will produce diminutive feminine nouns such as pupilla and pupula,
derived from pupa (doll). In the hermetic text itself, the god who

42
P. Kingsley, “Poimandres: The etymology of the Name and the Origins of the
Hermetica”, in From Poimandres to Jacob Böhme: Gnosis, Hermetism and the
Christian Tradition, Boston, 2000, p. 70.
43
H. Jackson, “Kore Kosmou: Isis, pupil of the eye of the world”, in Chronique
d’Égypte, 61 (1986), p. 116.

73
 JAVIER ALVARADO

creates the universe describes Isis as a “second effluvium or emana-

tion [aporrhoia] of my nature”, so that, through Isis-Korē or Isis-
“pupil of the eye”, God can survey the world. The Greco-Roman
culture associated Isis with Demeter and the “Korē” Persephone44.
Plutarch provides an explanation of the Isis-Korē association regard-
ing “pupil of the eye”: Isis “has been called both, Korē and Perseph-
one, the latter as being a bearer of light and Korē because that is
what we call the part of the eye in which is reflected the likeness of
him who looks into it as the light of the sun is seen in the moon”45.
Korē is a lunar pupil that reflects an image of Helios.

Actually, the idea that the sun, the moon and the rest of the celes-
tial bodies are the eyes of divinities was very spread in Egypt46. Al-
ready the Pyramid Texts referred to “the damsel who is in the eye of
Horus”, meaning “the pupil of the eye”. And an Egyptian text of the
4th century BC, the Festival songs of Isis and Nephthys (Bremner-
Rhind Papyrus) says that Isis is the “mistress of the universe, emana-
tion from the eye of Horus, Noble Serpent which issued from Re and
which came forth from the pupil of the eye of Atum when Re arose
on the first occasion”47. This Egyptian “mythology of the eye” is ma-
terialized in the amulet in the shape of a made-up eye of the celestial
god (oudjat), from which the tear of mercy comes forth for the
world. In sum, the association of Isis with the pupil of a celestial eye
was firmly established in Egypt. Isis is an emanation of the “sun’s
eye”, risen to protect the Humankind and survey the order of cos-
mos. Well, that is precisely the function assigned to Isis by the au-
thor of the hermetic Korē Kosmou.

44
Herodotus 2.59 and 156. Plutarch, Is. 27, 361e.
45
Plutarch, Concerning the face which appears in the orb of the moon, 27
[=Moralia 942d].
46
Greek Magical Papyri, Pap. CIII, 769 ff. (p. 303); Pap. XXI, 5 ff. (p. 325); Pap.
LXII, 33 (p. 376).
47
Pap. Bremner-Rhind, 17.8-10; Jackson, cit. p. 129.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

Examples of the Egyptian influence onto the hermetic texts

might be easily multiplied48. After a rough reading, some significant
evidences can be detected. For example, in the extract or fragment
26 of the Anthologion by Stobaeus, it is said, “the earth is set in the
midst of the universe like a man lying on his back and gazing into
heaven”. This is precisely the typical Egyptian representation of the
world’s structure, where the masculine god Geb (the earth) is below,
lying on his back, being the goddess of the heaven, Nut, curved
above him. This is doubly significant because, unlike the Greek men-
tality and mythological concepts, the hermetic text follows the an-
cient Egyptian tradition, which assigns a masculine value to the earth
and a feminine one to the heaven!

Just as much clarifying are those Hermetica paragraphs that de-

scribe the right cardinal orientation of the worshiper facing South,
since the Nile, source of life and gift of the gods, flows from South
to North. In CH XIII, 16, it is read: “thus then, my son, stand in a
place uncovered to the sky, facing the southern wind, about the sink-
ing of the setting sun, and make your worship; so in like manner too
when he doth rise, with face to the east wind”. And, in Asclepius 41,
it is said: “they turned their faces towards the South when they began
their prayers to God (for when the sun is setting, should anyone de-
sire to pray to God, he ought to turn him thitherwards; so also at the
rising of the same, unto that spot which lies beneath the sun
[East])...”. And also, “he hath his head set to the south of all, right
shoulder to Southeast, left shoulder to Southwest; his feet below the
Bear, right foot beneath its tail, left under its head; his thighs beneath
those that succeed the Bear; his waist beneath the middle” (Stobaeus,

48
Including some references to words with double meaning. For instance, the Cop-
tic term used for “generation” means “generation” and also “book”, so that, in
NHC VI, it is expressed such a word: “how is it to be prayed, my father, when
joined with the generations-books?” (52, 1); or “as wisdom in the generations-
books” (54, 9); “I have recognized each one of the generations-books” (54, 30).
According to Mahé, it could be a word game played by the translator in order to
express that the regeneration, besides providing the vision of the eternity, can also

75
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Ant., 26). Actually, the ritual orientation towards South, where the
Nile comes from, is one of the defining features of the most archaic
traces of the Egyptian culture. Only later, when the solar technology
reached its most developed phase, the South came to share its ritual
value with the East as the birthplace of the Sun as the source of Life.
In the course of time, the South-North axis was connected with the
Osirian cycle, and the East-West axis remained connected with the
solar religion.

2.- Cosmogonical accounts

The purely Egyptian filiation of the cosmogonical conceptions

recorded in the hermetic texts is also evident. However, it is to be
taken into account that the first problem found when elucidating this
question lies in the fact that the cosmogonical doctrines on which
those Egyptian mythological narrations are based do not match only
one model. On the contrary, we find a disconcerting variety of epi-
sodes, enriched with the local particularities. However, it must be
pointed out that this will not prevent the hermetic terminology to re-
main coherent49. In fact, just as it happens in other initiatic traditions,
the differences between the various cosmogonical accounts must not
be seen as dissensions or incoherences within the general outline of
the doctrine. The same truth can be expressed in different ways in
order to adapt it to the mentality or degree of understanding of those
who listen.

Basically, three explanatory models about the origin and nature

of the universe could be established.

be inscribed in the “book” of the chosen ones; Hermès en Haute-Égypte, vol. I, cit.,
p. 42.
49
J.-P. Mahé, “La création dans les Hermetica”, in Recherches Augustiniennes,
21 (1986), pp. 3-53, in which an exhaustive, synoptic study is dedicated to the sub-
ject of the “creation” within Hermetism.

76
 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

According to a first a-casual model, just the Only-One exists as

an immutable reality. That would imply that the creation of the
world never happened at all because nothing else than the One can
exist or ever cease to be. The comprehension of this mystery is deci-
phered when the hermetic text reveals to the disciple, “I am you”,
that is, there is nothing but the Being. This theory is not a denial of
the reality of the world, but the creative process that has brought it to
existence. However, the profane or disciple who is at the first few
levels of learning is absolutely unaware of the nature and unique
source of the world and, consequently, his mind may build an illuso-
ry world of separate interactive objects, misunderstanding the senso-
ry impressions he receives. Thus, there is neither birth nor death; just
the only reality exists, the One, the Being. In some Egyptian cos-
mogonies, “the demiurge has come to be by himself. He is the soli-
tary, the only one, and witnessless” (statement that could be posi-
tioned far from the Genesis of the Old Testament50). Likewise, in
CH XVI, we find an example of ontological creation without sym-
bolic or literary concessions: “the creator and father and who sur-
rounds the universe, all beings being the One and the One being all
beings”. But even the Egyptian thought went further beyond this
concept of the Being as Only-One and developed a subtle specula-
tion about the Non-Being. Some Egyptian texts explain that “the up-
per side of the sky exists in uniform darkness, the southern, northern,
western, and eastern limits of which are unknown, these having been
fixed in the Waters, in inertness... [A place] whose... land is un-
known by the gods or spirits, there being no brightness there. And as
for every place void of sky and void of land, that is the entire under-

50
Concerning the supposed biblical influences on the Hermetica, authors such as J-
P. Mahé, op. cit., p. 23, state that the vocabulary of the Corpus Hermeticum “be-
comes separated, quite clearly most of the times, from the LXX and the Alexandri-
an Judaism”. Even Korē Kosmou develops a cosmogony so distanced from the bib-
lical parameters that it might be suspected that it was not Gen. 1 that transfused its
anthropocentrism into CH I and III, but that both textual traditions come from a
common Egyptian source.

77
 JAVIER ALVARADO

world”51. With this, what is being described is the dark, aquatic

realm before Creation, that is, the uniform ocean or darkness. The
realm of the Non-Being where the sovereignty of the Creator mon-
arch of the universe finds its limit, because He was not there either.
Likewise, in the chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead, which de-
scribes the well-known “negative confession” with which one gives
his explanations before the court of Osiris, the deceased pronounces
the sentence “I have not known what is not”, which allows him to
pass through different hostile gates, one of which is the one “that de-
vours those who are not”52. He finally finds himself in the presence
of a god “who is reached by what is and by what is not”53. And, in
the Coffin Texts, it is stated, talking about the blessed deceased, that
“his repugnance is the non-existing (jwtt) because he has not seen the
disorder (jsft)” (CT, VI 136k).

The Egyptian terms tm wnn and nn wn are the negative form of

the verb “to be”, and the negative relative adjective (jwtj/jwtt) means
“what is not” or “the non-existing”. According to the Egyptian
thought, the non-being is the endless primordial matter, raw and pure
potentiality. From the temporal point of view, “what is not” or “the
non-existing” is the time without time before Creation, that is, some-
thing that is incomprehensible and unimaginable to the human mind.
Space did not exist, nor gods, nor human beings; in sum, the Word
of God did not exist, “the name of things had not yet been pro-
claimed”54, because what has no name does not exist. In such a state,
“the dispute had not yet arisen”55, because there was nothing and no
one. Consequently, if life or birth did not exist, neither did death.
The darkness “was everything in the beginning”; it makes “faces un-
recognizable”, erases all figures, and makes the forms of existence

51
Pap. Carlsberg I, II 20 ff., last published in O. Neugebauer and R. A. Parker,
Egyptian Astronomical Texts I, 1960, pp. 52 ff.
52
Book of Gates I, 79.
53
Amun, as well as Osiris, is considered the “lord of what is, to whom what is not
belongs”.
54
Pap. Berlin 3055, 16, 3 ff.
55
Pyramid Texts, 1040 and 1463

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

merge. The Creator God lies asleep, “like dead”, in the uniform
darkness before light (Keku zemau), also represented as the unlim-
ited primordial ocean (the god Nun).

It is significant that the Egyptian thought did not want to define

this state or non-state as Oneness, and that, on the contrary, it pre-
ferred to describe it in terms of non-duality: “there were not two
things yet”56. With this, it indirectly refers to a certain oneness, so
homogeneous and incomprehensible that it can only be defined in
negative terms: it is non-dual. That is as inconceivable as to state that
the Creator God is the “One who turned into millions”. Therefore, all
what is born, all what is, disappears with death, including gods. But
what disappears is the apparent individual shape, because death, as a
permanent state, only affects the non-existing. That is why, “The
Egyptians remain detached and balanced, and avoid falling into ni-
hilism or abrogating the self by surrendering to an unlimited state of
non-existence”57.
With the statement “I have not known what is not”, the deceased
wants to explain that he has not violated the limits of the established
order, that is, of the Being, and that, therefore, he can aspire to con-
tinue “existing” beyond death58. This is not an individual return to
life, but a resurrection in the beyond, where one has “all the faces”
(individualities), that is to say, one has no face. The cosmic serpent
wrapping itself (converted in the Roman period into the Ouroboros,
“the tail devourer”) is a representation of this idea. But even that “af-
terlife” in the “beyond” is time-bound, because Creation (including
its most celestial, sublime places) is like an island or a hill destined
to be flooded by the primal waters; it is a single moment or episode
“between the nothing and the nothing”. The idea itself of eternity, as
well as its Greek translation (aeter-aetas, the duration of the ether)

56
CT, II, 396b and III, 383a.
57
Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many,
Cornell Univ., 1982, p. 182.
58
Erik Hornung, The One and the Many, cit., p. 181.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

and the two Egyptian terms (nhh and dt) for “eternity”, really mean
“the time that the being may last”59.

The second explanatory model of the origin and nature of the

universe is based on the mental nature of the universe, insofar as it is
“created” or interpreted from and by the mind. The world comes into
existence at the same time as the thought (the Word) that perceives
it, and ceases to exist when the thought is absent. This means that the
way to transcend this “imaginary” world is by using a higher form of
knowledge that may overcome the subject-object duality; this is the
intellect (Nous). Thus, the origin of the Universe is explained as a
pronunciation of the divine Word. The Egyptian religious hymns
provide many examples of these beliefs: Re, the “primordial God...
who uttered a word when the earth was flooded by silence... unique
Lord who created the beings, who shaped the language of the Enne-
ad”60. The Corpus Hermeticum prolongs these beliefs: “Thereon out
of the light a holy Word descended on that nature. And upwards to
the height from the moist nature leaped forth pure fire” (CH I, 5),
statement that agrees with the Egyptian belief about the power of
language (to pronounce the name equals to create the named thing)
and the permutations of sounds derived from a main sound. For in-
stance, when Re wept (rem), men (romé) or fishes (ramú) began to
exist. And when the god let the word hab, (“to send”) escape while
talking to Thoth, the ibis (hib), Thoth’s animal, was born.

Finally, the third explanatory model of the origin of the universe

is based on a gradual or chronological Creation according to laws of
cause and effect that can be tracked until an originating action of
creation. It is, therefore, an explanation made not from the Being
(metaphysical point of view), but from the point of view of Creation
(cosmological point of view). In the hermetic logoi, we find several

59
Erik Hornung, The One and the Many, cit., p. 183.
60
Hymn of adoration to the Sun, in A. Barucq- F. Daumas, Hymnes et prières de
l’Égypte ancienne, Paris, 1980, p. 222.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

examples of Creation according to a chronological model that shows

a process with a beginning and an end (for instance, in Asclepius).
Creation “by generation” appears as well; in some cases, the Creator
is hermaphroditic (CH I) or “father and mother” of the living (CH V,
7). In other cases, Creation has been the result of an utterance, for in-
stance the seven guffaws with which the divinity created the world
according to the hermetic text “Leiden Kosmopoiia”, whose prece-
dent is the seven creating words of Neith in the cosmogony of the
Temple of Esna61.

For its part, the topic of the handcrafted creation of the universe,
so common in the universal mythology, finds an example in the
Egyptian god Khnum and his potter’s wheel. This topic has inspired
the hermetic logoi that record the creation by handcrafted production
or manufacture that appears in CH IX, 5 and CH XVI, 9. Likewise,
the Egyptian mythological argument of the primordial ocean (the
god Nun), from which the sun and the cosmos arose62, is reused in
the Corpus Hermeticum: “Darkness that knew no bounds was in

61
Greek Magical Papyri (=PGM), cit., pp. 282-284 and 294-297. Vid. S.
Sauneron, “La légende des sept paroles de Methyer au Temple d’Esna”, in Bulletin
de la Société Française d’Égyptologie (BSFdE) 32 (1961), pp. 43-48. The first part
of the PGM XIII mentions an “account of the creation”. Its resemblance to the
cosmogony of CH I is amazing: “When the god laughed, seven gods were born
(who encompass the cosmos...). When he laughed first, Phōs-Augē [Light-
Radiance] appeared and irradiated everything and became god over the cosmos
and fire... Then he laughed a second time. All was water. Earth, hearing the sound,
cried out and heaved, and the water came to be divided into three parts. A god ap-
peared; he was given charge of the abyss of primal waters, for without him mois-
ture neither increases nor diminishes. And his name is Eschakleo... When he want-
ed to laugh the third time, Nous or Phrenes [Mind or Wits] appeared holding a
heart, because of the sharpness of the god. He was called Hermes; he was called
Semesilam. The god laughed the fourth time, and Genna [Generative Power] ap-
peared, controlling Spora [Procreation]... He laughed the fifth time and was
gloomy as he laughed, and Moira [Fate] appeared. And she was the first to receive
the scepter of the world... He laughed the sixth time and was much gladdened, and
Kairos [Time] appeared holding a scepter, indicating kingship, and he gave over
the scepter to the first-created god, [Phōs]... When the god laughed a seventh time,
Psyche [Soul] came into being, and he wept while laughing. On seeing Psyche, he
hissed, and the earth heaved and gave birth to the Pythian serpent who foreknew all
things...”.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

abyss, and water and subtle breath intelligent; these were by power
of god in chaos” (CH III, 1). More specifically, one of the most
spread cosmogonical arguments in the Egyptian mythology is the
one of the hill or pyramid that emerges from the waters of chaos. In
this case, it is the god or “concept” Nun who, personifying chaos, is
also the beginning of the life that exists before the world. Well,
fragment 28 of the edition of the hermetic texts says: “The pyramid,
then, is below both nature and the intellectual world. For that it hath
above it ruling in the creator Word of the Lord of all, who, being the
first power after him, increate and infinite, leaned forth from him
[the Father], and has his seat above, and rule over all that have been
made through him. He is the first-born [progonos, not protogonos!]
of the All-perfection, his perfect, fecund and true son”63.

Nevertheless, these metaphysical speculations about the tetrad

and the Demiurge placed above a pyramid would pass unnoticed if
the image of the pyramid were not the Egyptian traditional symbol
of the primordial hill where the sun alights when it is born, in the
origin of times, or the mountain that arises from light so that the god
Demiurge alights on it. The pyramid makes a so spread symbol that
almost all cosmogonies and all classical theologies of Ancient Egypt
have represented the origin of the world as the emergence, from
within the primordial ocean Nun, of a primal mountain destined to
serve as the seat of the Demiurge, who is to proceed to create the
universe64. The pyramid was a stylization of the mountain or hill as
an elevated place where the sun is settled when it is born.

Precisely from these cosmogonical models comes the considera-

tion of initiation as a symbolic way with stages, more specifically as

62
A. Barucq- F. Daumas, Hymnes et prières de l’Égypte ancienne, Paris, 1980, p.
537.
63
All the fragments from 23 to 35 of the Corpus come from the Contra Iulianum
by Cyril of Alexandria.
64
S. Sauneron and J. Yoyotte, “La naissance du monde”, in Sources Orientales I
(1959), p. 35.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

a sidereal journey through planets ruled by tutelary gods. Each stage

involves a purifying ascension by means of the realization of one of
the virtues or qualities of the disciple, until attaining the contempla-
tion of the supreme divinity. From these speculations about the spir-
itual itinerary come the Egyptian and hermetic mythological and
philosophical conceptions about the Ogdoad and the Ennead. It is the
case of the manuscript of Nag Hammadi VI, 6, titled The Ogdoad
and the Ennead, whose aim was to take the disciple to the contem-
plation of the Ogdoad and the Ennead, that is, to elevate him up to
the highest degree of initiation in the “Way of Hermes”, as
Iamblichus called it65. This treatise explains that this “vision” or
mystical enlightenment culminates after the five stages: prayer, first
enlightenment, new prayer, second enlightenment and, finally,
thanksgiving.

The definition of “enlightenment” or “contemplation” as the vi-

sion of the Divinity or the emanating Light or, in this case, the vision
of the four couples of gods emanated from Him, or the Ogdoad and
the Ennead, finds its parallels in all religions. Since its meaning will
be explained later, now it is important just to point out that the terms
“Ogdoad” and “Ennead” refer, in Ancient Egypt, to the families of
primordial gods especially worshiped in Hermopolis and Heliopolis,
connected with Thoth. It is enough to remind some of their titles:
“The Great one of Hermopolis”, “Lord of the city of Eight”, “The
ancient and great one for the Ennead”, “Who leads the throne of the
Ennead”, “Annalist of the Ennead”, etc. For example, in the Mem-
phite theology of the dynasties III and V, Ptah is the creator god on
whom an Ogdoad of primordial gods depends: a hypostasis of the
demiurge. These gods are: Tatenen, the earth that makes the initial
watery chaos emerge (distant version of the primal hill), Nun, the
primordial ocean (condition of possibility of all physical production),
with his feminine partner Naunet, Atum “the Great” (that is why Ptah
is “the very Great”) and other four gods whose names have not been

65
Iamblichus, On the Egyptian mysteries VIII, 5 (267.13).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

preserved. In the Heliopolitan theology, the male Amun66 and the

female Amaunet were the fourth of the four couples coming from
Nun (the primal water), making an Ogdoad. King Ammōn, who ap-
pears as Hammona six times in the Asclepius, is precisely a Greek
version of Amun or Amun-Re. The significant thing here is that, ac-
cording to the ancient Egyptian tradition, the Ogdoad was represent-
ed under the shape of four frogs and four snakes. However, the Og-
doad mentioned in the Coptic hermetic text of Nag Hammadi is
formed by four frogs (male principles) and four cats (feminine prin-
ciples)67. This was considered as an exotic Greek innovation until
Zandee recognized that strange representation of the Ogdoad formed
by frogs and cats on the walls of the Temple of Edfu! This means
that the hermetic author was familiarized with this unusual Egyptian
way to symbolize the Ogdoad. The conclusion of all this is that, “in
Egyptian cosmological texts... we often find direct parallels of her-
metic doctrines enfolded in particular mythical terms”68.

The lists and commentaries of data and evidences that prove the
connection between the hermetic texts and the ancient Egyptian tra-
dition could be easily extended. Therefore, the metaphor of the rays
of sunlight as working hands that appears in the Hermetica: “Just as
the sun, the nurse of all the things that grow, on his first rising, gath-
ers unto himself the first-fruits of their yield with his most mighty
hand, using his rays as though it were for plucking off their fruits”
(CH XVIII), is unmistakably Egyptian and profusely used in differ-
ent steles and tombs, as well as in religious literature, for example
the Great Hymn to Amum of the dynasty XVIII, in which the solar

66
The name “Amun”, which means “hidden” or “invisible”, identified with the
cosmic air, was represented by a ram or a snake. Under the shape of the god Kneph
or the Greek Agathodaemon, it was the name of the nous and the dēmiourgos. That
is why, when Hellenizing and historizing this doctrine, Ammōn was connected with
Zeus as a divinity of air, and then with the powers of the pneuma.
67
The discourse on the Ogdoad and the Ennead (NHC VI, 6), op. cit.
68
Jan Zandee, Der Amunhymnus des Papyrus Leiden I 344, verso, Rijksmuseum
van Oudheden, Leiden, 1992. Vid. also Opuscula Graecolatina (Museum
Tusculanum Press), vol. 27; Erik Iversen, Egyptian and hermetic doctrine, Muse-
um Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen 1984.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

god is that “of many arms”69. Likewise, the sanctioning formulas

that appear at the end of some hermetic texts: “I conjure, to anyone
who read this sacred book, that the fury of each and every one (of
them) shall rain down upon those who transgress it...” (Annex to
NHC VI), just repeats the typical form of the formulas to protect the
property in Ancient Egypt70. Certainly, the Greek, Latin, Coptic and
Armenian translators of the Corpus seized the opportunity to add
some beliefs, likely foreign to the original contents of the text, or
maybe as a means to adapt them to the Greek culture. This way, to-
gether with the repeated mention to the Egyptian geography, cities,
gods, heroes, dynasties, temples and worships in the texts, certain
doctrines of Neoplatonism, Stoicism, Neopythagoreanism, etc. have
been added as well. But, anyway, I insist that its formal and doctrinal
coherence is still clear.

These considerations should be enough to prove that, ultimately,

the Hermetism sinks its roots in the Egyptian metaphysics, cosmog-
ony, philosophy and magic. Consequently, the only thing left would
be to classify the hermetic texts within the general panorama of the
ancient Egyptian literature. For that purpose, one more step should
be taken on the way toward the clarification of the origin and goal of
the hermetic texts in comparison with the Egyptian “sapiential” gen-
re that used to adopt the form of “instructions”, “maxims” or “wis-
doms”71.

3.- The Egyptian sapiential genre

The most ancient sapiential text known is the one by Imhotep, vi-
zier or chancellor of King Djoser of the Dynasty III (about 2800

69
Vid. Barucq-Daumas, cit., p. 197.
70
Vid. for instance the formula of the treatise between Ramesses II and prince
Kheta quoted by J-P Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte, vol. I, cit., p. 35.
71
A grouping edition of the Wisdoms in Bresciani, Letteratura e poesia dell’antico
Egitto (wisdoms of Hardejedef, Kagemni, Ptahhotep, Merikare, Amenemhat,
Khety, Any, Amennakhte, Amenote and Onkhsheshonqy).

85
 JAVIER ALVARADO

BC). Like the one by prince Djed-Hor, it is completely lost. Precise-

ly, one of the most prominent characters of the Corpus Hermeticum
is Asclepius, whose name is a Hellenized transmutation of the Imho-
tep who laid the foundations of the Egyptian colossal architecture,
whose most famous result is the monumental pyramid of Saqqāra.
This feat made him a sort of patron of master masons until the Ptol-
emies. His fame as a wise man and his legendary past made him the
perfect disciple of Hermes.

Only the beginning is preserved from another text of the Dynasty

V, Kagemni. Nonetheless, the Wisdom of Ptahhotep72, of the same
Dynasty V, is fully preserved. The Instructions of Merikare belong
to the same genre. From the New Kingdom, the Maxims of Any, the
Wisdom of Amenemope or the Instructions of Onchsheshonqy.

From the comparison of this Egyptian sapiential literature with

the hermetic logoi73, the following formal coincidences are inferred:
a) The dramatization is identical; a dialogue with which a master
instructs a disciple, or a father teaches his son. In the hermetic texts,
Hermes appears teaching his son Tat, Isis instructing Horus, and
Master Hermes initiating Ammōn.
b) The instruction is composed of a succession of sentences or
sayings of an approximately fixed length.
c) The sentences are usually grouped by subjects or chapters.

However, regardless of these formal resemblances, the contents

of both literary genres are radically different. In contrast to the mor-
alist, pedagogical nature of sapiential literature, the hermetic teach-
ing of the logoi is clearly different because it is a doctrine with an
esoteric, initiatic nature that can only be taught to those who possess
the suitable skills. Could it then be affirmed that this kind of litera-

72
Maxims of Ptahhotep, published by Gustave Jéquier, Le papyrus Prisse et ses
variantes, Paris, 1911.
73
J-P. Mahé is one of the authors who maintained the thesis of the close relation-
ship between the Egyptian “Instructions” genre and the hermetic logoi.

86
 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

ture was used by the Egyptian priests to expound the “hermetic”

doctrine in a suitable way? Was this genre an exclusive method of
the moralist literature? The truth is that the training dialogue format
had already transcended the sapiential genre itself and entered the
field of philosophical teaching (if not even found in its own origin).
In fact, reached this point, a demotic text titled Book of Thoth is to be
brought up, since it could be considered as the immediate predeces-
sor of the hermetic logoi. Also this writing dramatizes a “dialogue”
between Thoth and a disciple “who wishes or longs to know”. Thoth
is once called “wr wr wr”, the “thrice great”, Trismegas, variant of
Trismegistus. According to J-P. Mahé, the Book of Thoth “is, at the
most, the closest Egyptian document to the Greek Hermetica about
philosophy”. In his opinion, the sapiential literature of Ancient
Egypt, after making its light reach the whole Near East, survived in
Egypt at least until the Roman period, playing a decisive role in the
formation of the hermetic literature in Alexandria74.

V.- EGYPTIAN METAPHYSICS AND POPULAR RELIGIOS-

ITY

In a well-documented monograph, Erik Hornung has specified

some appropriate points about the Egyptian religiosity and, especial-
ly, about the assumed accusation of zoolatry, pantheism and other
manifestations of popular devotion75. Of course, as it has already

74
J-P. Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte, cit. In contrast to the hypotheses of some
researchers who have sought possible biblical or LXX sources in the hermetic
texts, the results seem to prove the contrary. In 1922, W. Budge already demon-
strated the relationship between Prov. 22:17 - 24:22 and the Precepts of Life by
Amen-em-Apt, the Son of Ka-Nekht. In 1929, P. Humbert reached the conclusion
that “Egypt was actually one of the main sources, if not the most important one, of
the Israelite sapiential literature”. Clear biblical influences have also been found in
CH XIII, 17, specifically from Job 38. Now then, Job 38, as well as Job 5:9 ff.,
12:7 ff., 26:5 ff. and 36:22 ff., have very clear Egyptian parallels, especially in the
religious “Hymns” of the Dynasties XVIII and XIX. Vid. Adolph Ermann, Die
Literatur der Ägypter, Leipzig, 1923, p. 352 ff.; A. Barucq-F. Daumas, Hymnes et
prières de l’Égypte Ancienne, Paris, 1980, p. 91 ff.
75
Already in the 2nd century AD, Lucian accounted for this refusal:

87
 JAVIER ALVARADO

been warned, such beliefs were induced in order to facilitate the

practice of the religious feeling among the popular classes76, whereas
the most philosophical or metaphysical doctrines and speculations
remained reserved for the intellectual and religious elites of the
country, educated in the scribal schools, the “houses of life” of the
temples, etc., where it was taught that the gods, beyond their physi-
cal appearance, represented forces, aspects or attributes of the Only
One Being. Thus, Amun etymologically means “the hidden one”,
Atum is “the undistinguished one”, Huh is “Infinite”, Kuk is the
“Darkness”, etc.

That is to say, philosophical and metaphysical concepts about the

incomprehensibility of God are concealed under the names of the
gods. That is why most current Egyptologists agree that the Egyp-
tians of the Pharaonic times did not believe that their gods really had
a human body and an animal head, because “none of these images
shows the true form of a god, and none can encompass the full rich-
ness of his nature”. Egyptians used to draw a clear distinction be-

“Momus: But I should just like to ask that Egyptian there, the dog-faced gentle-
man in the linen suit, who he is, and whether he proposes to establish his divinity
by barking. And will the piebald bull yonder from Memphis explain what use he
has for a temple, an oracle, or a priest? As for the ibises and monkeys and goats
and worse absurdities that are bundled in upon us, goodness knows how, from
Egypt, I am ashamed to speak of them; nor do I understand how you, gentlemen,
can endure to see such creatures enjoying a prestige equal to or greater than your
own. And you yourself, sir, must surely find ram’s horns a great inconvenience.
Zeus: Certainly, it is disgraceful the way these Egyptians go on. At the same
time, Momus, there is an occult significance in most of these things; and it ill be-
comes you, who are not the initiated, to ridicule them.
Momus: Oh, come now: a god is one thing, and a person with a dog’s head is
another; I need no initiation to tell me that”; “The Gods in Council”, in The Works
of Lucian of Samosata, vol. IV, tr. by the Fowler bros., Oxford, 1905.
76
As well as in the different monotheistic religions of nowadays, a distinction is to
be drawn between the elite of theologians who perform a certain role as guardians
of the dogma, and the most popular manifestations, which like to worship archan-
gels, angels, virgins, saints, beatified and the rest of relevant characters. Even many
followers of a so radically monotheistic religion like Islam, some of whose adher-
ents consider the Christian worship of the Holy Trinity as a polytheistic survival,
have succumbed to these populist trends that “worship” local historical characters
(relatives of Prophet Muḥammad, relevant mystics or rulers, etc.).

88
 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

tween those images and “the true form” of God, which remains for-
bidden to human sight77.

Therefore, the Egyptian religion could not be described as zoola-

tric since, even though accepted that the divinity may be settled or
manifested by means of an image with a certain animal feature, in
any case, in Egypt, just a particular specimen was worshiped, where-
as “only when all members of a species are worshiped can one speak
of ‘animal cults’”78. Egyptians used to distinguish the apparent form
of the divinity, which always had a symbolic nature referring to his
specific attributes or qualities, from his true nature, which remained
“hidden” and “mysterious”. Thus, these “illustrations or descriptions
of appearances of gods were not seen by the Egyptians as real imag-
es of the gods, but rather as allusions to essential parts of the nature
and function of deities”79. To describe these attitudes as zoolatric
brings only distortion to the manifestations produced by the popular
devotion of all times, including the Christian worship to the “Lamb
of God, who takes away the sins of the world”, the dove of the Holy
Spirit, the zoomorphic representation of the Evangelists, etc. To de-
prive these religious manifestations of their mystical, theological or
symbolic value will drive us to describe the worship to the saints’
relics as necrophilia and the sacrament of the Christian communion
as anthropophagy or theophagy.

On the other hand, the zoomorphism of the Egyptian religion

“does not lead to pantheism, for only certain species are related to a
deity, and they are often worshiped in only one locality”80. Conse-
quently, it is not correct either to describe the Egyptian religion as
pantheist, because “although in Egyptian religion the accumulation

77
Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many,
Cornell, 1982, p. 117.
78
Erik Hornung, The One and the Many, cit., p. 137.
79
Erik Hornung, The One and the Many, cit., p. 114, following here H. Frankfort,
Ancient Egyptian Religion, New York, 1948, p. 12, among others.
80
Erik Hornung, The One and the Many, cit., p. 137.

89
 JAVIER ALVARADO

of manifestations and combinations of deities produced phenomena

that are reminiscent of pantheism, the resemblance is coincidental
and superficial”, for the Egyptians have never had the wish or will to
divinize it all. The Egyptian creator god shows himself in Creation,
but is not merged with it. Although his nature may be extended by
means of new forms and epithets, he never becomes identical to the
“universe”, which, according to the Egyptians, contains non-divine
features. “Therefore one cannot speak of pantheism, in the strict
sense, in Egyptian religion”81.

Likewise, the alternative monotheism/polytheism not only does

not contribute to explain the Egyptian religiosity, but also even hin-
ders us from understanding certain aspects of its metaphysics. In dif-
ferent texts, such as the spell 261 in the Coffin Texts, which narrates
the creation of the gods, it is specified that they were created by the
“Only Lord, when even two things had not yet come into existence
on this earth” (CT III, 383a), that is, before the first distinction exist-
ed. And from that primal duality, that is, from those “two things”,
the subsequent dualities arise, the “millions” of forms of creation.

And, even though these texts supply documentary evidence of

several invocations to the “unequaled only God” creator of the other
Egyptian gods, the fact that some of those gods were in turn consid-
ered as “the greatest” or the “only one” is explained because, accord-
ing to the Egyptian religiosity, any divinity is considered as an at-
tribute, power or space-time modality of the Only One God. Precise-
ly, in order to overcome the contradictions of describing it as poly-
theistic or pantheistic, in modern times, some authors had coined the
term “henotheism” or “monolatry” to define the belief in Only One
God who appears under different hypostases.

Nevertheless, for the Egyptians, the concept of the Only One

God has some very particular characteristics, since the absolute

81
Erik Hornung, The One and the Many, cit., p. 128.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

Oneness of God can only be conceived outside Creation, that is, be-
yond time and space. The world, the Being, comes from the One,
which is also the Only. And that Only One is the Non-Being82.

Several authors have defended the monotheistic conceptions of

the ancient Egyptians, based, amongst other evidences, on the ety-
mology of the word nṯr, “god”, which is pronounced inserting two
vowels: Netjer. This term is employed, for example, in the Egyptian
didactic literature (the “sapiential texts”, also called “teachings for
life”) to distinguish between “God” in singular, and the particular
names of the different gods, fact that points out that the diversity of
gods or names were only hypostases or manifestations of the One,
nṯr. Thus, “Do not stir up fear in people, or God will punish in equal
measure [...] It is not what men devise that comes to pass, but what
God determines comes to pass” (Ptahhotep, 6th maxim). As well,
“Man is clay and straw, God is his builder. He tears down, he builds
up daily. He makes a thousand poor by his will; he makes a thousand
men into chiefs, when he is in his hour of life. Happy is him who
reaches the West [the realm of the dead], when he is safe in the hand
of God” (Amenemope, chapter 25). These authors state that the idea
that all the gods are really but manifestations or hypostases of anoth-
er god was common in Ancient Egypt; the most impressing example
is the “Solar Litany”, recorded for the first time about 1500 BC83.

82
It is usually stated that the Egyptian thought discovered monotheism as a result
of the religious reforms carried out by Akhenaten, which is untrue. Akhenaten, by
denying the existence of the plurality of gods, stopped considering the One and the
Many as complementary conceptions that, from that moment on, became radically
exclusive to each other. Without prejudice to factors of metaphysical order that
might have inspired the young monarch, the reforms of this historical period must
be studied within the context of political fight maintained between Pharaoh and the
priestly class. Akhenaten wished to be the only one mediator between the people
and the new religion, so he had to fight the possibility that any devout person or
priest could become an interpreter of the intermediary beings or of an Only One
God, since that would only be his responsibility as Pharaoh. As such a mediator, it
would be the monarch’s responsibility, and only his, to establish the “doctrine” of
Aten and reveal it to his subjects. Under a layer of monotheism, he hid a fight to
weaken the power of the priestly class as a mediator between gods and men.
83
Jean Vergote, “La notion de Dieu dans les Livres de sagesse égyptiens”, in Sa-
gesses du Proche-Orient Ancien (SPOA), p. 159-190. E. Drioton, “Sur la Sagesse

91
 JAVIER ALVARADO

On the other hand, the assumed Egyptian polytheism rather

seems to hinge on a semantic question: for instance, would the opin-
ion of any of the nowadays experts change if the Egyptians had
called their gods angels? The truth is that the Egyptian gods do not
look like gods in the full sense of the term, so how can they really be
considered as gods even when they are murdered (for example, Osi-
ris) or born (Horus)? How can they be considered as gods when, like
most of the Egyptian divinities, they just influenced a particular geo-
graphic area? In large part, all this is a consequence of the popular
devotion, which, unable to conceive the Oneness of the sacred, needs
to rely on the protection of various divinities who are in charge of
their families, their health, the paths through desert, their birthplace,
harvests, cattle fertility, the rise of the Nile, etc.

The truth is that, although there are gods who are limited by time
or geographic factors, or even “great” (wrw) and “small” (ndsw)
gods, they all are generated by a primal God. For example, in the
well-known Monologue of the Lord of All, it is said: “I created the
gods from my sweat. Man is from the tears of my eye”84. Could this
belief in a primal, universal “father of the gods” who created all the
gods and the rest of the beings be considered as a form of monothe-
ism?

With all that, even the highest conceivable Egyptian god seems
to be subject to the conditionings of time and space. Documented
records of the title “king of the gods” (njswt- nṯrw) are found in the
ritual formulas of the pyramid of King Pepi I Meryre (about 2292-
2260)85. And, even more clearly, in the Coffin Texts, another fre-
quent name of the Supreme Being appears (Nb-r-dr), usually trans-
lated as “Lord of All”, but literally meaning “lord-to-the-limit”, a

d’Aménémopé”, in Mélanges rédigés en l’honneur d’André Robert, Paris, 1957,

pp. 254-280.
84
It is based on a word game concerning the similarity of the terms “human being”
and “tear” (CT VII, 464 ff.).
85
Pyramid Texts, 1458e.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

term that clearly sets out the idea that even the power of the supreme
being has a certain limit. Actually, this primal God Father is not a
“non-created” one, because he is not present since eternity, but he
arises during creation, “when no god had yet arisen and the name of
things had not yet been proclaimed”. Therefore, the world before
Creation is a world without God or gods. Only together with Crea-
tion does a primal God arise, and then he calls the other forces of the
Being (deities) to life86.

VI.- SPREAD OF HERMETISM DURING THE MIDDLE

AGES

The influence of some hermetic concepts on the Coptic monks

seems more than likely. It has actually been pointed out that Chris-
tian monasticism was originally an imitation of the life of the con-
fined monks (katochoi) in the Egyptian temples of Serapis87. The
quest for God by means of the purification of the seven vices or the
twelve torments in order to attain imperturbability or calmness
(aklinēs), the techniques of meditation destined to inhibit all sensory
activity and attain the silence of thoughts, the final enlightenment,
etc. have a close similarity to the writings of Origen, Evagrius, Cas-
sian, etc. regarding the purifying combat against the eight evil
thoughts or demons by means of meditation or pure prayer, directed
to silence the thoughts and achieve the apatheia or tranquilitas
mentis, a state of peace in which one can receive the grace of en-
lightenment or contemplation of God. Anyway, after the virulent at-
tack that Saint Augustine launched on Hermetism in City of God,
Christianity barely showed interest in those writings until the 12th
century, on occasion of the reception of the Platonic tradition, espe-

86
The best compilation is S. Sauneron and J. Yoyotte in “La naissance du monde”,
Sources Orientales I (1959), pp. 17-91.
87
This was the thesis, otherwise undemonstrated, of the Protestant pastor H.
Weingarten, Der Ursprung des Mönchtums, Gotha, 1877.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

cially from the Asclepius, because of its relationship with the Timae-
us.

However, Hermetism survived in several places of Northern Af-

rica, Mesopotamia and certain Byzantine philosophical circles. For
instance, in Northwest Mesopotamia, the inhabitants of the city of
Harran, where a great center of hermetic studies was placed, after
their forced conversion to Islam, adopted a new name (Sabians), tol-
erated by the Quran, and likened prophet Hermes to the Quranic
Idrīs and the biblical Enoch. Like in other regions, the practice of a
certain Islamized Hermetism (which influenced the origins of Sufism
so much) was maintained there until the religious pressure was in-
tensified at the beginning of the 9th century, forcing some hermetic
Sabians to go into exile in regions under control of the Eastern Ro-
man Empire. The origin of the Byzantine hermetic renaissance could
be found in these emigrations.

In any case, the hermetic texts continued being translated and

studied by Muslim philosophers and theologians (it is the case of Al-
Kindī, as an example of an author of the 9th century). As already ex-
pounded, the introduction of Plato’s works in Europe between the 9th
and the 13th centuries stimulated the interest in the hermetic texts.
Amongst the many authors who came to know these texts, we could
mention Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Albert the Great, Thierry of
Chartres, John of Salisbury, Alan of Lille, Vincent of Beauvais, and
William of Auvergne.

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 caused a massive forced exile

of Byzantine wise men and mystics throughout Europe, especially to
Italy. One of the most noticeable consequences of this was the arri-
val of different collections of hermetic manuscripts that would soon
(1462) be used by Marsilio Ficino to publish the Poimandres (Book
on the power and wisdom of God, whose title is Pimander) and,
above all, to finish the translation of the fourteen treatises in 1463

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

and promote, after that, their publication in 147188. From that mo-
ment on, it was spread the idea that Hermes had been one of the
most ancient prophets in humankind, whose teaching was a synthesis
of pagan wisdom and Christian doctrine, and an inspiration to Mo-
ses, Orpheus, Plato and other great personalities of ancient times.
There were many notable attempts to Christianize Hermetism until,
in 1614, Isaac Casaubon ended up cutting all the bridges with his
discrediting theses.

VII.- ON THE ESOTERIC TEACHING IN EGYPT: METHOD

TO ACHIEVE ENLIGHTENMENT

The essential institution that supported the spiritual activity of the

Egyptian Temples was called “House of Life”. It was not only the
true intellectual center of the region because of its work of transcrip-
tion and study of the texts, but, above all, it was also the spiritual
center that gathered the priests and where the mysteric or initiatic
teaching was regularly taught.

The ancient Egyptian sapiential literature sometimes referred to

the title or function of “Teacher of the House of Life” or the appren-
tices’ custom to “read the secret books with the scribes of the House
of Life” (Tale of Sinuhe). In coherence with the dichotomy Life-
Gnosis/Death-ignorance, the Corpus Hermeticum countered the way
of Hermes, which leads to Life, with “the way of death” (CH I, 29),

88
Though outside the chronological frame of this study, it is to be mentioned that,
in 1494, Ludovico Lazzarelli wrote a Christian interpretation of the hermetic phi-
losophy titled Crater Hermetis and, in 1507, published a Latin version of the Cor-
pus. The impact of the hermetic writings on the European intellectuals was increas-
ing. Thus, they will be the main source of inspiration for the work De Harmonia
Mundi (1525) by Francesco Giorgi, and for the theological writings and the con-
figuration of what Agostino Steuco called “philosophia perennis”. Isaac Newton
used them in his Principia and in his works on hermetic alchemy. Among the
“hermetic” authors or those fascinated by Hermetism, we could mention Guy
Lefèvre de la Boderie, Philippe du Plessis Mornay, Giordano Bruno, Robert Fludd
or Michael Maier, as well as a list that could be easily extended...

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which is followed by the ignorant ones. These latter are who, accord-
ing to the Book of the Amduat, are at the desert valley, have lost their
heads (they appear decapitated) and are called “those who are turned
upside down”89.

Regarding the specific “way” (hodos) revealed by Hermes, fol-

lowed by “prophet” Bitis, King Ammōn90, and practiced in many
Egyptian “Houses of Life”, the Corpus Hermeticum employs a very
precise terminology to refer to the initiates as “perfect” or “trans-
cendent” (teleioi) and righteous (dikaioi)91. This teaching is solemn-
ly transmitted (paredōkas) in a specific environment and in a de-
tailed, reserved way by those who have expressly been conferred the
authority (exousia) as guides (hodēgos) or heralds (kēryx) of the
“Houses of Life” (CH I, 32). The existence of terms such as bathmos
(“step”, “degree”, “grade”) in CH XIII, 9 clearly proves that the ini-
tiatic teachings were transmitted at consecutive levels or grades
(bathmoi) that began with exoteric lessons (exotika) or instructions
of general issues (genikoi logoi; CH XII, 8; XIII, 1): “And he who
will not be begotten at the start by God comes to be by the general
and guiding discourses. He will not be able to read the things written
in this book”92. The next step was the esoteric teachings or special
studies by means of class notes (hypomnēmata), as they appear in
CH XIV, 1 and NHC VI, 6, 63. Concurrently, in addition to the doc-
trinal education, the disciple was introduced to the mental and verbal
prayer, the meditative practice93 and other disciplines that aimed to

89
The quotations from the Book of Amduat usually follow the translation by E. A.
Wallis Budge, 1905. The inline quotation is from ch. XI. The most complete edi-
tion of the Pyramid Texts is the one by S. Mercer, The Pyramid Texts in Transla-
tion and Commentary, New York, 1952. The quotations from the Book of the Dead
accord with the translation by Budge, 1895.
90
According to Iamblichus, On the mysteries VIII, 3.262-263, 4.267, 6.269.
91
The Greco-Egyptian authors of the CH sought a certain similarity to the gnostic
terminology and the language of the mysteric religions; teleioi is the Gnostic term
and dikaiousthai defines the inner change experienced after initiation.
92
The discourse on the Ogdoad and the Ennead (NHC VI, 6, 63), op. cit.
93
Including meditation on images and hieroglyphic language. Thus, a fragment
from the Book of the Amduat warns, “whoever knows these mysterious images is a

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

culminate in the enlightenment or contemplation of God. On the oth-

er hand, all this demonstrates the existence of clearly organized reli-
gious communities of a monastic nature that prolonged, in large part,
the spiritual doctrines, rites and practices of Ancient Egypt. This ex-
plains that, in the hermetic texts, the enlightened one is considered as
part of a mystical family, or that his rebirth is sealed with a kiss or an
embrace, and a ritual supper94.

Let us summarily explain the three levels of instruction of the

way of Thoth-Hermes: firstly, the candidate for initiation begins with
some introductory lessons or general discourses (CH XIII, 1), then
comes a second phase of “regeneration” and, finally, the phase of en-
lightenment or spiritual understanding95.

VIII.- FIRST DEGREE OF THE WAY OF THOTH-HERMES:

THE GENERAL PREPARATORY EDUCATION

Most hermetic treatises have a “preparatory” nature, that is, they

aim to show the obstacles and teach the virtues that facilitate the in-
dividual’s psycho-mental nullification as a previous step to his “re-
generation” or spiritual rebirth. Thus, at the beginning of the “Secret
sermon on the mountain concerning rebirth and the promise of si-
lence” (CH XIII, 1), a disciple, conversing with his master “while
descending from the mountain” (that is, from the “House of Life”),
reminds him, “in the General Sermons thou didst speak in riddles
most unclear” about the secret of regeneration, and “thou saidst that
thou wouldst give it me when ‘thou shalt have become a stranger to

well-provided Akh-spirit. Always [this person] can enter and leave the netherworld;
always speaking with the living ones. Proven to be true a million times.”, ch. XI.
94
The kiss in NHC VI, 6, the supper in Asc. 41. Vid. Textos Herméticos, Madrid,
1999, p. 514.
95
The similarity of these phases to the ones described in the Book of the Dead
(preparation, regeneration and transfiguration or apotheosis) can be explained be-
cause of the aim of this last one to provide the deceased with the “enlightenment”
or vision of Re, even though in a delayed or post-mortem way.

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the world’. Wherefore I got me ready and made the thought in me a

stranger to the world-illusion”. The goal of the preparatory stage is
condensed in this brief sentence: once understood that the world is il-
lusory, the senses lose interest in the objects, so that they attain a cer-
tain degree of distancing from the worldly matters. Only after having
attained that degree of detachment is it possible to face the stage of
“regeneration” or spiritual rebirth.

How to enter the beautiful way of regeneration? “One is the path

that leadeth unto the beauty; devotion (eusebeia) joined with
knowledge” (CH VI, 5). Devotion, piety, love, reverence... the euse-
beia is, ultimately, that mysterious force that sprouts from the deep-
est part of each man and is externally projected, driving him to seek
the meaning of existence. But that force or infinite longing to know
God can undergo a conversion of 180º and be directed inward; this is
what different religious traditions define as the “eye of the heart”
(the Vedanta hṛdaya, the wound of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in
Christianity, the Sufi ‘ayn al-qalb...)96. “Gaze upwards with the eyes
of the heart. Seek ye for one to take you by the hand and lead you
unto knowledge’s gates. Where shines clear light, of every darkness
clean; where not a single soul is drunk, but sober all they gaze with
their hearts’ eyes on him who willeth to be seen. No ear can hear
him, nor can eye see him, but only mind and heart. But first thou
must tear off from thee the cloak which thou dost wear, the web of
ignorance, the ground of bad, corruption’s chain, the carapace of
darkness, the living death, sensation’s corpse, the tomb thou carriest
with thee, the robber in thy house, who through the things he loveth,
hateth thee, and through the things he hateth, bears thee malice” (CH
VII, 1). This is possible when man leaves some room for God in his
heart. Although the Egyptian gods do not directly walk on earth
among the human beings and it is only possible to meet them at bor-
derlands (for example at a distant island, as in the tale of the Ship-

96
About this subject, vid. René Guénon, “The All-Seeing Eye”, in Symbols of Sa-
cred Science, Hillsdale (NY), 2004, p. 422.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

wrecked Sailor97), when the detachment from the created things

culminates and man is completely emptied, then is when he can ac-
cept God in his “heart” because “God is within the human being”98.

The mystical initiation is no more and no less than the process by

which a man who is inside leads or teaches another man “by the
hand”, that is, with mutual confidence, until placing him at the
threshold. The “apprentice” or candidate must enter by himself,
guided by the “eyes of his heart”, because the last step is taken with
no foot, once he has gotten rid of the world’s main illusion or mi-
rage, that is, the identification with the body. In CH IV, 6, it is also
shared the idea that the body is a dark jail or cell that hinders the
sight of beauty. We are urged to refuse the body and to tear that thick
tunic, in similar terms to the Platonic language99. The ascetic tone of
the text can be tinged with another paragraph where it is warned that
the theological pessimism is a mistake: “And do not thou be chary of
things made because of their variety, from fear of attribution of a low
estate and lack of glory unto God. For that His Glory’s one; to make
all things, and this is as it were God’s body, the making of them. But
by the maker’s self naught is there thought or bad or base. These
things are passions which accompany the making process, as rust
doth brass and filth doth body” (CH XIV, 7). Strictly speaking, all
these explanations are but propositions destined to soothe the disci-
ple’s inquisitiveness until he, after ceasing his curiosity and vital

97
A translation of this tale can be found in Eva March Tappan ed., A History of the
World in Story, Song and Art, vol. III, tr. by W. K. Flinders Petrie, Boston, 1914,
pp. 41-46.
98
É. Drioton, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte (ASAE) 44 (1944), p.
20.
99
The effort of hermetists to present their paideia with a Hellenized language is
clear here again. Thus, they use the term peribolon (“cell”) the way it was em-
ployed in the Cratylus (400b-c; cf. Theaetetus, 197c) in order to explain the analo-
gy sōma/sēma or body/tomb (jail). Porphyry, in his On the Life of Plotinus 1.1,
comments, “Plotinus, the philosopher, our contemporary, seemed ashamed of be-
ing in the body”. As well, Proclus, in his Elements (prop. 209), echoes the idea of
the body as a cell for the soul: “The vehicle (ochēma) of every partial soul de-
scends indeed with the addition of more material vestments (chitōnōn), but be-

99
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anxiety, acquires a certain calm and mental silence. Only from that
state of eusebeia can the true knowledge of God really be accessed,
since “the greatest ill among men is ignorance of God” (CH VII).

1.- Nous and logos

In this first stage, the master introduced the disciple to the new
specific language of mysteries. To that effect, one of the first taught
conceptual clarifications was the difference between nous and logos.
The hermetic doctrine distinguishes100 between the discursive mind
or reason (logos) and the pure mind or intellect101 (nous). Hermes
explains to his disciple: “Reason indeed among all men hath God
distributed, but intellect not yet” (CH IV, 3; cf. for example CH X, 9
and the fragments of Stobaeus). A different way of cognitive process
is derived from this. In addition to the ordinary knowledge
(epistēmē), which is a product of the reason (logos) and can be
learned as an “art” or “ability” (technē), there is a knowledge of a
higher or intuitive order (gnosis102), which is product of the intellect
or pure mind (nous), being a special gift of God.

In the “way of Thoth-Hermes”, the master teaches the epistēmē

to the disciple, so that he may understand (gnosis) that to accept the
ineffability of God is an indispensable step to the proper knowledge
of God. In CH IX, 10, it is stated, “To understand (noēsai) is to be-
lieve (pistis)”, because the access to the divinity, which is a revela-
tion, is not attained through the ordinary reasoning (logos), but
through a special, unitive process of cognition that, no matter how

comes united to the soul by an ablation of every thin material, and a recurrence to
its proper form...”.
100
Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan
Mind, Cambridge, 1986, p. 101.
101
Nous is usually translated as “mind”, but, given the ambiguous character of this
word, it is preferable to translate it as pure consciousness or “intellect”; vid René
Guénon, “The Limits of the Mental”, in Perspectives on Initiation, Ghent (NY),
2004, p. 205 ff..
102
In this sense, the best translation of “gnosis” would be “vision” or “understand-
ing”.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

much of it may be taught to the initiate, is only granted by God,

“who willed to have it set up, just as it were a prize” (CH IV, 3).

How can the prize of the intellect (nous) be collected? Hermes

answers that the nous is like a krater, a cup, whose content can only
be obtained by throwing oneself into it: “Plunge thyself into the
krater, when heart can do so, thou that hast faith thou canst ascend to
him that hath sent down the krater” (CH IV, 4). Those who “doused
themselves in mind became partakers in the knowledge; and when
they had received the nous, they were made perfect men”. Those
who do not plunge into the krater “are ignorant wherefor they have
come into being and whereby... they fail in all appreciation of those
things which really are worth contemplation. These centre all their
thought upon the pleasures of the body and its appetites, in the belief
that for its sake man hath come into being” (CH IV, 5). How to
plunge into the krater? Regardless of the usage of the metaphor of
the krater as a dramatization of an initiatic rite103, its interpretative
key is shown immediately afterwards in unequivocal terms: “Unless
thou first shalt hate thy body, son, thou canst not love thy self, but if
thou lov’st thy self thou shalt have mind, and having mind thou shalt
share in the knowledge (gnosis)”.

This lucid paragraph establishes a dichotomy between hating the

body and loving the spirit. Only the certainty that I am not the body
and that this body is like a jail will make me realize that I am imma-
terial and love the true essence of the human being. Hermes replies
to Tat: “It is not possible, my son, to give thyself to both; I mean to
things that perish and to things divine. For seeing that existing things
are twain, body and bodiless, in which the perishing and the divine
are understood, the man who hath the will to choose is left the choice
of one or other” (CH IV, 5-6).

103
The motif of the krater, pot or cup whose drink or contact provides immortality
is recorded in different traditions. It is not to be dismissed that the topic of the in-
gestion of a drink or immersion into a krater-lake will also be part of the dramati-
zation of the initiation ritual in some degrees of the hermetic way.

101
 JAVIER ALVARADO

2.- The sidereal journey and the eusebeia.

Some Hermetica describe the candidate’s way toward “gnosis”

with the metaphor of the journey throughout constellations, planets
or sidereal zones104. It seems to be deduced that the ascension from
one sidereal zone to the next one equaled the overcoming of a vice or
torment and the acquisition of the corresponding virtue. The initial
virtue needed to understand the journey is the eusebeia (for example
in CH III, 4), whereas the final quality or virtue is the aklinēs (calm-
ness, imperturbability). Certainly, the terms eusebeia, eusebeō and
eusebēs refer to the initiatic virtue of the “devotion”, “reverence” or
“worship” as a respectful, affectionate attitude toward gods, masters
and teachings.

104
The similarity of the topic of the hermetic sidereal journey to the soul’s celestial
journey in the Avestan religion (the post-mortem journey beyond the Primal Man
Gayōmard) has made some researchers consider certain Iranian influences coming
to Egypt (and to the Judeo-Christian thought) through the Mithraic worship. Thus,
authors such as Richard Reitzenstein (Studie zur Geschichte des Mönchtums und
der frühchristlichen Begriffe Gnostiker und Pneumatiker, Göttingen, 1916), as well
as H. H. Schaeder (Studien zum antiken Synkretismus aus Iran und Griechenland,
Leipzig, 1926, pp. 26-27), already connected the list of the seven planetary vices
that appear in Poimandres (CH I, 23) with Iranian sources, and the Ogdoad (for in-
stance, in CH I) to the Garodman and the Iranian eighth heaven. However, it is to
be reminded that, as well, the Egyptian mythology developed the topic of the “Og-
doad”, formed by the four couples of divinities, with no evidence that such a pat-
tern were an Iranian borrowing. On the other hand, the Egyptian funerary literature
also considers the transition of the deceased to the Beyond as a journey through the
different constellations related to the Decans and the hours of the day under the di-
rection of Orion (Osiris) and Sothis (Isis). Anyway, the topic of the celestial jour-
ney is also described in Celsus’ Ophites (Origen, Contra Celsum VI, 30-32), in
Mark’s Gnosis (Father Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses. I, 21, 5), in the Gospel of
Mary (Papyrus Berolinensis 8502), etc. In the latter, a Gnostic text, each and every
one of the seven heavens is guarded by a Power who allows the traveler to pass on-
ly when he replies “what binds me has been slain” (the text of the Gospel of Mary
has been published by several authors; among them, Douglas M. Parrott ed., “Gos-
pel of Mary” in Nag Hammadi Studies XI, Leiden, 1979. Perhaps there were in
more ancient versions three guardians or archons, like in the First Apocalypse of
James (NHC V, 3). There, the guardian asks the soul “Who are you?”, and it must
answer, “I am a son and I am from the Father”. When questioned again, “where
will you go?”, it must reply “to the place from which I have come, there shall I re-
turn”; in James M. Robinson ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, San Francisco, 1990,
p. 260 ff.

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Without prejudice to other astrological or astronomical consider-

ations, there is no doubt that the apprentice’s receptiveness, expec-
tancy and confidence in the received initiatic teaching increased con-
siderably when he was posed this kind of planetary metaphors in
which it is explained that the individual’s nous must get rid of the
identification with the body (sōma)105 in order to return to its original
mansion, that is, to “be in God” or “become God” (theothenai). In
CH I, 23, the list of the seven vices that hinder the purification of the
nous is mentioned: “But to the mindless ones, the wicked and de-
praved, the envious and covetous, and those who murder do and love
impiety, I am far off”. And, soon after that, it describes the cosmic
journey through seven zones that leads the wise man to get rid of his
faults so that, once purified, he may enter the eighth room, the ogdo-
adic region: “And thus it is that man doth speed his way thereafter
upwards through the cosmic frame. To the first zone he gives the en-
ergy of growth and waning; unto the second, device of evils de-
energized; unto the third, the guile of the desires de-energized; unto
the fourth, his domineering arrogance, de-energized; unto the fifth,
unholy daring and the rashness of audacity, de-energized; unto the
sixth, striving for wealth by evil means, deprived of its aggrandise-
ment; and to the seventh zone, ensnaring falsehood, de-energized.
And then, with all the energizings of the cosmic frame stript from
him, clothed in his proper power, he cometh to the ogdoadic region,
and there with those-that-are hymneth the father. They who are there
welcome his coming there with joy; and he, made like to them that
sojourn there, doth further hear the powers who are above the ogdo-
adic region, singing their songs of praise to God in language of their
own. And then they, in a band, go to the father home; of their own
selves they make surrender of themselves to powers, and becoming
powers they are in God” (CH I, 25).

The seven planetary heavens constitute the lower world (the

Hebdomad) that imprisons the mystic who wishes to ascend to the

105
CH I, 24-26; X, 15-18; XII, 12-14; XIII, 7-12.

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next higher level (the Ogdoad), the ogdoadic region or eighth sphere
of the fixed stars. All this means that man’s fight against his vices
has a universal size, since his combat is fought within a cosmic
frame. Somehow, his fight will refresh or repeat the gods’ fight
against chaos in the darkness. Actually, all this is but a way to ex-
plain or symbolize the spiritual itinerary that leads the Greco-
Egyptian mystic to contemplation on the path of prayer and medita-
tion, of which several examples are found in the Corpus Hermeti-
cum, and which is, on the other hand, very similar to the moralizing
interpretation of the ascent on Jacob’s ladder (Gen. 28:12), whose
metaphysical meaning clearly expresses the transition from medita-
tion to a contemplation free of forms, images and thoughts.

3.- Prayer, meditation and contemplation.

The hermetic texts contain different examples of vocal and men-

tal prayer, as well as preparatory meditation topics for pure medita-
tion, that is, a vision that is not influenced by the senses or any other
mental perception. CH I, 31 records an example of a prayer invoking
the divinity106:
“Holy art Thou, O God, the universals’ Father.
Holy art Thou, O God, whose Will perfects itself by means of its
own Powers.
Holy art Thou, O God, who willeth to be known and art known
by Thine own.
Holy art Thou, who didst by Word make to consist the things that
are.
Holy art Thou, of whom All-nature hath been made an Image.
Holy art Thou, whose Form Nature hath never made.
Holy art Thou, more powerful than all power.
Holy art Thou, transcending all pre-eminence.
Holy Thou art, Thou better than all praise”.

106
The usage of the word hagios (holy) may be due to the influence of the Jewish
liturgy (Is 6:3, Deut. 6:5-9).

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In a parallel way, besides this kind of hymns of praise and

thanksgiving that constitute the “offering or sacrifice of the word”
(logikē thysia), the mental prayer was practiced: “Accept my rea-
son’s offerings pure, from soul and heart for aye stretched up to thee,
o thou unutterable, unspeakable, whose name naught but the silence
can express”. The prayer asks for the grace to understand God: “Do
thou, then, Tat, my son, pray first unto our lord and father, the one-
and-only, from whom the one doth come, in order that thou mayest
have the power to catch a thought of this so mighty God, one single
beam of him to shine into thy thinking” (CH V, 1).

However, the spiritual practice, par excellence, of the Hermetists

was the meditation on divinity. We find different references that
clarify the meditation topics and their goal. In CH V, 3, the disciple
is posed: “If thou wouldst see God, bethink thee of the sun, bethink
thee of moon’s course, bethink thee of the order of the stars. Who is
the one who watcheth over that order?”. Further on, it is explained
that God can be seen by means of these meditation exercises,
through the nous: “there is naught in all the world that is not He. He
is Himself, both things that are and things that are not. The things
that are He hath made manifest, He keepeth things that are not in
Himself. He is the God beyond all name; He the unmanifest, He the
most manifest; He whom the intellect (nous) alone can contemplate,
He visible unto the eyes as well” (CH V, 9-10). And CH XIV, 9-10
develops another meditation topic about the mystery of the appear-
ance of cosmos: “But would’st thou learn how He doth make, and
how things made are made, thou may’st do so. Behold a very fair
and most resemblant image: a husbandman casting the seed into the
ground; here wheat, there barley, and there some other of the seeds.
Behold one and the same man planting the vine, the apple, and other
trees. In just the selfsame way doth God sow immortality in heaven,
and change on earth, and life and motion in the universe”. Nonethe-
less, this stage is but a preparation to carry out the phase of spiritual
regeneration or rebirth that leads to the vision or contemplation of

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God. Actually, vocal and mental prayers are but material offerings
that may even limit or hinder the genuine devotion. The hermetic
texts show God Hermes’ own refusal of the offering of perfumes and
incense, and his satisfaction with the “sacrifice of the word”, that is,
the silence of the mind.

It is a confirmed fact in the various religious and metaphysical

traditions that the apophatic way to approach God is a consequence
of the mystical experience of His ineffability. The verification that
the ordinary mind (logos) can neither describe nor imagine God
(thus only a via remotionis intuition is left, defining Him for what He
is not) has led to a form of spiritual meditation that teaches how to
suspend, annul or stop the identification with the own mental activi-
ty, and to make it easier that we may approach the divinity in a purer
way. This may make us affirm that the considerations that appear in
the hermetic texts about the impossibility to describe God by means
of mental conceptualizations was part of the disciple’s contemplative
teaching: the inability and uselessness of the discursive mind (logos)
as a contemplative tool were to be verified and accepted in order to
develop a higher tool: the pure or intuitive mind (nous), to clear up
the “mists” (Asclepius, 32) that conceal the cosmic consciousness
and the world of attributes (gods) of the Only God107. “Now from
one source all things depend; while source dependeth from the Only
One” (CH X, 14). In CH V, Hermes tells Tat that “He is the God be-
yond all name”, “and for this cause hath He all names, in that they
are one Father’s; and for this cause hath He Himself no name, in that
He’s Father of them all” (CH V, 10-11). He is before time, but He is
also in time: “so that thou thus shouldst think of Him as everywhere

107
The idea that the gods are the different names or attributes of the Only One God
already appears in ch. 17 of the Book of the Dead. As well, within Greek philoso-
phy, Plato, following the Pythagoreans, developed a theory of the becoming from
the One. To distinguish between the One and the Only, the Platonic philosophy re-
fers to the Only as hen, the nominative neuter singular of the word “one”, whose
masculine form is heis; since hen (the Only), God is the supreme source of the heis
(One), from which the rest of the numbers come, from two on.

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and ever-being” (CH IV 1)108. Although God is “one and only” (CH
IV, 1), He can be called with many names, depending on the aspect
of His activity that may be considered (Chrysippus109, Zeno, SVF I,
43, 9-12). This idea is common to all ancient religions. In the Egyp-
tian religion, “only” or “alone” is one of the titles of Osiris, Re and
Amun110. As the Only One God, He encompasses All; that is why
His magical name represents the whole cosmos111. “This body of
Him is a thing no man can touch, or see, or measure, a body inexten-
sible, like no other frame. ‘Tis neither fire nor water, air nor breath,
yet all of them come from it” (CH IV, 1). God is in all forms, “but
my true form is hidden, as I am unknowable112” (Book of the Dead,
ch. 42). “If, then, space be some godlike thing, it is substantial; but if
‘tis God, it transcends substance” (CH II, 5). God, even when con-
sidered as the supreme good, is unattainable, “for to the good there is
no shore, it hath no bounds, it is without and end, and for itself it is
without beginning, too, though unto us it seemeth to have one: the
knowledge. Therefore to it knowledge is no beginning; rather is it
that knowledge doth afford to us the first beginning of its being
known” (CH IV, 8-9). God does not know, or at least He does not as

108
In the Coffin Texts, it is said: “I am the Eternal... I am the creator of the Word...
I am the Word” (ch. 307). The Coffin Texts, the Book of the two paths and the rest
of the literature previous to the fixed version of the Book of the Dead or Going out
in Daylight have been published by Adriaan de Buck, The Egyptian Coffin Texts, 7
vol. Chicago, 1935-1961.
109
According to this Stoic, the various gods are but different names of one and on-
ly one God; Stoicorum veterum fragmenta (SVF) II 306, 7 and III 235.
110
These are the local or geographic names of the same unique divinity. Osiris (A.
Barucq- F. Daumas, Hymnes et prières de l’Égypte ancienne, Paris, 1980, pp. 89,
97, 113), Re (ibid. pp. 132, 146, 174, 175) and Amun (ibid. pp. 188, 189, 191, 211,
257).
111
The representation of the Name of God by means of a series of vowels appears
in the Hermetica, in the Greek Magical Papyri (e.g. PGM XIII, 207) and in other
texts. Thus, under the name of aa ee ēēē iiii ooooo yyyyyy ōōōōōōō, it is symbol-
ized that twenty-eight gods rule the seven spheres or planets, and all of them to-
gether constitute a hypostasis of the only one God, who is the great, great (the
greatest). As the God beyond time, that is, beyond life and death, He is called
Zōthaxathōz, whose name come from zōē (life) and thanatos (death), and appears
e.g. in PGM XIII 176.
112
He is not unknowable by Himself, but by means of a so imperfect instrument as
it is the discursive mind.

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man does, because knowledge implies a knowing subject, an object

to be known and the action of knowing, and, strictly speaking, God
is neither an object of knowledge, nor a subject who knows, for it
can only be talked about subject when there are objects.

But God transcends that plurality of elements because all is One

in Him. Or, in hermetic terms, “God is first thinkable for us, not for
Himself, for that the thing that is thought doth fall beneath the think-
er’s sense; God then cannot be thinkable unto Himself, in that He is
thought of by Himself as being nothing else than what He thinks.
But He is something else for us, and so He is thought of by us” (CH
VI, 5-6; also in CH II, 1 and CH IX, 9); “Thou art Thought when
Thou thinkest”. Certainly, the topic of the unknowable, invisible, un-
speakable God already appears in Plato (Symposium, 210e; Parmen-
ides, 141e and The Republic, VI, 509b) or Apuleius (De Platone
190-191) among others, but it is also a frequent topic in the Egyptian
theology, where the word game between Amun (Imn) and hidden
(imn) is constantly used113, or where the binary-contradictory names
of the gods are recurrent: Re is “he who is and is not”, statement that
will be prolonged in the Hermetica, “God is concealed, God is mani-
fest” (CH V, 9 and 11).

The via remotionis serves to awaken subtlety in the disciple’s in-

tellect, and takes no pity on minds that clung to the specific reason-
ing, fact that explains the exasperation of the impatient apprentice:
“What, then, is God?”. Again, Hermes clarifies that “not any one of
these is God, for He it is that causeth them to be, both all and each
and every thing of all that are” (CH II, 12). Hermes explains the
three worlds considered as Non-Being, unmanifested Being and
manifested Being: “Nor hath He left a thing beside that is-not; but
they are all from things-that-are and not from things-that-are-not. For
that the things-that-are-not have naturally no power of being any-

113
Examples of the religious hymns in Barucq-Daumas, cit., pp. 196, 212, 221,
224 and 327.

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thing, but rather the nature of the inability-to-be. And, conversely,

the things-that-are have not the nature of some time not-being” (CH
II, 13).

In sum, the disciple’s logic (logos) goes insane when it under-

stand that “God, therefore, is not mind, but Cause that the mind is;
God is not spirit, but Cause that spirit is; God is not light, but Cause
that the light is” (CH II, 14) and that, consequently, the only way to
reach God, to deify oneself, is to be like God, that is, through the
way of not being (not being the mind, not being spirit, not being the
light... no being... anything). But then, what remains...?

IX.- SECOND DEGREE: THE DOCTRINE OF REGENERA-

TION (MENTAL SILENCE AND SUSPENSION OF SENSES)

When the disciple is introduced to the doctrine of regeneration or

rebirth, the first thing that he is prevented of is that “this race, my
son, is never taught; but when he willeth it, its memory is restored by
God” (CH XIII, 2). It is a gift, a grace of God, but not in the sense of
being given to a few ones. On the contrary, He gives it to those who
make a reverent effort to deserve it, “for God doth will this vision to
be, and it is both Himself and most of all by reason of Himself” (CH
X, 4), because “not that God ignoreth man; nay, right well doth He
know him, and willeth to be known” (CH X, 15). For a man, this
God’s will “is the sole salvation”, whereas “forgetfulness becometh
vice”. Actually, Hermias of Alexandria, in his commentary on the
Phaedrus114, already mentions that Hermes Trismegistus, during his
third stay, had “remembered himself” (heautou anammnēsthai) or
“recognized himself”, receiving or remembering his true name, that
is, recovering the consciousness and the possession of his authentic
“I”.

114
Hermias Alexandrinus philosophus, In Platonis Phaedrum scholia, ed. by P.
Couvreur, Paris, 1901, lib. II, schol.2, p. 94, 21-22 and schol. 45, p. 168, 23-24.

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What is regeneration? The texts define it as “to know” or “to rec-

ognize” oneself. Specifically, the descriptions recorded in the Her-
metica might made us assume that it is a technique of sensory depri-
vation that unleashes an out-of-body experience. However, this de-
scription just partially reflects the roughest part of their teachings.
Actually, “regeneration”, starting with the unidentification of the
body, provides the consciousness of the oneness of all things or, in
more precise terms, it is a form of cognition in which the sub-
ject/object duality does not exist. “Father, I see the All, I see myself
in intellect. – This is, my son, regeneration...” (CH XIII, 13). It is an
experience difficult to explain and even more difficult to understand
with the discursive reasoning, because it overflows ordinary mind’s
comprehension: “Thou hast, O father, filled us so full of this so good
and fairest Sight, that thereby my mind’s eye hath now become for
me almost a thing to worship... For that the vision of the good doth
not, like the sun’s beam, fire-like blaze on the eyes and make them
close; nay, on the contrary, it shineth forth and maketh to increase
the seeing of the eye, as far as ever a man hath the capacity to hold
the inflow of the radiance that the mind alone can see. Not only does
it come more swiftly to us, but it does us no harm, and is instinct
with all immortal life. They who are able to drink in a somewhat
more than others of this sight, offtimes from out the body fall asleep
into the fairest spectacle” (CH X, 4-5). It is not an experience be-
cause there is no experiencer, nor is it exact to talk about “journey”
because the path is within oneself (nous), who is involved in the
cosmic or unitive consciousness at the same time, since, ultimately,
that is, from the metaphysical point of view, the only real viewpoint,
“there is no way, no place is there about thee, nor any other thing or
things that are. All are in thee, all are from thee” (CH V, 10). The
rest is a mirage of the logos: “I would, my son, that thou hadst even
passed right through thyself, as they who dream in sleep yet sleep-
less” (CH XIII, 4). In effect, from that “gnosis”, the ordinary life is
revealed like a dream or mirage that we can only be aware of, fact
that equals “awakening”, that is, “regeneration”. In such a state of

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existence, the previous vital circumstance is no longer recognized as

own, and the body and the thoughts disappear or are considered as
an alien addition: “I cannot see myself now”. Thus, the description
of the world’s experience made by an “initiate”, a mystic or a wise
man, is revealed as a vision without “logos”, without “ego”, without
sense of appropriation of the things, that is, a vision from the nous,
pure supraindividual consciousness. At this point, when the disciple
asks Hermes how to attain regeneration, he is answered: “throw out
of work the body’s senses, and thy divinity shall come to birth.
Purge from thyself the brutish torments, things of matter” (CH XIII,
7). Next, Hermes instructs Tat about man’s tormentors that prevent
him from quieting or suspending his sensory activity. The number of
these tormentors is personified by twelve particular vices, to which
the different virtues are opposed, as a kind of ladder that leads to the
total purification115.

115
-“I have tormentors then in me, O father?”.
-“Ay, no few, my son; fearful ones and manifold”.
-“I do not know them, father”.
-“Torment the first is this not-knowing, son; the second one is grief; the third, in-
temperance; the fourth, concupiscence; the fifth, unrighteousness; the sixth is ava-
rice; the seventh, error; the eighth is envy; the ninth, guile; the tenth is anger; elev-
enth, rashness; the twelfth is malice. These are in number twelve; but under them
are many more, my son; and creeping through the prison of the body they force the
man that’s placed within to suffer in his senses”.
The twelve vices have their corresponding virtues: “Knowledge of God hath
come to us, and when this comes, my son, non-knowing is cast out. Knowledge of
joy hath come to us, and on its coming, son, sorrow will flee away to them who
give it room. The power that follows joy do I invoke, thy self-control. O power
most sweet! Let us most gladly bid it welcome, son! How with its coming doth is
chase intemperance away! Now fourth, on continence I call, the power against de-
sire. This step, my son, is righteousness’ firm seat. For without judgment see how
hath chased unrighteousness away. We are made righteous, son, by the departure
of unrighteousness. Power sixth I call to us, that against avarice, sharing-with-all.
And now that avarice is gone, I call on truth. And error flees, and truth is with us.
See how the measure of the good is full, my son, upon truth’s coming. For envy
hath gone from us; and unto truth is joined the good as well, with life and light.
And now no more doth any torment of the darkness venture nigh, but vanquished
all have fled with whirring wings” (CH XIII, 8-9). This hermetic purifying route is
connected with the journey through the twelve hours described in the Egyptian fu-
nerary literature. The relationship between these twelve torments of Hermetism
and the faults or bad thoughts (logismoi) that, according to Origen, Evagrius and
other Coptic monks, disturbed the mystic’s impassiveness on his way towards con-
templation is evident as well.

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In several paragraphs, it is taught that the sight of beauty, en-

lightenment, understanding, in sum, contemplation, is achieved after
a certain purification whose clearest result is calmness or aklinēs
(equivalent to the apatheia of the Coptic Christian monks) and
whose symptoms are: a) the inhibition of the senses and b) the si-
lence of or detachment from the thoughts, “for knowledge [gnosis]
of the good is holy silence and a giving holiday to every sense” (CH
X, 5).

The holy silence is a meditative discipline or practice destined to

achieve detachment and unidentification with the thoughts, that is,
the nullification of the ordinary mental activity based on reasonings
and concepts (logos), that gives way to the nous. At the beginning of
the meditative practice, “not yet have we the power our intellect to
unfold and gaze upon the beauty of the good” (CH X, 5), so we must
insist on mental silence (sigē): “Be still, my son” (CH XIII, 16).
“Only then wilt thou upon it gaze when thou canst say no word con-
cerning it” (CH X, 5). When collecting or stopping the thoughts, the
logos keeps quiet and makes the room for the rise of the intellect
(nous). But it is to be noticed that we are not talking here about a sort
of vow of silence, but about a mental technique or discipline that
must lead to another form of cognition. Oral silence or, at least, dis-
regard of mundane conversations is a consequence of understanding
that the true language is ineffable, “for he who spendeth time in ar-
guing and hearing arguments, doth shadow fight. For God, the father
and the good, is not to be obtained by speech or hearing”. In any
case, reflective meditation can only lead us up to the threshold of the
knowledge of God; the only way to jump “beyond” is the verbal sac-
rifice (logikē thysia) or “sacrifice of the word”, which is at the same
time silence and interior recollection. This idea of silence comes
from the Egyptian Wisdoms: “Come (Thoth), that you may rescue
me, the silent one! Oh Thoth, the pleasant well for a thirsty man in
the desert, it is closed for the one who has found his speech, it is
open for the silent one. May the silent one come, that he finds the

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well...”116. Certainly, in the literature of the “Egyptian instructions”

or “wisdoms”, it is taught that the best way towards contemplation is
the mental silence. It constitutes the deepest prayer (Maxims of Any)
because it involves an offering of the thoughts and perceptions.

Regarding the inhibition or suppression of the senses, Hermes

recommends Tat, “throw out of work the body’s senses, and thy di-
vinity shall come to birth; purge from thyself the brutish torments,
things of matter” (CH XIII, 7). Afterwards, he adds, “who then doth
by his mercy gain this birth in God, abandoning the body’s senses,
knows himself to be of light and life and that he doth consist of these
and thus is filled with bliss” (CH XIII, 10). Another text vividly de-
scribes the characteristics of a mystical rapture or ecstasy: deprived
of the hearing and visual perceptions, the body remains paralyzed,
unable to move, whereas the intellect is inflamed and driven to the
sight of beauty: “Neither can he who perceiveth it, perceive aught
else, nor he who gazeth on it, gaze on aught else, nor hear aught else,
nor stir his body any way. Staying his body is every sense and every
motion he stayeth still. And shining then all round his mind, it shines
through his whole soul, and draws it out of body, transforming all of
him to essence” (CH X, 6). Since it is an ineffable experience that
transcends the sensory perceptions, one can only say about it that
“oftentimes the intellect doth leave the soul, and at that time the soul
nor sees nor understands, but is just like a thing that hath no reason.
Such is the power of intellect” (CH X, 24: NF I, 125, 10-12).

Asclepius, 32 adds that, “by the mind’s concentration”, the hu-

man consciousness achieves the understanding or “gnosis” of the
world’s consciousness, above which there is eternity and deification,
so “that by the mind’s concentration, intellect can reach to the intel-
ligence and the discernment of the quality of world’s consciousness.

116
Many other examples, like Amenemope XI, 13, can be consulted in J-P. Mahé,
Hermès en Haute-Égypte, Quebec, 1978 (vol. I) and 1982 (vol. II); this particular
quotation is in vol. II, pp. 300; Barucq-Daumas, cit., pp. 202 and 360.

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The world’s intellect, on the other hand, extends to the eternity and
to the gnosis of the gods who are above itself”. But, during the medi-
tative practice that should lead to contemplation, the mental concen-
tration the Hermetist talks about finds a new obstacle: “and thus it
comes to pass for men, that we perceive the things in heaven, as it
were through a mist, as far as the condition of the human conscious-
ness allows” (Asclepius, 32). The topic of the mist is frequent among
the contemplative mystics; it is enough to mention the cloud of igno-
rance or unknowing of Dionysius the Areopagite and the medieval
contemplative mystics. Anyway, it represents the last and most inti-
mate obstacle before attaining the intimacy with God. The darkness
symbolizes the transition from a state of individual consciousness to
a state of impersonal consciousness where the space-time condition-
ings have been overcome. For the Hermetists, by means of a sus-
tained effort of mental concentration on that silence of thoughts, it is
found out that there is “something” beyond or “outside” the body
and the ordinary process of sensory perception, and that, besides,
that “something” has a supraindividual nature. By means of the “re-
generation”, it is understood or verified that there is no individual or
“separate” souls and that such a belief is but a mirage caused by the
discursive mind (logos), since “from one soul, the All soul, come all
these souls which are made to revolve in all the cosmos, as though
divided off” (CH X, 7). That is why it seems absurd to talk about
soul’s birth or death: “There is no death for aught of things that are;
the thought this word conveys, is either void or fact, or simply by the
knocking off a syllable what is called ‘death’, doth stand for ‘death-
less’. For death is of destruction, and nothing in the cosmos is de-
stroyed” (CH VIII, 1). Can it be said more clearly?

One of these hermetic texts narrates the especially significant

moment of the disciple’s enlightenment: “And now, my son, be still
and solemn silence keep! Thus shall the mercy that flows on us from
God not cease (...)” (CH XIII, 8). The blank space of the original
text, “(...)”, tries to symbolize the lapse of time (days, months, years)

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needed by the Hermetist to purify himself until Hermes proclaims

that the event has already happened. In NHC VI, 6, 55-57, a ritual
osculation or embrace accompanies the regeneration or enlighten-
ment (“the Power that is light”).

And, what happens after the first ecstasy and the vision of the in-
effable? Is it possible to reproduce that experience again or even set-
tle in it? In effect, the die is cast; it should not be even necessary to
turn to the hackneyed metaphor of the mystic, formerly enraptured
by the presence of God, who longs to contemplate Him again and
who does not know how to leave the dark night of the spirit. The
Hermetica, in this point, refuse to attribute all volitional action or in-
dividual effort to the mystic, because he is assumed to be abandoned
to the mysterious power that works behind the vision of God. “The
sight hath this peculiar charm, it holdeth (katechei) fast and draweth
unto it those who succeed in opening their eyes, just as, they say, the
magnet draweth iron” (CH IV, 11)117.

X.- THIRD DEGREE; THE “GOOD END” (SOLARIZATION

OR ENLIGHTENMENT)

In the Egyptian metaphysics and mythology (in the sense of Sa-

cred History), there is a god or metaphysical concept called Aker or
Akerou, represented with two lions sitting back-to-back while hold-
ing the sun disk-gate. Sometimes, the double lion is replaced by the
two jackals of Anubis. This is the way it appears drawn in several
tombs (Seti I, Tutmose III, Amenophis II, etc.). In the tomb of
Ramesses VI, the double lion appears standing within the primal wa-
ters, above an inscription that says “Aker”, followed by an ellipse,
above another inscription that explains that Aker and Shu, the god of

117
Plato (Ion, 533d), as well as Porphyry (De Abstinentia, 4.20), turns to the same
expression, “it holdeth” (katechei), regarding the ecstasy or rapture of a man
caused by a supernatural being.

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air, are the two creators of the world. The ellipse is the simplest out-
line to represent the snake that bites its own tail as a symbol of the
becoming of the cycles and the submission to the space-time condi-
tionings. During the process of “regeneration”, the moment or in-
stant immediately prior to the apotheosis or resurrection of the initi-
ate (or the deceased in case of the post-mortem initiation118) is pre-
cisely represented with a snake that eats its own tail enclosing the in-
itiate with the attributes of the Sun God and a laconic inscription that
says, “This is the corpse”. This is the decisive liminal instant when
death and resurrection meet.

The image of the double lion or double dog, meaning the Yester-
day and the Tomorrow, represents the crucial moment of the Sun
God’s resurrection. The Yesterday died, the Tomorrow does not ex-
ist. Midnight, when the sun is in its lowest point and starts to rise
again, is the critical moment of the transition from death to life, from
yesterday to the next day. This lowest moment of enantiodromia and
resurrection is Aker, name that, precisely because of this, means “this
moment”, “now”. Therefore, Aker represents the a-spatial and a-
temporal “moment” when death and resurrection, the yesterday and
the tomorrow, are transcended. In chapter 17, the Book of the Dead
seems to point out that Aker is the door “to the Island of the just”, to
the “now” or “moment” when time stops119: “Mine is yesterday, I
know tomorrow... Yesterday is Osiris, tomorrow is Re... (but) we
abide”.

118
In the Book of the Amduat, post-mortem regeneration comes to everyone in the
“last hour” and is represented with many old, weak people who get into the tail of
the huge snake (the guardian of the door of time and cycles) and come out of its
mouth being as young as children.
119
A. Piankoff, “Deux variantes du Chapitre VI du Livre des Morts sur les ouchab-
tis”, in Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte, Cairo, 49 (1949), pp. 169-
170. C. de Wit, Le rôle et le sens du lion dans l’Égypte ancienne, Paris, 1951, pp.
91-106. It is indispensable to read the several essays by René Guénon compiled
under the title of Symbols of Sacred Science, Hillsdale (NY), 2004, for example,
the chapters dedicated to the symbolism of “The Narrow Door”, “The Guardians of
the Holy Land”, “The Eye of the Needle”, “The Seven Rays and the Rainbow”,
etc.

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

For that very reason, Aker is also represented as the Sun Gate to
the Beyond whose passing is guarded by the two lions that are de-
scribed this way by the sub-inscriptions: “These are the ones who
open the path, the agents of resurrection”. Actually, Aker also col-
laborates in seeking and reunifying the dispersed bones of Osiris’
corpse and carries the Sun God’s corpse. In the funerary literature,
he who aspires to pass through the Sun Gate, personified by the disk
held by the double lion or the ellipse in the shape of a snake whose
twelve rings represent the zodiac constellations120, invokes Aker so
that he may receive him fraternally: “O Aker, I have followed your
path... open your arms, receive me. Here I am, I must dispel your
darkness”121 (Book of Caverns). In sum, Aker is the guardian of the
Sun Gate, the Lord of Time who is beyond Time and rules the pas-
sage or border between this world subject to time factors and the
“other world” that is not properly a place, but a state non-
conditioned by space-time that implies the consciousness of immor-
tality. Significantly, the name of the Gate is “The one that swallows
everything”, because one can only pass through it when being noth-
ing or nobody, though it also has other names, such as, for instance,
“Knives”, because it cannot be crossed materially, but spiritually122.
Whoever may walk through the gate goes out of the cosmos, that is,

120
The entrance or exit from the zodiac ring, represented with the serpent
Ouroboros, takes place through solstitial gates that seem to be referred to in CH
VIII, 4; XI, 2; XII.,15 and Asclepius, 13.
121
On the occasion of the description of the trial of the deceased before embarking
on the Nile on his way to their grave, Diodorus Siculus (I, 92, 1-6) mentions, “the
boatman whom the Egyptians call in their language Charon” (charo=boat) and,
since his name means “he who sees behind”, he is usually depicted as looking back
in order to symbolize the stopping of time (the same as Mithra riding the constella-
tion of Taurus). From here come the name and the iconographic representation of
the Greek and Etruscan Acheron or Charon. As a divinity that transcends or facili-
tates the passing through space-time, he is also philologically related to the Iranian
Zurvan Akarana, who is depicted as guarding the exit gate of the zodiac ring.
122
Regarding the initiatic topic of the narrow door that conceals knives, or the
chattering rocks that put the candidate’s aptitude for the heroic initiation to the test,
vid. A. K. Coomaraswamy, “Symplegades”, in Studies in Comparative Religion,
vol. 7, no. 1, World Wisdom, 1973; as well as I. Couliano, Más allá de este mun-
do; paraísos, purgatorios e infiernos; un viaje a través de las culturas religiosas,
Barcelona, 1993.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

out of this space-time universe, to access the world of the gods.

From the viewpoint of the meditative practice, Aker dramatizes the
crucial moment when the experienced meditator, plunged into the
darkness of the liminal states, is about to be swallowed by the empti-
ness and must decide whether to retreat or to surrender, giving the
absolute control.

Similarly, the final phase of the spiritual rebirth recorded in the

hermetic texts involves a transformation or palingenesis by virtue of
which takes place a real change of identity. In CH I, 26, using a
common expression of the Egyptian mysteric literature, it is said that
“this is the good end for those who have gained knowledge: to be
made one with God”. Due to this “good end” (to agathon telos), the
old man, with a real name and constrained by body and sensory cir-
cumstances, is now a new man or, more strictly, a refresh or hiero-
phany of the archetypal Man123 or “essential Man”, the First Man
(anthrōpos) who personifies the Humankind (for example in CH I,
12-16) in the pure, strong moment of the origin, when the things
were thought or created by the Divinity124. In this sense, “regenera-
tion” implies a return movement to or into God. As regeneration is
only possible outside this world, we must leave it momentarily. That
is why the return by means of rebirth is considered as a repeat or re-
fresh of the making of the world, when the sun rose “for the first

123
This essential Man is used as a general framework to build an Egyptian temple.
Schwaller de Lubicz’s research about the floor plan of the Luxor Temple reveals
the existence of a large drawing of a human body on the pavement, whose limbs
and vital organs match the different shrines and chambers of the building. Thus,
the Luxor Temple seems to be a building consecrated to the relationship between
macrocosm and microcosm, as well as “a book explaining the secret functions of
the organs and nerve centers”; R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Le temple dans
l’homme, Paris, 1979.
124
Zosimus, based on Egyptian sources, comments the double consideration of this
essential Man: as a plural physical manifestation and as a spiritual being that
dwells within; “The First Man is called by us Thoth and by them Adam... naming
him symbolically according to his body... whereas his Inner Man, the spiritual... his
authentic name I know not... but that for common use is Light” (On the Letter
Omega, 6).

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

time”125. Because of this too, in the Book of the Caverns, the re-born
one, assimilated to the Sun God, announces “See, I come into the
world I emerged from, I settle in the place of my first birth”126.

With several words, the Corpus Hermeticum defines that state of

“good end”, of “imperturbable” calmness or stillness. In CH XIII,
11, the disciple confesses, “regeneration... made me steadfast”
(aklinēs). In CH XIII, 21, it is defined as enlightenment
(epipephōtistai) and, in CH V, 3, the verb to dazzle (kataugazō) is
used to describe immortality. Already in the Egyptian funerary lit-
erature, especially in the Book of the Dead, whose original name was
precisely Book of the Going out in Daylight, the concept “going out
in daylight” referred to the new birth or regeneration that lets the
spirit receive the sunlight, that is, identify itself with the divinity.
One of the symptoms of peace or bliss (aklinēs) is the consciousness
of immortality, that is, the consciousness installed into the eternal
present. When there is no sense of appropriation of anything, the
thought stops identifying itself with the own memories that formed
the small personal story. Neither is there a sense of the future, for the
man settled in the aklinēs knows that such an idea is but a mirage
because of which the ignorant one constantly delays the moment to
face the present. The man who has attained such an enlightenment
experiences the immortality of the eternal present, the Now: he has
passed through Aker. That is why one of the most beautiful hermetic
passages says: “None can seize thine hour or time...” (CH V, 11).

Other passages of the Corpus Hermeticum are more explicit on

the descriptions of the new state of “enlightenment” that characteriz-
es the already reborn man. As mentioned before, the vision, which is
a God’s gift that cannot be taught, may be explained as an “exit” to
the light of the mind (nous) or as a birth in the mind; “Whenever I
see myself the uncompounded vision brought to birth out of God’s

125
Book of Amduat, II, 191.
126
A. Piankoff, Le livre des Quererts, 1946, pl. 15, 3 ff.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

mercy, I have passed through myself into a body that can never die,
and now I am not what I was before: but I am born in mind (nous)”
(CH XIII, 3). This implies a change in the ordinary sensory percep-
tion or, rather, in the interpretation derived from the cognitive pro-
cesses, for now it is not known by means of the reasoning (logos)
based on the subject/object relationship, but using a direct intellec-
tive or intuitive knowledge of things; “no longer with the sight my
eyes afford I look on things, but with the energy the mind doth give
me through the powers” (CH XIII, 11). There are no borders, no lim-
its between subjects and objects in that higher modality, because all
is part of all without any interruption: “Father, I see the All, I see
myself in nous... This is, my son, regeneration: no more to look on
things from body’s view-point, a thing three ways in space extend-
ed” (CH XIII, 13). From that state of existence, the presumably indi-
vidual forms are irrelevant because they are seen as part of all; “I
have had my former composed form dismembered for me. I am no
longer touched, yet have I touch; I have dimension too; and yet am I
a stranger to them now” (CH XIII, 3). The introversion into the mind
leads to realize that the human consciousness is a mirage within the
cosmic consciousness, so that, when transcending the space-time
conditionings, it is verified that, at the same time, “in heaven am I, in
earth, in water, air; I am in animals, in plants; I’m in the womb, be-
fore the womb, after the womb; I’m everywhere” (CH XIII, 11). But
all this is too subtle for the ordinary mind (logos) because it is
missed by the normal perception of the senses; “Thou seest me with
eyes, my son, but what I am thou dost not understand even with full-
est strain of body and of sight” (CH XIII, 3)127.

One of the most significant hermetic texts ends like this: “For
that thou art whatever I may be; thou art whatever I may do; thou art

127
As a Sufi text says: “if he walks on sand, he leaves no trace; if he walks on
rocks, his feet leave their imprint. If he stands in the sun, he projects no shadow; in
darkness, a light emanates from him”. Quotation in René Guénon, “Is the spirit in
the body or the body in the spirit?”, in Initiation and Spiritual Realization, Hills-
dale (NY), 2004, p. 158

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 SOLARIZATION OR ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN HERMETISM

whatever I may speak. For thou art all, and there is nothing else
which thou art not. Thou art all that which doth exist, and thou art
what doth not exist” (CH V, 11). This expression is to be highlight-
ed: “For that thou art... I may be”; it already appears in the Book of
the Dead: “I am he... and he is I” (ch. 64)128. In that movement of the
light towards the mind-nous, the human consciousness has stopped
identifying itself with the body and the individual thoughts in order
to integrate with the cosmic consciousness. In order to know God,
we need to identify ourselves with Him, “for like is knowable to like
alone” (CH XI, 20). How to explain that state of the Being in which
there is no sense of the “I”? What is more, how to explain the para-
dox that the vision, understanding or realization of being part of a
unique Consciousness may be verified from an individual body-
mind?

Certainly, if there is no identification with a personal “I”, there is

no “you” and no “he” either, because only the Ineffable exists, “the
One and Only” (CH X, 14). That is why this way to understand the
universe that characterizes the “initiate” is represented in the differ-
ent traditions: Vedic, Greek, Jewish, Christian, Islamic..., with the
formula “you are I and I am you”. With this, they want to express
that, if “I” am “you”, strictly speaking, it is because there is neither
an “I” nor a “you”, but just the Only One Being. Therefore, the be-
lief in an individual existence is a consequence of an error of per-
spective.

128
Also found in Greek Magical Papyri: “For you am I, and I are you; your name
is mine, and mine is yours” (PGM VIII, 38-40; also in XIII, 793, V, 145 and XII,
227).

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH
TRADITION (KABBALAH)

“Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is

none upon earth that I desire besides Thee.” (Ps.
73:25).
“I am Yahweh and there is none else” (Is. 45:5).

Etymologically, the word Kabbalah comes from the verb Kab-

bal, which means “to receive”. Therefore, it refers to the “tradition”,
to what is “received” (kibbel), that is, to a “teaching that passes from
mouth to ear” and dates back to the prophets of the Old Testament.
But, like all spiritual transmission or tradition, the inner core of the
Kabbalah cannot be intellectually taught because one can only inter-
nalize it, experience it and make of it a way of life. In fact, many
Kabbalists explain that the Kabbalah is not learned, but remem-
bered, since it is, essentially, an attempt to recover the state of inti-
macy with God that the Humankind or the archetypical Man (Adam)
had in Paradise before his Fall. The innermost core of the teaching is
symbolized with the transmission of the secret Name of God as the
highest, most comprehensible manifestation of the divinity. Beyond
that, the experience is ineffable, nonverbal, and cannot be communi-
cated or taught, but lived and experienced. That is why the Kabbalah
masters tell their disciples “I can tell you no more”, “I have already
explained it with the words of the mouth”, “this is a secret...”129.

129
During the last few decades, the researches on the Kabbalah have been enriched
by the notable works of authors such as Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and
Its Symbolism, New York, 2006; Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, New York,
1995; Conceptos básicos del Judaísmo, Madrid, 1998. The topics treated in these
works have been developed by the same author in Kabbalah, New York, 1978,
where he gathered his works published in the Encyclopedia Judaica. Very clarify-
ing is Jay Michaelson, Everything is God. The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism,
 JAVIER ALVARADO

According to an eminent contemporary Kabbalist, “Kabbalah is

the traditional and most commonly used term for the esoteric teach-
ings of Judaism and for Jewish mysticism”130. As such, it contains
doctrines about metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, magic, etc.,
but, essentially, its innermost core is about the science or art of medi-
tation.

Regarding the origin of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystics explain

that God, in Mount Sinai, gave Moses not only the written Law (the
Torah131), but also an unwritten Torah that had to be entrusted or
taught from mouth to ear only to those who sought a greater recogni-
tion by God. The Kabbalah would precisely be the esoteric part of
that oral Law. Other Kabbalists go even further and date the origin of
the tradition back to the angels who were instructed by God. One of
them was the Archangel Metatron, who, transfigured into Enoch,

Boston, 2009. It is also useful to consult Moshe Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah,
Albany (NY), 1988 and the synthesis of it made by the same author, Kabbalah:
New Perspectives, New Haven-London, 1988. Due to its clarity and empirical ap-
proach, the reading of Aryeh Kaplan’s works is essential: Meditation and Kabba-
lah, York Beach (ME), 1982; Meditation and the Bible, York Beach (ME), 1988;
Sefer Yetzirah. The Book of Creation. In Theory and Practice, York Beach (ME),
1997. As well, P. Besserman, Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism. An essential intro-
duction to the philosophy and practice of the mystical traditions of Judaism, Bos-
ton, 1997; and other works that will be mentioned at the appropriate time.
130
G. Scholem, Kabbalah, cit., p. 3. According to this author, the Kabbalah en-
compasses mysticism (experience that, due to its nature, cannot be transmitted but
by symbols or metaphors) and esoterism or metaphysics (intellectual, intuitive
knowledge leading to the meditative practices). However, he specifies that the
Kabbalah is not a sort of mysticism if this is defined as the quest for the commun-
ion with God by means of the annihilation of the individual (bittul ha-yesh), since
many Kabbalists pursue their realization, considered as an individual achievement;
according to Scholem, if mysticism is defined as the direct, immediate union with
God, then there is no mysticism at all within Judaism. But if mysticism is defined
as an experiential consciousness or perception of divine realities, then there is a
Jewish mysticism with multiple forms and facets. Anyway, even in the highest ec-
stasy, the infinite abyss that lies between the soul and the God-King on his throne
cannot be overcome. On the contrary, in Christian mysticism, the unifying decision
around God appears more explicitly in the archetype of the monk as a monachos,
not in the sense of solitary, but undivided, unified. About this, it is also interesting
P. Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God, New York, 1992.
131
The word Torah also means “watering”, because the word of God is like rain-
water that falls from the sky to make the land germinate and, ultimately, to restore
the garden of Eden.

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

“walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Gen. 5:24),
that is, he never knew death. He reappeared afterwards under the
shape of King Melchizedek, who initiated Abraham (Gen. 14:18-20),
who in turn initiated Isaiah, and he did Jacob, and, by means of an
uninterrupted transmission, the initiation reached Moses, to whom
the Lord spoke in these terms: “I revealed myself in a bush and
spoke to Moses... I told him many wondrous things, and showed him
the secrets of the times and the end of the times. I commanded him,
saying: ‘These words thou shall publish openly, and these thou shall
keep secret’” (2 Esd. 14:4-6).

Actually, Jewish mysticism in general has focused its doctrinal

and practical techniques and methods on the three examples of vi-
sions or ecstatic raptures mentioned in the Old Testament; 1st, the vi-
sion of Jacob’s ladder, on which angels ascended and descended; 2nd,
the vision of the burning bush of Moses, by which God Himself re-
veals His Sacred Name; and 3rd, the vision of the chariot and palaces
of Ezekiel. Since ancient times, it has been considered that such ac-
counts contain some esoteric information that show or facilitate the
method to try to reproduce such prophetic raptures or visions.

The Talmud mentions the sitre Torah or raze Torah (secrets of

the Torah), which are possessed by Kabbalists, that is, by the ba’alei
ha-sod (masters of the mystery), the maskilim (those who under-
stand), the chakhamei lev (the wise-hearted; vid. Ex. 28:3). In the
Zohar, they are called benei heikhala de-malka (children of the
King’s palace) or yade’ei middin (those who know the perfect
measures), inon de-allu u-nefaku (those who entered [the garden]
and left [in peace]) or ba’alei ha-avodah (lords of the service [to
God]).

The Talmud and the written Torah have several senses or mean-
ings that are to be suitably puzzled out. Origen already mentioned
that a “Hebrew” wise man had confessed him that the Holy Scrip-

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

tures are like a large house with many closed rooms. Outside each
door lies a key, but it is not the right one, so it is necessary to find
it132. In a symbolic sense, it is said that each word has six hundred
thousand “faces” or meanings, the same as the number of children of
Israel, so it is only possible to access the hidden meanings of the
word of God with the suitable dedication and disposition, or using a
Kabbalistic expression, the secret Name of God. Certainly, the word
(the Name) of God may be “black, but comely” (Song 1:5). Amongst
the different examples that illustrate this, I will mention the follow-
ing: some Kabbalists explain that, in order to know the secret Name
of God, they must realize the verse 1:3 of the Song of Songs:
“Therefore do the virgins (Alamot) love thee”, but, in order to do it,
it is to be noticed that the text does not say Alamot, but Al mot
(above death), so it must be then translated as “therefore doth he who
is above death love thee”, which means that, when a man is pious, he
will be loved even by the Angel of Death, who will flank him in or-
der to know the Name of God.

I.- SOURCES AND TEXTS

In order to explain its meditative practices, Kabbalistic literature

uses rabbinic commentaries (Talmud) on biblical books, especially
the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Song of Songs, the Book of Ruth and
the Proverbs (Misle) of Solomon. The first references to a Jewish
meditative practice appear in certain accounts called Ma’aseh Merk-
abah (literally, “Doctrine or Work of the Chariot”), regarding the
chariot (Merkabah) described in the book of Ezekiel and in 1 Chr.
28:18. The core topics date back to the 1st and 2nd centuries, although
their textual development began in the 3rd century. Their aim was to
experience the divine reality by means of an ecstatic journey through
the seven “palaces” (Hekhalot) or heavenly mansions, overcoming

132
Origen, Selecta in Psalmos (on Psalm 1), in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 12,
col. 1080.

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

the jealousy and the hostility of the guardian of the threshold, until
reaching Paradise and contemplating the Throne of God. Likewise,
during the first few centuries of our Era, some texts about meditative
practices and techniques were written and later grouped under the ti-
tle of Ma’aseh Bereshit (“Doctrine or Acts of Creation”), for they
were based on the first words of the Genesis regarding Creation
(Bereshit...).

Among the most studied Kabbalistic texts, the Sefer Yetzirah (lit-
erally, Book of Formation), the Sefer ha-Bahir and the Zohar are to
be highlighted. The first of them is an instruction manual written be-
tween the 2nd and the 4th centuries, describing certain exercises es-
sentially based on the combination of two different meditation tech-
niques; the permutation of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet with
the ten Sephirot, totaling the 32 paths of wisdom. The Sefer ha-Bahir
appears in Provence between 1150 and 1200, influenced by a very
much earlier Gnostic and Neoplatonic tradition133 that changes the
vision of the Merkabah into God’s powers that emanate (aeons) from
the divine Glory (Kabod).

For its part, the Zohar134 or “book of the Splendor” is an exten-

sive commentary on the Pentateuch and the Torah that was written in
Castile at the end of the 13th century, most likely by Moses ben
Shem Tov of León, whose extraordinary diffusion was due to the
fact that it was deliberately written in the old style of a Midras or
commentary on the Torah, making many Jews believe that it was a
really ancient text full of authority.

The Kabbalah, despite being a typical esoteric trend of the Jewish

mysticism and religiosity135, has been enriched by contributions of

133
Vid. G. Scholem, Kabbalah, cit., p. 47.
134
El Zohar, 3 vols., Barcelona, 2006 [The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, 7/12 vols.,
Stanford, 2004-].
135
Although the list of the main Kabbalistic currents arisen since the Middle Ages
is not one of the aims of this study, it must be at least mentioned that the medieval

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

other esoteric and religious currents, from the nearest ones, like the
community of Qumran, to Gnosticism or Neoplatonism. In effect,
the influence of the Essenes of Qumran has been noted; this is the
case, for instance, of certain linguistic and liturgical similarities in
prayers, such as the custom to finish the psalms with the kedushah or
“sanctification”, pronounced by Isaiah in the Temple while contem-
plating the cherubs: “Holy, Holy, Holy, YHWH Sebaot, the whole
earth is full of His Glory” (Is. 6:3).

The Hekhalot (Palaces) and the Merkabah literatures originally

had some similarities to Gnostic texts such as the book Pistis Sophia
of the 3rd and 4th centuries, and the Greek Magical Papyri136. Like-
wise, the Kabbalistic distinction of the three supreme levels of the
soul (Nefesh, Ruach, and Neshamah) comes from the speculations of
Neoplatonic Jews such as Abraham ibn Ezra or Abraham bar Ḥiy-
ya137.

origin of the Kabbalah may be located in Spain (Toledo and Girona were some of
the most important centers) and Provence, and also highlight Moses ben
Nahmanides (1194-1270) and Abraham Abulafia (1240-1292), who, after traveling
throughout Spain, Italy and the East and contacting some Kabbalistic masters and
Sufi brotherhoods, wrote several treatises on initiation to meditation, including
techniques of combinations of letters and Names of God. The expulsion of the
Jews from Spain in 1492 contributed to spread the Kabbalah through Europe, Asia
and Northern Africa, up to the extent that one of the groups settled in Palestine,
some time later, created the well-known circle of Safed, whose most representative
member was Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (1522-1570) and even Isaac Luria
(though he joined the community of Safed only three years before his death). Re-
garding this, vid. A. Muñiz-Huberman, Las raíces y las ramas. Fuentes y deriva-
ciones de la Cábala hispanohebrea, Mexico, 1993, pp. 105 ff.; Moshe Idel, The
Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, Albany (NY), 1988.
136
The similarities between the formulas or spells to get an assistant daemon ap-
pearing in the Greek Magical Papyri, and the Kabbalistic practice to form a golem
must be pointed out; vid. Greek Magical Papyri, I, 1-42: “Rite for acquiring an as-
sistant daemon”; or I, 42-195, “Spell of Pnouthis, the sacred scribe, for acquiring
an assistant daemon (paredros)”, sent to Kēryx.
137
Due to the influence of Neoplatonic Jews, such as Abraham Ibn Ezra or Abra-
ham Bar Ḥiyya, Kabbalists distinguished three supreme levels of the soul, which
they called Nefesh, Ruach and Neshamah. Nefesh is derived from the root Nafash,
“to rest”, as in Ex. 31:17; “...and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed
(nafash)”. Ruach is often translated as “Spirit” or “wind”. And Neshamah is de-
rived from Neshimah, “breath”. In order to understand the difference between the
three states, Kabbalists such as Isaac Luria (Ha-Ari) employ the metaphor of God

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

Since the 3rd century, the Gnostic doctrine of the “aeons” that fill
the pleroma influenced the conception of the ten Sephirot and 32
paths as emanations, middot (measures) or qualities of God. Like-
wise, “the earliest strata of the Sefer ha-Bahir, which came from the
East, prove the existence of definitely Gnostic views in a circle of
believing Jews in Babylonia or Syria, who connected the theory of
the Merkabah with that of the aeons... (For its part), the doctrine of
the Sephirot and the language system hint at Neopythagorean and
Stoic influences”138; the stress on the double pronunciation of the
bedge-kefat is Stoic. The Kabbalistic concept of “elemental letters”
or letters that are also elements and that, for instance, appear in the
Sefer Yetzirah as otiyot yesod, is a tradition that came from the Greek
concept stoicheia, which means “elements” as well as “letters”. The
“sealing” of the limits of the universe by the Sacred Name of
YHWH that, for example, appears in the Sefer Yetzirah, finds its cor-
responding Greek transcription as IAO or IEU, frequent in the Gnos-
tic texts and Greek Magical Papyri, with which the borders of the
cosmos are delimited. It is not known up to which extent “the author
of Sefer Yetzirah did not yet know the symbols for the Hebrew vow-
els and in place of the Greek vowels he employed the Hebrew con-
sonants yhw, which are both vowel letters and components of the
Tetragrammaton”139.

as a glassblower. The glassblower blows his breath (Neshimah) into a tube to cre-
ate a vessel; he blows so that his breath, with the form of wind (Ruach), go through
the tube and enters the vessel that must be modeled. Next, it is time to rest
(Nafash). In Gen. 2:7, it is said “And the Lord formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath (Neshamah) of life”. Neshamah is
the highest level of the soul, accessible through the Ruach, which acts as an inter-
mediary. That is why, when God wants to enlighten a person, He proceeds by
means of Ruach. It is then said that the individual has attained Ruach Ha-Kodesh;
“Until the Spirit (Ruach) be poured upon us from on high” (Is. 32:15). Anyway,
according to the Kabbalah, the revelation of the Glory of God derived from the
soul’s (Neshamah) movement is higher than Ruach Ha-Kodesh.
138
G. Scholem, Kabbalah, cit. pp. 22 and 27. Regarding the influence of the
Greek, Gnostic and Essene philosophy and mysticism on the Kabbalah, vid. op.
cit., pp. 13, 27 and 28.
139
G. Scholem, Kabbalah, cit. p. 27.

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In conclusion, it is likely that the Merkabah Jewish mysticism is

a derivation from Jewish Gnosticism, from which it took: 1st, the
techniques of permutation of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; 2nd,
the importance of divine Names; 3rd, the passwords, signs and seals
to pass through the heavenly mansions; and 4th, the arithmological
speculations140. A particularly interesting case is the books of Ieu141,
which describe the ascent of the Gnostic through the sixty heavenly
mansions he must pass through by previously memorizing the name
of their guardians, seals, diagrams, maps, etc., and especially the
name of the sixty Ieus derived from the original Ieu (Ieu is the pho-
netic equivalence to YHWH). The difficulty to learn such an amount
of concepts drove the divinity to take pity on the pilgrim up to the
extent to reveal him the master key of names, numbers and seals so
that he may continue his ascent. However, as the books of Ieu were
translated from Coptic into Greek, their cultural horizon may be po-
sitioned at the Egyptian esoteric circle, where the passing of the soul
through the different mansions is described by the Book of the Dead.
And, actually, as subsequent researchers have pointed out, Gnosti-
cism142, in turn, feeds from the Greek magical and hermetic texts, in
turn influenced by the Egyptian and Assyrio-Babylonian culture.
Thus, for instance, the presence of numerological and philological
techniques of permutation has been documented in the Assyrio-
Babylonian tablets143. There are also evidences of the influence
flown into the Kabbalah by the Christian ascetic and Sufi litera-
tures144, mostly since the 11th century on.

140
G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition,
New York, 1965.
141
The English transcription and translation can be found in Violet MacDermot,
The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text in the Bruce Codex, Leiden, 1978.
142
Regarding the Gnostic meditation and visualization techniques, vid. Giovanni
Casadio, “La visione in Marco il Mago e nella Gnosi di tipo sethiano”, in
Augustinianum 29 (1989), pp. 123-146.
143
This is Alasdair Livingstone’s thesis, Mystical and Mythological Explanatory
Work of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, Oxford, 1986.
144
Regarding this Jewish trend with Sufi influence, the Kabbalists who lived in the
Islamic Spain (Al-Andalus) must be mentioned. They even wrote in Arabic and not
in Hebrew; this is the case of Chovot ha-Levavot (Duties of the heart) written by
Bahya Ibn Paquda.

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II.- AIM OF MEDITATION

The final purpose of the Kabbalist or mystic is metaphorically

described as to attain the vision of “the face of God”, to know the
“name of God”, to enjoy His presence... Moses symbolizes the desire
of every mystic when he asks his Lord: “what is [Thy] name?”;
“show me now Thy way”; “show me Thy glory” (Ex. 3:13; 33:13;
33:18; cf. also Num. 12:8). More precisely, the quest for Enlighten-
ment or spiritual Realization is called Ruach Ha-Kodesh, literally
“Holy Spirit”. This expression appears repeatedly in the Bible. For
example, in the Psalms, King David describes Enlightenment or the
contemplation of God as “clean of heart”, “rightness of spirit”, “un-
ion with the Holy Spirit”:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from Thy presence,
and take not Thy Holy Spirit [Ruach Ha-Kodesh] from me.” (PS.
51, 10-12).

Obviously, as the ways of the Lord are inscrutable and the wind
of the Holy Spirit blows wherever it wants, the union with Ruach
Ha-Kodesh is a gift that “descends” regardless of the ascetic effort
made. Nonetheless, it is usually said that the effort to purify oneself
during the spiritual quest is not a sufficient condition, though neces-
sary, to achieve the Grace (Ruach Ha-Kodesh). Therefore, the Kab-
balah recommends different methods, such as an intense devotion,
the Torah study, prayer, etc. and, especially, the meditation, consid-
ered as a method to achieve the contemplation (hitbonenut) of
God145.

145
“Meditation is primarily a means of attaining spiritual liberation. Its various
methods are designated to loosen the bond of the physical, allowing the individual
to ascend to the transcendental, spiritual realm. One who accomplishes this suc-
cessfully is said to have attained Ruach Ha-Kodesh, the Holy Spirit, which is the

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In some passages, the Bible describes the mystical or prophetic

experience as something somatically traumatic, but spiritually deli-
cious. In Gen. 15:12, it is said that, when Abraham went into a
trance, his limbs shuddered, his body fainted and “a horror of great
darkness fell upon him”. Daniel himself explains, “I saw this great
vision, and there remained no strength in me; for my comeliness was
turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength. Yet heard I
the voice of His words; and when I heard the voice of His words,
then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face was toward the
ground” (Dan. 10:8-9). The prophet’s senses and mind were discon-
nected from every external perception and he remained at the mercy
of a spiritual influence. The reason of this contradictory experience
is the momentary disconnection of the consciousness from the body-
mind, which implies the verification of the existence of an out-of-
body consciousness and the appearance of a form of special, higher
cognition.

Can the mystical experience of the vision of God be described?

Universal mysticism is unanimous: there is no psalm, poem, song or
metaphor able to explain that state of peace and bliss. In fact, some
mystics do not consider it an experience, but the verification of the
real (spiritual) nature of Mankind. And, in effect, the Spirit does not
consist of any state, nor can it be experienced, because it Is before
the appearance of the whole Creation or experience. The so-called
mystical experiences or visions of God are ultimately but a human
interpretation of the manifestation of the Breath of God. Prophet Eli-
jah said, “the Lord was not in the earthquake... the Lord was not in
the fire” (1 Kings 19:11-12). It is written that nobody can see God:
“for there shall no man see Me and live” (Ex. 33:20). As the Zohar
says, everything is what is from the perspective of him who receives
it, “all this is said only from our point of view, and it is relative to
our knowledge” (2, 176a).

general Hebraic term for enlightenment”, A. Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah,

cit., p. 11.

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Anyway, the contemplation of God is considered as a renewing,

radical experience that kills the old man and transforms him into a
new man. That is why it is called the death by the kiss of God: “let
Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth...” (Song 1:2), because the
kiss that kills the false “I” provides the consciousness of the own
immortality, that is to say, it kills the death itself. The Sefer Yetzirah
describes it as a “heart running” (1, 8). This Heart is the “Heart of
the heaven”, from which departed the Word of God that was mani-
fested at Sinai: “And ye came near and stood under the mountain;
and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with
darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. And YHWH spoke unto you
out of the midst of the fire. Ye heard the voice of the words, but saw
no similitude; only ye heard a voice” (Deut. 4:11-12).

That spiritual intimacy or union is here and now forever. Thus,

after meditating, David says: “when I awake, I am still with Thee”
(Ps. 139:18), since, as Joseph Albo (1380-1435) points out, I am not
“something separate from You”. In this eternal present or now, En-
lightenment (Haskalah) unifies the consciousness so that the distinc-
tion between the thinker (Maskil), the pure thought (Sekhel) and the
thought concept (Muskal) disappears. Ultimately, it could not be said
“I am Him” or “I am in You”, or “we all are in One”, because there
is no “I”, no “you”, no “he”, even no “One”. Clearly, Jewish meta-
physics, for example the Sefer Yetzirah, does not say that He is One
(Echad), but that He is Unique (Yachid), because God cannot be de-
scribed with any quality or adjective. In effect, the idea of “Oneness”
would introduce the whole numerical series and, with it, an element
of plurality. This way, “God” would be turned into another concept.
God is not One, but the Only One; He admits no otherness. That is
why, in the Eccl. 4:8, it is clarified that “there is One who is alone,
and there is not a second; yea, He hath neither child nor brother”.

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The idea that, in order to contemplate the face of God, it is neces-

sary to empty oneself out of oneself (regarding the ego) is expressed
in the etymology of the word “prophet”. In Hebrew, the words
“prophet” and “prophecy” have a different meaning from the one
usually attributed in the current language. A prophet is not he who
foresees, but he who communicates with or gets close to God. In
Hebrew, the word Navie (prophet) comes from the root Navuv,
which means “hollow”, like Job 11:12, “A hollow man (navuv)
would be wise”. A prophet is he who completely empties himself out
of his entire ego to serve as a channel for the Divine Spirit. That is
the way King David’s statement in Ps. 109:22 is to be interpreted:
“My heart is hollow within me”, that is, emptied out of ego and full
of the Spirit. The Torah defines prophecy as the communication of
God with devout men who find themselves in a state of trance, sleep
or suitably disposition: “If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord,
will make Myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto
him in a dream” (Num. 12:6).

If the mystic’s aspiration or goal is to attain Enlightenment or

Ruach Ha-Kodesh (“Holy Spirit”), then, for the Kabbalist, it is obvi-
ous that, with certain qualities and under certain conditions, man can
empty his ego and become a container of Wisdom (Chokhmah) and
Understanding (Binah). The Bible compares them with the rainwater
that can be used by anyone who has the suitable container to hold it.
For example, in Is. 55:9-11, it is said that the thought of God
(Chokhmah) is so much higher than the human mind as the sky is
than the earth. The rain that falls from the sky is compared with the
Wisdom that God drops among men. Nevertheless, whereas Wisdom
can be achieved by means of effort and voluntary dedication, Ruach
Ha-Kodesh comes from outside as a gift or grace of God. Enlight-
enment does not happen for one’s own will, but for the grace of God.
Otherwise, we could not even talk about an Enlightened one, be-
cause such a state should involve no personal circumstance or indi-
vidual achievement, but just a supraindividual event. That is why

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there is a difference between the water (Chokhmah) that falls by it-

self, and the Breath (Ruach Ha-Kodesh) that is blown downwards
because it is a grace given by a direct intervention of God. In sum,
Ruach Ha-Kodesh comes from above and cannot be attained by any
human effort. This Ruach Ha-Kodesh is the “breath of God” men-
tioned in Ex. 31:3, “And I have filled him with the Breath of God, in
Wisdom and in Understanding and in Knowledge”. Only that Spirit
can animate what is inert matter, since “He causeth His breath
(Ruach) to blow and the waters flow” (Ps. 147:18).

III.- MEDITATION TECHNIQUES

To the profane who approaches the Kabbalah for the first time,
the apparent profusion of schools, techniques and meditative meth-
ods that appears in the Kabbalistic literature may cause him the im-
pression to be in front of a doctrinal whole dominated by the mys-
tic’s subjectivism and free creativity. However, the apparent diversi-
ty of Kabbalistic methods and schools is but the reflection of the fact
that, in the way towards God, there is no unique way: “The Kabbalah
is not a single system with basic principles which can be explained
in a simple and straightforward fashion, but consists rather of a mul-
tiplicity of different approaches”146. According to certain people, the
close conversation with God can be as eloquent as the deepest medi-
tation. Actually, the intimacy with God is itself a form of meditation.
The people with a most sensitive sight would prefer to concentrate
on the light of a candle or any other object that may lead them to an
experience of oneness or emptiness of thoughts. To repeat certain
prayers or words can make the mind concentrate, as well as a deep
state of meditation can be induced by means of the concentration on
sounds, smells, flavors or even body movements. Regarding the lat-
ter, the Bible reflects some of the most common postures of the Jew-
ish mysticism. In the Jewish tradition, it is usual the “standing pray-

146
G. Scholem, Kabbalah, cit., p. 87.

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er” (Amidah) with feet together, emulating the posture of angels.

Other texts mention the sitting prayer. Several biblical passages
mention the kneeling prayer with hands spread up to heaven. Thus,
Solomon “kneeled down... and spread forth his hands toward heav-
en” (2 Chr. 6:13). As well, Ezra says, “I fell upon my knees and
spread out my hands unto the Lord my God” (Ezra 9:5). Due to its
symbolism and antiquity, the so-called “prophetic position”, kneel-
ing with head between legs, is also practiced: “Elijah went up to the
top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth and put his
face between his knees” (1 Kings 18:42). In addition to these pos-
tures, a series of body signs were also established, characterizing the
different states of meditation, so that it was noted when the meditator
should stand, sit or kneel, how to regulate breathing or react to ex-
cessive sweat, dizziness, etc. Regarding this, one of the most notable
Kabbalists was the Saragossan Abraham Abulafia (1240-1300). He,
as a good knower of breathing exercises, singing, body movements
and Sufi (Islamic mysticism) exercises of visualization and Hindu
yoga, decided to add them to the Jewish mysticism. Thus, for exam-
ple, Abulafia associated certain breathing exercises147 and head

147
Since breathing is a mechanical or unconscious activity, it belongs to the
Chokhmah consciousness, but, if any kind of control or self-reflection is exercised
over it, then it passes to the Binah sphere. That implies that the conscious control
of breathing is a technique to join both states of consciousness. In order to practice
meditation, some predispositions are needed: “Cleanse the body and choose a lone-
ly house where none shall hear your voice. Sit there in your closet and do not re-
veal your secret to any man... Abstract all your thought from the vanities of the
world... And wrap yourself in a tallit [prayer clothing] and place your tefillin on
your head and your arm, so that you may be fearful and in awe of the Shekhinah,
which is with you at that time. And cleanse yourself and your garments, and if pos-
sible let them all be white, for all this greatly assists the intention of fear and love...
And begin to combine small letters with great ones, to reverse them and to permu-
tate them rapidly, until your heart shall be warmed through their combinations and
rejoice in their movements and in what you bring about through their permutations;
and when you feel thusly that your heart is already greatly heated through the
combinations... Prepare your true thoughts to imagine the Name, may He be
Blessed, and with it the supernal angels. And visualize them in your heart as if they
are human beings standing or sitting around you... [At the end of the process], your
body begins to tremble greatly and mightily, until you think that you shall die at
that time, for your soul will become separated from your body out of the great joy
in attaining and knowing what you have known... till you will choose death over
life... then you are ready to receive the emanated influx... Hide your face more and

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movements to the visualization of the letters of the Hebrew alephbet.

In fact, some Kabbalists maintain the thesis that the names and
shapes of the Hebrew vowel points have a mystical intention, and
that the head movements associated with their sounds were adopted
for that purpose. Due to its symbolism, such an exercise is especially
notable when associated with the letter Aleph, whose numerical val-
ue 1 expresses the oneness in God.

There are many techniques employed by the Kabbalists to make

concentration easier. One of them consists in staring at an object
(similar to the Hindu Tatrak technique) or even at every letter of the
Name of God. In the book of Ezekiel, we find another way to calm
the mind down: by staring into the water. This verse has a clear
symbolism, since it is about the waters of River of Chebar (in He-
brew, “now”), because it represents that what we are looking for is
just here and now, that is, in the eternal present, always reflected in
the “water” of the consciousness.

There is another technique that enables wiping all thought from

the mind, in order to attain a state of consciousness without verbal
thoughts (Chokhmah). In the Sefer Yetzirah, it is said that Abraham
“bound the 22 letters of the Torah to his tongue... he drew them in
water, he flamed them with fire, he agitated them with breath” and
“looked, saw, understood, probed, engraved and carved, and he was
successful in creation” (6, 7). The Kabbalists explain that “to en-
grave” refers to the meditative process to draw a letter in the mind.
“To carve” implies separating that letter from the rest of the thoughts
focusing attention on that letter until the rest of the images and
thoughts disappear. Next, the letter must be visualized in transparent
air until the Chokhmah level is reached. Then, the letter must be im-
mersed and observed as if through water. It is in that moment when,

be afraid of looking at God... And return to the matters of the body... and make
your heart happy with your share. And know that the Lord your God loves you”;
M. Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia, Albany, 1988, p. 46-50.

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according to the Sefer Yetzirah, the initiate must “engrave and carve
chaos and void, mire and clay”. In this state, the shape and feeling of
individuality seems to be completely dissolved in a “chaos and void”
that makes the image to blur, as if seen through muddy water, until
all is covered by absolute darkness, as if buried in opaque mire. In
this point, no visual, physical or intellectual sensation is experienced.
Then, the initiate can be taken by a Binah state of consciousness, in
which he will find a blinding fire or light that is the level where one
“flames them with fire”. From that state, Enlightenment might hap-
pen.

Music is also an important practice mentioned in the Bible to

provoke the prophetic state. For instance, when Elisha tried to pre-
pare himself to hear God’s revelations, he said, “But now bring me a
minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the
hand of the Lord came upon him” (2 Kings 3:15). As well, Samuel
told Saul, “Thou shalt meet a company of prophets coming down
from the high place with a psaltery and a taboret and a pipe and a
harp before them; and they shall prophesy” (1 Sam. 10:5). There
were other mystics, such as Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun, “who
should prophesy with harps, with psalteries, and with cymbals” (1
Chr. 25:1). The root of the Hebrew word that means music (Nagen)
comes from the letter Gimel, which is also the origin of the word
Mug (“to melt”), because the aim of music is to melt or soften those
who listen to it. With the purpose of melting emotional resistance
(haughtiness, vanity, pride) and dissolving the ego, the prophets used
“to show forth Thy loving-kindness in the morning, and Thy faith-
fulness every night; upon an instrument of ten strings and upon the
psaltery, upon the harp with a solemn meditation (higayon)” (Ps.
92:2-3).

The Bible also points out the most favorable moments of the day
to meditate. The most suitable moment is midnight or just before
dawn; “Arise, meditate in the night, in the beginning of the watches”

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(Lam. 2:19). It was the right moment for King David too: “Mine
eyes awaited the night watches, that I might meditate on Thy word”
(Ps. 119:148). Likewise, the Kabbalah developed different tech-
niques to avoid sleep during meditation: “I will not give sleep to
mine eyes or slumber to mine eyelids” (Ps. 132:4). Those who start
practicing meditation may need the discipline of a schedule or mo-
ment to meditate. It is true that, for a comprehensor of his own real
nature, there is no distinction between moments or spaces because
He is in every time and place. Baal Shem Tov already taught that
God, meditation and daily activity were the same thing, and that the
hawwanah or concentrated consciousness did not have to be limited
to a specific moment of the day or week, but it could be practiced at
any moment.

IV.- STAGES AND FORMS OF MEDITATION

In spite of the discretion and caution with which the Kabbalists

have jealously kept their spiritual tradition up to the extent to jeop-
ardize its continuity, Moshe Idel’s and above all Aryeh Kaplan’s148
research about the traditional contemplative methods of Jewish mys-
ticism has notably contributed to attain a deeper knowledge of them.
The works of the latter author about the ancient techniques of Jewish
meditation have been very useful to revive the original meaning of
the Kabbalah as a spiritual tradition. The intensive study of Eastern
traditional techniques, particularly non-dual the Vedanta and Sufi
ones, has been employed by Kaplan to connect nowadays Kabbalah
with the ancient Jewish mysticism. Thus, many texts written by
Kabbalah masters have been reinterpreted, gaining a mystical sense
and wealth, in tune with the intention they were written with. It is to
be reminded that some Kabbalists of the 13th century, such as Abu-

148
Moshe Idel, Kabbalah; New Perspectives, New Haven-London, 1988, pp.75-
111, concerning meditative and ecstatic techniques. The main works by A. Kaplan
have already been cited; a large part of this work is based on them. Particularly, re-
garding this matter, vid. Meditation and Kabbalah, cit., pp 11 and 122.

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lafia or Maimonides, already mentioned the close similarity between

their meditative methods and the ones practiced by the Sufis: for in-
stance, the recitation of the name of God (Dhikr). Thus, the stages
and methods of the Kabbalah, such as the Hagah and Siyach medita-
tions or the Shasha contemplation, have found their clear profile
thanks to their research.

1.- Starting point: the mental flow.

It is generally thought that you create your own ideas and choose
your own thoughts. But it is not like that; it is enough to close your
eyes and see how countless thoughts or images, more or less emo-
tionally colored, appear and cannot be controlled at all. It seems im-
possible not only to stop that flow, but also to be able to choose the
kind of thoughts preferred. But the truth is that you cannot choose
the kind of thoughts you want; if you could, you would always
choose good thoughts, which not always happens. In large part, it
happens that you cannot choose them; instead, you just react to the
different kinds of thoughts that rise. When you close your eyes, you
can see how all kind of ideas and images without order or coherence
fleetingly cross your mind. And, when you try to concentrate on
some of them, after a few seconds, you are crushed by a flood of
new images and thoughts on top of the others. In sum, the brain con-
tinuously produces a sort of static or flow that, since it appears so
unceasingly and constantly before the consciousness, ends up caus-
ing an impoverishing identification between the consciousness and
the thought, making us believe that we are but the mind.

One of the first aims of meditation is to stop that mental flow or

static in order to make meditation on God, on the Self, on the Noth-
ing or on the Oneness easier, since, as the thoughts are infinite to
God, “they are more in number than the sand” (Ps. 139:18); anyway
“without lacking one of them” (Ps. 139:16).

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This ordinary state of consciousness in which the mind is full of

interferences, “background noise”, no matter whether we close our
eyes or not, is what the Kabbalah calls Understanding (Binah), that
is, verbal thought. When, by means of the proper concentration, it is
possible to remove the mental static and the consciousness is no
longer involved in ruminations, then the Wisdom (Chokhmah) ap-
pears, that is, a sort of pure thought that precedes the state of pure at-
tention or self-consciousness, separate from the mental flow. At the
beginning of the meditative technique, it is extraordinarily difficult
to experience this kind of pure thought because, right when one has
just emptied his mind, arises the thought “now I am not thinking of
anything”. That is why the emptiness of thought (Chokhmah) is not
to be confused with having the thought of emptiness (which implies
the mode of Binah consciousness).

The goal of the first steps in meditation is to increase the time in

that state of Chokhmah consciousness, of emptiness of thoughts or
“pure thought”. At the beginning, it lasts just a few seconds; in the
future, with perseverance, it will last longer. Ez. 1:14 refers to this
meditator’s fight: “And the Chayot (cherubs) ran and returned, like
the appearance of a flash of lightning”. The mind can, when the time
come, concentrate and see the Chayot as a “lightning”, but just for a
short while. Kabbalists point out that “to run” denotes Chokhmah,
whereas “to return” refers to Binah. Even though that state is as “un-
stable as water” (Gen. 49:4), it can be stabilized. That is why it is
said that the Chokhmah consciousness has two modalities: it is fluid
as water, but it can be held or retained when it takes the form of
snow.

Many Kabbalistic meditation techniques are based on the recita-

tion of mantra-like mottos or sentences with a special symbolic
charge. As in the Hindu tradition, this technique has the goal to free
the mind from the mental flow that prevents it from stabilizing in the
peace and calmness needed to achieve a state of silent attention.

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The search of biblical verses or psalms especially suitable for the

different states of meditation found in the visions of Ezekiel, as well
as in the prayers of Moses and King David, its greatest inspiration.
For instance, to recite the verses of the Merkabah tale that describe
Ezekiel’s vision or contemplation were considered especially suita-
ble to lead the meditator to a mystical state; “Now it came to pass in
the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month,
as I was among the captives by the River of Chebar, that the heavens
were opened and I saw visions of God” (Ez. 1:1). Curiously enough:
in the original Hebrew version, this verse and some of the following
ones have 72 letters, fact that confers upon them a special meaning
(Ez. 1:4 or 26). In the book of the Exodus (14:19-21), there are three
verses which also have exactly 72 letters each. From these three
verses does the Name of the Seventy-two come, and this fact plays
an important role in Kabbalistic meditation and symbolism (the 72
steps of Jacob’s ladder, the 72 angels who ascend and descend on it;
the 72 signacula extracted from the 72 verses of the Psaltery, etc.).

Likewise, according to Midrash, the eleven Psalms from the 90th

to the 100th are considered to be prayers pronounced by Moses him-
self in order to attain Enlightenment, because “Moses said these
eleven Psalms in the technique of prophecy”. Therefore, the mystic
who recited those same prayers with the suitable attitude could con-
template Ruach Ha-Kodesh. With the same purpose, the Kabbalists
used to recite the Psalms that King David had pronounced in order to
attain Enlightenment149.

149
To this effect, the Talmud distinguishes, on one hand, between the Psalms recit-
ed by King David after having attained Ruach Ha-Kodesh, which are the ones that
begin with the sentence “By David, a psalm” (LeDavid Mizmor), and, on the other
hand, the Psalms that begin with the sentence “A Psalm by David” (Mizmor Le-
David), which are the ones invoked to attain Enlightenment. According to this, at
least eighteen Psalms were specifically composed to achieve the highest degree of
contemplation.

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There are in the Kabbalah three concepts that express the idea of
meditating and refer to very precise aspects or stages of meditation.
Firstly, Hagah meditation consists in repeating a sound or sentence
monotonously in order to weaken the mental static, before being
ready for other kinds of higher meditation such as Siyach, which is a
sort of self-inquiry or examination of conscience, or Shasha medita-
tion, which is characterized by an introspection or inwardness and,
finally, the so-called Hitbonenut meditation, which is the under-
standing of oneself by means of contemplation. Let us study each
one of them.

2.- Forms or stages of meditation.

Firstly, in the field of the stages and forms of the meditative pro-
cess of the Kabbalah, the Old Testament mentions three words refer-
ring to meditation (Higayon, Hagig and Hagut) that come from the
root Hagah. Thus, “Thine heart shall meditate (hagah) terror” (Is.
33:18). “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation (hagayon) of
my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord” (Ps. 19:14). But, other
times, the word Hagah is unequivocally attributed to inarticulate, re-
petitive utterances of some animals. It appears with that meaning in
Is. 38:14, “Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter (hagah)”. Or in
Is. 31:4, “As the lion and the young lion roaring (hagah) on his
prey”. From this, Rabbi David Kimchi deduces that the root Hagah
suggests a verbalized sound or thought that is repeated once and
once again, like the crane’s chatter or the lion’s roar. Josh. 1:9
should be interpreted in this sense: “This book of the Torah shall not
depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate (hagah) therein day
and night”. As well, “But his delight is in the Torah of God, and on
His Torah doth he meditate (hagah) day and night” (Ps. 1:2). Kaplan
connects this procedure of unceasing recitation of a sentence or word
with the invocation to the Hindu mantra as a means to cause the nul-
lification of the mind and the decrease of the flow of thoughts. Actu-
ally, in the ancient Hekhalot literature, it is stated that the entrance of

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the initiate into the holy mansions takes place after repeating a cer-
tain formula 112 times.

Nevertheless, according to the philologist Rabbi Solomon Pap-

penheim, Hagah is derived from the word Nahag, which means “to
lead, direct or steer”. Thus, Hagah expresses the idea of movements
(physical or mental ones) directed to a common end, concluding that
the biblical term Hagah means “to wipe all the thoughts” so that the
mind may be led in only one direction. Besides, the base of the root
Hagah lays on only one letter (Gimel), which suggests the idea of
“melting” or “softening”. In this context, the term Hagah might ex-
plicitly refer to the “softening” of the ego as an initial or preparatory
step before accessing deeper stages and forms of meditation, such as
the Siyach or the Shasha meditations. In sum, the Hagah meditation
methods, as they involve the repetition of sounds, words, sentences
or melodies, might be closely related to the Hindu mantra, the Chris-
tian Hesychastic recitation or the Islamic Dhikr.

Of course, the unceasing recitation of a sacred sentence does not

have to be necessarily limited to the moment and environment of
meditation. Instead, it can be invoked and repeated at any moment of
the day to make us be present before God. A paradigmatic example
of this is the Jewish declaration of faith: “Hear, Israel” (Shema
Yisrael) from Deut. 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: YHWH, our God, YHWH
is One”, which has, in this sense, the same potentiality as the Islamic
declaration of faith, “there is no god but God” (lā ilāha illa Allāh),
whose consequence must be internalized as “the Lord is One, I do
not exist outside of God” or, said in Sufi terms, “there is no being
but the Being”, which implies that the sense of individuality is but an
apparent and illusory superimposition, since “there is no ‘I’ but the
‘I’ of God”, for “I AM THAT [Only One] I AM”. Besides, the six
words of the invocation: “Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai
Echad” become a yichud that condenses six meditations, which, like
the six directions of the Universe, are unified or resolved in the Only

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Name. Adonai (my Lord), Eloheinu (our God), Adonai (my Lord),
Echad (One) are just aspects of God. YHWH and all his manifesta-
tions, Creator and Creation, are One. Likewise, by means of the reci-
tation of the Shema, the mind, when recognizing the oneness of the
Being, is nullified, thus meditator, meditation and meditated become
One.

Secondly, there is a biblical term that expresses the action of

meditating as well as a meditative technique; mostly, it expresses a
deeper stage or level of meditation: Siyach150.

In several verses, Siyach meditation is a kind of verbal or mental

prayer before God: “Hear my voice, O God, in my meditation
(siyach)” (Ps. 64:1). Likewise, “A prayer of the afflicted, when he is
overwhelmed, and poureth out his meditation (siyach) before the
Lord” (Ps. 102:1). It can also adopt the form of songs or psalmodies:
“I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my
God while I have my being. My meditation (siyach) of Him shall be
sweet; I will be glad in the Lord” (Ps. 104:33-34), “Sing unto Him,
sing psalms unto Him; meditate (siyach) ye on all His wondrous
works” (Ps. 105:1). In other passages, Siyach meditation describes
the self-reflection on God’s teachings and works: “I will meditate
(siyach) on Thy precepts” (Ps. 119:15), and also “I will meditate
(siyach) on the glorious honor of Thy majesty, and of Thy wondrous
works” (Ps. 145:5). But it also refers to a form of nonverbal medita-
tion that comes from heart: “I call to remembrance my song in the
night; I meditate (siyach) with mine own heart, and my spirit
(Ruach) maketh diligent search” (Ps. 77:7). Here, Siyach meditation
shows a close conversation with one’s own heart. The meditator,
once the mental noise has been quieted by means of the Hagah
meditation, can begin the Siyach meditation by concentrating on the
idea or thought he must work on. According to the philologist Pap-
penheim (1750-1814), the term Siyach is related to the root Nasach

150
A. Kaplan, Meditation and the Bible, cit., p. 116.

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and also to the root Sachah, both meaning “to clean”, “remove”,
“tear”. In this context, Siyach expresses the concentration on an idea
or thought that also involves the removal of other thoughts. Siyach is
the meditation, verbal or not, focused on only one meditative object
in order to examine it in detail. It is a form of self-inquiry in which
the consciousness concentrates on an idea or aspect by observing it
from all the points of view. In the first stages of Siyach meditation,
all kind of conflicts enclosed in the mind usually arise, which im-
plies an unbeatable opportunity to submit them to a liberating analy-
sis. In this sense, Siyach is an important way to regenerate the nerv-
ous system.

Thirdly, there is another word in the Bible that refers to medita-

tion: Shasha. This word comes from the root Shaha or Shua, which
means “to blind”. Thus, in Is. 6:10, it is said: “Make their ears heavy,
and blind (shaha) their eyes”. And in Ps. 119:143, it is mentioned,
“trouble and anguish have taken hold on me, yet Thy command-
ments are my absorption”. Shasha also appears as absorption in Ps.
119:92: “Had not Thy Torah been my absorption, I should have per-
ished in mine affliction”. Therefore, the word Shasha describes a
state of meditation in which the mystic is voluntarily “blind”, ab-
sorbed and thus unable to pay attention to any external interest, for
he has disconnected the senses that communicated him with the ex-
ternal world and feels raptured by the spiritual world. In Ps. 119:15-
18, the terms Shasha and Siyach appear connected: “I will meditate
(siyach) on Thy precepts and attend unto Thy ways. I will absorb
(shasha) myself in Thy statutes; I will not forget Thy word... Open
Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy To-
rah”. From this, it seems to be deduced that the Shasha meditation
follows after the Siyach one because it is a more advanced state of
inwardness. That is to say, the meditator starts to remove the mental
flow by means of the recitation of a Hagah mantra, then he concen-
trates on only one idea (Siyach) until he is self-absorbed in it, enter-
ing a state of Shasha meditation.

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Finally, there is another much subtler stage or form of medita-

tion. The verb “to meditate” (Hitboded) is derived from the root
Baded, which means “to be alone”, thus Hitbodedut meditation
means “self-isolation” or “self-absorption”. Mystic Chaim Vital
(1543-1620) stated, “one must seclude (hitboded) himself in his
thoughts to the ultimate degree” in order to separate his spirit from
his body. Likewise, according to Levi Ben Gershon (1288-1344),
prophetic revelation “requires the isolation (hitbodedut) of the con-
sciousness from the imagination, or both of these from the other per-
ceptive mental faculties”. In short, hitbodedut refers to the medita-
tive process in which the person is mentally isolated and concen-
trates on something in order to achieve a revelation or spiritual vi-
sion. However, it is a term that has not been quite common in the
Kabbalistic literature151.

On the other hand, hitbodedut (isolation from the world) must

not be confused with the concept of hitbonenut. Hitbonenut is the re-
flexive form of the root Bin (“to understand”), from which the word
Binah (“Understanding”) is derived. Hitbonenut literally means “to
understand oneself” in the classical sense of “self-knowledge”, even
though it can generally refer to the action of contemplating the truth
of the beings or penetrating into the real nature of things. Kabbalists
explain that, in the meditative state of hitbonenut in which one may
contemplate oneself not as an object but directly or unitively without
associating another thing, it can be verified that the ‘I’ is “nothing”.
And, when it is accepted that the ego is an illusory mirage superim-
posed and essentially built of desires and memories, mind’s peace
and silence come. Contemplation (Hitbonenut) implies a so close
approach or knowledge of the object of meditation that the borders
or limits between subject and object are diluted. In this sense, “con-
templation” consists in a state of realization in which the mystic does
not perceive himself as different from the world. It is the last step of
the meditative process that can be achieved by the own effort, for the

151
A. Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah, cit., p. 16.

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final culmination of contemplation is a divine gift that does not de-

pend on human will or effort.

V.- MEDITATION TOPICS

As time goes by, Kabbalah masters have developed different top-

ics or images of biblical origin to make meditation easier. This has
not been due to the vanity of including some original or personal el-
ement in the method inherited from their masters, but to the need to
facilitate and adapt the teachings to those who listen to them and en-
rich them with new aspects compatible with the essential core. The
common element of all the meditation topics is the random spiritual
quest in which the mystic, after detaching himself from his false ego,
accesses the vision of the face of God, the return to Paradise or the
discovery of the secret Name of God.

Amongst the most widespread meditation topics, I must high-

light: the meditation on Solomon’s Temple, the quest for the Secret
Name of God, the ascension of the Merkabah or Ezekiel’s chariot to
the heaven, and the ten Names or attributes of God under the form of
the ten Sephirot that represent the process of Creation of the Tree of
Life.

1.- Meditating on Solomon’s Temple.

It has been said that the source of all prophetic inspiration was
the Temple in Jerusalem, and especially the third room of the upper
floor where the Ark of the Covenant was guarded and the Presence
(Shekhinah152) of God manifested itself covered by a cloud. Many

152
Shekhinah comes from the verb Shakhan, “to dwell” or “reside”, though it also
has the meaning of “to free” or “unleash”, because it is “that which resides” or is
present and, as well, it is the understanding or knowledge that frees us from the
chains of ignorance. In the Bible, it is symbolized with the Light or “the face or
God”. Kabbalists also consider it as the Paradise of the Torah, that is, of the celes-

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biblical passages refer to this mysterious event, decided by the Di-

vinity. As an example of all of them, Ex. 25:22, when God told Mo-
ses: “And I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat,
from between the two cherubim which are upon the Ark of the Tes-
timony”.

It can be proven that Solomon’s Temple was an object of medita-

tion since ancient times. In the account of the first vision of Samuel,
it is said, “and ere the lamp of God went out in the Temple of the
Lord where the Ark of God was, and Samuel was lying down” (1
Sam. 3:3). As many commentators have pointed out, such as, for in-
stance, Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508), Samuel could not be
sleeping at the Temple because even sitting was forbidden, which
implies that the expression “to lie down” may mean that he was
meditating at the Temple. In the same sense appears this expression
in Eccl. 2:23, “Yea, his heart doth not lie down in the night”, that is,
it does not sleep. In effect, the expression “to lie down” (Shakhav),
in addition to its usual meaning “to be into a flat position” or “sleep-
ing”, also refers to the sensory deprivation caused by meditation.

In sum, all this shows that Samuel received his first prophetic vi-
sion after intensely meditating on the Temple in Jerusalem and espe-
cially on the Shekhinah or Divine Presence manifested at the Sanc-
tum Sanctorum. Of course, this kind of meditation topics may have
some stages; the Kabbalist could rebuild his inner Temple so that the
structural activities were replaced by the task of engraving and crop-
ping letters. When the letter building were erected, the contemplative
could conceive the four archetypical worlds as quarries: first of all,
the Quarry of Souls (Atzilut); secondly, the Quarry of Angels (Be-
riah); third, the Quarry of Light (Yetzirah); and finally the Quarry of
Husks (Assiah). In this case, the task of dissolving the ego was com-

tial Law (Torah). In ancient sources, the word Shekhinah refers to the presence it-
self of the Divinity in the world. Later, it was considered as another emanation of
God or it was even identified, from another aspect, with the Keneset Yisrael (com-
munity of Israel).

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pared with working the rough stone; the parts of the Temple, associ-
ated with the body of God or the Primal Man, and the route through
the inside of the Temple towards the Sanctum Sanctorum, represent-
ed the inner journey through the meditation stages153 until reaching
the Ruach Ha-Kodesh.

2.- The quest and recitation of the Sacred Name of God.

The mystic’s pilgrimage was also compared to the quest for the
lost, hidden or fragmented Name of God, in which his task of inner
purification consisted in unceasingly repeating, meditating or per-
muting its letters until achieving the revelation of the Name of God.
That name represents the highest comprehensible manifestation of
the power of the divinity, so that “to know” it implies to access a
higher level of the Being. This is a common idea among different
ancient peoples that was literally interpreted by the popular sector,
who used to write the name of God in charms and other objects for
protection. Thus, in the Ethiopic Enoch, Michael is asked to show
the divine Name in order to terrify the foe (1 Enoch, 69:13-14).

Although some Kabbalah masters, such as Abraham Abulafia,

affirmed that the Names of God, by themselves, had no intrinsic
power and that all depended on the meditator’s attitude, most Kabba-
lists maintain that the Names have an important power of their own,
because they are subtly connected with spiritual forces. Precisely, the
connection between the mystic and those forces by means of the rec-
itation of the Names of God, the visualization of certain images with
the aid of different body movements and breathing techniques, is still
one of the best-kept secrets of the Kabbalah. The reality of this prin-
ciple is derived from the divine will. In the Bible, actually, God ap-
pears revealing that, should someone pronounce His Name, the Spir-
itual Influence associated with that Name would be given to him. “In
all places where I record My Name I will come unto thee, and I will

153
P. Besserman, cit., p. 48.

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

bless thee” (Ex. 20:24). Certainly, several biblical passages mention

that the prophetic state could be achieved “in the name (Ba-Shem) of
God”, or, more correctly translated, “with the name of God”. In Gen.
12:8, it is said that Abraham “called upon the name of the Lord”.
And, in Ps. 20:8, it is the best way to reach God: “Some trust in char-
iots, and some in horses; but we will remember the Name of the
Lord our God”.

The unceasing recitation of the Name of God, in the style of

Hindu mantras, the Christian Rosary of the Hesychastic tradition or
the Islamic dhikr are, in principle, a form of Hagah meditation. In
fact, as already mentioned, the relationship between the Name of
God and the Hagah meditation appears in several biblical passages,
for instance in Ps. 63:5-7: “I will lift up my hands in Thy Name...
and meditate (hagah) on Thee in the night watches”.

In the Kabbalah, the Name of God not only shows a way to

achieve the prophetic state. The knowledge of the Name of God also
represents the possession of a prophetic state and the access to Major
Mysteries; that is why, in Ps. 91:14, God says: “Because he hath set
his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him; I will set him on high,
because he hath known My Name”. Thus, the respect, mystery and
power the Kabbalah attributes to the Name of God are so huge that it
must not be voiced; it can only be mouthed with the larynx and
tongue using a technique called “gulping” of the Divine Name. The
Talmud already explains that the Tetragrammaton can only be pro-
nounced in the Temple (Beit HaMikdash); “unto the place which the
Lord your God shall choose... to put His Name there” (Deut. 12:5).

What is the true Name of God? “And I appeared unto Abraham,

unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, but by My Name YHWH was I not
known to them” (Ex. 6:3). In Ex. 3:13-15, God calls Himself “I AM
THAT I AM” (EHYEH ASHER EHYEH), which is a way to explain
the oneness and uniqueness of the “Being” that, by itself, has no

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name. Actually, “God” is just one of the names of YHWH. The first
word, sound or thought of God was the appearance of the first form
of duality or “otherness”; that is, to know that one knows, the aware-
ness of being aware. The Being becomes aware of itself and explains
it with the formula “I AM THAT I AM”. Nevertheless, the word
“YHWH” is derived from the verb “HYH” (hayah), which means to
be. Therefore, YHWH means “He who Is”. In Ps. 81:11 appears a
God’s introduction formula: the Tetragrammaton, “I am YHWH, thy
God”154, that is, “I am He who Is”. In other biblical passages, it ap-
pears abbreviated under the shape YH, which means “He is”. That is
to say, God calls Himself “I am” or “that I am”, and asks to be called
“He who Is”.

However, on other occasions, the Divinity prefers other names,

even though none of the Names of God truly refers to the Creator
Himself. In fact, the first name that appears in the Genesis is Elohim,
which describes a plurality of forces, fact that suggests that the
Names of God used in the Scriptures refer to the modes by which
God manifests Himself in Creation. That is why some primitive
Kabbalists interpret the first verse of the Genesis in the sense of: “In
the beginning, He created Elohim, together with the heavens and the
earth”, that is, the first thing that God created was the name Elohim.

Lately, an intense academic discussion has arisen, trying to

demonstrate that the diversity of biblical names of God shows the
different Jewish religious tendencies that, throughout history, ended
up converging on the composition of the Torah155. Thus, it is heard
about the “Yahwist” historical current, or about an “Elohist” trend,
depending on their preferences when naming the God of Israel. Nev-
ertheless, several biblical passages do not match these interpreta-

154
A. Rodríguez Carmona, La religión judía. Historia y teología, Madrid, 2001,
BAC, p. 26.
155
As an example, vid. Hans-Joachim Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, Minneap-
olis, 1992, p. 18 ff.; Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Tes-
tament Period, 2 vols., London, 1994.

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tions. For instance, how should Ex. 6:2: “And Elohim spoke unto
Moses and said unto him: I am YHWH” be interpreted? The truth is
that, according to the Jewish exegesis and the traditional thought in
general, the historicist matters are secondary when compared to the
main point of view: the metaphysical one. A Midrash commentary
on these verses clarifies this question: “Rabbi Abba bar Memel said:
The Holy One said to Moses: Is it my name that you wish to know? I
am called according to my deeds. I am called variously El Shaddai,
Tzevaot, Elohim and YHWH. When I judge humanity I am called
Elohim, when I wage war against the wicked I am called Tzevaot,
when I suspend punishment I am called El Shaddai, and when I take
pity upon My worlds I am called YHWH” (Exodus Rabbah, ch. 3).
Maimonides, in the chapter 61 of his Guide for the Perplexed, al-
ready clarified that the Names of God are derived from His actions,
that is, they are names of His divine aspects or attributes.

As already mentioned, the most important (however not the true)

name of God is the Tetragrammaton, YHWH: “This is My Name for
ever” (Ex. 3:15). It also appears with the formula Yah, the Lord, YH
YHWH. It is stated that, with these six letters, God proceeded to
Creation: “Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for by YH YHWH He cre-
ated the worlds” (Is. 26:4). Another common name is “YHWH of
hosts”; “O Lord of hosts, if Thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of
Thine handmaid...” (1 Sam. 1:11), where the “hosts” symbolize the
myriads of angels (also considered as divine supports, vehicles or at-
tributes) that collaborate in Creation. He is also called Almighty
(Gevurah), for instance in Jer. 10:6 and in Ps. 21:19. As well, He ap-
pears in Dan. 4:37 as the King of the Heavens (le-Melekh Shemaiya),
and in Ps. 103:13 and Prov. 3:12 as Father. In Gen. 1:2 and Is. 31:3,
He is called Spirit or Breath (Ruach) of Elohim/YHWH. He is also
usually described as Holy.

The Kabbalah explains that, even though God is One or, more
strictly speaking, Only One, duality occurs in the universe of rectifi-

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cation, and thus plurality happens. Therefore, God appears with two
measures (middot): when He acts with mercy, He is called YHWH,
when He acts with strict justice, He is called Elohim156. The Talmud
refers to these two aspects of God as “one throne for Justice and the
other for Mercy” (Sanhedrin 38b), since, in effect, in Ex. 34:6,
YHWH is “merciful and gracious”. In the Zohar 20.1(a), this duality
of Names of God is interpreted as representing the beginning of Cre-
ation, for they were originally united: “This is the secret of the full
name YHWH-Elohim”157. And, in effect, in some passages, such as
Gen. 2:4 and 18, both names appear together (YHWH-Elohim) to
show when the divine influence acts as a unified entity.

As it will already have been noticed, underneath this matter is

again the topic of the origin of Creation, that is, the enigma of how
the one became plurality in successive hierophanies until the Fall of
Adam and his subsequent redemption or, in sum, reinstatement. To
unify the Name of God equals to reinstate the Primal Man in Para-
dise, because, if one invokes, recites or recalls this lost, separated
and now unified Name of God, he will return to the Eden: “Know
therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that YHWH is Elo-
him” (Deut. 4:39).

Kabbalistic literature has developed different meditation tech-

niques that use the letters as a support or topic. From the simplest
technique of permuting the letters of a word in all possible ways
(Gilgul or “rotation”, also used in Gematria), to the technique of en-
graving and carving letters (expression that comes from handicraft
techniques). When connecting the letters with each other, the Kabba-
list seeks the Perfect Word or Lost Word, taking as a model the
God’s Word that put into movement the process of the Creation of

156
Bereshit Rabbah 12 and 15; Sifrei 71 a; Targum Psalm 56, 11; Pesiqta 149a
and 164a.
157
Regarding this, vid. J. Peradejordi, La Cábala, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 59-74.

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

the Universe158. Traditional Kabbalistic literature is profuse in medi-

tation techniques to unify the Names of God. One of the most re-
fined method is Abulafia’s one. The easiest technique consists in
combining the four letters of the Tetragrammaton with the letter
Aleph and the five primary vowels159. It is precisely from these prim-
itive techniques of permutation and repetition that come the 12 let-
ters of the name of God (the triple repetition of the Tetragrammaton)
and the 72 or 42 letters of the secret Name of God (resulting from a
pyramid composed of the repetition of the Tetragrammaton so that
the first four lines of the base equal 42 letters).

Other techniques unify the Name of God YHWH by using the

Sephirot as a support for contemplation, imagining that the highest
apex of the letter Yodh represents Keter, the Yodh itself does
Chokhmah, the first He does Binah, the Waw, whose numerical val-
ue is six, represents the six following Sephirot, and the last He does
Malkhut. In some cases, to achieve a certain state of relaxation prior
to meditation, the letters are written in pieces of paper and the Name
is then composed with them.

In the Zohar, different words are permuted, with the accompani-

ment of a certain breathing rhythm and the visualization of a pillar of
air that rises from the base of the spine up to the brain. This descrip-
tion, which, on the other hand, is connected with the Hindu tech-
nique of kuṇḍalinī rising, might lead the meditator to the “absence of

158
As the expression “And God said...” appears ten times in Gen. 1, the Kabbalah
interprets that the Universe was created by means of Ten Words.
159
The four stages of a type of meditation known as Jacob’s Ladder (action, dis-
course, thought and non-thought) match the four letters of the Tetragrammaton:
Yodh ═ action ═ hand / body
He ═ discourse ═ breath
Waw ═ thought ═ spirit
He ═ non-thought ═ experiencing the nothing.

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thought” and prepare him to experience the “nothing”160, that is,

non-duality.

One of the versions of this technique is the Tikkun meditation,

developed by Isaac Luria (1543-1620), a famous Kabbalist, also
known with the nickname Ari (literally: “Lion”) due to his spiritual
achievements, with whose teaching did the Safed community reach
its golden age. Luria introduced the tikkun (unification, restitution),
based on Gen. 36, where the seven kings of Edom are listed. The
Zohar interprets the list of these kings, who ruled and died “before
kings ruled Israel”, as a mysterious reference to the pre-existence of
some worlds or humanities before the current one161. The death and
“agony of the primitive kings” is interpreted by Luria as the “break-
ing of the vessels”, which could only be restored by the restitution or
tikkun. But that fall or crisis is not really other than a repetition, in
other levels of existence, of the process of Creation, which is re-
freshed in different hierophanies.

Therefore, it is explained that the original “contraction” of Ain

Sof or Absolute Infinity was poured into vessels that, unable to hold
its power, ended up cracking. The resulting Qelippot, “husks”,
“peels”, “fragments” or “shells” became our “fallen” world. Similar-
ly, those broken vessels contained the Sephirot that were to receive
the universe from the emanation of Adam Kadmon. With the pur-
pose of repairing the vessels and restoring the building, some lights
of a building and healing nature arose from Adam Kadmon’s fore-
head, so that they could cause the “restitution” (tikkun) of the origi-
nal kraters (to be compared with the krater of the hermetic texts).
The Fall of Adam and his following expulsion from Paradise (or,
said with the terms of the meditative language, the loss of the natural

160
P. Besserman, cit., p. 52. As well, the Zohar contains other examples of useful
permutations, such as, for instance, the Hebrew word hebel, “vanity” is permuted
so that it may be read hebli, “my breath”.
161
Similar to the Vedic tradition of the seven continents or dwipas that successive-
ly emerge and immerse themselves throughout the Sacred History.

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ability to enter a prophetic state to “listen” to God because of the ap-

pearance of the speculative mind) repeats, on an anthropological lev-
el, the breaking of the vessels of the metaphysical level. In effect,
God spoke with Adam in Paradise and the latter replied, that is to
say, there was a certain natural communication or intimacy with
God. Adam himself had been provided by God with the power of the
Word, since he gave names to the animals (Gen. 2:20), so that his
expulsion from Paradise brought with it the loss or concealment of
that Word, which was the Name of God. This caused the distinction
between the Word and the Name of God, which had once been one:
the Yodh and the He remained above, and the Waw and the He were
dragged down. This is how began the world of rectification, unifica-
tion or quest for the lost or concealed Word with the purpose of re-
storing the Oneness of the Name of God162. For this reason, “the
whole art of the Kabbalah essentially consists in operating this mys-
terious union symbolized by the letter Aleph, whose numerical value
is 1, Echad”163, since, as in Zech. 14:9, “shall there be one YHWH,
and His name One”. The mystery of the division of the Name of God
is represented by the letter Aleph, whose script is formed by two
Yodh’s, one above and another one below, separated by a Waw that
joins them. According to Luria, the upper Yodh represents the sweet
waters of Life, and the lower Yodh does the bitter waters, both sepa-
rated by the Waw or sky (Rakiah). In fact:

YHWH= 26
2 Yodh (10) and one Waw (6) = 26

162
Unless the individual may carry out an intense, upright quest, God will keep si-
lence; “How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me? ... Consider and hear me, O
Lord my God; lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death” (Ps. 13:1-3). De-
spite the pleas, God hides His face (Ps. 27:9; 69:17 among others), not to punish
men, but because the concealment is one of the attributes of revelation (Ps. 22:4).
He keeps silence because He has spoken (Ps. 50:3) and now He is Deus
absconditus, who does not communicate when men want, but when and to whom
He wills.
163
J. Peradejordi, La Cábala, Barcelona, 2004, p. 74.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

But, without a doubt, the most powerful form of meditation asso-

ciated with the name of God is the one associated with YHWH.
Nevertheless, in this case, it is not a meditation on the name YHWH
(either rotating or permuting letters, numbers, etc.), but a specific
form of meditation that will be here defined as HYH, “I AM”. In Ex.
3:13-15, God refers to Himself as “I AM THAT I AM” (EHYEH ASH-
ER EHYEH), the only one time when the name of God appears in
capital letters in Latin script and, as already mentioned, a name that
is derived from the third person of the verb HY (haya), to be. Like-
wise, in the Islamic tradition, the name Allāh would be etymological-
ly derived from an archaic form of the third person singular of the
verb to be. Allāh would then be He who Is. Significantly, the god
Brahma has his name derived from Brahm (to be)-aham (I), the Be-
ing. Of course, these etymological identities are not mere coinci-
dences, but they belong to ancient, profound traditional teachings.
And, regarding the meditative practice, the name of God “I am” en-
compasses or rather indicates the most ancient and effective gate to
the contemplative states.

Actually, as mentioned before, one thing is meditation on “I am”

(which implies the action of thinking), and another thing is the plain
and simple “I am” meditation, whose essential potentiality is the lack
of appropriation of thoughts. Strictly speaking, “I am” meditation
describes a state of pure consciousness that can be accessed after
paying attention to the feeling “I am”. Since it forces the mind to
remain in the present, the simple practice of that sustained self-
inquiry ends up weakening the instinct of appropriation and the
sense of identification with the thoughts, up to the extent that it facil-
itates the appearance or emergence of a state of non-dual or unitive
consciousness in which the Being “knows” and “knows itself”, di-
rectly, without any mediation of the senses or the mind. There is no
plurality of objects of knowledge, but an essential Oneness in which
it is understood and realized that “the Lord, our God, the Lord is
One” (Deut. 6:4) or that “there is no god but God” (lā ilāha illa

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Allāh). From another point of view, meditation on YHWH, as previ-

ous or preparatory step before “I am” meditation, assigns another
meaning to the geometric, numerical and philological techniques
mentioned before, associated with the meditation on the names of
God. As the Zohar says: “The name Elohim is included in the name
YHWH and acknowledged as one without separation” (Zohar 1, 2
a). And also, “when man understands that all is one and does not
cause any separation, then even the other side164 will disappear from
the world and not be drawn down below” (Zohar 1, 2 a). The return
to the primal oneness is carried out when one, by means of medita-
tion (in the deepest meaning of the term), understands, that is, ac-
cepts and realizes, what he is not and what he Is. Or, in other terms,
the mystic who has “understood” that YHWH is the Name associat-
ed with the Universe of the Rectification165 is then ready to ascend
“by permuting his letters” until attaining unification. And the most
powerful permutation is the one that goes from YHWH (He who Is)
to HYH (I am), that is, from the duality that separates the Divinity (I
am) from its Creation (that sees God as He who Is) to the oneness of
God. Or, in other terms, there are not letters, nor numbers, nor com-
binations, nor meditator, nor meditation... but perfect, calm, silent
Oneness.

3.- The chariot of Ezekiel.

There are just a few passages in the Bible in which prophets ex-
plain how their mystical experiences took place. That is why, for the
Kabbalists, the account of the vision of prophet Ezekiel has been
considered as a model, due to its thoroughness. It describes Ezekiel’s

164
Several works talk about the power of evil. The Zohar (2, 262) refers to it as the
sitra ahra (the “other side”), and some Kabbalists, for instance Isaac Ha-Kohen,
assumed the existence of some demonic Sephirot or emanations from the left side,
parallel to the holy Sephirot. Or even some Hekhalot or palaces of impurity with
demonic guardians, like a mirror world of the holy Palaces. The power of the “oth-
er side” was also compared with the husks or qelippot, and with the root pruning at
the Garden of Eden or the Tree of Life.
165
Vid. A. Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah, cit., p. 100 ff.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

ecstatic journey in a Chariot (Merkabah) through a series of worlds,

mansions or states of consciousness called Hekhalot (“palaces”),
which symbolize the mystic’s pilgrimage towards the ideal or heav-
enly version of the Temple in Jerusalem. That is why the Talmud
calls the mystical practice Maaseh Merkabah, the “Work of the
Chariot”, in the sense of “riding”, traveling and reaching an angelic
vision. In a general sense, it also refers to the meditation techniques
required to attain the vision of God as shown in the book of Ezeki-
el166. The word Merkabah, which is employed to describe the cher-
ubs that are on the Ark, is derived from the root Rakab (“to ride”),
because it also describes the action of “riding” them. Thus, in 1 Chr.
28:18 and above all in Ps. 18:11, “[God] rode upon a cherub and
flew; yea, He flew upon the wings of the spirit”, because God
“rides” or “glides” with the wings of the spirit (Ruach).

The ancient Hekhalot literature (for example, Hekhalot Rabbati)

thoroughly described the seven Palaces, the heavenly armies who
dwelled in them, the rivers of fire and the bridges to avoid them, the
deceptive visions, the hostility of the angels of destruction, etc. that
the meditator had to overcome during his ascent or journey through
each Palace. At the gate of each Palace, he had to let the “guardians
of the threshold” see his “seals”, passwords that consisted in the se-
cret Names of God or drawings loaded with magical influence (as in
the book Pistis Sophia), under penalty of being attacked by them.
When the meditator (as prophets Elijah and Ezekiel did) used the
specific Name for that gate, the angel opened it. Only then, the medi-
tator’s consciousness passed through the gate, ascending up to the
remotest Light. “In the hypothetical case that his way were blocked
by a demonic guardian, the mystic could then visualize God’s Judg-
ment as a bright red sphere and repeat the Holy Name ‘Adonai’ until
the so-feared guardian disappeared”167. This spell is just prolonged

166
The most clarifying explanations and interpretations about this matter are still
the ones by Aryeh Kaplan, especially in Meditation and the Bible, cit. pp. 35 ff., on
which I am based.
167
P. Besserman, cit. p. 24.

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in the so-called liturgy of the gate168, which appears, for example, in

Ps. 24:1 ff., as a sort of interrogation before the gate of the shrine:
“Lift up your heads, O ye gates! And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting
doors! And the King of Glory shall come in!”. Danger increased at
the sixth Palace, because it was as if there were “thousands upon
thousands of waves of water, and there is not in that place even a
single drop, but just the splendor of the pure marble stones of the
palace floor” (Hekhalot Rabbati 258)169. If the traveler confused
those visions with water, he was expelled from the Palace. Finally,
he arrived at the Throne of God, upon which was “the likeness in
appearance of a man above upon it” (Ez. 1:26): the Heavenly Man or
Adam Kadmon.

1 Enoch, 14:11-19170 describes the blinding vision of Enoch, who

is led to heaven and then entered behind a wall made of crystal and
fire, inside of which was a large house of fire, inside of which was
the throne of God. This seems to be the most primitive form of the
vision of the chariot or Merkabah, ridden to ascend the celestial
temple, whose image is precisely reproduced on earth by the Temple
in Jerusalem. 2 Enoch (written between 70 and 135 AD) describes

168
For their part, as well, the authors of the Sefer Yetzirah divided the meditation
on letters into a series of stages or “gates”, “paths” and “parts”. The meditator be-
gan his practice or “journey” through the different gates by visualizing himself as
an angel. The first two entrance gates were called Gate of Heaven and Gate of
Saints. According to this literature, the guardians of the Chariots, such as Ariel,
Raphael and Gabriel, personify the different states that took place during medita-
tion. The most ancient precedents of a dangerous journey through worlds where the
guardians of the gates had to be exorcised are found in the Egyptian Book of the
Dead.
169
That is why R. Aqiba warned those who entered the Garden of Eden, “when
you get to stones of pure marble, do not say water, water”. The fact that this rec-
ommendation not to drink water (symbolizing the material bonding in general, and
to the thoughts in particular) is similar to the Orphic and Eleusinian funerary for-
mulas is not just a coincidence. It has also been supposed that this image was a rep-
resentation of the ideal or heavenly version of the Temple in Jerusalem.
170
An Ethiopic translation of the original Greek version has been preserved, writ-
ten between the 4th and the 6th centuries, although its most ancient parts date back
to the 3rd century BC. It has been published by Michael E. Knibb, The Ethiopic
Book of Enoch: A New Edition in the Light of the Aramaic Dead Sea Fragments, 2
vols., Oxford, 1970.

161
 JAVIER ALVARADO

the ascending journey through the seven heavens. These books of

Enoch, as well as others with an apocalyptic vision (that is, about ec-
static journeys), such as the Apocalypse of Abraham, will be some
of the sources of the Hekhalot literature171. In the 3rd century, a mor-
alist trend came into the Merkabah literature, assigning certain moral
virtues to each one of the seven Palaces; the ascent to the different
Palaces was compared with the scale of ascension to those virtues172.

At this point, one may wonder, what was the vision of prophet
Ezekiel? His description is focused on four ascending levels, keeping
in mind that Ezekiel describes them while being himself on the third
level of the cherubs or Chayot:

The level or universe of the angels (Ophanim) is under the level

of the Chayot and populated by wheel-shaped angels. They are the
Ophanim (singular, Ophan): “Now as I beheld the Chayot, behold,
an Ophan was upon the earth by each of the Chayot” (Ez. 1:15). The
level of the cherubs (Chayot) is above them; “And the cherubim
were lifted up; this is the Chayah (cherub) that I saw by the River of
Chebar” (Ez. 10:15). Above it is the world of the Throne of God, be-
cause the prophet, from the world of the Chayot, rose his “look”:
“above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a
Throne” (Ez. 1:26). Finally, Ezekiel visualized the universe of God
as Adam Kadmon sitting on the Throne: “and upon the likeness of
the Throne was the likeness in appearance of a man above upon it”
(Ez. 1:26). It is to be considered that the Bible metaphorically talks
about “the hand of God”, “the eye of God”, etc. as if He actually had
that body173. The Kabbalah actually explains that the different parts

171
The most important among them is the Hekhalot Rabbati. It has been published
and studied by Peter Schäfer, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur, Tübingen, 1981.
172
For instance, in Maaseh Merkabah, par. 9. It has been translated and published
by Naomi Janowitz, The Poetics of Ascent: Theories of Language in a Rabbinic
Ascent Text, New York, 1989.
173
This vision is the origin of an esoteric doctrine called Shi’ur Qomah (“body
measurement”) about the secret measures and names of the different parts of the
body of God.

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of the “Body” of God represent the different Sephirot. Apart from

that, when it is said that God “is sitting”, it is to be interpreted that
He is descending or “stooping” to take care of the world.

From the account of this vision, the Kabbalists deduce that Eze-
kiel had had the vision of the Four Universes174 (which match the
four letters of the Tetragrammaton). Certainly, as Ezekiel just
reached the Yetzirah level, when he rose his inner look, he saw the
Throne above his viewpoint. That is why he says that he saw a blurry
“likeness of a throne”. Likewise, when he saw the “Man above up-
on” the Throne, two levels above him, he describes his vision as the
reflection of a reflection, “the likeness in appearance of a Man”. The
names of these Four Universes are derived from Is. 43:7, “Even eve-
ry one that is called (Atzilut) by My Name: For I have created him
(Beriah) for My Glory, I have formed him (Yetzirah), yea, I have
made him (Assiah)”. Therefore, they refer to the verbs to call, create,
form and make respectively.

1.- Atzilut is the world of Emanation (Olam ha-Atzilut) that

comes from the ten words pronounced by God to originate Creation.
It contains the first three Sephirot.

2.- Beriah is the universe of Creation (Olam ha-Beriah) as de-

scribed in the book of Genesis, represented by the Throne of God. It
contains the fourth and sixth lower Sephirot. The part of the human
soul that reaches this level is Neshamah.

3.- Yetzirah is the world of Formation (Olam ha-Yetzirah), which

contains the seventh, eighth and ninth Sephirot, as the top highest
zone of the archetypical world of formation that rests on the lowest
part of the world of Creation (Beriah). Like in other traditions, such

174
The influence of the Jewish and Neoplatonic philosophy on medieval Kabba-
lists’ speculations is the origin of the doctrine of the four universes, which already
appears in the Zohar and reached its highest development with the circles of Safed
in the 16th century.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

as Vedanta or Islam, it is the state of consciousness of the Primal

Man, Adam, before abandoning the Garden of Eden. It corresponds
with the level of Ruach in the human soul.

4.- Assiah is the Universe of Action or Composition (Olam ha-

Assiah), which represents the tenth Sephirot, our material world of
the “husks” or “shells” (Qelippot), coming from the broken vessels.
It corresponds with the level of Nefesh.

Each and every one of these four worlds is connected with the
four elements: fire, air, water and earth, so that the action of passing
through their respective thresholds equals to overcome a test. Paying
attention to philology, Jewish metaphysics provides an interpretation
that clarifies the meaning and nature of these four worlds or univers-
es. In effect, from the etymological analysis of the Hebrew words
Bara “to create”, Yatzar “to form” and Asah “to make”, it can be de-
duced that Bara refers to Creation ex nihilo, “something out of noth-
ing”. Yatzar expresses the idea of forming something from a pre-
existing substance, “something out of something”. Asah indicates the
conclusion of a series of actions. But, in which situation is then the
supreme universe of Atzilut? Given that Beriah (Creation) is “some-
thing out of nothing”, it is to be deduced that the universe “above”,
that is, the supreme universe (Atzilut) is the “Nothingness” (Ain).
That is why, when the Sephirot of Atzilut emanated, the Sefer
Yetzirah and some Kabbalists defined them as Sephirot of the Noth-
ing (Belimah).

Thus, the meditative process is conceived as a progressive ap-

proach to the Nothing or the Emptiness, until the final nullification
of the ego. “This insistence on the absolute Nothingness of the Jew-
ish meditative experience was, and still is, the aim of the true spiritu-
al seeker. Glorious and terrible visions may appear, but they are

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nothing more than manifestations of the mind and body of the medi-
tator”175.

The Nothingness, despite intellectually incomprehensible, repre-

sents the disappearance of the ordinary knowledge, understood as a
subject-object relationship. Should the process of knowledge involve
the three elements, a subject-knower, a known object and the action
of knowing, the intuitive knowledge or, strictly speaking, the non-
knowledge transcends that personal or individual relationship, unify-
ing those cognitive borders. Within the Nothing, there is no differ-
ence between subject and object, not because the subject that knows
is at the same time all what is known, but because there is Nobody
who knows or Nothing to be known. That is why it is said that God
does not know, because within Him there is no separation between
subject and object, His non-knowledge is all-encompassing and all-
comprehending. Therefore, the only understandable way that the Di-
vinity found to tell Moses who He Is, was to say “I AM THAT I AM”,
that is, I Am the Only One who knows and the Only One who is
known, with no attributes, no names, no features. But that self-
reflection of God, somewhat implying “leaving the Self”, is inter-
preted by the wise man as a hierophany or a thought equivalent to
the Word that unleashes the Creation of the Universe. That is to say,
the thought that divides subjects from objects, that creates the world
around us and projects us onto something, taking us outside of the
world of the intuitive knowledge of God or Paradise. Therefore, the
way to return to the Garden of Eden consists in solving or transcend-
ing that sense of supervening separateness.

This also explains that, from a metaphysical point of view, all the
universes or states of the Being, Sephirot, etc. can be considered as
mere instrumental concepts, ideas, that is, imaginary constructions
made of something as ethereal, subjective and volatile as the human
thought.

175
P. Besserman, cit., p. 9.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

Universe Contents Level

Atzilut (Emanation) Sephirot Nothingness
Beriah (Creation) The Throne Something out of Nothing
Yetzirah (Formation) Angels Something out of something
Assiah (Action) Shadows of physical world Completion

The visions of Moses, Jacob, Elijah and, especially, Ezekiel have

been considered by the Talmudic tradition as descriptions of the
meditator’s roadmap. When prophet Ezekiel says “And I looked, and
beheld, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire
enfolding itself; and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst
the vision of the Chashmal, out of the midst of the fire” (Ez. 1:4),
Kabbalah masters have identified these experiences with certain
mystical itineraries. Thus, the Zohar teaches that the “whirlwind”,
the “great cloud” and the “infolding fire” refer to the three levels of
the Qelippot or “husks” that stun the mind and are the obstacles that
put to the test the determination of the candidate who wishes to as-
cend. According to the Zohar, these are also the three barriers visual-
ized by prophet Elijah: “A great and strong wind... an earthquake... a
fire... and after the fire, a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-12). As
well, the Midrash relates this fire to the ladder of Jacob’s dream, on
which angels ascended and descended.

According to Ezekiel, the prophetic experience begins with a

“whirlwind” (Ruach Saarah), concerning the “mental perturbations”
that hinder the concentration of the meditator (the thundering trum-
pet blasts that Moses heard as he was climbing the Sinai are to be
reminded). After that, the mind comes up against a “great cloud” (the
second qelippah), that is, a cognitive state in which the mind cannot
see or experience anything. For his part, as Elijah’s prophetic experi-
ence was auditory instead of visual, he describes the second barrier
as an earthquake or “strong noise” (Raash). The third barrier appears
as a terrifying fire, which should be identified with certain feelings

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such as sickness, tachycardia, dizziness or sweat, etc. caused by the

momentary physical and mental withdrawal.

If that state of concentration is maintained, the meditator shall

reach the Nogah level, the “shining”, a light that shines in the dark-
ness, or the Chashmal level, in which the sense of individuality is
completely annulled. The word Chashmal comes from: Chash (si-
lence) and Mal (speech), and describes the state of “speaking si-
lence” in which the word of God can be heard, and the divine vision
takes place. It can be compared to the “still small voice” heard by
Elijah176.

4.- The ten Sephirot.

The most famous meditative topic of the Kabbalah is the Se-

phirot. The Sephirot (singular, sephirah) personify the ten attributes,
qualities (middot) or Names of God that appear in different biblical
passages and that, together, form the only one great Name of God.
They represent the multiple states of the Being177, which encompass
the whole Universe created by God. They are also called dibburim
(sayings), semot (names), orot (lights), kohot (powers), middot (qual-
ities), marot (mirrors), netiot (sprouts), keterim (crowns). The most
common way to depict them is by means of the cosmic Tree of Life.

It must now be specified, even though this may surprise more

than one of us, that the Sephirot are purely theoretical, ideal, sub-
stanceless concepts178, whose usefulness lies in supporting the medi-
tation on the steps, states, qualities or virtues that those who wish to

176
The Samādhi of the Vedanta tradition.
177
Regarding this matter, the work by René Guénon, Guénon, René, The Multiple
States of the Being, Hillsdale (NY), 2001, is still exemplary. The Kabbalah insists
that the Sephirot are not aside or outside God, but they are His external aspects:
“He is Them and They are Him” (Zohar, 3, 11 b, 70 a).
178
In the Sefer Yetzirah, the word Sephirah usually appears together with the word
Belimah (Nothing), in order to reaffirm that the Sephirot are theoretical concepts
with no reality in comparison with God.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

attain Enlightenment must deal with. In this sense, they are an effec-
tive discipline program179. For instance, the Talmud establishes the
qualities, associated with each Sephirah, that lead to Ruach Ha-
Kodesh: Study, Prudence, Diligence, Cleanliness, Abstention, Purity,
Piety, Humility, Fear to sin, and Holiness. This way, the candidate
begins with the study, observation and diligence needed to lead a
clean, pious life that, by means of humility and the denial of the ego,
will lead to holiness.

The ten Sephirot are divided in two groups: The three upper ones
are the “long face” (Arich Anpin) or “hidden face of God”, that is,
the God of Creation before the six days. They are represented with
the letters Aleph, Yodh and Nun, which together form the word Ain
(Nothingness). The seven lower Sephirot are the “short face” of God
(Ze’ir Anpin), the face of God as revealed in the six days of Creation.

The names of the ten Sephirot are derived from certain verses of
the Scriptures. Specifically, the names of the three upper Sephirot
can be found in the virtues given to Betzalel, according to Ex. 31:3:
“And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in Wisdom and in Un-
derstanding and in Knowledge”. These Sephirot are referred to as
well in Prov. 3:19-20, “The Lord by Wisdom hath founded the earth,
by Understanding hath He established the heavens, by His
Knowledge the depths are broken up”. Likewise, Prov. 24:3-4 says,
“Through Wisdom a house is built, and by Understanding it is estab-
lished, and by Knowledge shall the chambers be filled”. According
to Prov. 9:1, the seven lower Sephirot emanate from Chokhmah
(Wisdom): “Wisdom hath built her house, she hath hewn out her
seven pillars”. The names of the seven lower Sephirot appear in 1

179
As each one of the three levels of the pneuma (Ruach, Nefesh and Ruach Ha-
Kodesh) contains ten levels, in order to attain the Ruach Ha-Kodesh Enlighten-
ment, the first ten levels of Ruach and the ones of Nefesh must be previously puri-
fied. Regarding this, the work The Path of the Upright (Mesilat Yesharim), by
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707-1747), is essentially a manual to attain En-
lightenment by means of the realization of those ten levels.

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Chr. 29:11, “Thine, O Lord, is the Greatness (4.- Gedulah or Love,

Chesed), and the Power (5.- Gevurah), and the Glory (6.-Tiferet),
and the Victory (7.- Netzach), and the Splendor (8.- Hod), for All
that is in the heavens and in the earth (9.- Yesod) is Thine; Thine, O
Lord, is the Kingdom (10.- Malkhut)”.

According to other Kabbalists, Binah is considered as the mother

of the seven lower Sephirot: “yea, if thou callest Understanding
mother” (Prov. 2:3). The word Binah comes from the verb Banah,
“to build”, because Binah is the one that builds the world with
words, ideas, thoughts. Ultimately, the universe is a thought of God
sustained by His builders (the “banay”).

The Sephirot can be distributed in three columns: the left one is

the column of Severity, the right one is the column of Mercy, and the
central one, the longest one, is the column of Justice. The world of
dualities must be resolved into the synthesis or unity of the central
column. They can also be related to the two pillars of Solomon’s
Temple: “And he set up the right pillar and called the name thereof
Jachin, and he set up the left pillar and called the name thereof Boaz.
And upon the top of the pillars was lily work” (1 Kings 7:21-22).

1.
Keter Crown
Chokhmah
2. Wisdom
Binah
3. Understanding
[Daat] [Knowledge]
Chesed
4. Love
Gevurah
5. Strength
Tiferet
6. Beauty
Netzach
7. Victory
Hod
8. Splendor
Yesod
9. Foundation
Malkhut
10. Kingship

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According to some Kabbalists, “the seven lower Sephirot and

their names correspond to the seven centers of energy along the right
side of the spine and represent a ‘male’, active energy. ‘Female’, re-
ceptive energy resides on the left side. Each has its counterpart in the
nervous system, which, like the Sephirot on the cosmic Tree, meet in
Crown, the head, and each has its corresponding set of Names, as set
out in the Torah. For example, using the Song of Songs as a form of
divine acrostic, the Zohar offers symbolic meditations on the energy
centers along the spine”180.

The diagram of the Sephirot is still largely used in the meditative

Kabbalah. It is to be reminded that the book of Sefer Yetzirah is
based on the plain and simple meditation on the Sephirot. To that ef-
fect, they can be used as ways of ascending meditation, climbing the
Tree of Life, resting on the Sephirot. The Sefer Yetzirah (1, 6) clari-
fies that: “Their vision is like the appearance of lightning” and that
they initially appear “running and returning” because, as they are to
be visualized with Chokhmah consciousness, when trying to reflect
or experiment with them, one automatically returns to the Binah
consciousness. The Sephirot could also be visualized under the fig-
ure of Adam Kadmon, a Primal Man who also appears in the vision
of Ezekiel. Some Kabbalists represent this by writing the letters of
the name YHWH in a column, for they certainly seem a human fig-
ure.

In this context, Ain Sof, the undifferenced Being, considered as

“Nothing” or “Emptiness” from the perspective of the created be-
ings, stays on the edge of all representation. On the contrary, when
meditating on the first Sephirah (Keter), an androgynous human
head could be imagined. Likewise, meditation on Chokhmah was
visualized as a male “face”, and the female “face” corresponded to
Binah. The right “arm” corresponded to Chesed, the left “arm” to
Gevurah; the trunk of the body with Tiferet. Netzach matched the

180
P. Besserman, cit., p. 58

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

right “leg” and Hod the left one. Yesod was associated with the geni-
tals and Malkhut represented the feet, settled in the physical world.

The Sephirot were also an object of prayer, invocations and

songs181. Universal mysticism has developed different literary stories
that describe the union or intimacy with God (who adopts the form
of father or friend) or with the Soul (depicted as the beloved wom-
an). The most significant example of love poetry within the Jewish
mysticism is the Song of Songs. Meditation on the Soul or on the
Divine Grace (Shekhinah), as a feminine aspect of God, led the Kab-
balist to visualize a beautiful woman with seventy faces, each of
which hid an aspect of the soul. This meditative motif can also be
found in antiquity; amongst the ancient Iranians, the Daena, as a Su-
preme Alter Ego that is on the Chinvat bridge, which leads to the
Beyond; the Eurydice rescued from the Hells by Orpheus; the Brun-
hilda rescued from the fire ring by Siegfried, etc., whose stories are
about rescue, salvation, encounter or awakening of the beautiful
sleeping princess or White of the Snows by a solar Hero, etc.

The presence or influence of the Three Mothers (Aleph Mem

Shin) on the anthropomorphic diagram of the Sephirot leads, for its
part, to certain interesting developments. In effect, when imagined as
the Primal Man or Adam Kadmon, Shin corresponds with the upper
line of the head, between Chokhmah and Binah; Aleph would repre-
sent the central line of the chest, between Chesed and Gevurah; and

181
Joseph Tzayach, a mystic who was the Rabbi of Jerusalem and Damascus in the
mid-16th century, wrote this prayer so that it could be recited in the prophetic posi-
tion (kneeling with head between legs):
“EHYEH ASHER EHYEH (I AM THAT I AM), Crown me (Keter).
Yah, give me Wisdom (Chokhmah).
Elohim Chaim, grant me Understanding (Binah).
El, with the right hand of his Love, make me great (Chesed).
Elohim, from the Terror of His judgment, protect me (Gevurah).
YHWH, with His mercy, grant me Beauty (Tiferet).
YHWH Tzevaot, watch me Forever (Netzach).
Elohim Tzevaot, grant me beatitude from his Splendor (Hod).
El Chai, make His covenant my Foundation (Yesod).
Adonai, open my lips and my mouth will speak of Your praise (Malkhut)”.

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Mem would the lower line of the belly, between Netzach and Hod182.
According to some Kabbalists, such as Abraham Abulafia, the cove-
nant of the tongue is in the head, which, as the source of the flow of
thoughts, is considered as the center of the Binah consciousness. The
heart is in the chest, as a symbol of the soul. Finally, the covenant of
the circumcision is placed in the belly region, whose unconscious
process is identified with Mem and the Chokhmah consciousness183.
That is why some mystics contemplate their own bellies while trying
to attain the Chokhmah consciousness.

5.- The Proto-Sephirot and the three mother letters: Mem, Shin
and Aleph.

What was there before the ten Sephirot? What was there before
God was God, that is, the Creator? What existed before God had a
name? This state of unmanifestation or potentiality is called, in Kab-
balistic language, the Universe of Chaos (Tohu). Thus, whereas in
the Universe of Chaos (Tohu)184 the divine Name consisted in the
letters AMŠ, in which the ten Proto-Sephirot are implied, in the
manifested one or Universe of Rectification, the divine Name is the
Tetragrammaton, YHWH, from which the ten Sephirot emanate.

AMŠ are the initials of the letters Aleph Mem Shin, the so-called
Three Mothers:

“Three Mothers: Aleph Mem Shin

A great, mystical secret …

182
It is not a coincidence that these zones of the human body respectively match
the three signs of the masonic degrees of entered apprentice, fellow craft and mas-
ter mason.
183
Regarding these relations, vid. A. Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, cit., p. 185.
184
The nature of the mystic who fights against his mental chaos, seeking the union
with or contemplation of God, is somehow compared to the process of Creation of
the Universe. At the beginning, “the earth was chaos and void” (Gen. 1:2). The
state of mental static is also called “chaos” (tohu). The word Tohu comes from the
verb Tahah, which means “to be stunned” or “confused”; that is why some Kabba-
lists associate Tohu to Binah.

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

From them emanated air, water and fire,

and from them are born Fathers,
and from the Fathers, descendants” (Sefer Yetzirah 3, 2)

According to Kabbalists, Yodh is derived from Mem, He from

Shin and Waw from Aleph. Therefore, the three Mother letters repre-
sent a mystery that is even bigger than the Tetragrammaton, since
the latter comes from the former. In the diagram of the Tree of Life,
these three letters (Mem, Shin and Aleph) can also represent the three
columns in which the Sephirot are arranged. Mem represents the
right column, headed by Chokhmah; Shin represents the left column,
headed by Binah, and Aleph represents the central column, headed
by Keter.

In the Sefer Yetzirah (1, 12), we find the meditative applications

of these three letters, called the three Mothers, in which other of the
Kabbalah mysteries lies: the three primordial letters of Creation
(aleph/air; mem/water; shin/fire) contain the elements connected to
the breath as the power that generates the Word. The three letters
YHW, which define the space-time, are in turn derived from AMŠ,
which are the gate to transcend the space-time and can consequently
be used to abolish that difference. For that reason, meditation on
these letters is a means by which the meditator may join the whole
Creation. The Sefer Yetzirah (2, 1) explains how these words can be
used as mantras in order to pass from a meditative state to another:
“The Three Mothers are Aleph, Mem, Shin. Mem hums, Shin hisses
and Aleph is the Breath of air deciding between them”. The hum-
ming sound, associated with Mem to attain the Chokhmah state, must
be repeated in a still way, similarly to the Vedanta “Om” or the
Judeo-Christian Amen. The Kabbalists explain that the “still small
voice” (damamah) that appears in 1 Kings 19:12 as heard by Elijah
was a “still hum”; this is also confirmed in Job 4:16, “An image was
before mine eyes, there was a hum (damamah) and I heard a voice”.
Likewise, the letter Shin, employed as a mantra or sacred word, has

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the sibilant sound “Š” that is used to induce a strong state of Binah
consciousness. For its part, Ez. 1:14 says that, after visualizing the
Chashmal, the Prophet perceived the Sephirot. And, according to the
Talmud, the word Chashmal comes from two words: Chash (“si-
lence”) and Mal (“speech”), which could be translated as “speaking
silence”185, expression that describes a state empty of thoughts in
which, therefore, the ego, considered as the sense of appropriation, is
absent. This state of detachment is described by some Kabbalists as a
liminal place, border state, barrier or threshold, similar to the laby-
rinth, wall or cliff of the initiatic literature, because it is an impassa-
ble obstacle that blocks the way of those who try to pass without the
suitable disposition.

The three Mothers may also represent the three successive states
of meditation (observation, concentration, contemplation), similar to
the three stages of Vedanta meditation (Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna,
Samādhi), and, at the same time, they provide the three sacred words
or mantras associated with such states. The pronunciation of the ini-
tials of the three sacred words (AMŠ) will in turn make the passing
through the Chashmal and the access to the Chokhmah conscious-
ness easier for the experienced meditator.

6.- The 32 paths of Genesis 1.

The mystical experiences of the first Kabbalists came to build up

a picture of the different ways, states or levels of the cognitive pro-
cess of consciousness. The Kabbalah, and more particularly the Sefer

185
However, in Sefer Yetzirah. The Book of Creation. In Theory and Practice,
York Beach (ME), 1997, p. 98, Aryeh Kaplan maintains that both sounds, M and Š,
can also be used as a means to oscillate between the Binah and the Chokhmah con-
sciousness. And, as M and Š are the dominant consonants in Chashmal, it is possi-
ble that this word were used as a mantra when prophet Ezekiel oscillated between
the Binah and the Chokhmah consciousness. That is why Kaplan translated
“Chashmal” as “speaking silence”, which expresses the dual feeling of experienc-
ing the “silence” of the Chokhmah consciousness and the “speech” of the Binah
consciousness at the same time. The interpretation shown above differs from the
one of this author.

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

Yetzirah, calls them the 32 paths of Wisdom (Chokhmah). Neverthe-

less, as Wisdom is considered as a pure, indivisible thought, that is, a
unitive, non-dual experience, the division into 32 paths can only be
made from the level of Understanding.

The Torah refers to those 32 paths in the 32 times when the name
of God (Elohim) appears in the account of the Creation, in the first
chapter of the Genesis. Specifically, it appears 10 times under the
expression “God said”, referring to the Ten Sephirot or to the Ten
Sayings or letters of the alphabet by means of which the world was
created. Thus, “God said: let there be light”, and “God said: let there
be a firmament”. The Word of God manifested in those letters or
Sayings was not only responsible of Creation, but also sustains it
continuously as well, since, if these letters were removed, the uni-
verse would cease to exist: “Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in
heaven” (Ps. 119:89).

Out of the other 22 times (which also match the 22 letters of the
Hebrew alphabet or alephbet), the expression “God made” appears
three times, referring to the three Mothers; other seven repetitions of
the expression “God saw” are associated with the seven Double
ones, and the remaining twelve names correspond with the twelve
Elementary ones, though, according to Deut. 32:8, they also corre-
spond to the twelve pillars that support the universe: “He set the
bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Is-
rael”186. Their nature as paths becomes evident when represented as
the lines or strokes that join the ten Sephirot together. Genesis 1:

1. In the beginning God created Keter Sephirah 1

2. The Spirit of God moved He Elementary 1
3. God said, let there be light Chokhmah Sephirah 2
4. God saw the light, that it was good Beth Double 1
5. God divided the light from the darkness Waw Elementary 2
6. God called the light Day Zayin Elementary 3

186
In Deut. 33:27, they are no pillars, but the “everlasting arms”.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

7. God said, let there be a firmament Binah Sephirah 3

8. God made the firmament Aleph Mother 1
9. God called the firmament Heaven Cheth Elementary 4
10. God said, let the waters be gathered Chesed Sephirah 4
11. God called the dry land Earth Teth Elementary 5
12. God saw that it was good Gimel Double 2
13. God said, let earth bring forth grass Gevurah Sephirah 5
14. God saw that it was good Daleth Double 3
15. God said, let there be lights Tiferet Sephirah 6
16. God made two great lights Mem Mother 2
17. God set them in the firmament Yodh Elementary 6
18. God saw that it was good Kaph Double 4
19. God said, let the waters swarm Netzach Sephirah 7
20. God created the great whales Lamed Elementary 7
21. God saw that it was good Pe Double 5
22. God blessed them, be fruitful and multiply Nun Elementary 8
23. Let the earth bring forth the living creature Hod Sephirah 8
24. God made the beast of the earth Shin Mother 3
25. God saw that it was good Resh Double 6
26. God said, let Us make man Yesod Sephirah 8
27. God created man Samekh Elementary 9
28. In the image of God created He him Ayin Elementary 10
29. God blessed them Tzadhe Elementary 11
30. God said, be fruitful and multiply Malkhut Sephirah 10
31. God said, behold, I have given you Qoph Elementary 12
32. God saw every thing that He had made Taw Double 7

7.- Meditating on the Nothing.

The biblical texts clearly develop the idea that God cannot be
known because He is beyond any speculative comprehension. It is
not possible to achieve a religious or rational knowledge about God,
even by means of contemplation, since this can only provide us with
the experience of the non-separateness, that is, of what I am not and,
by via remotionis, of the intuitive verification of what I am in God.
That is why none of the Names of God refers to the Creator Himself,
but to qualities or attributes by which God manifests Himself in Cre-
ation. This is personified by the first Name of God that appears in
the Genesis, Elohim, being a plural word, a plurality of forces.

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

So, how to refer to that Deus absconditus, that Absolute, unlim-

ited God that represents the Absolute Perfection or Wholeness? To
solve this enigma, Isaac the Blind reused the concept Ain Sof (literal-
ly, unending). Ain Sof is not a name of God, but a simple, useful
concept that expresses the concealment and recognition that there is
no word that can describe or define God. However, some later Kab-
balists tended to objectivize Ain Sof, transforming it into a Name of
God, from which Ain (the Nothingness) emanates187 or is created.
That Nothingness is an intellectual barrier that blocks the way of
every man who tries to know God in a rational way. That is why, ac-
cording to other Kabbalistic tendencies, God, who is Ain Sof to Him-
self, is called Ain (Nothingness) regarding his first self-revelation.

The Kabbalah defines the states of the Being as an Ayin, that is,
Nothingness. Likewise, as Creation (Beriah) is considered to consist
in creating something from the Nothing, it is inferred that the world
originated by Beriah, that is, the world of Atzilut, is that Nothing.
That is why Job 28:12 says that “Wisdom (Chokhmah) is born from
the Nothingness (Ain)”. As well, Job 26:7 says, “He stretcheth out
the north over the Chaos, and hangeth the earth upon the Nothing
(Belimah)”, referring to the inanity or mirage of Creation. The word
Belimah is derived from Beli, which means “without”, and Mah,
which means “something”. That is to say, Belimah means “without
anything” or “nothing”. Another etymology considers it to be de-
rived from the root Balam, which means “to encompass”. Thus,
Belimah would be the “unencompassable”, what cannot be de-
scribed, in sum, the “ineffable”. In fact, Keter, the supreme Se-
phirah, is also defined with the word Ain, which means “nothing-
ness”, being then Ain Sof (from which Keter emanates) an even more

187
The doctrine of the Creation ex nihilo was defended by arguing that the emana-
tion of God takes place within God Himself. Thus, the whole process of Creation
of the Sephirot was immanent in God Himself, fact that implied that the Divinity,
being One and Only, made the Creation be Nothing; that is why the Sephirot are
Belimah (from the Nothing).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

unencompassable metaphysical principle or concept. Ain Sof is liter-

ally unending, that is, Infinite, the ultimate Nothing:

Ain Sof: End of the Nothing or ultimate Nothing

Atzilut; Nothingness
Beriah; creation out of Nothing

There are certain meditative practices whose goal is to gradually

quiet down the mind in order to stay in the Chokhmah conscious-
ness. One of them consists in approaching the idea of Infinity: “Out
of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord” (Ps. 130:1). The infini-
ty of time passed, days, years, centuries, even longer cycles ago can
be imagined. Or even the future time in an undefined measure. The
idea of Infinity can be applied to space: a street, a town, a country, a
planet, a solar system, a galaxy... or the opposite trip: a hand, a cell,
an atom, an electron, up to the smallest particles. Infinite good and
infinite evil can also be imagined, as well as infinite beauty or infi-
nite ugliness. It should be noticed that it is the Chokhmah conscious-
ness which prevails in this kind of exercises, that is, the conscious-
ness of pure thought or intuition, since such ideas cannot be verbal-
ized. The same happens when trying to imagine the Absolute, or the
idea of Ain Sof, or the universe before Creation, or a number before
zero: the Binah or verbal thought cannot understand such concepts.

Regarding this, one of the most powerful and most difficult-to-

188
use tools a mystic has is the meditation on the Nothing, because,
when a meditator denies himself and considers himself as nothing or
emptiness, his Being can more easily be opened to God and become
receptive to spiritual influences. The Talmud says, a person must

188
“In classical meditation, the most difficult path is undirected meditation. This is
a path where one must totally clear one’s mind of all thought and sensation, wheth-
er physical or spiritual. All that one experiences on this level is absolute nothing-
ness... Undirected meditation [...] is one of the most dangerous methods in classical
meditation and should not be attempted except under the guidance of a master”, A.
Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah, cit. p. 299.

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

“make himself like he does not exist”. For the contemplative, one of
the goals of meditation on the Nothing is to verify, that is, to experi-
ence, by means of contemplation, the illusion of separateness and the
fact that the assumed diversity of forms and modes of individual ex-
istence is but a mere appearance, since the only reality is undivided
and One. That is why it is written: “Hear, O Israel: YHWH, our God,
YHWH is One” (Deut. 6:4). Judah Albotini (1452-1519), recollect-
ing the teachings of Abulafia and Maimonides, explained that the
goal of certain kinds of meditation was to “nullify all their faculties
in order to allow their hidden intellect to emerge”189. The nullifica-
tion of the ego-universe (Nothing) could facilitate the emergence of
the presence of God (All, Infinity).

From the point of view of the meditative practice, the “intuition”

of Ain Sof, which implies experiencing the nothingness of the ‘I’, can
be realized by concentrating on rearranging the letters of the word
“nothing”, since the Hebrew word that means “I”, ani (aleph, nun,
yodh), once permuted, means “nothingness”, ain (aleph, yodh,
nun)190. Some Kabbalists recommend referring to the absolute noth-
ing as “what is seen behind the head”, since there is no sight from
the nape. Another way consists in tirelessly following the thoughts
up to their source or lair, trying to stop the mental flow and become
stabilized in that state empty of thoughts, that is, the Chokhmah con-
sciousness (that is why it is called “nothing”, regarding the conscious
thought or Binah).

This way, the secret of secrets is achieved; man, as a man, is

nothing, because Ain Od Milvado, “There is none else besides Him
[God]” (Deut. 4:35); “the true reality of our existence is Ain Sof, In-
finite, and thus the sense of separate self that we all have, the notion
that ‘you’ and ‘I’ are individuals with souls separate from the rest of

189
Quoted by A. Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah, cit., p. 113.
190
P. Besserman, cit. p. 48

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

the universe, is not ultimately true. The self is a phenomenon, an il-

lusion, a mirage”191.

VI.- THE TRANSMISSION OF THE KABBALAH AND THE

CHRISTIAN KABBALAH

Like in all traditional teachings, the candidate who was intro-

duced to the Kabbalah was required to be bound to a disciple chain
by being accepted by some master. The fact that the initiation into
the Kabbalah was initially reserved for the Jews hindered the diffu-
sion of this tradition among the Gentiles, so the mystical teachings
barely overflowed the familiar transmission from father to son for
centuries. All this made it extraordinarily difficult for the non-Jews
to access the Kabbalah.

A Kabbalah master had several ways to admit a new disciple and

initiate him into the mysteries of his Art, generally depending on the
school he belonged to, as well as on the requirements or qualifica-
tions that were demanded. Some Kabalistic texts (for example, Or
neerab by Moses ben Jacob Cordovero) recount the ethical, intellec-
tual qualities required to be accepted as a disciple, as well as the
suitable age to be initiated into the “Tradition”, usually set “in the
middle stage of life” (Gemarah, Hag. 13 b). The initiation rites to en-
ter the Tradition essentially consisted in the oral, secret transmission
(in the form of whispers) of the name of God from master to disci-
ple. Eleazar of Worms (1176-1238) describes this initiation as fol-
lows: “The name is transmitted only to the reserved –this word can
also be translated as ‘the initiate’– who are not prone to anger, who
are humble and God-fearing, and carry out the commandments of
their Creator. And it is transmitted only over water. Before the mas-
ter teaches it to his pupil, they must both immerse themselves and
bathe in forty measures of flowing water, then put on white garments

191
J. Michaelson, Everything is God, cit., p. 1.

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

and fast on the day of instruction. Then both must stand up to their
ankles in the water, and the master must say a prayer ending with the
words: ‘The voice of God is over the waters! Praised be Thou, O
Lord, who revealest Thy secret to those who fear Thee, He who
knoweth the mysteries’. Then both must turn their eyes toward the
water and recite verses from the Psalms, praising God over the wa-
ters”192. In this initiation rite, the transmission of the Name of God
over the “baptismal” waters tries to associate the idea of new birth
(initiation) with the process of Creation or birth of the Cosmos from
the Breath, Voice and Word of God, who was flapping over the pri-
mal waters. The transmission of a secret, sacred Word, personalized
for each disciple, could be the way other Kabbalah masters accepted
and initiated their disciples (the way it is practiced in other initiatic
traditions, for instance in India); it is known that each one of Luria’s
pupils was transmitted a word or sentence, adapted to his own tem-
perament and capacity, so that he could meditate on it or constantly
recite it as a yichud or “unification” exercise. There is no clear evi-
dence that Luria employed such Word as an initiation mantra, but
that possibility cannot be dismissed.

The Kabbalah has not traditionally been a well-spread doctrine,

not only for the difficulties of the Hebrew language or for being re-
served to those who followed the Jewish religion, but also because,
according to the Gentiles of all times (from Rome to the medieval
and modern Inquisition), the perseverance of the mystic dedicated to
his solitary meditations, to his combinations of numbers and letters,
personified the mistrust of the most unknown, strange aspect of the
Jewish community. This Jewish community, desperate due to centu-
ries of exile and persecution, turned its face to the Kabbalah as a
magical solution by which to sublimate the fears and frustrations of
its people, developing modalities of magical Kabbalah, recreating a
pantheon of angels, demons and superstitions. However, the fact that

192
G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, cit., p. 136.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

the Christians approached the Kabbalah ended up creating a singular

traditional form.

The Christian Kabbalah could be considered to start with the

texts written by converted Jews in Spain at the end of the 13th centu-
ry (Abner of Burgos, Pablo de Heredia, etc.). However, this trend
scarcely succeeded. The development of Christian speculations on
the Kabbalah really started around the circle of the Medici’s Platonic
Academy at Florence. Under the supervision and study of Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), converts such as Raymond
Moncada (Flavius Mithridates) began to translate Kabbalistic texts
into Latin193. This extraordinary diffusion of the Kabbalistic litera-
ture is due to the fact that the Renaissance mystics and philosophers
believed to have discovered in it the original revelation, made by
God to Moses and the prophets, which had been preserved thanks to
some uninterrupted oral and written tradition guarded by the Kabba-
lists. Not only could the philosophy of Pythagoras, Plato or the Or-
phism be better understood with this doctrine, but also some aspects
of the Catholic faith could be confirmed, such as, for instance, the
divinity of Jesus Christ, the dogmas of the Trinity, the Incarnation,
etc. Although the Church refused these ideas, the truth is that the
Kabbalah vigorously broke into the Christian Platonic circles and, in
general, into the European Renaissance intellectual environment.

Continuing the work of Pico della Mirandola, the Christian He-

braist Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522) published the first Kabbalah
texts written by a non-Jew in Latin: De Verbo Mirifico (On the Won-
der-Working Word) in 1494 and De Arte Cabbalistica in 1517. The
work of these two authors moved Paolo Ricci, private doctor of Em-

193
According to Frances Yates, “Christian Kabbalah thus differs basically from
Jewish Kabbalah in its Christian use of Kabalistic techniques and in its amalgama-
tion of Hermetism and Hermetic magic into the system”, in The Occult Philosophy
in the Elizabethan Age, New York, 2001, p. 3. Vid. as well François Secret, Les
Kabbalistes Chrétiens de la Renaissance, Paris, 1964 and G. Scholem, Kabbalah,
cit., pp. 196 ff.

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 MEDITATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION (KABBALAH)

peror Maximilian, to translate Joseph Gikatila’s (1248-1323) Gates

of Light (Shaarei Orah) into Latin in 1516. Gikatila was a Kabbalist
born in Medinaceli (Soria, Spain), disciple of Abulafia, and devel-
oped the meditation technique of the ten names of God associated
with the ten Sephirot. Soon later, Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim
published De occulta philosophia (1531), giving way to the magical-
practical tendency of the Kabbalah. This way, during the first half of
the 16th century, Neoplatonic philosophers, Christian theologians, al-
chemists and astrologers, dazzled by the supposed discovery of an
original biblical tradition or by the expectation to manipulate the na-
ture by means of the power of the Hebrew letters and numbers,
joined a vast hermeneutical activity in order to adapt the Kabbalistic
categories and concepts to fit the Christian dogmatism. For instance,
the first three Sephirot were interpreted in a Trinitarian way, the
Shekhinah or feminine aspect of God was identified with Virgin
Mary, and Jesus Christ with the Primal Man or Adam Kadmon, etc.
Regarding this process, the importance of Cardinal Giles of Viterbo
(1465-1532) or the Franciscan Francesco Giorgi Veneto (1460-
1541), who published De Harmonia Mundi (1525) and Problemata
(1536), must be highlighted. Among the Jesuits, Athanasius Kircher
and his Oedipus Aegyptiacus doubtlessly stood out. The sources of
the Kabbalah were now translated from Hebrew into Latin. Christian
mystic Guillaume Postel (1510-1581) published the Sefer Yetzirah
(1552) and the Zohar even before they were printed in Hebrew for
the first time in Mantua in 1562.

In this climate, favorable to mystical contemplation and theo-

sophical speculation, Jacob Böhme wrote his theosophical works in-
tegrating different esoteric and mystical currents, as well as they had
been published years before by Heinrich Khunrath in his
Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (1609), which were prolonged
as part of a strong publicistic tendency: Abraham von Franckenberg
(1593-1652), Robert Fludd (1574-1637), Thomas Vaughan (1622-
1666), etc., and which possibly finds its most representative author

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in Georg von Welling and his Opus mago-cabbalisticum (1735).

Christian Knorr von Rosenroth published his Cabbala denudata be-
tween 1677 and 1684. Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614-
1699) published a work with the significant title of Adumbratio
Cabbalae Christianae, which notably influenced the English Platon-
ic circles. Other important works on Judeo-Christian syncretism
were the Traité sur la réintégration des êtres, by Martinès de
Pasqually (1727-1774), disciple of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, or
the Philosophie der Geschichte oder Über die Tradition, by Franz
Joseph Molitor (1779-1861), who already connected with the most
recent tendencies of the 19th and 20th centuries194.

194
I will not resist making a record, even though in a footnote, of one of the mod-
ernist tendencies that, arisen from the Christian Kabbalah, have evolved into the
occultist and spiritist genre or subgenre that has only brought confusion and fraud.
Citing the eminent Professor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem G. Scholem,
“To this category of supreme charlatanism belong the many and widely read books
of Eliphas Levi (actually Alphonse Louis Constant, 1810-1875), Papus (Gérard
Encausse, 1868-1916), and Frater Perdurabo (Aleister Crowley, 1875-1946), all of
whom had an infinitesimal knowledge of Kabbalah that did not prevent them from
drawing freely on their imaginations instead. The comprehensive works of A. E.
Waite (The Holy Kabbalah, 1929), S. Karppe, and P. Vulliaud, on the other hand,
were essentially rather confused compilations made from secondhand sources”, in
Kabbalah, cit. p. 203. A clear, documented denunciation of the frauds of occultism
(which must not be confused with esoterism or with the inner core of every reli-
gious tradition) was made at the beginning of the 20th century by René Guénon in
two of his works: Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion, Hillsdale (NY), 2004
and The Spiritist Fallacy, Hillsdale (NY), 2003, whose reading is vividly recom-
mend to the reader.

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“sōma-sēma [the body is a tomb]”

(Orphic maxim)

Pythagoras was born in 569 BC, in the flourishing island of Sa-

mos. Since Iamblichus stated that Pythagoras195 died at the age of
ninety-nine, it is possible to place this event in 480 BC. Pythagoras’
parents were Mnesarchus, a merchant from Tyre, and Pythais, a na-
tive from Samos. The seafaring of Samos, close to the Cyclades and
the island of Delos, provided young Pythagoras with the possibility
to travel to Asia Minor with his father. During those years, Pythago-
ras received a careful education and learned how to play the lyre,
write poetry, recite Homer, etc. Thanks his father’s family and their
commercial links, he was accepted by the priests to be initiated into
the Phoenician mysteries. Iamblichus confirms that Pythagoras was
initiated into all divine rites at Byblos and Tyre. This did not seem to
be enough for him, so he carried on with his spiritual quest, visiting
the most famous wise men at that time. Amongst them, there were
three who notably influenced Pythagoras: Pherecydes, Thales and

195
Many Greco-Roman writers provide data about Pythagoras. From the Pre-
Hellenistic period: Empedocles, Heraclitus, Ion, Xenophanes, Herodotus, Isocrates
and Plato must be mentioned. From the Hellenistic age (from the end of the 4th
century BC to the 1st century BC), which begins with Aristotle and his work On the
Pythagoreans, several disciples of Plato, such as Speusippus, his successor in
charge of the Academy, talk about Pythagoras, as well as members of it such as
Heraclides Pontus, in addition to different writers such as Callimachus, Hermippus,
Dichaearchus or Pythagoreans like Aristoxenus. Finally, from the 1st century BC
on, when the interest in the Pythagoreans arose in Rome, Plotinus, Nigidius
Figulus, Ovid, Nicomachus, Apollonius, Iamblichus, Diogenes Laertius (author of
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers) and Porphyry (author of a late-3rd-
century biography of Pythagoras) must be highlighted. Regarding Pythagoras’ life
and thought, vid. J. Carcopino, De Pythagore aux Apôtres. Études sur la conver-
sion du monde romain, Paris, 1956; Peter Gorman, Pythagoras: A Life, Boston,
1979; and David Hernández de la Fuente, Vidas de Pitágoras, Girona, 2011.
 JAVIER ALVARADO

his pupil Anaximander. It was during his visits to Thales at Miletus

when young Pythagoras learned the symbolic, metaphysical value of
mathematics and astronomy. It was Thales as well who advised him
to travel to Egypt, as he himself had already done before, in order to
learn more about the mysteries of the universe and the spirit. For his
part, Anaximander taught him the astrological doctrines of the Baby-
lonians and the Assyrians.

In the year 535 BC, Pythagoras travels to Egypt in order to be in-

itiated in the “Houses of Life”. His stay in Egypt is confirmed by his
three most reliable biographers (Diogenes, Porphyry and Iamblich-
us), as well as by other Greek authors such as Strabo196, Plutarch197
and Philostratus198. Isocrates, in one of his speeches entitled Busiris,
28, states that “Pythagoras of Samos... on a visit to Egypt he became
a student of the [Egyptian priests]... and was the first to bring to the
Greeks all philosophy, and more conspicuously than others he seri-
ously interested himself in sacrifices and in ceremonial purity”. Py-
thagoras probably went to Egypt with an introductory letter written
by Polycrates, the tyrant-ruler of Samos, since he had established a
political, economic alliance with the country of the Nile. According
to Porphyry, Pythagoras was refused by several temples due to his
quality of foreigner, until he was finally accepted and initiated in Di-
ospolis. There he had to learn the Egyptian language in order to read
the sacred texts. About this, the Pythagorean Porphyry provides a re-
vealing piece of information, mentioning that, out of the three kinds
of Egyptian writing learned by Pythagoras –epistographic, hiero-
glyphic and symbolic–, the latter was the one he chose as the basis of
his symbolic teaching method. In addition to this, Pythagoras also
transmitted to his school other doctrines and customs practiced at the
Egyptian temples. Pythagoras stayed in Egypt just over ten years
(not twenty, as Iamblichus stated), until the Persian King Cambyses

196
Strabo XIV, 1.16.
197
Plutarch, Is., 10.
198
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, viii, 15 ff.

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 THE PYTHAGOREAN MAXIMS

II conquered Egypt199 and Pythagoras, as well as hundreds of Egyp-

tians, was enslaved and taken to Babylonia (525 BC). In sum, Py-
thagoras stayed in Egypt “astronomizing and geometrizing, and was
initiated, not in a superficial or casual manner, in all the mysteries of
the Gods, till at length being taken captive by the soldiers of Camby-
ses, he was brought to Babylon. Here he gladly associated with the
Magi, was instructed by them in their venerable knowledge, and
learned from them the most perfect worship of the Gods. Through
their assistance likewise, he arrived at the summit of arithmetic, mu-
sic, and other disciplines”200. It is not known how Pythagoras broke
free in Babylonia. He likely bought his own freedom by asserting his
friendship with Polycrates and his quality of native of Samos, ally of
Persia. Apparently, Pythagoras went back to Samos in 520 BC.

Back in Samos, he founded a school called the Semicircle.

Iamblichus writes about it: “he established a school in the city [Sa-
mos], which is even now called the ‘Semicircle’ of Pythagoras; and
in which the Samians now consult about public affairs, conceiving it
right to investigate things just and advantageous in that place which
he had constructed who paid attention to the welfare of all men. He
also formed a cavern out of the city, adapted to his philosophy, in
which he spent the greatest part both of the day and night; employing
himself in the investigation of [mathematics]”201. Certainly, the
Greek mentality has always had a special sensitivity to subjects re-
garding the political cohabitation and welfare of the city-state, so Py-
thagoras’ philosophical-political concerns fitted well this cultural
horizon. This cannot be said about other practices imported from
Egypt by Pythagoras, like withdrawal to a cave with some fellows,
since it involved a lack of community spirit. However, this with-

199
The Egyptian defeat was modestly influenced by the decision made by Polycra-
tes of Samos to give up his alliance and join the Persian fleet by sending forty ships
that, during the Battle of Pelusium, close to the Nile Delta, captured Heliopolis and
Memphis.
200
Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras (VP), ch. IV.
201
Iamblichus, VP, ch. V.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

drawn way of life practiced by Pythagoras will be invoked by other

later mystical movements as an example worthy to be imitated.
Some writers have legitimized the hermitic life of the Essenes, the
ascetic therapeutai or the Christian monks who dwelled in the caves
and deserts of the Egyptian Thebaid. Of course, Pythagoras just car-
ried on with the way of life he had learned in the Egyptian “Houses
of Life”, the same institutions that likely inspired such an attitude
among the spiritual people from the territories near Palestine or even
Egypt. Thus, from one of the caves in the hills of Samos, Pythagoras
taught his teachings to the Samian youth and at the same time he
preached the habit of silence and withdrawal, compulsory at the
Egyptian temples. This way, Pythagoras clearly set out his decision
to cut all his family ties and profane friends, admitting no kinship but
the one derived from the spiritual brotherhood. This hallmark of his
school meant, for example, refusing to keep any attachment to one’s
personal story. It is to be reminded how, for that very reason, Ploti-
nus refused to reveal his race, who his parents were and where he
had been born. About 518 BC, Pythagoras left Samos because of the
Samians’ incomprehension of the contemplative, asocial way of life
of the Pythagoreans. Iamblichus comments that “he [was] endeav-
ored to introduce the symbolical mode of teaching, in a way perfect-
ly similar to the documents by which he had been instructed in
Egypt; though the Samians did not very much admit this mode of
tuition, and did not adhere to him that according aptitude which was
requisite”202. Pythagoras settled with his school in Crotona, Southern
Italy, creating great expectations. Actually, soon after his arrival, the
city asked him to explain his ideas publicly, fact that led him to pre-
pare four speeches, respectively addressed to the young, the Senate,
the women and the children, which would later circulate as the core
of his moral teachings. In short time, the Pythagorean Brotherhood
became famous for the honesty of its followers, whose heads were
known as the mathēmatikoi, who had no personal belongings, lived
in the school itself, were vegetarians and kept a strict fasting system.
On the contrary, the external circle of the Society was formed by the

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akousmatikoi, who were allowed to keep their own properties, were

not compelled to be vegetarians and lived in their own houses, going
to the Society just during the day. Pythagoras used to say that “every
wood is not proper to make a Hermes”, so a period of “preparation”
(paraskeuē) was necessary, lasting between two and five years, dur-
ing which the novices or auditing students (akoustikoi) were subject
to the rule of absolute silence, with the aim of developing the faculty
of intuition.

The doctrines of the Pythagorean Society spread across other

Italian cities, though they adopted different tendencies depending on
the ideological and spiritual profiles of their leaders. They were also
object of persecution, since they did not submit to the contemporary
political demands and did not grant entrance to powerful people who
tried to legitimize their political programs with the Brotherhood’s
backing. In 460 BC, the Society was even violently persecuted and
several Pythagoreans were murdered. Some of its disciples com-
mented that Pythagoras knew that most philosophers before him had
ended up their days exiled in a foreign land, and that was why he
tried not to provoke the political authorities. However, riots caused
by slander and envy could not be prevented. In fact, during one of
these popular riots instigated by corrupt politicians who had spread
the rumor that the authorities of Crotona had the intention of handing
over a neighboring conquered piece of land to the Pythagoreans, it is
believed that the rowdy multitude set fire to the house where Py-
thagoras and some disciple were, until they all died.

I.- SYMBOLIC AND ACOUSMATIC METHOD

Pythagoras’ followers have transmitted us his teachings in a

fragmentary way. It is known that the candidates for full entrance in-
to the Brotherhood had to pass through a period of initiation of at
least five years, in compulsory, absolute silence. Even once initiated

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into the Society, they were compelled to keep strict secret about all
received practices and doctrines. Their egalitarian beliefs implied the
admission to the Society of either men or women. Even some Py-
thagoreans, such as Plotinus or Porphyry, renounced to have slaves
or servants in coherence with this idea of fraternity. His repugnance
for the old tradition of blood sacrifices is also known. That is why
some Pythagoreans, such as Empedocles of Acragas, used victims
with the shape of animals, made of honey and barley, in order to
comply with certain religious precepts.

The background of Pythagoras’ philosophy is shown by a famous

anecdote recorded by Cicero. During one of his journeys, he visited
the famous Leon of Phlius, an important Hellene ruler; “Pythago-
ras... is reported to have gone to Phlius... and to have discoursed very
learnedly and copiously on certain subjects with Leon, prince of the
Phliasii; and when Leon, admiring his ingenuity and eloquence,
asked him what art he particularly professed, his answer was that he
was acquainted with no art, but that he was a philosopher. Leon, sur-
prised at the novelty of the name, inquired what he meant by the
name of philosopher, and in what philosophers differed from other
men; on which Pythagoras replied that the life of man seemed to him
to resemble those games which were celebrated with the greatest
possible variety of sports and the general concourse of all Greece
[that is, the Olympic Games]. For as in those games there were per-
sons whose object was glory and the honor of a crown, to be attained
by the performance of bodily exercises, so others were led thither by
the gain of buying and selling, and mere views of profit; but there
was likewise one class of persons, and they were by far the best,
whose aim was neither applause nor profit, but who came merely as
spectators through curiosity, to observe what was done, and to see in
what manner things were carried on there. And thus, said he, we
come from another life and nature unto this one, just as men come
out of some other city, to some much frequented mart; some being
slaves to glory, others to money; and there are some few who, taking

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no account of anything else, earnestly look into the nature of things;

and these men call themselves lovers of wisdom, that is, philoso-
phers: and as there it is the most reputable occupation of all to be a
looker-on without making any acquisition, so in life, the contemplat-
ing things, and acquainting one’s self with them, greatly exceeds
every other pursuit of life”202.

According to Iamblichus (VP ch. XXIII), Pythagoras learned in

Egypt the system to formulate abstract truths in a symbolic way by
means of short, enigmatic sentences or statements that stimulate the
hearer’s (acousmaticus) ability of reflection. Pythagoras called such
statements akousmata, oral instructions with a cryptic form: “The
philosophy of the acusmatici consists in akousmata unaccompanied
with demonstrations and a reasoning process; because it merely or-
ders a thing to be done in a certain way”203. Iamblichus mentions as
an example the following akousma: “What are the islands of the
Blessed? The sun and moon”. With this, Pythagoras encompassed
the whole traditional conception about the ascension of the soul
passing through the planetary spheres (the symbolic ones, not the as-
tronomical ones) until going through the solar gate and access the is-
lands of the Blessed.

Let us show a selection of akousmata followed by some sugges-

tions of interpretation, given that, although some of them were al-
ready explained in antiquity, most of them still continue being enig-
matic204.

- “Enter not into a temple negligently...”, being the Temple, ac-

cording to the Pythagoreans, the heart or inner world of the spirit,
this akousma refers to the attention, free of images and thoughts,
needed to attain a contemplative state.

202
Cicero, Tusc., V, 3, 8.
203
Iamblichus, VP, ch. XVIII
204
Most of them are found in Life of Pythagoras, by Iamblichus and Porphyry.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

- “... nor in short adore carelessly, nor even though you should
stand at the very doors themselves”. It refers to the suitable attitude
of him who is willing to know himself by means of the contempla-
tive practice, but approaches just for curiosity, or remains attached to
the different circumstances of the profane world and does not devote
himself to contemplation in an unconditional way.

- “Sacrifice and adore unshod”. In order to enter and move

around the soul, it is necessary to go barefoot. Feet, symbolizing the
lower part of man, that is, the seat of instincts and emotions, must be
bared and uncovered. In order to approach the Divinity and remain
in His presence, it is necessary to remove all clothing or carnal, psy-
chical and mental attachments. A similar symbolism compelled Mo-
ses to take off his shoes and detach himself from himself in order to
appear before God.

- “Disbelieve nothing wonderful concerning the gods, nor con-

cerning divine dogmas”. That is to say, no concept, metaphor, sym-
bol, definition or form of language is enough to describe the spiritual
world, because a human explanation may never account for divine
realities.

- “It is not proper to walk in the public ways; walk in unfrequent-

ed paths”. The symbolism of the wide way and the narrow way is
explicit here. The public way, via lata or wide way is the one walked
by most men who live attached to their wishes and lack the predispo-
sition needed to devote themselves to the world of the spirit. The
path is the narrow way or via arcta (narrow door) of detachment, ef-
fort, perseverance, self-inquiry, self-assessment, etc.

- “Abstain from sepia; for it belongs to the terrestrial gods”. As

the sepia defends itself by rendering the water turbid spreading its
black ink, it symbolizes those people who do not sincerely, honestly
try to smooth over their imperfections, but they just conceal them.

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 THE PYTHAGOREAN MAXIMS

- “Dig not fire with a sword”. This maxim refers to the impossi-
bility to understand (the sword) the igneous world of the gods in a
rational way. That is why, from a metaphysical point of view, it
points out the futility of trying to dig, divide or look for duality
where there is just the oneness of the flame. From a more practical
point of view, it recommends not talking about what is not under-
stood and not trivializing igneous things.

- “Speak not about [God and the divine] concerns without light”.
This one goes even further than the last aphorism. It refers here not
only to the audacity of those who speak without the “light” of intel-
lectual understanding, but above all to the fraud or chatterbox who
dares opine about those matters without having seen the spiritual
“light”. In order to talk about the contemplation of God, it is neces-
sary to have experienced that “vision of the light” before, or to ap-
proach someone who can witness it.

- “When the winds blows, worship its echo”. This is one of the
many sailor’s metaphors that old Pythagoras liked so much. It might
mean that, when the favor of the gods rewards you with their glim-
mer, a moment of lucidity or an episode of inspiration, you must take
advantage of that favorable instant until the last moment.

There is another group of aphorisms that teach the importance of

living in the present by means of the detachment from the past and
the future:

- “Wear not the image of God in a ring”. A precept against idola-

try, but also a reminder that, by knocking on the “solar gate” with
one’s “knuckles”, one can only enter when there is no preconceived
idea (that is, no thought) about the Divinity.

- “Do not step above the beam of the balance”, that is, do not be
avaricious, nor alter the balance of things.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

- “Do not sit upon a wheat measure”, that is, do not live without
working. But it also means that one should not hoard or be worried
about tomorrow. Do not try to appropriate anything. Live each day’s
fullness, in the now, without projecting any ambition onto a nonex-
istent future. Each moment you live thinking of an imagined future is
a moment stolen to the present by the mind, which does not re-
nounces to appropriate the whole time.

- “Do not eat the heart”. Do not let misfortune sadden you. Or,
even better, to access the most intimate core of man, his spirit or
heart, it is necessary to be completely free of intentions. If you want
to contemplate the gods, that is, to enter the heart, refuse all personal
vanity, ambition or gluttony. “Do not eat the heart” means that you
must not approach the spiritual things with worldly desires because,
otherwise, your eaten heart will end up among the excrements.

- “Do not let a swallow or a turtle dove nest under your roof”.
Clement of Alexandria explained that the swallow and the turtle
dove, due to their strident, cooing sound and because they feed on
the musical insects that symbolize the mystics, represent the rough,
superficial life. The true philosopher must refuse the excess of activi-
ty, which leads to an unstoppable inner restlessness, as well as the
false peace of those who are settled in the comfort and the cooing of
worldly pleasures.

- “When you rise out of bed, wrap the coverlet together, and con-
found the print of your body”. Bed means here either dream or this
life, which is like a dream, and the night is the past that is not worth
remembering. The suggestion not to leave the print of one’s body is
an appeal to remove all satisfaction from this world’s things, espe-
cially our memories and the rest of images that strengthen the feeling
of identification with a body-mind.

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 THE PYTHAGOREAN MAXIMS

- “sōma-sēma”, that is, the body (sōma) is like a “tomb” (sēma)

where the soul is imprisoned. The initiatic teaching has the aim of
giving the acceptance of this fact back to man as a previous step to
the “understanding” that this situation can be transcended by means
of an ecstatic or out-of-body “experience”.

- “Traveling from home, look not back, for the furies go back
with you”. This Pythagorean saying refers to the suitable attitude of
the spiritual seeker. Not looking back means giving up family ties
and the rest of personal ties that block the access to a new life of
spiritual fraternity. But from the point of view of the contemplative
practice, it points out the need to pay attention to the present instant
and not to get distracted by the memories and daydreams of the
mind.

- “Do not urinate against the Sun”. In its moral sense, this prov-
erb is similar to our popular saying: “if you spit in the air, it lands in
your face”, that is, do not offend the gods. From the metaphysical
point of view, it refers to the futility of the thoughts (they are like
urine) as a way to access true contemplation. Not urinating against
the Sun means not throwing thoughts against the Light.

- “Feed the rooster, but sacrifice it not; for it is sacred to the Sun
and to the Moon”. It refers to the Greek custom to sacrifice a cock
after the initiation into the mysteries, but just with a symbolic sense.
The Rooster is here the upper part of the spirit, which is thus capable
of recognizing the light of God the same way the Rooster recognizes
and announces the Sunrise at dawn.

- “Do not sail on land”. He turns to a sailor’s metaphor again as

the art of seeking for the One. Therefore, this aphorism shows the
incompatibility between sailing, that is, philosophizing or contem-
plating, and living at the same time attached to earthly things.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

- “Every geometric shape is a platform”. This maxim, transmitted

by Proclus, expresses the Pythagorean doctrine that it is only worth
studying the geometry that provides each new theorem with aid to
make the soul ascend and to separate it from the sensitive objects, in
order to be used either as development of natural laws or, above all,
as support for meditation.

II.- GEOMETRY AND NUMBER

Pythagoras’ contribution to mathematical sciences has been very

well summarized by Iamblichus. Pythagoras is the heir of a mathe-
matical tradition of Hellene philosophers such as Thales, of the
Egyptians and of the Babylonians or Chaldeans. He was the first to
use mathematics and numbers to express abstract ideas, difficult to
formulate by means of the verbal language. It can actually be talked
about numerical metaphysics or mysticism, since numbers could
make subtle realities easier to understand. Even the gods were repre-
sented with numbers, because they were pure and free from material
changes. The Pythagoreans also maintained that each number had its
own personality, male or female, perfect or imperfect, beautiful or
ugly205, and even a certain power of transformation should they be

205
A perfect number has the property to be equal to the sum of its divisors, exclud-
ing itself. For instance, the number 28 has 5 divisors apart from itself:
1+2+4+7+14=28. The number 6 is perfect as well. The divisors of 6, other than it-
self, are 1, 2 and 3, whose addition is also 6. Besides 6 and 28, the number 496 can
be mentioned, since it is perfect as well. Triangular numbers are the sum of the se-
ries of natural numbers up to a certain one: For example, 28=1+2+3+4+5+6+7.
That is why it is said that 28 is a triangular number with 7 dots on a side, formulat-
ed 28(7). Likewise, 36(8), 45(9), 120(15), 153(17), 276(23) or 666(36). Regarding
square and pentagonal numbers, the concept is similar to that of the triangular
ones. 1, 4, 9, 16, 25... are square numbers, whereas 1, 5, 12, 22, 35... are pentago-
nal. Amicable numbers are two different numbers so related that the sum of the
proper divisors of each is equal to the other number; for example 12 and 16, 22 and
284. As these pages do not have the aim of explaining the contributions of Pythag-
oras and his school in matters of geometry and mathematics, if the reader is inter-
ested in it, the works by Thomas L. Heath and Scott Loomis may be consulted. Py-
thagoras also realized that there was a close relationship between musical harmony
and numerical harmony. In effect, when a stretched cord is played, a note is ob-

196
 THE PYTHAGOREAN MAXIMS

suitably used. Deep down, the same thaumaturgic power has been at-
tributed to certain symbols, especially to the acted symbols or rites.
Pythagoreans such as Iamblichus believed that “... The perfect effi-
cacy of ineffable works, which are divinely performed in a way sur-
passing all intelligence, and the power of inexplicable symbols,
which are known only to the Gods, impart theurgic union. Hence, we
do not perform these things through intellectual perception; since, if
this were the case, the intellectual energy of them would be imparted
by us; neither of which is true. For when we do not energize intellec-
tually, the symbols themselves perform by themselves their proper
work, and the ineffable power of the Gods itself knows, by itself, its
own images... Hence, neither are divine causes precedaneously
called into energy by our intellections; but it is requisite to consider
these, and all the best dispositions of the soul, and also the purity
pertaining to us, as certain concauses; the things which properly ex-
cite the divine will being divine symbols themselves” (On the mys-
teries II. 11).

There were also mystical numbers such as the golden number,

supposedly discovered by Pythagoras and after which the School
took its symbol to let its members recognize each other. It was a 5-
pointed star inscribed inside a pentagon or pentalpha (five alphas). In
effect, the relationship between a diagonal and a side of a pentagon
was called golden ratio. This golden quotient or ratio, known by the
Greek letter “phi”, is φ = 1.61803398875...

Proclus, about 450 AD, wrote that Pythagoras was also the dis-
coverer of the theory of irrational numbers, based on the problem of
the square root of 2, that is, the calculation of the diagonal of a
square. √ 2 was an immeasurable number that could not be defined
by a specific amount of figures. And, if the diagonal and the side of

tained, but when the length of that cord is reduced to the half, that is, at a scale of
1:2, an eighth is obtained. Should the length be 3:4, a fourth is obtained, and
should it be 2:3, a fifth will be the result.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

the square were immeasurable, such diagonal lines were infinitely

divisible, as well as the small dots that are part of those lines. There-
fore, having such dots no dimension, it could be deduced that there
was “something” in the universe that eluded human understanding
because it lacked a quantifiable existence.

The Pythagoreans explained the origin and genesis of the cosmos

in a numerical style. They even conceived the previous state, which
they assimilated to the concept zero that Iamblichus and Plotinus
(Ennead III, 8, 10, 28) called mēden. From that mathematical inter-
pretation of the Theophany, the number One was identified with
Apollo, whose etymology was meant to be derived from a-polos
(without duality), or with Zeus too, as father of the gods and creator
of the cosmos. The number One was described as the “ship” that
plied the space, keeping the powers of existence inside of it. It was
also called sigē or silence, because in the “region” of the One, be-
yond the cosmos, the absolute silence rules. It was defined as well
with the name of hysplēx, a barrier used as starting gate in chariot
races. Since the circuit was not straight, but circular and cyclic, with
that name did they mean that the One put the cosmic periods into
operation around the post or kampter. The Greek name of the One or
monad is monas, which was meant by the Pythagoreans to be de-
rived from the word menein, “to stay”, because all cosmic cycles
were finally resolved in the One, which always stays. The One is
good because it lacks duality. It was also called “friend” or alter ego
because, as the symbol of the essential oneness of the whole creation
and the world of the spirit, it also represented the highest essence of
the human being. Empedocles actually defined the state of the cos-
mos as a perfect unit with the term philia, “friendship”. The Pythag-
oreans assumed the traditional doctrine that there is a universal truth
revealed or inspired by God to many wise men.

Iamblichus, as examples of men inspired by the One, mentions

Orpheus, Plato, Apollonius of Tyana and Plotinus. Thanks to Aristo-

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 THE PYTHAGOREAN MAXIMS

tle, it is also known that the Pythagoreans believed that Pythagoras

himself was the reincarnation of Apollo Hyperboreus206, the One or
mystical monad. That may explain why Pythagoras, probably fol-
lowing the Babylonian theology learned from the wise Zaratas, con-
sidered the number two, or Dyad, as a kakos daimon or “evil spirit”.
He also deduced from this the idea of the cosmos as a tension be-
tween the forces of good and evil or a combat between the infinite
and the finite. The Dyad was identified with the goddess Rhea,
mother of the gods, because the Greek verb rhein means “to flow”. If
the One is the spirit that stays, the Dyad is the continuously flowing
matter. According to the late Pythagoreanism, the Dyad-Rhea was
assimilated to the Egyptian goddess Isis due to the phonetic similari-
ty of her name and the Greek word isos, “equal”, since duality im-
plies symmetry or equality of two simple units. It was also called dye
or “suffering”, because duality was the origin of opposing pairs and,
therefore, the cause of psychological, mental and moral oscillations
of man.

Finally, the Dyad was also known as tolma, “audacity” or “te-

merity”, since its nature transgresses the pure unity of the One. As
well, Plotinus summed up the original separation from the One in the
audacity. The tetraktys was the series of the first four whole num-
bers, equal to ten. It was also on the sacred four that the Pythagore-
ans took the oath of their Society: “By that pure, holy, four lettered
name on high, nature’s eternal fountain and supply, the parent of all
souls that living be, by him, with faith find oath, I swear to you”.
The sum of the numerical series up to four is ten (1+2+3+4=10). In
this sense, ten was the best number because it contained the first four
figures in itself.

206
The Hyperboreans, literally the inhabitants of beyond the north wind, were a
mystical people who lived in the northernmost side of the uninhabited world. It is
one of the many ways to refer to the Beyond.

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III.- MEDITATION AMONG THE PYTHAGOREANS

It is known that Pythagoras divided his disciples into candidates

or acousmatici, and esoterics or geometricians: “He ordered those
who came to him to observe a quinquennial silence, in order that he
might experimentally know how they were affected as to conti-
nence207 of speech, the subjugation of the tongue being the most dif-
ficult of all victories [...] Those who appeared to be worthy to partic-
ipate of his dogmas... after the quinquennial silence, they became es-
oterics, and both heard and saw Pythagoras himself within the veil”
(Iamblichus, VP, XVII, 72). However, his esoteric teachings are
hardly known because the prohibition to spread them was strictly ob-
served. The symbolic method by which his teachings were explained
contributed to it. Even the most extreme or exoteric teachings, since
they were also expressed with maxims, were composed “in such a
way as not to be easily apprehended by those that read them”, be-
cause the Pythagoreans “adopted that taciturnity which was instruct-
ed by Pythagoras as a law, in concealing after an arcane mode, di-
vine mysteries from the uninitiated, and obscuring their writings and
conferences with each other” (Iamblichus, VP, XXIII, 104).

He taught the “contemplative science” by means of the absti-

nence from “certain foods, which are hostile to the reasoning power,
and impede its genuine energies. He likewise enjoined them conti-
nence of speech, and perfect silence, exercising them for many years
in the subjugation of the tongue, and in a strenuous and assiduous
investigation and resumption of the most difficult theorems”
(Iamblichus, VP, XVI, 68-69).

Given that the body (sōma) is like a tomb or prison (sēma) where
the soul lives chained to the matter, that is, to the rule of the senses,
the Pythagorean method proposes the reunification by means of a

207
Regarding this, vid. O. Casel, De philosophorum graecorum silentio mystico,
Berlin, 1967.

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 THE PYTHAGOREAN MAXIMS

process of detachment or purification by which the soul will recover

a certain state of harmony, homogeneity or resonance with the spir-
itual world, since only equals can know each other. Such a reso-
nance is only possible when man resigns himself and unifies his
senses and powers. How? Almost nothing is known about the Py-
thagorean ascetic and meditative practices. Thanks to some mentions
recorded by Numenius and Plotinus, it is known that a certain kind
of concentration and meditation exercises were practiced by means
of the repetition of monosyllables to which a magical or thaumatur-
gic nature was attributed, especially the Greek words on (essence or
existence) and hen (Unit). Thanks to the Orphic legacy, it is known
that the Pythagoreans practiced meditation with the rhythm of certain
breathing exercises. Regarding Pythagoras and other wise men who
attained trance or visions, Porphyry comments that he was “a man of
extraordinary wisdom who had been able to acquire a great wealth of
prapides; he was powerful in all sorts of works. For when he made a
great effort in his prapides, he easily saw all of the things that had
happened in the lifetimes of ten or twenty men” (VP, XXX). Being
“lungs” the most probable translation for prapides, such breathing
techniques employed by Pythagoras and other wise men such as
Parmenides, Epimenides, etc. would likely consist in a way to con-
trol the thought by concentrating on breathing. This technique has
accurately208 been related to the Eastern breathing technique known
as prāṇāyāma or concentration on the hara (center of the abdomen).

One of the strangest, most significant concepts of the Pythagore-

an meditative practices that sought the mystical union with Apollo
(the One) is the one called “Leucadian leap”. Leucadia is a Greek is-
land, consecrated to Apollo, with formidable cliffs (from which po-
etess Sappho took her leap). By turning to that symbol, the Pythago-
reans were referring to a crucial moment within the meditative prac-
tice when, all senses fully disconnected and all powers resigned, fi-

208
This is the case of Francisco Díez de Velasco, Los caminos de la muerte, Va-
lladolid, 1995, p. 117.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

nally one must fully dedicate oneself, cede all control and complete-
ly devote oneself to meditation. It is the liminal instant previous to
the ecstasy or “vision” of the One, that is, of the essential oneness of
the Being. In some cases, the psycho-mental resistance to cede con-
trol may momentarily cause breathing difficulties, tachycardia, faint
(not loss of consciousness), etc., all of which is represented by the
fear to take the leap. The spiritual seeker who wishes to contemplate
the “vision” of the One must be ready, when the moment come, to
take his final leap in order to reaffirm his will to transcend the body
ties and the servitude of the matter209. The last obstacle of the con-
templative, the cliff, has the same meaning as the Dragon that
watches the access to the treasure deposited in the Hells or guards
the captive Lady (Orpheus’ descent into the Hells in order to rescue
Eurydice is to be reminded), or the hero who must get through clash-
ing rocks (symplegades). It is a final test in which the candidate must
risk his life. The “Leucadian leap”, in sum, is the last test in the spir-
itual itinerary of those who aspire to defeat themselves.

What became of the Pythagoreans? It is known that Pythagoras’

doctrines continued being taught at Plato’s ancient school210, the
Athenian Academy and also in Alexandria until well into the 6th cen-
tury AD. The universalist attitude of the Neopythagoreanism may
have been personified by the Alexandrian philosopher Numenius of
Apamea (120-180), one of Plotinus’ masters, who stated: “we must
go back in time and relate [this matter] to the teachings of Pythago-
ras, and then call on people of renown, showing their initiations,
dogmas and foundations inasmuch as they agree with Plato, and all
those the Brahmans, the Jews, the Magi and Egyptians have estab-
lished” (Plotinus via Eusebius, P.E. 9.7.1). It was precisely in Alex-

209
Some Pythagoreans, as well as the followers of other ancient mysteric cults,
employed certain hallucinogens in order to facilitate ecstasy. However, it must be
specified that such an intake only makes it easier to go out of the body, but, by it-
self, it does not cause the vision of the One.
210
Even it has been suggested that the so-called Neoplatonists were Pythagoreans
who interpreted Plato as if he were another Pythagorean.

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 THE PYTHAGOREAN MAXIMS

andria where the Neopythagoreanism reached its highest splendor.

The letters and the famous Golden verses attributed to Pythagoras
were published there. And even though Emperor Justinian closed the
Academy and forbid the pagan philosophy to be taught anymore,
forcing many Neoplatonists to go into exile in Persia, soon after that,
the change in the Byzantine politics towards a higher tolerance al-
lowed the Pythagoreanism, disguised as Neoplatonism, to be freely
taught at least during 1,200 years, since the 6th century BC until the
6th century AD and even much longer after that. There might be rea-
sons to suspect that many of the wise men who escaped into Italy
(and other regions of Europe) during the decline and final fall of
Constantinople at the hands of the Turks in 1453 were Pythagoreans
and Neoplatonists, who therefore contributed to the rise of Renais-
sance.

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 PURIFICATION OF THOUGHT
ACCORDING TO PLATO

“There does not exist, nor will there ever exist,

any treatise of mine dealing therewith. For it does
not at all admit of verbal expression like other stud-
ies, but, as a result of continued application to the
subject itself and communion therewith, it is
brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light
that is kindled” (Plato, Letters VII, 341c).
“... the purification consists... in separating, so
far as possible, the soul from the body and teaching
the soul the habit of collecting and bringing itself
together from all parts of the body” (Plato, Phaedo
67c).

Plato was born either in Athens or in Aegina between 429 and

427 BC and died in Athens in 348/347. His name is not known, alt-
hough he might have been named after his grandfather, Aristocles.
His nickname “Plato” (the Broad) was probably due to his physical
appearance. The family of his father, Ariston, traced his descent
from the last king of Athens, Codrus, fact that makes it easier to un-
derstand that Plato’s family tried to give him a good future dedicated
to the political career. However, the disaster and excess of the Pelo-
ponnesian War, Critias’ tyranny and the violent reaction that took
place after him, disappointed young Plato and drove him to look for
answers in philosophy. It is known that, when he was about twenty
years old, he regularly visited Socrates’ group and that he, following
the example of other philosophers, made some journeys. Some
sources mention that he, following the example of Pythagoras and
other philosophers, visited Egypt, the Cyrenaica, Crete and Delos.
 JAVIER ALVARADO

There are documented evidences that he was in Sicily and that, after
coming back to Athens about 387, founded the Academy near Colo-
nus.

Almost nothing is known about young Plato’s philosophical edu-

cation. Some of his modern biographers maintain that he, as well as
Pythagoras and most philosophers and spiritual elites of that age,
was initiated into the Greek Mysteries.

I.- THE INITIATION OF SOCRATES AND PLATO INTO

THE GREEK MYSTERIES

In effect, in one of his dialogues, Plato, speaking for Socrates,

explains the teachings he received from the priestess Diotima of
Mantinea. According to her, the “lover” of the somatic beauty must
learn to become separate from his love for one body in order to fall
in love with the Beauty itself and the importance of pure Love in the
quest for the Beauty as a quality of the Being; “a man finds it truly
worth while to live, as he contemplates absolute beauty. This, when
once beheld, will outshine your gold and your vesture...”. It is then
when Diotima reveals that “In these love-matters even you, Socrates,
might haply be initiated, but I doubt if you could approach the rites
and revelations to which these, for the properly instructed, are mere-
ly the avenue. However I will speak of them, and will not stint my
best endeavors; only you on your part must try your best to follow”
(Symposium, 209e-211c). The circumstance that Socrates does not
speak on his own behalf, but that he explains the mysteric doctrine
taught by Diotima of Mantinea, has been interpreted by modern spe-
cialists as a deliberated acknowledgement of the esoteric aspect of
Platonic philosophy, argument which would be supported by the last
gesture of Socrates before drinking the hemlock: to sacrifice a roost-
er to the god Asclepius, as it was custom among the newly initiates;
“we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Pay it and do not neglect it”

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 PURIFICATION OF THOUGHT ACCORDING TO PLATO

(Phaedo, 118a). With this, not only did Socrates try to explain that
physical death was but a change of state of his immortal Being, but
he also explicitly recognized the spiritual value of certain mysteric
cults that still survived despite the naturalistic, materialistic degener-
ation that flooded the Greek religion and philosophy.

Did Socrates and Plato take the contemplative method perhaps

from the traditional mysteric teachings represented by Diotima? It is
certainly true that the via mystica showed by Plato, which culminates
in an ineffable experience described as “vision”, is similar to other
Greek mysteric itineraries that require a progressive detachment
from the sensory world. Even Plato, in his Letter VII, recognizes the
existence of the esoteric part of his teachings, which was never to be
written. Therefore, when Plato makes Socrates spiritually depend on
Diotima, did he mean that his master had been initiated into some of
the Greek mysteric traditions? What is more, did not that mean that
even Plato had also been initiated into them himself and experienced
the contemplative vision that, as Diotima confirmed, was the final
goal of the mystēs? “The Symposium is a mystical work and Plato
could only write a work like that as a clairvoyant inspired by the di-
vinity, not as a philosopher; a fact that explains why Socrates does
not express these thoughts on his own behalf, but as revelations of
the clairvoyant Diotima of Mantinea”211. The fact that the Platonic
philosophy and the Socratic method were not incompatible with the
initiation into the Greek mysteries, but rather something complemen-
tary or, if preferred, of another order of magnitudes, is demonstrated
by the numerous members of the Academy who kept their ties with
such cults. A significant example will be mentioned: when Proclus
(410-485) entered the Academy, by then ruled by Syrianus, it was
the daughter of the latter, Asclepigenia, priestess of the Eleusian
cults, who initiated Proclus into the mysteries. Since his conversion,
Proclus will defend the compatibility of both teachings, stating that a
philosopher “should be the hierophant of the whole world”.

211
H. M. Wolff, Plato: Der Kampf ums Sein, Bern, 1975, p. 137.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

II.- THE QUEST FOR GOD (THE BEING)

All men seek their happiness, even though that yearning, desire
or feeling may be expressed in different ways. In some moment of
their lives, certain people think about the meaning of existence and
their destiny beyond death. They embark then on a spiritual quest,
trying to achieve an intellectual explanation that may solve and, so to
speak, unify all their doubts. Some desire to be recognized for their
merits, most try to achieve happiness by hoarding experiences,
wealth and all sort of material objects. But there is also a certain kind
of people who are moved to the philosophical quest by a feeling of
dissatisfaction that they identify as nostalgia for the original Oneness
or for the presence of God. The reason why some men may consider
embarking on that spiritual quest, according to Plato, is that “all men
seek the reality”, thus that innate reminiscence drives the soul to
seek its origin, God, the Being, Peace, the Truth or whatever “the
good... which every soul pursues and for [whose] sake does all that it
does” (Republic, VI, 505d-e) may be called. Anyway, Peace, the
Truth, etc. are but the most easily accessible attributes or qualities of
the Being, that is, the philosophical way to refer to God (Republic,
VI, 509b-c). Plato defines that state of dissatisfaction or vital anxiety
that leads to the quest for transcendence as metastrophē, term that
could be translated as conversion in the sense of “turn” or “change of
direction”. This word comes from two Greek terms: metanoia
“change of thought” or “regret” and epistrophē “change of orienta-
tion”. Therefore, conversion implies the return to an ideal, perfect
state (epistrophē) once one realizes one’s mistake. The philosopher
who gets rid of the chains in the cavern of the sensory world is a
convert because he has decided to move his attention away from the
sensitive objects and look at the light; that is, he has turned his look
in a good direction (Republic, VII, 518c). In sum, the spiritual seek-
ers will consider a theoretical “understanding” of existence and,
above all, acquiring some sort of glimpse or “experience” of the sa-

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 PURIFICATION OF THOUGHT ACCORDING TO PLATO

cred that provides them with the certainty of their transcendence (the
immortality of the soul212) or makes them attain some kind of mo-
mentary contact with the Divinity (in the classical world, the myster-
ic institutions had theoretically that goal).

III.- SOUL’S REMINISCENCES BEFORE ITS BIRTH INTO

THIS WORLD

Which exit can be found by a man who seeks the Good or happi-
ness? Plato points out that the “exit” of man is the same as his “en-
trance”, because there is “something” within the human being that
belongs to or has a close affinity with the celestial or spiritual world.
That affinity or resonance appears under the shape of the nostalgia,
reminiscence or “memory” of the state in which the soul was before
its birth, at that time when it, exempt from all evil, enjoyed the su-
preme bliss, “being ourselves pure and not entombed in this which
we carry about with us and call the body”. However, as “since we
came to earth we have found it (the Beauty) shining most clearly
through the clearest of our senses” (Phaedrus, 250a-c), then it is
clear that all men have an innate sense to perceive the beauty of the
objects in a spontaneous way. For instance, if a group of people,
when watching several geometric shapes, agree on which ones are
the most harmonic, elegant ones, then will not that mean that the
human being possesses an innate sense to recognize certain stand-
ards of beauty?

Following Pythagoras, Plato turns to geometry and mathematics,

for they are the only sciences with a universal value (Meno, 86e-87;
Republic, VII, 536d-537a; Laws, VII, 819b). Among the different
examples expounded by Plato in order to demonstrate this statement,
one of the most significant ones is the dialogue between Socrates

212
Regarding the difference between spirit and soul, what was said in the introduc-
tory note of this work is still valid.

209
 JAVIER ALVARADO

and a slave whom he helps discover that a square drawn on the diag-
onal of a base square is twice as large as that square213. Nevertheless,
“without anyone having taught him [this theorem]... he will under-
stand, recovering the knowledge out of himself” (Meno, 85d). This
would also imply that, as well as that “law” or geometric principle
was already in the slave in a virtual way, so every man would carry
other innate principles, essences (ousia) or intelligible ideas (eidos),
within him (Phaedo, 102a). The discovery and refresh of such innate
essences precisely constitute the aim of philosophy.

In the discovery of these innate ideas lies the “Socratic” dialogue.

The importance of such method does not lie in what is spoken, but in
who speaks. Going back to the last example, the least important
thing is the discovery of a geometric theorem; what is important is
the fact that the interlocutor understands that everything is already
within him. Socrates has no intention of teaching “anything” to his
interlocutors because the only thing he affirms is that he knows noth-
ing.

However, Socrates harasses his interlocutors with questions to

help them recognize themselves and understand what they are by na-
ture, although they may have forgotten it. The Delphic precept
Gnōthi seauton (“Know thyself”) means, in its authentic sense, to re-
cover the consciousness of our divinity: “I did not keep quiet, but
neglecting what most men care for: money-making and property,
and military offices, and public speaking, and the various offices and
plots and parties that come up in the state... I tried to persuade each
of you to care for what he is and his own perfection in goodness and
wisdom rather than for any of his belongings” (Apology, 36b-c).

213
As the size of the diagonal is determined by an “irrational” number (alogos),
this example is used by Plato to explain the immeasurable nature of certain subtle
realities (Laws, VII, 819d-820d).

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 PURIFICATION OF THOUGHT ACCORDING TO PLATO

IV.- DOES OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE EXIST?

Certainly, all knowledge that aspires to be scientific must be ob-

jective: “what I know is what I am aware of”. However, insofar as it
is experienced by me, it is still subjective; for example, “the sweet-
ness, which comes from the wine and pervades it, passes over and
makes the wine both to be and to seem sweet to the tongue... But
when it gets hold of me in illness... in the tongue the sensation or
perception of bitterness, and in the wine a bitterness that is engen-
dered there and passes over into the other” (Theaetetus, 159d-e).
Therefore, “if a man says anything is, he must say it is to or of or in
relation to something, and similarly if he says it becomes” (The-
aetetus, 160b). Thus, if the perceptions or experiences that come
from the senses are inaccurate and deceptive because they are sub-
ject to changes or to the becoming, if the knowledge we interpret by
means of the senses cannot provide us with an accurate idea or un-
derstanding of reality, in sum, if there is no objective knowledge of
the reality that comes from the subject, how can we know the reali-
ty? Indeed, how can we achieve a knowledge, deserving that name,
which may be pure enough to let the soul or the Being have a
glimpse or experience?

Regarding this, Plato finds out that the body senses and the ordi-
nary thought are not enough to walk a path of purification that cul-
minates in the contemplation of God. Firstly, how can we know the
Being? According to Plato, the Being is the Cause without cause,
what is not born and cannot die, and is not subject to any change, but
always stays, unchanging, identical to itself. “What is that eternal
Being that has no becoming? ... Everything which becomes must of
necessity become owing to some cause; for without a cause it is im-
possible for anything to attain becoming” (Timaeus, 27d-28a).
Therefore, if everything were just becoming, there would be no ref-
erence at all. Nonetheless, if the Being is just absolute, language and
thought are not less impossible, because nothing can be distin-

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guished within the One without parts; because to say that “A is A” is

already to exceed A. Even to say that the Being is “something”
(eternal, permanent, unchanging, etc.) is not less inaccurate, because
that would equal to say that the Being is not the opposite of “eter-
nal”, “permanent”, and that, therefore, it is lacking. To say that the
Being is “everything” implies affirming that the Being is also “noth-
ing”, which is absurd; “[The Being] neither has become nor became
nor was in the past, it has neither become nor is it becoming nor is it
in the present, and it will neither become nor be made to become nor
will it be in the future... Then the Being is not at all. Evidently not”
(Parmenides, 141e). However, ultimately, the least incorrect is to
state that “The Being is”. Nevertheless, if “the One is”, this implies
that the One and the Being are two, so another thing is born: multi-
plicity: “then the being of one will exist, but will not be identical
with one, for if it were identical with one, it would not be the being
of one, nor would one partake of it” (Parmenides, 142b).

On one hand, any thing is being or non-being; if it is non-being,

the non-being is already something, which would be paradoxical. On
the other hand, even if the non-being is admitted, “it is impossible
rightly to utter or to say or to think of non-being without any attrib-
ute, but it is a thing inconceivable, inexpressible, unspeakable, irra-
tional” (Sophist, 238c). Consequently, no matter how many times we
turn this reasoning over in our minds, up to which extent does not
this demonstrate the inability of human language to define the es-
sence of the Divinity? And, even once admitted such inability, it is
still paradoxical that “What can be thought is also that why there is
thought, since without the Being, in which it is explained, you would
not find the thinking”. Even though some form of knowledge about
the Divinity or some sort of mystical, unitive “experience” of the Be-
ing were possible, would not it be unrecognizable, being such
knowledge incommunicable? (Parmenides, 132b). Plato employs
numerous and exhausting reasonings in order to convince the reader
that the understanding of God and of the transcendence of the soul

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 PURIFICATION OF THOUGHT ACCORDING TO PLATO

can be achieved, if accepted that, being both of them (which are

strictly but one in their essential Oneness) related to each other be-
yond mind’s understanding, the least inaccurate that can be said
about it is that the Being is the Being. The Cause without cause, the
Only One God, the Being is “what is”; “our soul before it entered in-
to the body existed just as the very essence which is called what is”
(Phaedo, 92d).

Did the seeker get to a dead end? What should he do then? It is

logical that the only possible way starts from distrusting his senses,
“removing himself, so far as possible, from eyes and ears, and, in a
word, from his whole body, because he feels that its companionship
disturbs his soul and hinders it from attaining truth and wisdom”
(Phaedo, 66a). The identification with and attachment to his body is
the main obstacle for a philosopher who aspires to develop his con-
templative life: “So long as we have the body, and the soul is con-
taminated by such an evil, we shall never attain completely what we
desire, that is, the truth” (Phaedo, 66b). The vision through the body
senses is imperfect and needed of means, involving a subject, an ob-
ject and the action of knowing. The vision of the Being is pure, uni-
tive and immediate because there is neither subject, nor object, nor
action: “And this way, freeing ourselves from the foolishness of the
body and being pure, we shall, I think, be with the pure and shall
know of ourselves all that is pure” (Phaedo, 67a). Therefore, “while
we live, we shall, I think, be nearest to knowledge when we avoid,
so far as possible, intercourse and communion with the body... and
are not filled with its nature, but keep ourselves pure from it until
God himself sets us free” (Phaedo, 67a).

Consequently, according to Plato, the soul “thinks best when

none of these things troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, nor pain
nor any pleasure, but it is, so far as possible, alone by itself, and
takes leave of the body, and avoiding, so far as it can, all association

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or contact with the body, reaches out toward the reality (the Being)”
(Phaedo, 65c).

V.- THE KNOWLEDGE OF REALITY THROUGH CON-

TEMPLATION

The Platonic Dialogue in which the author lets us more clearly

glimpse his theory and practice of contemplation is the Phaedo. It
must be said that this work is about the immortality of the soul and
about philosophy as a preparation for the physical death, using as its
backbone argument Socrates’ sentence of death that forced him to
drink the hemlock, falsely accused of corrupting the youth with his
ideas. However, behind that first level of the Platonic discourse, an-
other deeper, subtler textual register is hidden, in which he deals
with the most esoteric, innermost teachings of the Academy. Never-
theless, as those teachings were not to be written or published, the
text confines itself to showing a highly formalist description of the
contemplative method without going deeper into the most substantial
aspects: “The greatest safeguard is to avoid writing and to learn by
heart... For this reason I myself have never yet written anything on
these subjects” (Letters, II, 314b). Even so, a thorough reading of his
work may let us discover what the spiritual itinerary of the divine
Plato and his initiated academics was.

As mentioned before, the Platonists, following the Pythagoreans,

distrusted the ability of the body senses to capture the essence of the
Being. They felt the same disdain for the bodily world, which they
considered to have an illusory, deceptive nature.

Plato intends to demonstrate that the body and its senses not only
do not help us attain wisdom, but that they are even an obstacle to
doing it. Every time the soul tries to attain the truth, it is deceived by
the body (Phaedo, 65a), whereas, on the contrary, it “thinks best

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when none of these things troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, nor
pain nor any pleasure, but it is, so far as possible, alone by itself, and
takes leave of the body, and avoiding, so far as it can, all association
or contact with the body, reaches out toward the reality” (Phaedo,
65c), thus if we want to know the truth “absolutely, we must be free
from the body and must behold the actual realities with the eye of the
soul alone” (Phaedo, 66d-e).

Taking back a word game inherited from Orphism and Pythago-

reanism, they affirmed that the body (sōma) was a sēma, that is, a
“tomb” or prison for the soul (Republic, VII, beginning). They also
defended the need to “leave” this world in order to find the true Life.
In several passages, Plato compares the worldly existence with a
dream (Cratylus, 439c). That imperfect way to see the world is simi-
lar to that of him who remains in the underwater depth and looks at
the sky through all the liquid that blurs his vision (Phaedo, 109c-e).
It is necessary to get out of the water in order to recover our pure vi-
sion. The world can come to be like a hell (Gorgias, 523a ff.) or like
the Orphic quagmire (Phaedo, 69c; Republic, II, 363d). And, above
all, the world is like a cavern where man is chained since his child-
hood, fascinated by the game of shadows that an external light pro-
jects on the bottom of the cavern; “Picture men dwelling in a sort of
subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its en-
tire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered
from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot, able to look
forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads.
Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a dis-
tance behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above
them a road along which a low wall has been built, as the exhibitors
of puppet-shows have partitions before the men themselves, above
which they show the puppets” (Republic, VII, 514a-b). As these men
have never seen another thing in their lives except for the shadows
projected by the light, they do not understand or conceive another
way of existence different from the one of the shadows. The mission

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of philosophy consists in freeing them from their chains, getting

them out of their ignorance, that is, from the cavern, so that they may
see the sunlight. At the beginning, the mere understanding of their
situation would make it easier for them to look at the shadows, but,
after that, they would dedicate all their efforts to get out of the cav-
ern and directly contemplate the Light. That is the Socratic enlight-
enment: the death to the world of darkness and the birth into the true
light, that of the soul.

Nevertheless, against the opinion of most current researchers, I

think that, when Plato talks about the Sunlight as the goal of philos-
ophy, he is not referring to the Light of rational understanding, but to
a very different Light that, besides, encompasses and transcends the
former. It is about the inner Light of him who, having purified his
thought, achieves the “contemplative vision” (the Hindu Samādhi or
the Christian “beatific vision”).

What happens when he who has gotten out of the cavern decides,
after that, to return to it in order to warn his former captive fellows
about the deception? Some of those fellows will wake up from their
dream, but many others will mock his ideas, branding them as vi-
sionary. Recalling the “battle with the giants” described by Hesiod in
his Theogony, Plato speaks ironically about these discussions be-
tween materialists and idealists, describing the former as “sons of the
Earth”, because they only understand what they can touch and han-
dle (Sophist, 246a).

In another passage, he turns to the metaphor of the auriga to ex-

plain the fight for the control of the “earthly” tendencies that hinder
the necessary purification of thought that leads to contemplation. In
daily life, as well as in the meditative practice, the candidate is con-
stantly struck by all kind of thoughts that prevents him from being
suitably concentrated on himself. The candidate’s daily life is, thus,
an unceasing fight against the daily mirages, so if he does not make

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an effort to maintain the proper constant concentration during the

first stages, he will end up being trampled at the quagmire of the
world. The perceptions from the senses and the thoughts are like
runaway horses that need a good rider who rides them. At the begin-
ning of the meditative practice, the soul is “troubled by the horses
and hardly beholding the realities; and another sometimes rises and
sometimes sinks, and, because its horses are unruly, it sees some
things and fails to see others.

The other souls follow after, all yearning for the upper region but
unable to reach it, and are carried round beneath, trampling upon and
colliding with one another, each striving to pass its neighbor. So
there is the greatest confusion and sweat of rivalry, wherein many
are lamed, and many wings are broken through the incompetence of
the drivers; and after much toil they all go away without gaining a
view of Reality” (Phaedrus, 248a).

VI.- METHOD TO PURIFY THE THOUGHT

This being the state of things, Plato introduces an enormous di-

lemma: Given that the separation from the body takes place only af-
ter the biological death, “one of two things must follow: either [wis-
dom] cannot be acquired at all or only when we are dead, for then
the soul will be by itself”, freed from the body-mind prison (Phaedo,
66e-67a).

However, Plato points out a third option that he defines as the

method of the purification of thought and that he declares it was tak-
en up again from a tradition “which has been mentioned long ago”,
which consists “in separating, so far as possible, the soul from the
body and teaching the soul the habit of collecting and bringing itself
together from all parts of the body, and living, so far as it can, both
now and hereafter, alone by itself, freed from the body as from fet-

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ters” (Phaedo, 67c-d). In another moment, he insists that “those men

who established the mysteries were not unenlightened, but in reality
had a hidden meaning when they said long ago that” purification by
means of initiation was a good for man (Phaedo, 69c).

This third option is what Plato, speaking for Socrates, defines as

death in life or philosophical death214. Since the philosophers aspire
to wisdom and this is completely attained only by untying the soul
from the body, all momentary, partial separation attained in this life
by means of the purification of thought would be like an advance of
the beyond. From this, it is deduced that philosophizing is a sort of
preparation for death.

Macrobius, in his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, states,

“Plato acknowledged two deaths in a man... Man dies when the soul
leaves the body215 in accordance with the laws of nature; he is also
said to die when the soul, still residing in his body, spurns all bodily
allurements under the guidance of philosophy, and frees itself from
the tempting devices of the lusts and all the other passions. This is
the death which, as we pointed out above, proceeds from the second
type of those virtues which befit only philosophers” (1.18.5-6). In ef-
fect, Socrates points out that “the true philosophers practice dying”,
considering it not something to “be frightened [of] and troubled”
about (Phaedo, 67e), but something deeply happy, for it consists in
an anticipated experience of the life that awaits us in the Beyond.

214
From the context of the Platonic Dialogue, it is deduced that the “philosophical
death” was a rectified version of the “initiatic death”, dramatized in the Greek mys-
teries, which had fallen into a certain disrepute.
215
Regarding physical death, Macrobius adds that Plato “forbade forcing, inducing
or provoking it, and taught that it is necessary to wait for the nature to ply its
role...” [1.13.11]. Such a clear condemnation of suicide is justified because we are
a property of the gods (Phaedo, 62b-c). It only remains to wait until the numerical
destiny of the bodily human existence is fulfilled: “It is actually certain that the
souls associate with the bodies according to a relation based on certain numbers.
While those numbers last, the body remains animated; when they are missing, that
arcane force in which the association consisted is dissolved. That is why the wisest
prophet: I will fulfill the number and be given back to the darkness” (Virgil, Aene-
id, VI, 545).

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 PURIFICATION OF THOUGHT ACCORDING TO PLATO

In another moment, Plato specifies one of the characteristics of

such philosophical death. Practicing philosophy implies preparing
oneself for the death of individuality, because contemplation, as a
goal of philosophy, is essentially a vision that transcends individuali-
ty and places itself in universality and objectivity. It consists in the
nullification of the subject as an entity separate from the world and
in continuous fight for hoarding and appropriating objects. When the
subject-object dual relationship is transcended, another form of
knowledge takes over, overflowing the ordinary borders. It is the
immediate or contemplative knowledge.

Contemplation actually implies passing from a vision dominated

by individuality to a vision ruled by the universality of pure thought.
Therefore, a life based on individual emotions and thoughts is an
imperfect and even mean form of existence if compared with the
contemplative life, because “nothing can be more contrary than such
pettiness to the quality of a soul that is ever to seek integrity and uni-
versality in all things human and divine... Do you think that a spirit
habituated to thoughts of grandeur and the contemplation of all time
and all existence can deem this life of man a thing of great concern?
(Republic, VI, 486a).

Let us return to the initial question: how to get rid of the body?
Plato unequivocally answers: by means of the purification of
thought. Such a purification consists in “that which is called cour-
age... and that which is commonly called self-restraint, which con-
sists in not being excited by the passions and in being superior to
them and acting in a seemly way” (Phaedo, 68c), since, as well as
after the biological death takes place a separation from the body,
during the posthumous journey of the soul “by the River of Indiffer-
ence (Ameles), whose waters no vessel can contain” (Republic, X,
621a), the philosophical death (equivalent to the initiatic death of
the mysteric rites) takes place as soon as we practice the detachment

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and indifference of the sensible objects. Nevertheless, that purifica-

tion of thought also requires a very specific meditative practice by
which the thought may concentrate on itself, unified or free from all
distraction. This state is momentarily216 induced by the power of the
Intellect during those meditative practices whose aim is to discon-
nect the senses as a previous step to experience the Oneness: “The
colorless, formless, and intangible truly existing essence, with which
all true knowledge is concerned, holds this region and is visible only
to the intellect, the pilot of the soul... In the revolution it beholds ab-
solute justice, temperance, and knowledge, not such knowledge as
has a beginning and varies as it is associated with one or another of
the things we call realities, but that which abides in the real eternal
absolute” (Phaedrus, 247c-e).

Therefore, the purification of thought, according to Socrates and

Plato, involves: 1st, a process of self-restraint or detachment from all
what is earthly, which facilitates the resignation of the senses so that
the soul may “withdraw from these”. And 2nd, a method of concen-
tration of the thought on itself by means of which the soul must “col-
lect and concentrate itself within itself, and to trust nothing except it-
self and its own abstract thought of abstract existence” (Phaedo, 83a-
b). This way, the meditation is purer if one “approaches each thing,
so far as possible, with the reason alone, not introducing sight into
his reasoning nor dragging in any of the other senses along with his
thinking, but... employs pure, absolute reason in his attempt to search
out the pure, absolute essence of things, and... removes himself, so
far as possible, from eyes and ears, and, in a word, from his whole
body, because he feels that its companionship disturbs the soul and
hinders it from attaining truth and wisdom” (Phaedo, 65e-66a).

216
In the expedition against Potidaea, Socrates remained “concentrated on his
thoughts” a whole day (Symposium, 220c). Plato seems to point out that Socrates
entered a deep contemplative state, equivalent to the mystical rapture. Marinus of
Neapolis, in the biography of the Pythagorean and Neoplatonist Proclus (Proclus
or On Happiness), comments that the latter “strongly dedicated himself to medita-
tion”.

220
 PURIFICATION OF THOUGHT ACCORDING TO PLATO

Finally, all this consists, ultimately, “in separating, so far as pos-

sible, the soul from the body and teaching the soul the habit of col-
lecting and bringing itself together from all parts of the body”
(Phaedo, 67c). Therefore, here is then synthesized the method to pu-
rify the thought that culminates in contemplation:

- to release the soul from its attachment to the body,

- to move soul’s attention away from all the parts of the body,
- to concentrate and collect itself.

Porphyry summarized the Platonic contemplative tradition even

more when he divided it into two exercises (meletai): to move the
thought away from all what is mortal and sensible, and dedicate one-
self to the meditation on the Intellect (On Abstinence, 1.30).

What does thinking oneself consist in?

When Plato and the members of his Academy refer to the facul-
ties and activities of the Intellect as the pilot of the Soul, they are re-
ferring not only to the reflective, rational or thinking activity. From
the point of view of the contemplation of the Being, they are ulti-
mately referring to a certain faculty that is higher than any other one
and that transcends the individual thought. Proclus defined this fac-
ulty, higher than the Understanding, as the flower of the being,
thanks to which the ecstasy and the knowledge of the One could be
achieved by means of a direct experience. This is the faculty that en-
ables a direct knowledge of Reality because it transcends or over-
flows the apparent consistence or individuality of the objects. The
subject comprehends, encompasses and knows everything in every-
thing or, if mystical terms are preferred, Nothing in Nothing, because
there is no subject that knows any object, since the subject is the ob-
ject, that is, the subject is the Everything-Nothing. That is why the
Platonic method does not allow thinking about objects during the au-

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thentic contemplation because the One, the Being, is not accessible

by means of this form of thought or any of the senses217.

Could it be more specified what kind of process of purification of

thought Plato refers to when he recommends the contemplative to re-
linquish his sensory perceptions? Certainly, when the meditator
gives up all sensory information, he ends up remaining at the mercy
of his own mental flow. This is an apparently incontrollable situa-
tion, for the direct experience seems to demonstrate that it is impos-
sible to calm down or remove the stream of thoughts. Even the mere
fact of trying seems to strengthen them, thus all our tries seem to be
headed to fall in that authentic quagmire Orphism talked about,
made of mental inertia. Nonetheless, how something so chaotic as
the stream of thoughts can give way to contemplation? Plato clarifies
that, in this situation, after the meditator “removes himself, so far as
possible, from eyes and ears, and, in a word, from his whole body,
because he feels that its companionship disturbs the soul and hinders
it from attaining truth and wisdom”, the way to make the detachment
from the thoughts culminate, that is, achieve what Plato himself de-
nominated pure thought, lies in concentrating on the thought itself as
“pure, dragging with it nothing... gathered itself into itself alone”
(Phaedo, 80e). That is, the mystical or unitive vision seems to in-
volve, in a first moment, a subject who knows the subject himself as
an object. However, this action of a subject knowing himself or
thinking of himself is not ultimately a true action, because the au-
thentic contemplation is not the action of thinking, but a different,
higher form of direct knowledge that could be described as intuitive.
Plato defined the pure thought as a supraindividual state in which the
subject, by thinking of himself, castles and exhausts himself as a
subject and as an object. By thinking of himself with such a constant,
sustained concentration, the subject, transformed into the object of

217
Vid. Pierre Courcelle, “Tradition néoplatonicienne et tradition chrétienne de la
‘region de dissemblance’”, in Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du
Moyen Âge, 32 (1957), pp. 5-33.

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 PURIFICATION OF THOUGHT ACCORDING TO PLATO

his own attention, ends up becoming dissolved and transcended, giv-

ing way to a higher form of unitive or non-dual knowledge: the pure
or contemplative knowledge. Only there true peace and happiness
can be found, because there is no subject who claims any action or
the ownership or authorship of anything. A direct knowledge or vi-
sion of the Being takes place there, free from the attachments and
from the intervention of the body and its senses. It is “the delight of
knowing the truth and the reality” (Republic, IX, 581e), that is, of
knowing not by means of the sensory organs, but thanks to a direct,
immediate knowledge that implies the absence, dissolution or
“death” of the subject as an individual entity. It is, ultimately, the
“good death” of him who has embraced the philosophical life. That
is why only a philosopher can enjoy “the pleasure that the contem-
plation of the Being yields” (Republic, IX, 582c).

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“[in order to contemplate], we must turn the

consciousness inward and hold it to attention there”
(Plotinus, Enneads V, 1, 12, 12).

Plotinus was born in 204 AD in the Egyptian city of Lycopolis,

currently Assiut. At an early age, it is known that he frequented the
Neoplatonic circles of Alexandria as a disciple of Ammonius
Sacccas (175-242). According to his biographers, the education re-
ceived by Plotinus at Ammonius’ school, influenced by the Buddhist
and Hindu tendencies, and in general by the Eastern doctrines that
circulated through Alexandria on behalf of the traveling shākyas218,
awakened in him “a vivid desire to experience the ascetic practices
of Persian and Indian philosophies”. For this reason, in 242, when he
was already thirty-eight years old, he joined the entourage of Emper-
or Marcus Antonius Gordian III in his expedition against Persia. In
243, the Roman troops managed to reconquer this lost province, but
Gordian died the following spring and Plotinus had to escape to An-
tioch. Later, he settled in Rome and founded a philosophical school
whose influence reached even Gallus’ imperial court.

During his whole life, Plotinus was an example of asceticism,

celibacy and generous dedication to his disciples, so helpful with all
of them that “he was able to live at once within himself and for oth-
ers”219. A man of delicate manners, calm and affable, he always de-
fended frugality of food and sleep as one of the many means to dis-
cipline the mind and prepare it to face the spiritual path. His mystical
experiences had led him to a so strong certainty about the inferiority

218
As it is deduced from the evident kinship of some of his ideas with the Upani-
shads; Cf. É. Brehier and M. Gandillac, La sagesse de Plotin, Paris, 1952, pp.
XVIII ff.
219
Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus 8, 19.
 JAVIER ALVARADO

and evanescence of human life that, several times, he declared him-

self ashamed of being imprisoned in his body. The last words of Plo-
tinus were dedicated to Eustachius, his doctor and disciple: “I am
striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the
All”220.

The most important characteristic of his teachings is that they all

are only and exclusively the consequence and reflection of his ecstat-
ic or mystical experiences and that their aim is to explain those states
and to teach his disciples how to achieve them. One of his biog-
raphers and pupils, Porphyry, assures that, during the years that he
lived with him, he witnessed at least four ecstasies of his master:
“Sleeplessly alert... pure of soul, ever striving towards the divine
which he loved with all his being... And this is why to Plotinus, God-
like and lifting himself often, by the ways of meditation and by the
methods Plato teaches in the Symposium, to the first and all-
transcendent God, that God appeared, the God who has neither shape
nor form but sits enthroned above the intellectual principle and all
the intellectual sphere... For the term, the one end, of his life was... to
approach to the God over all: and four times, during the period I
passed with him, he achieved this term, by no mere latent fitness but
by the ineffable art”221. Therefore, his metaphysics are not a thought
system but a “seen” or contemplated system. However, as Plotinus
himself explains, only “after” leaving the contemplative trance can a
reflection about the mystical “pleasure”, its effects and “what has
been seen” be made, and only then can it be affirmed that such an
experience is valid and may be reproduced (Enneads V, 3, 17, 28-
29).

In order to build up his doctrine, Plotinus will make use not only
of his Neoplatonic masters and the Eastern metaphysical doctrines,
but also of certain expressions of the Greek, Eastern and even Egyp-

220
Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus 2, 25-27.
221
Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus, 23, 3-18.

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 THE VISION OF LIGHT ACCORDING TO PLOTINUS

tian mysteric teachings for they were relatively frequently used

among the mysteric or esoteric circles of those times. It has actually
been pointed out “the scarce importance given by Plotinus to the re-
ligion of his time, in his concept of ecstasy and mysticism. He does
not demand animal sacrifices or value magical spells. Nonetheless,
he values the mysteric cults, up to the extent that it has even been
considered that we are maybe dealing with a transposition of the
worship of the mysteries into the field of philosophy”222. Plotinus’
work, the Enneads223, is composed of fifty-four tractates compiled
by Porphyry and grouped in an arbitrary way into six books of nine
sections each. Its influence on Western theology, philosophy and re-
ligious thought has been decisive, since Plotinus’ Neoplatonism was
converted into one of the first sources of Western mysticism, as it
was Christianized by Saint Augustine and the Pseudo-Dionysius224.

I.- MAN EXILED IN THIS WORLD

Taking up again the Platonic discourse, Plotinus explains that the

human soul225 is like a foreigner exiled in this world at the mercy of
a plurality of objects and experiences whose meaning and goal he
does not know. This is because the soul has dived into the sensible
world: “It has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from expressing it-
self now through its intellectual phase, it operates through sense, it is
a captive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul”. (En. IV,
8, 4). In such a state, the “casting of the wings, the enchaining in
body” takes place (En. IV, 8, 4). However, there is a little reminis-
cence of that state, previous to the soul’s fall, which makes it wish to
return to the principle from which it comes and which teaches it that,

222
José Alsina Clota, El neoplatonismo. Síntesis del espiritualismo antiguo,
Barcelona, 1989, p. 65.
223
For the English translation of the Enneads, the classic version as translated by
Stephen MacKenna, London, 1917 has been used.
224
J. Maréchal, Études sur la psychologie des mystiques I, Paris, 1938, p. 427.
225
Regarding the ambiguous usage of the word “soul”, what was said in the intro-
ductory note of this work is still valid.

227
 JAVIER ALVARADO

in this intelligible world, it will only be safe when united with God
(En. IV, 8, 4, 1-6). Otherwise, should man pour himself into the sen-
sible world and move away from the spiritual world, he will know
but ignorance and suffering. This dilemma is not to be easily solved
by the seeker, because, deep down, he wants to be god and keep at
the same time his singularity as a man.

Plotinus turns to the famous mysteric episode of Narcissus’ death

in order to explain how the ‘narcissistic’ soul sinks into the matter
when it confuses its body with the authentic reality, as well as Nar-
cissus drowns in water while trying to reach his own image. In order
to avoid that fatal mirage, the soul must start its escape and move its
eyes away from the quagmire the matter consists in226. In effect,
swept by the pride of his beauty, Narcissus despised all those who
tried to love him227, until one day he approached a fountain to soothe
his thirst and fell in love with his own reflection on the water, fully
convinced that it was another person. Ignoring that he had fallen in
love with himself, considering himself unable to communicate with
whom he loved so much, he died of love at the edge of the fountain.
Although the interpretation of this myth contains many registers,
Plotinus brings it up in order to show the mistake and harm of con-

226
The function of the quagmire in Orphism and Eleusian mysteries is to be re-
minded. The Greek term ὕλη originally meant “forest”, “forest land”, “forest
wood”, “firewood”; that is why ὑλο-τόμος is the lumberjack and afterwards this
word derived into “metal” or “primary matter”. Likewise, the Latin term materia
comes from mater, womb, mother, and materies, wood. Thus, materiatura is car-
pentry, and materiarius is the carpenter or lumberjack. Plotinus uses the term mat-
ter of There in order to refer to the first principle that is beyond the being, as op-
posed to the matter of Here, which is non-being, in the sense of infra-being (En. II,
4, 16, 24-27). The matter of the sensible world is the “eidos of the non-being” (En.
I, 8, 3, 4-5), because it has no consistence or permanence. The soul must walk to
what was before it in order to find the being; otherwise, it will head for what is af-
ter it, the non-being, that is, what is not (εἰς τὸ μὴ ὄν). The similarity between the
Plotinian concept of matter (non-being) and the Hindu Māyā (literally, “what is
not”) is to be pointed out.
227
The version of Narcissus’ myth employed here is the one by Ovid: Metamor-
phoses, III, 339-510, or Photios, Bibliotheca, 186, 24.

228
 THE VISION OF LIGHT ACCORDING TO PLOTINUS

fusing an image, a reflected shadow, with reality, instead of looking

at the highest Eros228.

II.- BUT MAN CAN RETURN

In different passages, Plotinus uses the expression “primordial

happiness” or return to the state “before our birth” (En. VI, 4, 14, 17-
18). Such references to a previous life do not have a chronological
sense, because the idea of “falling” into the matter is based on an on-
tological as well moral conception. From the ontological point of
view, the “reincarnation” into the matter is not a “fall”, and does not
bring with it any corruption because such processes are not ruled by
the human “time” of before and after. In fact, the chronological time
is a logical assumption created by our discursive mind, whereas the
metaphysical “time” of the intelligible or divine world is out of our
understanding. However, there must certainly be a first natural con-
dition, an original state of the Being (equivalent to the Jewish or
Christian Paradise, or the Greek Golden Age) that explains the cur-
rent condition of “fall” or “casting of the wings” that justifies the
need for “purification” and “return”. But it does not imply an indi-
vidual existence prior to birth, but the existence of a previous ideal
supraindividual state. The soul does not move away from itself, nor
does the inferior nature come from anywhere to join the soul (En.
VI, 4, 12-13). In sum, that previous “moment” implies the non-
existence of what “exists” afterwards (this coincides with the Hindu
idea of the universe as an illusion projected by the mind). That is
why Plotinus adds that we were all pure intelligible (En. VI, 4, 14,

228
There is another episode in the Odyssey based on the same argument: whereas
Ulysses (symbol of the pilgrim soul) decided to resume his journey back to Ithaca
(his true fatherland), giving up the sensible pleasures that he enjoyed beside Circe
and Calypso, symbolizing this the return of the soul to the primordial principle
(Odyssey, X, 550-560), the “narcissistic” soul of Elpenor, Ulysses’ youngest com-
panion, succumbs to such charms because he ignores that the body is just an eva-
nescent, temporary reflection of himself.

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19-20), without that diversity contradicting the essential unity of all

the forms of the “Nous”229.

How to return to that state of pureness, grace and happiness prior

to human time? On one hand, Plotinus states that we have that hap-
piness “when we but will” (En. V, 5, 12, 33) because it is a loving at-
traction that brings us the presence of the Good. But, on the other
hand, invoking the Greek and Egyptian mysterical traditions230, he
affirms that that “knowledge” must be reserved to those who have
been initiated into the contemplation, those who in turn are obliged
to prevent that secret from being revealed unless certain qualifica-
tions are not found in the candidates (En. VI, 9, 11, 1-4). Man must
meditate on that mysterious inner force that causes the nostalgia of
the lost unity and the longing for the good. This will lead to the con-
clusion that there is a spiritual “presence” that constitutes the deepest
‘I’, which can be discovered, experienced and finally realized. Ulti-
mately, it is about God Himself who is in us, though the soul is not
aware of the beneficial action of this presence (for instance, En. V, 3,
14; VI, 9, 7). Explained in rational terms, Plotinus would say that the
Soul can access the One or the Good by virtue of the principle of
“the similar through the similar” (En. VI, 9, 11, 32); finally, the One
can be contemplated by means of the supra-intellective level of the
soul.

In order to perceive the One, we need to focus our attention on

our own interior by means of meditation, with the hope to be en-
lightened by the Divinity; “We first invoke God Himself, not in loud
word but in that way of prayer which is always within our power,

229
Saint Augustine was inspired by this idea when stated that, before the creation
of the world, we were at the divine mind, even though that does not implies our
preexistence as individuals before our birth; De div. quaest. LXXXIII, 46, 2 (PL
40, 30); Epist. 14 (PL 4, 33, 80). On the other hand, in Eph. 1:4, Saint Paul also ac-
cepts the idea that “He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the
world...”.

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leaning in soul towards Him by aspiration...” (En. V, 1, 6, 8-11).

Man must previously understand that his true nature is like an irradi-
ation of the original unity, so his apparent projection in the intelligi-
ble world and his radical loneliness (En. VI, 7, 21, 8-10) are but con-
sequences of the identification of the only one being with an illusory
multiplicity. That is to say, he must uncover the mirage of separate-
ness and understand that the apparent multiplicity of the beings, in-
cluding our own assumed individuality, is but an appearance of the
Only One Being. Man’s discursive reason needs to “understand by
what means it has knowledge of the thing it sees and warrant for
what it affirms” (En. V, 3, 6, 22-24). Only with that rational certainty
will man, who is prisoner of multiplicity, be able to find the balance
of his intellectual instability, which will provide him with a “return”
to his original fatherland.

However, after that, the rational understanding must be followed

by the understanding or vision beyond the sensible world, that is, the
metaphysical experience. Plotinus considers that all really metaphys-
ical doctrine must be perceived by contemplation, for this is the only
way to have access to the intelligible, as the experience of his own
and of other mystics confirmed (En. V, 3, 14, 9-10). That is why he
criticizes the intellectuals who dedicate themselves to philosophy
without practicing it because “we seem to desire to be persuaded ra-
ther than to see the truth in the pure intellect”.

Ultimately, Plotinus affirms the supremacy of the knowledge ac-

quired through the contemplative way, for it happens in a special
state in which the “reduction of all souls to one” is felt and which
transforms the consciousness into something higher, once the reason
and the body senses have been calmed down: “The spirit understood
according to its nature and thought of itself. The resting soul handed

230
M. Cochez, “Plotin et les Mystères d’Isis”, in Revue Néo-scolastique de Philo-
sophie (RNPh) 18 (1911), pp. 328-340, commenting on En. VI, 9, 10-11. Also J.-
M. Narbonne, La Métaphysique de Plotin, Vrin, Paris, 1994.

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over its activity to the spirit”. The soul needs to “withdraw into it-
self” (En. I, 6, 8, 1-3) and understand the situation of its own original
existence (En. I, 6, 8, 21). To that end, the consciousness, which is
“dispelled because of the two orders of passion”, must “withdraw to
its own place” (En. I, 2, 5).

III.- THERE ARE NO ATTRIBUTES, THOUGHTS OR OTH-

ERNESS IN GOD

The first paradox of the metaphysical experience comes from the

difficulty to express transcendence. That is why all the mystics state
that contemplation is an experience of an incommunicable nature,
since those who have “seen” cannot explain it, and those who have
not had the joy to experience it by themselves cannot understand it
(En. VI, 9, 11, 1-2). After the vision of the One, “we deal with it, but
we do not state it”231; “we can and do state what it is not, while we
are silent as to what it is” (En. V, 3, 14, 6-7). It is considered that,
with this discourse, Plotinus inaugurated the path of the negative
way, the apophatic mysticism, which will later be prolonged in the
work of Dionysius the Areopagite in the 5th century. As it is assumed
that the One is beyond all definition, it is only possible an apophatic
approach (from Greek apophasis, negative statement) to define what
God “is not”, in contrast to the cataphatic mysticism (or theology),
which states what God is. “We see that this can be no thing among
things but must be prior to all things... [The One] is none of the
things of which it is the source –its nature is that nothing can be af-
firmed of it–, not existence, not essence, not life” (En. III, 8).

According to Plotinus, God is infinite, unique (En. III, 9, 4, 7),

He has given Himself existence, “He was able at once to make all
things and to leave them to their own being. He above” (En. V, 5,

231
Plato, Parmenides, 142a: “Then the one has no name, nor is there any descrip-
tion or knowledge or perception or opinion of it”.

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12, 38-39). The One is none of these things, which means that it is
“no thing among things” (En. III 8, 9, 48-49; V 3, 11, 18), because it
is “prior to all things” (En. III 8, 9, 54) and is “beyond all statement”
(En. V 3, 13, 2; V 4, 2, 39-40). It is present everywhere, fills every-
thing without identifying itself as any thing (En. III 9, 4, 2-6), state-
ment that separates Plotinus’ doctrines from pantheism232. Likewise,
Plotinus states that God is love and, at the same time, object of love
(En. VI, 8, 15, 1). Nevertheless, if “Eros” is the desire of what is not
possessed, God cannot love, but, for God contains everything with-
out being contained, He is at once subject and object of love, which
that is a way to transcend the apparent plurality, solving it into the
oneness of the Being233. That is why “He Himself is that which He
loves... He is what from always He wished and wishes to be” (En.
VI, 8).

Refusing the Aristotelian principle that the thought is the su-

preme reality234, Plotinus uses all his skill to prove that neither is
there thought in God, since that would imply subject-object duality.
God has no need to think about Himself, which does not mean that it
be correct to state that He ignores his own being. To attribute
knowledge to God is as inappropriate for Him as to deny it to him.
Strictly speaking, “knowledge is a unitary thing, but defined: the first
is One, but undefined: a defined One would not be the One... [The
One] without knowledge, [since] a knowing principle has duality”,
but it transcends all thoughts, requires no mediate cognitive process,
because there is no process in God, but a unitive, immediate
knowledge (En. V, 3, 12; III, 9, 7, 1-6). Precisely, when the subject-
object duality disappears, Plotinus explains that there is actually no
thought, but “there is mere conjunction, such a contact, without af-
firmation or comprehension, as would precede knowledge, the Intel-

232
Supporting this, it is to be reminded that the same words regarding God are
found in the LXX version of the Bible (Ecclus. 43:27)
233
This way, Plotinus picks up again the dilemma set out by Plato in his Symposi-
um after Agathon’s intervention.
234
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.1074b.

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lect not yet in being, the impinging agent not percipient” (En. V, 3,
10, 41-44). And, as the One is “prior to thought and movement” and
therefore also prior to human language and knowledge, that explains
that it may be conceptually inexpressible. It is not correct even to say
that God “is” and even less that He “is something” specific (En. VI,
9, 37, 4-9). For all these reasons, Plotinus concludes that God is inef-
fable: “Thus, He is in truth beyond all statements: any affirmation is
of a thing; but all-transcending, resting above even the most august
divine Intelligence, this is the only true description, since it does not
make it a thing among things, nor name it where no name could
identify Him: we can but try to indicate, in our own feeble way,
something concerning Him” (En. V, 3, 13, 1-6).

The metaphysical consequence of this is that the soul itself, in its

state of unity, overflows all thought (En. VI, 7, 35, 42-45), fact that
also implies that it can only be comprehended by transcending the
ordinary thought. Given that the One is beyond Intelligence, it can-
not be apprehended except by that belonging to Intelligence that is
not Intelligence in itself and that is, at the same time, in man’s soul;
the center of the soul. In order to make this supra-intellective or su-
praindividual level be revealed, man needs to be purified, to “cut
away everything” (En. V 3, 17, 38), and to turn all powers inopera-
tive and asleep. Then, isolated from the outside, the center of the
soul will be able to escape alone to the Alone (En. VI 9, 11, 51), re-
ceive alone the Alone (En. VI 7, 34, 7-8) and behold alone the Alone
(En. I 6, 7, 9).

IV.- THE TRIAD URANUS-KRONOS-ZEUS AND THE AS-

CENSION OF THE SOUL

In sum, the central topic of Plotinus, as well as of Neoplatonism,

is the escape and ascension of the soul, the return conceived as an
entrance into oneself. It consists in escaping from the world of here

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towards the world of there in order to return, as Ulysses did, to the

true Fatherland (En. I, 6, 8, 16-21). For that purpose, every man
must go back through the endogenous, triune structure of the soul. In
particular, through the three divine Hypostases latent in man’s soul:
the Soul, the Intelligence and the Good (En. I, 1, 8, 1-10; V, 1, 10, 1-
6). In order to “recover the wings” and be able to ascend, the soul
does not need to go out from itself, since God (through the trinity:
Soul, Intelligence, One-Good) is present within it (En. I, 1 53, 8, 1-
12 and En. V, 1, 10, 1-6). Deep down, Plotinus just proposes a philo-
sophical translation of the three great gods of the Hesiodic Theogo-
ny:

Uranus-One-Good-Father of the gods,

Kronos-Intelligence-Nous,
Zeus-Soul.

Uranus symbolizes the One-Good, due to which he is “King over

a king and over kings, and even more justly called father of gods”
(En. V, 5, 3). This first principle engendered the Intelligence (Nous),
which produces all the beings and intelligible forms that it keeps in-
side of itself in order to prevent them from falling into the matter.
That is why it is “saturated” with its entire offspring, the intelligi-
bles, held under its own protection (En. III, 5, 2, 19-20). In effect,
according to a certain etymology mentioned by Plotinus, Kronos is
the god of “satiation” (koros) and “intelligence” (nous). Once satiat-
ed, that is, when the Being achieves its perfection, it is ready to give
birth to Zeus, as the Intelligence gives birth to the Soul when it
achieves its perfection (En. V, 1, 7, 35-37). According to another et-
ymology that Plotinus uses as well, Kronos (Chronos) is the time
that, after its union to the world or matter (Rhea etymologically
means “to flow”), devours all his “children” except Zeus (Soul of the
world). The marriage between Kronos and Rhea symbolizes the un-
ion between the time and the world from which all things arise. But
the becoming itself, Kronos, devours and destroys everything, except

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that which is immortal, that is, Zeus, as principle of life that repre-
sents the Soul of the world. The third hypostasis, the Soul (Zeus), is
not self-constituted, as its predecessor, just by an act of “audacity”,
but also by a wish of contemplation of the Intelligence. From this cu-
riosity and wish of independence of the particular souls comes the
so-called “casting of the wings” (equivalent to the Fall or expulsion
from the Judeo-Christian Paradise).

How could this hypostatic process that originates the cosmos be

explained? Why have these successive hierophanies taken place?
There is really no mental answer to this question, that is, from the
subject-object point of view. At the most, Plotinus expresses a singu-
lar concept: Kronos (Intelligence-Consciousness) is separated from
the One by audacity; the Intelligence “is a principle which in some
measure has dared secession [from the One]” (En. VI, 9, 5, 29).
Thus, when the divine Nous looks outside, the external objects arise
into existence; when the “particular” Nous thinks about the objects, it
identifies itself and makes itself multiple with them, it turns itself an
object, getting lost in the plurality of the sensible world. These meta-
phors, extracted from the sacred history, try no more (and no less)
than to explain the inexplicable appealing to intuition... It is impossi-
ble to explain it or understand it without living the mystical experi-
ence, because, strictly speaking, there is nothing outside reality that
is not the One. The One is what there is, it is the being that is not, it
is that which, being everything that it is, is none of the things it is.
Outside the One is there nothing, not even thinkable. All the rest: the
“Nous”, the Soul, etc., is but mental recreations that try to explain
the inexplicable.

The same reasoning is taken to its logical conclusion in order to

explain the origin of the soul: “What can it be that has brought the
souls to forget the father, God, and, though members of the Divine
and entirely of that world, to ignore at once themselves and Him?
The evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will, in the en-

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try into the sphere of process, and in the primal differentiation with
the desire for self-ownership. They conceived a pleasure in this free-
dom and largely indulged their own motion; thus they were hurried
down the wrong path, and in the end, drifting further and further,
they came to lose even the thought of their origin in the Divine. A
child wrenched young from home and brought up during many years
at a distance will fail in knowledge of its father and of itself: the
souls, in the same way, no longer discern either the divinity or their
own nature; ignorance of their rank brings self-depreciation” (En. V,
1, 1).

V.- WHAT IS CONTEMPLATION?

The ordinary process of knowledge successively implies a know-

ing subject, an object of knowledge and the action of knowing: “A
knowing principle must handle distinct items: its object must, at the
moment of cognition, contain diversity; otherwise the thing remains
unknown” (En. V, 3, 10, 40-44). On the contrary, contemplation is a
“form of vision”, very different from the discursive thought because
the former happens after the momentary withdrawal of what one be-
lieves one is. That “introversion” leads to a “beyond” that is not
properly an “outside”, but an “inside” (En. VI, 11, 22-24) whose
immediate effect is to nullify or exclude the contingent I; in sum,
subject and object become one. What is remarkable about this cogni-
tive process is that, by remaining in that “vision”, it is discovered
that there is something more than a mere “subject”; the soul “has
seen that presence suddenly manifesting within it, for there is noth-
ing between: here is no longer a duality but a two in one” (En. VI, 7,
34) or, in other words, the soul “becomes that very light... raised to
Godhood or, better, knowing its Godhood” (En. VI, 9, 9, 58). Here is
no knowledge that comes from successive objects or experiences; it
cannot even be affirmed that there is knowledge itself, since there is
no experiencing subject. And, as there is consciousness, but not an

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individual consciousness, it is talked about intellective or “unitive vi-

sion” (because there is an immediate knowledge without a subject-
object relationship), transpersonal consciousness (because the fron-
tiers of individual knowledge are overflown), witnessing and even
“simultaneity” in the cognitive process (because “all in all” is
known).

That is why one of the most important teachings of Plotinus is

that the Being cannot be understood from individuality235, because
the part, as a part, cannot understand the All; “you cease to think of
yourself as under limit but, laying all such determination aside, you
became an All” (En. VI, 5, 12). However, the part, as an All, can ac-
tually attain understanding for every being is a part of the absolute
Good (En. I, 7, 2, 1-4). In order to understand the All, it is necessary
to discover the ‘I’ as a ‘νοῦς’: “To admit [soul’s] knowing God is to
be compelled to admit its self-knowing... for it is itself one of those
given things” (En. V, 3, 7, 1 ff.).

The aim of contemplation is that the soul may identify itself with
the Nous (Superior Intelligence or Consciousness): “the true way is
to become Nous and be, our very selves, what we are to see” (En.
VI, 7, 15, 31-32). The application of this metaphysical principle to
the level of spiritual realization is presented as one of his latest trac-
tates: The knowing hypostases and the transcendent (En. V, 3).
There, Plotinus maintains that the Nous is a unique Consciousness
that knows that it itself knows. And when it thinks about itself, there
is no duality between subject and object of thought in it anymore,
because the thinker, the thought and the action of thinking are identi-
fied as one (En. V, 3, 3, 4-22); “The Divine Intelligence in its menta-
tion thinks itself; the object of the thought is nothing external:

235
Here he just develops the traditional Eastern thought, though. Regarding the re-
lationship between Plotinus’ ideas and Hindu thought, vid. García Bazán, Neopla-
tonismo y Vedanta; H. A. Armstrong, “Plotinus and India”, in The Classical Quar-
terly (CQ) 30 (1936), pp 22-28; G. Dandoy, L’ontologie du Vedanta, Paris, 1932;
P. M. Schuhl, Essai sur la fabulation plotinienne, Paris, 1955.

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Thinker and thought are one; therefore in its thinking and knowing it
possesses itself, observes itself and sees itself not as something un-
conscious but as knowing: in this primal knowing it must include, as
one and the same act, the knowledge of the knowing; and even the
logical distinction mentioned above cannot be made the case of the
Divine” (En. II, 9, 1, 46-52). Therefore, when the Intelligence (Nous)
practices its knowing activity, it is at once subject, object and action.
If it saw a part of itself in other of its parts, there would then be a
part that sees and another part that is seen, that is, plurality of ob-
jects. However, as it is a whole out of similar parts, where the part
that sees is not different from the part seen, when “seeing any given
part of itself as identical with itself, it sees itself by means of itself”
(En. V, 3, 5, 5-6). Strictly speaking, if there is no difference between
“the part that sees” and “the part that is seen”, such division “makes
no sense” and is but a pedagogic resource (En. V, 3, 5, 6-7). Finally,
as the self-knowledge implies a triple identity between the Intelli-
gence that knows, the Intelligence that is known and the action of
knowing, then to know is to know oneself.

With this argument, Plotinus indirectly shows the secrets of the

meditation technique that he taught to his disciples and that he likely
learned from his Eastern “masters”: quiet down all thoughts but to be
aware that one is aware, and remain as long as possible in that state
of self-inquiry.

VI.- HOW TO CONTEMPLATE?

According to Plotinus, in order to achieve the vision of God, first

of all, we must rationally understand what God is. And, in that pro-
cess, the meditator will assume the absolute inability of the ordinary
knowledge. Only this way, the particular mind will give up its arro-
gant requests and, duly disciplined, it will give way to the intellect.
A previous stage of discursive meditation is needed, as well as

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“analogies, abstractions, our understanding of its subsequents, of all

that is derived from it, the upward steps towards it; Purification has it
for goal, so the virtues, all right ordering, ascent within the intellec-
tual, settlement therein, banqueting upon the divine... by these meth-
ods one becomes, to self and to all else” (En. VI, 7, 36, 6-10), that is
to say, a certain ascetic praxis that facilitates the withdrawal of nega-
tive, perturbing habits. “There is the method, which we amply exhib-
it elsewhere, declaring the dishonor of the objects which the soul
holds here in honor; the second teaches or recalls to the soul its race
and worth... How can a man slight himself and run after other
things?” (En. V, 1, 1). This purification or internalization process “is
not possible unless you separate yourself first from the man you are,
and immediately from the psyche, after that from the sensations, the
desires, the anger and other frivolities that make us incline towards
the perishable” (En. VI, 9, 9, 2-5). Ultimately, it is necessary to have
a strong will and an intense longing to know God in order to relin-
quish our love for the life of “here” and concentrate all our attention
on the One (En. VI, 7, 34, 20-21).

By means of certain techniques, Plotinus tries to guide the first

steps of the disciple, showing him several alternatives that make the
initial goal of emptying his thoughts easier: “the seeker is soul and it
must start from a true notion of the nature and quality by which soul
may undertake the search; it must study itself in order to learn
whether it has the faculty for the inquiry, the eye for the object pro-
posed, whether in fact we ought to seek; for if the object is alien the
search must be futile” (En. V, 5, 1). In order to overcome this first
stage, “we must withdraw from all the extern” (En. VI, 9, 7). This
way, it will be possible to “close the eyes and call upon another vi-
sion which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all,
which few turn to use” (En. I, 6, 8, 25). It is necessary to suspend the
sensory activity and the thought because it is impossible to “witness”
even the simplest “form” of the One while the thought is adhered to
specific shapes that make it multiple. The concentration on the One

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causes the passing from the alienation of multiplicity to the external

world: “we must turn the consciousness inward and hold it to atten-
tion there” (En. V, 1, 12, 12). This way, while sustaining such an at-
tention effort that remains turned inward (En. V, 3, 6, 30-31), the
flow of thoughts ends up being stopped, for the subject is converted
into the only one object (En. V, 3, 7, 17). Such an attention must be
stable, sustained and concentrated because, as soon as it stops being
devoted to itself and pays attention to the external objects, that is, to
the thoughts and requirements of the body senses, the implacable
Kronos will take us out of meditation and throw us again to the un-
quietness of the sensible world; “We must turn the consciousness
inward and hold it to attention there. Hoping to hear a desired voice
we let all other pass and are alert for the coming at last of that most
welcome of sounds: so here, we must let the hearings of sense go by,
save for sheer necessity, and keep the soul’s perception bright and
quick to the sounds from above” (En. V, 1, 12).

Plotinus clarifies an important question: “in contemplative vi-

sion, especially when it is vivid, we are not at the time aware of our
own personality; we are in possession of ourselves, but the activity is
towards the object of vision with which the thinker becomes identi-
fied; he has made himself over as matter to be shaped” (En. IV, 4, 2,
3). Therefore, when the subject pays attention to himself as an ob-
ject, that is, when he is aware that he is aware, and remains stead-
fast in that state of concentration, two events happen simultaneously:
thoughts cease and so does the feeling of “I-ness”. Indirectly, Ploti-
nus is revealing with this statement that the contemplation of the One
is not a thought but an absence of thoughts and that, therefore, the
meditator must not confuse the fact of not thinking about the One
with the contemplation of the One.

In short, “The Fatherland to us is There whence we have come,

and There is The Father... This is not a journey for the feet; the feet
bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of coach or ship

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to carry you away. You must close the eyes and call instead upon
another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-
right of all, which few turn to use... To any vision must be brought
an eye adapted to what is to be seen, and having some likeness to it.
Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sunlike, and
never can the soul have vision of the first beauty unless itself be
beautiful” (En. I, 6, 8-9).

VII.- FIRST STEPS IN THE CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE

For the true spiritual seeker, the contemplation of God as the One
is the object of our quest (En. VI, 9, 3, 15). But the spiritual path that
leads to God must be personally walked, because no one can do it for
us. That way may be indicated, showed or suggested, but no teaching
or reading can replace the personal effort that the meditative practice
represents; “In our writing and telling we are but urging towards
Him. Out of discussion we call to vision: to those desiring to see, we
point the path; our teaching is of the road and the traveling; the see-
ing must be the very act of one that has made this choice” (En. VI, 9,
4). Not only is not contemplation the result of any reasoning or
teaching, but neither is it the consequence of any personal effort,
since that would imply the existence of a subject that makes the ef-
fort to obtain an object as a prize; “We must not run after it (the ec-
stasy), but fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for its
appearance, as the eye waits on the rising of the sun, which in its
own time appears above the horizon, out of the ocean, as the poets
say, and gives itself to our sight... This advent, still, is not by expec-
tation: it is coming without approach; the vision is not of something
that must enter but of something present before all else, before the
intellect itself made any movement... No doubt it is wonderful that it
should thus be present without any coming, and that, while it is no-
where, nowhere is it not” (En. V, 5, 8, 6). If, as Plotinus states, “it is
for them (the gods) to come to me, not for me to go to them”

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(Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 10, 33-38), then it is enough to persevere

with humble meekness. That is to say, when achieving such a state
of non-duality, one can just stay in it and await... the rest does not
depend on human effort or will.

Certainly, contemplation is not reached through the thought or

the discursive reason. Actually, when the contemplative state is ac-
cessed, it cannot be described, nor does one even want to, because
thought is then a hindrance. This matter can only be analyzed a pos-
teriori, once this experience has been mentally recalled. Plotinus
warns us about the futility of trying to think during the ecstatic mo-
ment, for the soul forgets even the notion of what it is during con-
templation (En. VI, 7, 34, 16-21), though not losing the awareness of
being (En. V, 8, 11, 23). Even any attempt of individual appropria-
tion of that experience will have the effect of forcing us to get out of
contemplation. It is as if Kronos had regurgitated us. And it is then
when he who has experienced the Light of the One realizes the eva-
nescence of the ordinary knowledge, which, precisely because of
this, is defined by Plotinus as “to be without light”. Those who have
lost the state of contemplation discover the unimportance of the ‘I’
and the radical solitude of a man thrown into the plurality of futile
objects. But the difference is that a man cultivated in contemplation
does not believe himself to be lost in the dominating multiplicity of
the ‘I’ because he has witnessed that there is an oasis even in that de-
sert caused by the loss of the own I, considered as the instinct of ap-
propriation of objects and experiences. He has now experienced that,
by means of the disregard and unidentification of the ‘I’ (body-
mind), the intelligence can go out of itself, dedicate itself (En. VI, 9,
11, 23) and be carried away by the One-Good. The contemplative
stops being an ‘I’ and becomes that light raised to Godhood or, bet-
ter, knows his Godhood (En. VI, 9, 9, 58). This is the true
knowledge about himself: to know his own origin (En. VI, 9, 7, 33-
34).

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The most common obstacle to starting the “inwardness” or turn-

ing the attention inwards is precisely the “alteration” or “alienation”
caused by the habit of focusing or reflecting our attention on external
objects (thoughts, memories, projects, wishes, actions, etc.), config-
uring that peculiar feeling of identity that we define as “I”. Likewise,
the habit of knowing through thought makes us convert it all into
“objects”. Thus, the mind converts God in another object, fact that
just makes us move away from the final goal, because God cannot be
thought. According to Plotinus, “Soul must see in its own way; this
is by coalescence, unification; but in seeking thus to know the Unity
it is prevented by that very unification from recognizing that it has
found; it cannot distinguish itself from the object of this intuition”
(En. VI, 9, 3). Sooner or later, the spiritual seeker will realize that he
is creating a mirage and will refuse to go deeper into contemplation
in order to research. He will understand that he cannot remain una-
ware of this spectacle because the spectacle itself is him. This is
connected to another problem. The contemplative experiences, how-
ever pleasant and beautiful they may be, are but that: experiences.
Therefore, they imply the duality of the subject that experiences and
the object that is experienced. The candidate for contemplation must
refuse all this and remain unaware of all sensory perception, thought
or delight, no matter how spiritual it may seem; “But even there we
are not to remain always, in that Beauty of the multiple; we must
make haste yet higher, above this heaven of ours and even that, leav-
ing all else aside” (En. VI, 7, 16, 1-2). Why should we give up the
delights of contemplation? By means of a great example, Plotinus
explains that, when a palace is visited, it is inevitable that the guest
stops to admire the many beauties that decorate it, but it would be
impolite to keep on looking at them, not paying attention to the own-
er of the palace. This must be the only one who deserves our full at-
tention and is really worth to be contemplated (En. VI, 7, 35, 7-10).

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VIII.- ECSTASY, ENLIGHTENMENT, VISION AND OTHER

CONTEMPLATIVE EXPERIENCES

How to explain what is inexplicable? Plotinus describes the ac-

tion of departing from oneself in several ways. It is described as a
sort of Bacchic warmth, inebriation or delirium (En. VI, 7, 22, 9),
even as a “wound” that causes pleasant stupor. It also causes an
“Eros” loving desire or “fervent desire” to stay in contemplation (En.
VI, 7, 31, 8) because “no weariness overtakes contemplation, which
yet brings no satiety”, since it does not imply an emptiness that must
be filled, but flows from fullness to fullness. It is a stable, constant
“Eros” that is always available and causes no anxiety. It is a fullness
that causes no weariness, because the “Eros” has no limits, since
what is loved is unlimited (En. V, 8, 4, 31-32). But Plotinus also ex-
plains that the language cannot describe something that, by its own
nature, is beyond time and space (ekei). It is an incommunicable ex-
perience, because it cannot be understood until it is realized: “any
that have seen know what I have in mind” (En. VI, 9, 9, 47-48)236.
Plotinus tries to explain his mystical experience under three aspects
that became very famous among later Christian authors: vision, con-
tact and union. The vision of the Light of the One does not take place
by means of thoughts, shapes, external objects or any organ different
from light, but by means of the light itself (En. V 5, 7; V 3, 17, 34-
38); it is a vision without seer-seen duality (En. VI 7, 34, 13-14; VI
9, 11, 4-6). The contact takes place when the center of the soul coin-
cides with the universal Center because, though being two different
centers, they are only one when they unite (En. VI 9, 8, 19-20; 10,
16-18). And the union exists when all otherness is removed (En. VI
9, 8, 29-35).

236
As well, Gregory of Nyssa, in his Life of Moses, states that the spiritual trans-
formation suffered by Moses at the Sinai can only be understood by the “initiates”
(VIII, I).

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After contemplation, the soul accepts its nature as a frontier be-

tween the material world and the spiritual world. Plotinus defines it
as “amphibious” (En. IV, 8, 4, 31-35) because it has the ability to
live in two worlds: the world of men and the world of gods. As Plato
did in his Phaedrus (247a-d), Plotinus describes the contemplative
state, comparing it with “the life of the gods”. It is a world of light
where the individuality is transcended and overflown in an individu-
al dimension. And it is not a collective state because there is no ag-
gregation of parts, but pure homogeneity where “all is transparent...
Every being... contains all within itself, and at the same time sees all
in every other, so that everywhere there is all, and all is all, and each
all, and infinite the glory” (En. V, 8, 4, 4 ff.). All is simultaneously
identical to itself... Supreme Identity.

The Platonic metaphysical principle picked up again by Plotinus,

by virtue of which the whole nature aspires to unity (En. VI, 5, 1,
17-18), finds its true sense in contemplation. When the soul achieves
contemplation, God “suddenly manifests within it, for there is noth-
ing between: here is no longer a duality but a two in one; for, so long
as the presence holds, all distinction fades: it is as lover and beloved
here, in a copy of that union, long to blend” (En. VI, 7, 34, 12 ff.). It
is a unitive vision or, rather, without duality, because “there were not
two: beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed
but a unity apprehended” (En. VI, 9, 11, 4-6). During the moment of
ecstasy, “the soul has now no further awareness of being in body and
will give herself no foreign name, not man, not living being, not be-
ing, not all; any observation of such things falls away; the soul has
neither time nor taste for them; Him it sought and Him it has found
and on Him it looks and not upon itself... suddenly manifesting with-
in it, for there is nothing between: here is no longer a duality but a
two in one...” (En. VI, 7, 34, 16 ff.)237. Once the soul is deprived of

237
This description of the enlightenment as something sudden, which appears on
several occasions (En. V 3, 17, 29; V 5, 7, 34; VI 7, 34, 13; 36, 18-19), coincides
not only with some of Plato’s statements: Symposium 210e 4; Letter VII 341c 7),
but also with the epopteia of the mysteric religions.

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any particular shape, then there is something like a fleeting lightning

(En. VI, 7, 33) and “in this seeing, we neither hold an object nor
trace distinction; there is no two. The man is changed, no longer
himself nor self-belonging; he is merged with the One, sunken into
it, one with it: center coincides with center, for centers of circles,
even here below, are one when they unite” (En. VI, 9, 10). And,
when the distinction between subject and object disappears (En. VI,
9, 10; VI, 9, 7), a different way of “seeing” is recovered (En. VI, 9,
11), a way that implies the highest degree of freedom for the soul,
since there is no desire, thought or knowledge, but just the pure im-
movability of those who have entered inside the temple-soul or the
center of the esseity, the Supreme Identity: “There were not two; be-
holder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a uni-
ty apprehended. The man formed by this mingling with the Supreme
must, if he only remember, carry its image impressed upon him: he
is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any di-
versity; no movement now, no passion, no outlooking desire, one
this ascent is achieved; reasoning is in abeyance and all Intellection
and even, to dare the word, the very self: caught away, filled with
God, he has in perfect stillness attained isolation; all the being
calmed, he turns neither to this side nor to that, not even inwards to
himself; utterly resting he has become very rest. He belongs no long-
er to the order of the beautiful; he has risen beyond beauty; he has
overpassed even the choir of the virtues; he is like one who, having
penetrated the inner sanctuary, leaves the temple images behind him,
though these become once more first objects of regard when he
leaves the holies; for There his converse was not with image, not
with trace, but with the very God in the view of which all the rest is
but of secondary concern” (En. VI, 9, 11, 4-21). Plotinus confesses
that he cannot say anything about this mystical union, so he would
rather keep silent. Anyway, the mystic, “once There, he will barter
for This nothing the universe holds; not though one would make
over the heavens entire to him; than This there is nothing higher,
nothing of more good; above going This there is no passing; all the

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rest however lofty lies on the down-going path” (En. VI, 7, 34, 21-
25).

IX.- THE VISION OF LIGHT AND THE UNION IN THE

NOUS

Plotinus describes ecstasy as the vision of a light. For instance,

he states that, during the contemplative practice, a moment comes
when the soul “puts aside all the learning; disciplined to this pitch,
established in beauty, the quester holds knowledge still of the ground
he rests on, but, suddenly, swept beyond it all by the very crest of the
wave of the Spirit surging beneath, he is lifted and sees, never know-
ing how; the vision floods the eyes with light, but it is not a light
showing some other object, the light is itself the vision” (En. VI, 7,
36, 15-20). “By these methods, one becomes, to self and to all else,
at once seen and seer... we no longer see God as an external; we are
near now, the next is That and it is close at hand, radiant above the
Intellect... The light is itself the vision. No longer is there thing seen
and light to show it, no longer Intellect and object of intellection; this
is the very radiance that brought both Intellect and intellectual object
into being for the later use” (En. VI, 7, 36). Or, in other words, “It is
certainly thus that the spirit, hiding itself from all the outer, with-
drawing to the inmost, seeing nothing, must have its vision, not of
some other light in some other thing but of the light within itself,
unmingled, pure, suddenly gleaming before it (En. V, 5, 7).

Dionysius the Areopagite, as well as Philo or Gregory of Nyssa,

will use the term brilliant darkness238. With this paradoxical expres-
sion, they refer to the witnessing of the Light that is initially per-
ceived as the dark that absorbs it all, since, strictly speaking, there is

238
Gregory of Nyssa, inspired by Philo (On the posterity of Cain..., 5, 14), intro-
duces this term in relation to his commentary on Ex. 24:16-18, describing the
Cloud where Moses enters to meet God at the Sinai as a mystical darkness (cf. The
life of Moses, GNO 39, 3-7; 86, 20-87, 1).

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 THE VISION OF LIGHT ACCORDING TO PLOTINUS

no seeing subject (the soul) or seen object (the Light). God, or the
Light, is neither an object nor a subject and, therefore, cannot be
seen as something external to us. The cornerstone of the traditional
metaphysical doctrines is that the mystic can “see” God when he
transcends the subject-object relationship, and this only happens
when the subject (I) disappears after understanding that the subject
is the object (God). Or, in other words, when he sees Himself (as
God), absolutely exempt from himself (as “I”). And this is possible
because there is “something” in man that is already God and has
never stopped being so. It is precisely in that instant of the eternal
present when “that presence suddenly manifests within him” (En.
VI, 7, 34, 17) and, finally, “the soul possesses what it sought” (En.
V, 3, 17). However, recovering the awareness of that condition that,
strictly speaking, has never been lost (there is just forgetfulness and
ignorance) does not imply that the “I” annihilates himself or remains
unaware, since he sees himself. Rather, it happens that the soul
breaks its identification ties with an individual being and is no longer
aware of itself (parakolouthesis), recovering its supra-conscious na-
ture (synaisthesis). This way, “the soul in its nature loves God and
longs to be at one with Him” (En. VI, 9, 9).

Consequently, the soul of every man can attain a mystical union

with the Nous because there is something common between them,
something that unites them and makes them homogeneous. Accord-
ing to Plotinus, the metaphysical conclusion of all this is unequivo-
cal: all souls are one only Soul that includes the Soul of the world as
well as the individual souls239. But, although all of them come from
the highest Soul, they all are ultimately only one Soul, they all form
one only hypostasis that, though it seems multiple, is one and undi-
vided (En. IV, 1, 19-22; IV, 3, 19, 30-34; V, 1, 2, 34-38). Strictly
speaking, as there is only one subject-object, the multiplicity of the
intelligible world is but virtual. Therefore, souls do not have a will

239
Plotinus tackles this issue in his tractate Are all Souls One? (En. IV, 9) and in
the first book of Problems of the Soul (En. IV, 3, 1-8).

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and a thought of their own. They lack autonomy because they are not
objects. They are, as in the example of Plato’s cavern, mere shadows
or images reflected on the walls by one only light. But they can re-
cover their full, complete autonomy should they leave the cavern of
the sensible world and go out to the Light.

A last question still remains, “but how comes the soul not to keep
that ground? (En. VI, 9, 10, 1). Plotinus thinks about the paradox that
is derived from the “enlightenment” or ecstasy; on one hand, it re-
veals the eternity of the soul, but, on the other hand, man cannot al-
ways stabilize that state. The mystical union, sooner or later, is ob-
scured when the mind returns to its ordinary reflective task, because
the soul is not able to stay that high. Plotinus describes this return to
the profane world as “to unfold again”, that is, to return to the habit-
ual situation of the subject-object dialectical knowledge. But, on the
other hand, once that kind of esseity has been enjoyed, what we are
in the ordinary life does not seem to be tolerable anymore, thus, from
that moment on, while recalling the enlightenment’s joy, life is reor-
iented with the only goal of getting ready for a new contemplation.
This way, the gnostic, definitely stimulated and inspired, resumes the
transformation of the being, with a renewed energy if possible, in or-
der to attain a stable, definitive contemplation.

X.- THE NEOPLATONIC INFLUENCE

Neoplatonism constituted one of the most prolific, spread move-

ments of late antiquity. At the school of Rome, founded by Plotinus,
his disciple Porphyry stood out, as well as Ammonius Saccas, Her-
ennius and Origen did at the school of Alexandria, crossroads of cul-
tures. But there were other important circles such as the school of
Syria, represented by Iamblichus, the school of Athens with Proclus,
Damascius and Simplicius, or the school of Pergamon with Eresius

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 THE VISION OF LIGHT ACCORDING TO PLOTINUS

(Iamblichus’ disciple), Eusebius, Maximus and Julian (unfairly

called the Apostate)...

The Neoplatonic influence on Eastern Christianity was noticea-

ble in the works of Justin, Clement and Origen, but above all, from
the 4th century on, in the school formed by Saint Basil, Saint Gregory
of Nazianzus and Saint Gregory of Nyssa. The works attributed to
Dionysius the Areopagite can be dated back to the 6th century; these
works are so faithful to Plotinus and Proclus that some current re-
searchers have even affirmed that the corpus dionysiacum had the
aim of bringing Christianity and Neoplatonism closer. For its part, in
the Western world, the Neoplatonic thought was prolonged by au-
thors such as Porphyry, Calcidius, Macrobius, Marius Victorinus or
even Saint Augustine, who “reached Christianity through a Neopla-
tonic interpretation”. As well, Boethius and Scotus Eriugena. The
defeat of the iconoclast movement at the II Council of Nicaea caused
an exodus of wise men to the West, which allowed the introduction
of the corpus dionysiacum, as well as a deeper influence of the Neo-
platonic tendencies.

Nevertheless, the great development of Western Neoplatonism

will take place during the Renaissance, due to a new exodus of wise
men to Italy after a constant Turkish pressure on Byzantium that will
culminate in the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Besides the Platonic
Academy of Florence, a distinguished group of authors, who were in
large part inspired by the classical thought in general and by Neopla-
tonism in particular, should be mentioned: Gemistus Pletho, Cardinal
Bessarion, Chryssoloras, the Lascaris, Demetrios Chalkokondyles,
Marsilio Ficino, Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, Giordano
Bruno, etc.

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“This philosophy is great, it is mystical, not a

common thing, nor is it given to every man” (Epic-
tetus, Discourses, III, 21, 17-20).
“Men are disturbed not by the things which
happen, but by the opinions about the things” (Ep-
ictetus, Manual, 5).

Nowadays, any “way to see anything” is considered philosophy

and we actually talk about a political philosophy, a moral philoso-
phy, a philosophy of history and, above all, a history of philosophy,
considered to be a chronicle of the theories of knowledge. The de-
preciation of the word philosophy has led to the appearance of books
about “philosophy of sport”, “philosophy of cooking”, “philosophy
of sex”, etc.

On the contrary, Stoicism240 will always use the concept philoso-

phy in its strictly etymological sense of love or friendship to wisdom.
But, above all, ancient mentality in general and Stoicism in particu-
lar will identify the word philosophy with a praxis. According to the
Stoics241, any theory has no value unless it is a preparation for prac-

240
In order to carry out the composition of these pages, mainly the following
works have been used: Paul Rabbow, Seelenführung. Methodik der Exerzitien in
der Antike, Munich, 1954; Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a way of life, Malden
(MA), 1995. By the mentioned author, also The Inner Citadel, Harvard, 2001; J.
Berraondo, El estoicismo, Barcelona, 1992; E. Elorduy, El estoicismo, Madrid,
1972; Jean-Joël Duhot, Épictète et la sagesse stoïcienne, Paris, 1996.
241
Besides other works and editions that will be mentioned later, the following
ones will be used: Epictetus, Discourses, Enchiridion-Manual, Fragments, Medita-
tions, etc. tr. by George Long, London, 1890. Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations,
tr. by George Long, London, 1862. Seneca, Moral Essays, tr. by John W. Basore,
London, 1928-35 and Moral Epistles, tr. by Richard M. Gummere.
 JAVIER ALVARADO

tice. That is why the quality of authentic philosophy is denied to eve-

ry discourse that navigates exclusively through a merely conceptual
or speculative terrain and does not have a method to carry out an im-
provement of man, since “we should exercise ourselves with facts
and not with mere logical speculations, which leave us, like the man
who has got by heart some paltry handbook on harmony but never
practiced” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers IV,
18). “The carpenter does not come and say: -Hear me talk about the
carpenter’s art; but having undertaken to build a house, he makes it”
(Epictetus, Discourses, III, 21, 4-6). In sum, the study of philosophy
is not a goal itself, but a way of living the human existence.

This pragmatic aspect of Stoicism was precisely what constituted

one of the causes of its enormous attractiveness in the ancient world.
This, together with its tolerance and compatibility with any religious
worship and the Stoic membership of distinguished men such as Ep-
ictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, etc., explains not only the consid-
erable prestige and spreading of Stoicism, but also the fact that it was
one of the few ancient legacies accepted by Christianity. It is true
that the Stoic monotheism has a great influence on this fact, since, as
opposed to the statements of many modern researchers, the Stoics
were neither pantheists nor polytheists.

A certain form of pantheism has been deduced from the Stoic as-
sertion that the divine pneuma is everywhere. However, pantheism is
the belief that God not only is in all things, but also He is all things,
and, on the contrary, according to the Stoics, the things are not God,
but they participate in God, each one depending on its own nature.
Insofar as pantheism exclusively refers to the manifested nature and
denies the transcendence of the Divinity in relation to it, the Stoic
idea itself of one Only divine will that works beyond the Universe is
incompatible with pantheism. And this very idea explains how ab-
surd it is to define those of the porch as polytheists. The whole uni-
verse is brought back to the principle of oneness, which is God, be-

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 THE PRACTICE OF ATTENTION AMONG THE STOICS

ing the gods mere fantasies invented by poets or, at the most, person-
ifications or allegories of the qualities or attributes of the only one
God. This peculiar conception of the Stoic monotheism or henothe-
ism is precisely what made it more attractive to the first Fathers of
the Church; “Do you see therefore how from true and valuable phys-
ical realities have been evolved these imaginary and fanciful gods?
The perversion has been a fruitful source of false beliefs, crazy errors
and superstitions hardly above the level of old wives’ tales” (Cicero,
De Natura Deorum, II, XXVIII).

The disdain of the Stoics for merely theoretical or speculative is-

sues (such as the digressions on polytheism or pantheism) led them
to deal with the existence of God from an exclusively spiritual point
of view. On several occasions, the Stoics criticize the habit of repre-
senting the gods by means of statues that just move man away from
the divinity, because God is not in the statues, but within us. For in-
stance, according to Epictetus, the important question is how man
can become aware of his kinship with God: “If a man should be able
to assent to this doctrine as he ought, that we are all sprung from
God in an especial manner, and that God is the father both of men
and of gods, I suppose that he would never have any ignoble or mean
thoughts about himself... But since these two things are mingled in
the generation of man, body in common with the animals, and reason
and intelligence in common with the gods, many incline to this kin-
ship, which is miserable and mortal; and some few to that which is
divine and happy... Who am I? A poor, miserable man, with my
wretched bit of flesh. Wretched, indeed; but you possess something
better than your bit of flesh. Why then do you neglect that which is
better, and why do you attach yourself to this?” (Epictetus, Dis-
courses, I, 3, 1-6).

But when the Stoic states that God is within us, he is not using
any metaphor, but he is revealing an evidence that is so tangible,
clear and unequivocal that even the human mind will not be willing

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to accept it unless that statement is previously covered with a myste-

rious veil that it may appropriate. And equally mysterious, because
of the simplicity of its method, is the fact that the way to access that
natural, pure vision of God is the practice of a neutral vision that is
like placed behind our individual vision. Exactly this constitutes the
most powerful memory of God: “You are a portion separated from
God; you have in yourself a certain portion of Him. Why then are
you ignorant of your own noble descent? Why do you not know
whence you came? Will you not remember when you are eating,
who you are, who eat and whom you feed? When you are in con-
junction with a woman, will you not remember who you are, who do
this thing? When you are in social intercourse, when you are exercis-
ing yourself, when you are engaged in discussion, know you not that
you are nourishing God, that you are exercising God? Wretch, you
are carrying about God with you, and you know not. Do you think
that I mean some god of silver or of gold, and external? You carry
him within yourself, and you perceive not that you are polluting him
by impure thoughts and dirty deeds. And if an image of God were
present, you would not dare to do any of the things which you are
doing: but when God Himself is present within and sees all and hears
all, you are not ashamed of thinking such things and doing such
things, ignorant as you are of your own nature and subject to the an-
ger of God” (Epictetus, Discourses, II, 8).

I.- METHOD TO ATTAIN PEACE

As Stoicism incorporates certain ascetic aspects of Pythagorean-

ism and Platonism, it is not strange that it too conceives philosophy
as a therapy to face man’s suffering in order to restore his spiritual
balance, that is, his inner peace. Ultimately, all reflection, all re-
search on nature, however elevated it may be, must pursue man’s
spiritual balance, because “knowledge of celestial phenomena... has

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 THE PRACTICE OF ATTENTION AMONG THE STOICS

no other end in view that peace of soul” (Epicure, Letter to Py-

thocles, 85).

According to those of the porch, philosophy provides a theoreti-

cal and practical knowledge to interpret the world, to find our place
and be in contact with the Creator. The goal of all this is, in sum, to
attain a state of peace or happiness that is described as spiritual tran-
quility (ataraxia), inner freedom (autarkeia), absolute absence of
passions (apatheia), etc. Once attained that peace, “Now no evil can
happen to me; for me there is no robber, no earthquake, every thing
is full of peace, full of tranquility: every way, every city, every meet-
ing, neighbor, companion is harmless. One person whose business it
is, supplies me with food; another with raiment; another with percep-
tions, and preconceptions. And if he does not supply what is neces-
sary, He gives the signal for retreat, opens the door, and says to you,
Go. Go whither? To nothing terrible, but to the place from which
you came, to your friends and kinsmen, to the elements: what there
was in you of fire goes to fire; of earth, to earth; of pneuma, to
pneuma; of water, to water: no Hades, nor Acheron, nor Cocytus,
nor Pyriphlegethon” (Epictetus, Discourses III, 13, 13-16).

For that purpose, Stoicism inherited and adapted a set of ascetic

exercises, practiced for centuries. It is to be specified that the word
“exercise” tries to translate the Greek askēsis or meletē, which mean
inner activity and whose meaning is far from the sense of abstinence
or renunciation that this word has nowadays. Therefore, the ascesis
or spiritual exercises consist in a method to favor the introspection
needed to gain control of oneself, that is, peace. Paradoxically, many
spiritual seekers assume that, in order to find peace, it is necessary to
have a life of retreat, ignoring that they must not put their hopes in
external events but in a suitable introspective attitude; “Men seek re-
treats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and moun-
tains; and you too are wont to desire such things very much. But this
is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in your

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power whenever you shall choose to retire into yourself” (Marcus

Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 3).

Can we figure out what the method of the Stoics was? There is
some recent work that has the merit of having called our attention on
this difficult issue242. The conclusion is that the Stoics had a method
articulated through different practiced inherited from antiquity.
Thanks to Philo of Alexandria, we know some of those exercises243
and their almost daily sequence: The practice begins with the study
of a topic (zetesis), its deep analysis (skepsis), the reading, when ap-
propriate, of texts regarding that topic, the listening (akroasis). All
this must entail the cultivation of a persistent attention (prosoche)
that develops the self-control (enkrateia) and the indifference to the
world’s requests244. Other of the Stoic exercises inherited from the
Pythagoreans is the examination of conscience before going to bed;
“Never suffer sleep to close your eyelids, after your going to bed, till
you have examined by your reason all your actions of the day:
Wherein have I done amiss? What have I done? What have I omitted
that I ought to have done? If in this examination you find that you
have done amiss, reprimand yourself severely for it, and if you have
done any good, rejoice”245. Seneca considered it as one of the most
fruitful, powerful exercises: “Can anything be more excellent than
this practice of thoroughly sifting the whole day? And how delight-
ful the sleep that follows this self-examination, how tranquil it is,
how deep and untroubled, when the soul has either praised or ad-
monished itself, and when this secret examiner and critic of self has
given report of its own character! I avail myself of this privilege, and
every day I plead my cause before the bar of self... For why should I
shrink from any of my mistakes, when I may commune thus with

242
This is precisely the aim of the work by Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a way of
life, Malden (MA), 1995.
243
Philo, Quis rerum divinarum heres sit, § 253.
244
Philo, Legum Allegoriae, III, 18.
245
Golden verses, attributed to Pythagoras, 40-44

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myself: ‘See that you never do that again’?” (Seneca, On anger, III,
XXXVI).

The mental ascesis had to entail a physical ascesis that helped us

discipline the innate tendencies of the body. Among these, the most
effective was fasting: “Practice sometimes a way of living like a per-
son out of health that you may at some time live like a man in health.
Abstain from food, drink water, abstain sometimes altogether from
desire, in order that you may some time desire consistently with rea-
son” (Epictetus, Discourses III, 13, 20-21). By means of the body
discipline, the will was strengthened, and so was with it the ability of
reflection and self-analysis in order to discover the continuous traps
set up by the psyche and the mind, which resist being ruled by the
spirit.

Reflective meditation was one of the favorite practices of the

Stoics. The Stoics were actually masters in choosing a specific topic
and analyzing it until they had made the most of it. The titles and
reading of some of the treatises by Plutarch or Seneca give us a thor-
ough sense of way they approached these exercises: On the control
of anger, On the tranquility of soul, On fraternal love, On parental
love, On talkativeness, On curiosity, On love of wealth, On compli-
ancy, On envy and hate, On anger, On the shortness of life, On the
deadliness of idleness...

In order to firmly face the daily routine and make the most of the
time given, the Stoics turned to the practice of memorizing (mnēmē)
aphorisms, sentences, apothegms or vital rules that they unceasingly
repeated in their minds until being imbued by them246. With these
practices, the Stoic prepared himself to firmly face the setbacks of
life, such as illness, suffering, death, etc.

246
Seneca, De beneficiis, VII, 2, 1-2; Epictetus, Discourses, III, 3, 14-16.

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In our times, a recent book has developed the Stoic meditation

with a therapeutic goal247. Its starting point is the Enchiridion or
Manual by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, summarizing his thought
in three sentences:

- “Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the
opinions about the things” (Epictetus, Manual, 5).

- “When then we are impeded or disturbed or grieved, let us nev-

er blame others, but ourselves, that is, our opinions” (Epictetus,
Manual, 5).

- “Remember that it is not he who reviles you or strikes you, who

insults you, but it is your opinion about these things as being insult-
ing” (Epictetus, Manual, 20).

Based on her own personal experiences, as well as on her pa-

tients’, the author of this book explains how inner tensions originate
in our discussions with what is, showing that anxiety and suffering
originate from our bonding to a false thought. And, though medita-
tion reveals that what has already happened cannot be changed, this
does not imply that it must be approved or tolerated, but that it must
be accepted without resistance or inner struggle. No one wants pain,
hunger, fear, wars, etc. But the truth is that suffering is not originated
by our thoughts but by our bonding, when we believe without ana-
lyzing. In sum, restlessness comes when we believe that we are or it
happens what our thoughts say we are or it happens. This way, we
believe the sequences of thoughts that constantly recreate our small
personal story, based on memories and expectations, that is, on how
things should be or why they are not like that. Thus, the small se-
quences of thoughts generate other bigger stories that in turn gener-
ate theories about life, death, fear, destiny, freedom, about the world,
the universe, etc. That is why depression, suffering, fear, any prob-

247
Byron Katie, Loving what Is, New York, 2002.

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lem is an opportunity to examine our thoughts and discover up to

which extent we are living an untrue story. In sum, we must unbuild
our thoughts by means of a constant discrimination or self-inquiry.

II.- METHOD TO DIVIDE AND DISCRIMINATE

The Stoics taught their disciples the importance of having a good

judgment in our lives. By means of meditation exercises, the ability
to discriminate was to be developed. For that purpose, it was taught
how to divide, decontextualize or relativize any problem or issue in
order to deal with it in its most relative dimension. Such technique
consists in choosing one thing, isolating it, defining it and dividing it
into parts until its nature becomes evident. “Make for yourself a def-
inition or description of the thing which is presented to you, so as to
see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity,
in its complete entirety, and tell yourself its proper name, and the
names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into
which it will be resolved” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations III, 11).
The Stoic had to be on guard against the apparent magnitude of any
thing or problem. Any problem could be reduced to the minimum
expression using the force of discriminative meditation: “Do not dis-
turb yourself by thinking of the whole of your life” (Marcus Aureli-
us, Meditations VIII, 36). “What kind of universe is this? What kind
of use does everything perform in it? What value does everything
have with reference to the whole, and what with reference to man?”
(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations III, 11). This way, “where there are
things which appear most worthy of our appreciation, we ought to
lay them bare and look at their worthlessness and strip them of all
the words by which they are exalted” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations,
VI, 13). This way, any experience of wakefulness can be reduced to
a pure, vain illusion by unceasingly inquiring ourselves how we have
been able to take part in those events; “Chiefly a man should exer-
cise himself: As soon as you go out in the morning, examine every

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man whom you see, every man whom you hear; answer as to a ques-
tion: What have you seen? A handsome man or woman? Apply this
rule. Is this independent of the will, or dependent? Independent.
Take it away. What have you seen? A man lamenting over the death
of a child. Apply the rule. Death is a thing independent of the will.
Take it away. Has the proconsul met you? Apply the rule. What kind
of thing is a proconsul’s office? Independent of the will, or depend-
ent on it? Independent. Take this away also: it does not stand exami-
nation: cast it away: it is nothing to you. If we practiced this and ex-
ercised ourselves in it daily from morning to night, something indeed
would be done. But now we are forthwith caught half asleep by eve-
ry appearance” (Epictetus, Discourses III, 3, 14-17). By means of
this task of constant mental discrimination, the Stoic ends up distin-
guishing what is real or permanent and what is a mere ephemeral
product of the mind, or fantasy (phantasiai).

Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations are a model of this art of

dividing an issue until completely unbuilding it. How to control our
excessive appetite? How to resist the uncontrolled sexual desire?
Here is an example of discriminative meditation: “When we have
meat before us and such eatables we receive the impression, that this
is the dead body of a fish, and this is the dead body of a bird or of a
pig; and again, that this Falernian is only a little grape juice, and this
purple robe some sheep’s wool dyed with the blood of a shell-fish;
about venereal enjoyments, they are the attrition of a base part of our
body, and a convulsive sort of excretion of a mucus” (Meditations
VI, 13). What are the supposed great men? Who are the politicians,
aristocrats and the rest of men of learning and culture that seem so
proud at the public square? “Consider what men are when they are
eating, sleeping, fornicating, easing themselves and so forth. Then
what kind of men they are when they are imperious and arrogant, or
angry and scolding from their elevated place (Meditations X, 19). Do
you worship your body or your personal image? “Such as bathing
appears to you: oil, sweat, dirt, filthy water, all things disgusting; so

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is every part of life and everything” (Meditations VIII, 24). “The

things which are much valued in life are empty and rotten and tri-
fling, and like little dogs biting one another, and little children quar-
reling, laughing, and then straightaway weeping” (Meditations V,
33, 2) What is glory? What is power? What is material wealth?
“Asia and Europe are corners of the universe: all the sea a drop in
the universe... All the present time is a point in Eternity” (Medita-
tions VI, 36).

Even man’s activity is but a mere monotony that lasts for centu-
ries, a vain illusion: “Constantly consider how all things such as they
now are, in time past also were; and consider that they will be the
same again. And place before your eyes entire dramas and stages of
the same form, whatever you have learned from your experience or
from older history; for example, the whole court of Hadrian, and the
whole court of Antoninus, and the whole court of Philip, Alexander,
Croesus; for all those were such dramas as we see now, only with
different actors” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations X, 27). If this meth-
od of division is taken to the extreme, what is then the body or the
death but mere concepts or fantasies that the human mind has artifi-
cially exaggerated to frighten us? “The body is nothing to me: the
parts of it are nothing to me. Death? Let it come when it chooses, ei-
ther death of the whole or of a part. Fly, you say. And whither? Can
any man eject me out of the world? He cannot. But wherever I go,
there is the sun, there is the moon, there are the stars, dreams, omens,
and the conversation with gods” (Epictetus, Discourses III, 22, 19-
25).

While escaping from their existential angst, some men strive to

be somebody or try to obtain a fictitious immortality by associating
their names to their material works. But, what is a name? “Name is
sound an echo” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V, 33), which will
not last in the infinity of time (III, 10), since “near is your forgetful-
ness of all things, and near the forgetfulness of you by all” (VII, 21).

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“All that you see will quickly perish, and those who have been spec-
tators of its dissolution will very soon perish too” (IX, 33), because
“you will look at human things as smoke and nothing at all” (X, 31).
And, as the emptiness of the world and the futility of human actions
are accepted, the anxiety to hoard experiences, to stand out of the
rest, to fight against a destiny that has already been written, ceases to
exist. Should there be any word that defines the attitude of the Stoic
regarding life, it is acceptance. Those of the porch learn to accept the
natural course of things without opposing it. They understand that
the fact itself of wishing implies frustration, because the material ob-
jects do not provide us with a durable happiness, for they are imper-
manent.

As life is a theater play, there is no freedom to modify or impro-

vise any role of the play; “Whatever may happen to you, it was pre-
pared for you from all eternity; and the implication of causes was
from eternity spinning the thread of your being, and of that which is
incident to it” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations X, 5). Therefore, the
wisest attitude is to accept each one’s role and play it as naturally as
possible; “Remember that desire contains in it the profession of ob-
taining that which you desire; and the profession in aversion is that
you will not fall into that which you attempt to avoid: and he who
falls in his desire is unfortunate; and he who falls into that which he
would avoid, is unhappy. If then you attempt to avoid only the things
contrary to nature which are within your power, you will not be in-
volved in any of the things which you would avoid... You also ought
to do something of the kind: eat like a man, drink like a man, dress,
marry, beget children, do the office of a citizen, endure abuse, bear
with an unreasonable brother, bear with your father, bear with your
son, neighbor, companion. (Epictetus, Manual 2; Discourses III, 21).
In sum, the acceptance of one’s predestination is the most powerful
pedagogic instrument to tame the predating instinct of the ego that
lives and enjoys by hoarding experiences even though exploiting
others. According to this, the true indifference, the apathy or control

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of the passions, takes place when it is discovered and accepted that

there is no other free will than realizing that everything is just a
game, as empty or illusory as a theater play.

Nonetheless, if human free will is a mirage and there is no possi-

bility to choose the good and refuse the evil, what is the evil meant
for? If everything is determined by God, what is the purpose of the
existence itself of the universe and the beings that inhabit it? Does
not all this seem a colossal dramatic dream played by automata who
believe that they are free and thus suffer for it? Are we before a sa-
distic God who enjoys seeing how His creatures suffer? If everything
is planned by destiny and, thus, man is not liable for his actions, the
effort is not worth making. Against this argument justifying sloth, it
is to be clarified that man’s only free choice is to decide whether he
wants to be free (wise man) or remain in the ignorance of the identi-
fication of the character he is playing at the festival/drama of life.
The Stoic must learn to distinguish what depends on his free will and
what does not depend on it and, thus, what he can change and what
he cannot change. Regarding that which does not depend on him and
cannot be changed, he must learn to accept it by means of the prac-
tice of meditation and the control of the appearances, that is, the in-
terpretations that we make about the information that we get from
the senses, the imagination and the mind.

An example of the wrong use of appearances is to consider the

evilness of some things. According to the Stoics, the evil does not
exist by itself, it has no autonomous existence, independent from us.
On the contrary, the nature disowns the evil. Only our thoughts
about the evil exist, so “men are disturbed not by the things which
happen, but by the opinions about the things: for example, death is
nothing terrible, for if it were, it would have seemed so to Socrates;
for the opinion about death, that it is terrible, is the terrible thing.
When then we are impeded or disturbed or grieved, let us never
blame others, but ourselves, that is, our opinions. It is the act of an

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ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the
act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on him-
self; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame an-
other, nor himself” (Epictetus, Manual 5). The true source of the evil
lies in ignorance, that is, in the absence of attention or awareness.
Consequently, there is no desire for the evil, but a wrong desire,
cause by a lack of attention.

Wealth, pleasure, power, etc. are not evil by themselves, but neu-
tral elements of the theater play. The evil appears when the theatrical
character binds or identifies himself so much with the role (with his
thoughts, desires, expectations, etc.) that considers as true all the ac-
tions that he plays, and insists on believing that he can change the
storyline. There cannot be true freedom while man is conditioned by
the stimuli of the external world, his thought and desires. And, even
though most men consider themselves free, that will not make them
stop being slaves of their desires.

According to the Stoics, the only free man is the wise man who
has learned how to face pain, death, etc. in an impartial and tranquil
way, without assigning them any value. Consequently, the only wise
attitude is to want what God wants for us, to support His will. But
such a decision is not a mental or intellectual action, but the conse-
quence of a complete, deep certainty that God is truly who measures,
considers and decides man’s destiny. According to Dorotheus of Ga-
za, “By cutting off his own will he obtains non-attachment
(aprospatheia), and from non-attachment he comes, with God’s
help, to complete apatheia”248. But if that acceptance and dedication
is just mental, then the worldly thoughts and desires will go on call-
ing our attention as tyrants who aspire to rule our inner city.

True freedom, thus, consists in supporting God’s will: lacking

any will other than God’s. In that wanting not to want anything dif-

248
Dorotheus of Gaza, 20, 11-13.

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 THE PRACTICE OF ATTENTION AMONG THE STOICS

ferent from what God wants is where peace lies, according to Doro-
theus of Gaza: “No matter how disinclined he is to fulfill his own
will, it turns out that it is always fulfilled. For to one who does not
have his own will, everything that happens to him is according to his
will”249. Or, as Epictetus said: “Seek not that the things which hap-
pen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to
be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life” (Epictetus,
Manual, 8). Or, in other words: when you lose your head (the ration-
al or speculative mind) this way, you gain true freedom, which con-
sists in devoting yourself to God’s will. “My man, as the proverb
says, make a desperate effort on behalf of tranquility of mind, free-
dom and magnanimity. Lift up your head at last as released from
slavery. Dare to look up to God and say, Deal with me for the future
as you will; I am of the same mind as you are; I am yours: I refuse
nothing that pleases you: lead me where you will: clothe me in any
dress you choose: is it your will that I should hold the office of a
magistrate, that I should be in the condition of a private man, stay
here or be an exile, be poor, be rich?” (Epictetus, Discourses II, 16,
41-43). All this is neither metaphysical deliria nor philosophical
rhetoric. According to Stoics, these descriptions are clearly identifia-
ble with spiritual states or mansions that they perfectly know, be-
cause, by dint of meditation and disregard, they already constitute
their natural state. If that devotion to God is really wished, then one
should ask Him for help: “From yourself, from your thoughts cast
away... sadness, fear, desire, envy, malevolence, avarice, effeminacy,
intemperance. But it is not possible to eject these things otherwise
than by looking to God only, by fixing your affections on Him only,
by being consecrated to His commands. But if you choose any thing
else, you will with sighs and groans be compelled to follow what is
stronger than yourself, always seeking tranquility and never able to
find it; for you seek tranquility there where it is not, and you neglect
to seek it where it is” (Epictetus, Discourses II, 16, 45-47). Even in
the most uncertain, uneasiest moments, the simple fact of enduring

249
Dorotheus of Gaza, 102, 12.

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implies, deep down, the decision to keep on fighting: “This is the

true athlete, the man who exercises himself against such appearanc-
es. Stay, wretch, do not be carried way. Great is the combat, divine is
the work; it is for kingship, for freedom, for happiness, for freedom
from perturbation. Remember God: call on Him as a helper and pro-
tector, as men at sea call on the Dioscur in a storm” (Epictetus, Dis-
courses II, 18, 11-29).

The absence of peace is due to the fact that the inner city has
been conquered and is ruled by passions, frustrations, fears and
thoughts. “How then is a fortress demolished? Not by the sword, not
by fire, but by opinion. For if we abolish the fortress which is in the
city, can we abolish also that of fever, and that of beautiful women?
Can we in a word abolish the fortress which is in us and cast out the
tyrants within us, whom we have daily over us, sometimes the same
tyrants, at other times different tyrants? But with this we must begin,
and with this we must demolish the fortress and eject the tyrants, by
giving up the body, the parts of it, the faculties of it, the possessions,
the reputation, magisterial offices, honors, children, brothers, friends,
by considering all these things as belonging to others. And if tyrants
have been ejected from us, why do I still shut in the fortress by a
wall of circumvallation, at least on my account; for if it still stands,
what does it do to me? Why do I still eject guards? For where do I
perceive them? Against others they have their fasces, and their
spears and their swords. But I have never been hindered in my will,
nor compelled when I did not will. And how is this possible? I have
placed my movements towards action in obedience to God. Is it His
will that I shall have fever? It is my will also. Is it His will that I
should move towards any thing? It is my wish also. Does He not
will? I do not wish” (Epictetus, Discourses IV, 1).

If we break free from those tyrants that are within us, then we
will be able to join our will to God’s and convert the world into a
theater play in which one is but another character: “The after receiv-

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ing everything from another and even yourself, are you angry and do
you blame the giver if He takes any thing from you? Who are you,
and for what purpose did you come into the world? Did not He in-
troduce you here, did He not show you the light, did He not give you
fellow workers, and perceptions and reason? And as whom did He
introduce you here? Did He not introduce you as subject to death,
and as one to live on the earth with a little flesh, and to observe His
administration, and to join Him in the spectacle and the festival for a
short time? Will you not then, as long as you have been permitted,
after seeing the spectacle and His solemnity, when He leads you out,
go with adoration of Him and thanks for what you have heard and
seen?.
-No; but I would still enjoy the feast.
The initiated too would with to be longer in the initiation: and
perhaps also those at Olympia to see other athletes; but the solemnity
is ended: go away like a grateful and modest man; make room for
others: others also must be born, as you were, and being born they
must have a place, and houses and necessary things. And if the first
do not retire, what remains? Why are you insatiable? Why are you
not content? Why do you contract the world?” (Epictetus, Discours-
es IV, 1).

Given that man is a character who plays in a theater play, accord-

ing to an assigned role, it makes no sense to try to modify the libretto
or change one’s character, because that depends on the Director:
“Remember that you are an actor in a play, of such a kind as the di-
rector may chose; if short, of a short one; if long, of a long one: if he
wishes you to act the part of a poor man, see that you act the part
naturally; if the part of a lame man, of a magistrate, of a private per-
son. For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you; but
to select the part, belongs to another” (Epictetus, Manual 17). Even
when one believes he is exercising his freedom to rebel against the
role he has been given, how to know if that very action of rebellion
was not already foreseen and was a part of the play? The Stoic re-

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signs himself to the role he has been given and, without any attach-
ment to his character, accomplishes his mission as well as possible
until he must leave the scene or the curtain drops. To resist this just
causes suffering and frustration:
“-For what purpose then have I received these things?
-To use them.
-How long?
-So long as He who lent them chooses.
-What if they are necessary to me?
-Do not attach yourself to them and they will not be necessary:
do not say to yourself that they are necessary, and then they are not
necessary”. (Epictetus, Discourses IV, 1, 86-110).

“Never say about any thing, I have lost it, but say I have restored
it. Is your child dead? It has been restored. Is your wife dead? She
has been restored. Has your estate been taken from you? Has not
then this also been restored?
-But he who has taken it from me is a bad man.
-But what is it to you, by whose hands the giver demanded it
back? So long as He may allow you, take care of it as a thing which
belongs to another, as travelers do with their inn”. (Epictetus, Manu-
al XI).

The question is then the following: if the only freedom that is

given to us is that of realizing that everything is like a theater play,
what must our character do to wake up? Here, the prosochē goes into
action: the attention to oneself.

III.- FROM THE ATTENTION TO THE PRESENT TO CON-

TEMPLATION

Stoics such as Marcus Aurelius establish a tripartite composition

of the human being: The body (sōma), the soul (psychē) and the spir-

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 THE PRACTICE OF ATTENTION AMONG THE STOICS

it (hēgemonikon) or inner guide; this tripartite structure has a clear

Platonic origin. The way to invoke the hēgemonikon consists in cul-
tivating self-attention. According to the Stoics, as well as the Pla-
tonists, it is an evident fact that the world, the waking, is an illusion
or fantasy created by the senses. But if most men live deceived in the
trap or cavern of the senses is because we do not pay enough atten-
tion. Nonetheless, that attention does not have a mental or intellec-
tual nature, but a much more basic or natural one. In the first stages,
there might be some reflective content: “Everywhere and at all times
it is in your power... to exert your skill upon your present
thoughts”250. But attention, in its more thorough definition, is exempt
from thoughts.

Prosochē is attention without tension. It is an attitude of continu-

ous vigilance and constant alertness concerning each and every one
of the daily events: “First... to have [this principle] in readiness, and
without it not to sleep, not to rise, not to drink, not to eat, not to con-
verse with men”251. The Stoic self-attention is a way to live in the
now, that is, in the present. Insofar as we do not let the past disturb
us and we do not get worried by an uncertain future, we stay in the
present, which is, anyway, the only reality we inhabit; “While we are
postponing, life speeds by” (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius I, 1). From
the ancient ascetics, the Stoics had inherited the discovery that the
ego-mind lives off of memories and expectations, so living in the
now will deprive the ego-mind of food until it, once weakened, ends
up giving control to the spirit252. In Christian spirituality, this
prosochē was called nepsis or vigilance. Thus, Athanasius, who
wrote the Life of Antony in 357, stated that the Saint “paid attention
to himself”. But this “watchfulness of heart” is not to be confused
with the examination of moral conscience, because, whereas reason-

250
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VII, 54, vid. as well III, 12; VIII, 36; IX, 6.
251
Epictetus, Discourses IV, 12, 7; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations III, 13; Galen,
On the natural faculties I, 9, 51.
252
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations II, 14; IV, 26, 5; XII, 26; Seneca, De benef. VII,
2, 4.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

ing and reflection take precedence in the latter, the prosochē consists
in the practice of the “attention” without using thoughts or moral
judgments. Actually, it is rather about paying attention to oneself, or
self-attention, and appropriating the action of thinking until convert-
ing it into a mere tool.

This attention to the present could be developed by means of cer-

tain concentration exercises that sought to “separate [oneself] from...
the times past and future” in order to “make oneself live the present
moment”253. At the beginning, the prosochē was achieved just a few
minutes a day; later, some hours; finally, all day long. Such an
“awake” man is who has, picking up the Platonic language again,
gotten out of the cavern toward the daylight because he has woken
up from his dream; he is now aware not only of what he does, but,
above all, of what he is. He has recovered the memory of his glori-
ous origin and has returned to his divine nature. That is why self-
attention is, strictly speaking, to settle oneself in the “memory of
God”. Ultimately, it is about maintaining a neutral attention to one-
self, to the world that surrounds us, and to the present moment. It is
about feeling that the divine vision and His presence is within us.
“Let God be at hand to behold and examine every act and deed and
word”254.

The contemplative vision is achieved by means of the unceasing

practice of physical ascesis (especially fasting), the different forms
of reflective meditation (zetesis, skepsis, akroasis, etc.) and the con-
tinuous attention. Such a vision is described by some Stoics in terms
very similar to the Plotinian ecstasy or the mystical trances of the
first Christians. Anyway, in the descriptions by some Stoics, it is
very difficult to know how much there is of literary devices or of ec-
static experience. According to Seneca, the contemplative vision is a
consequence of the detachment from the body and its senses: “Only

253
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations XII, 3, 3.
254
Porphyry, Letter to Marcella 12

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on high are the domains spacious; to their possession the soul is ad-
mitted, provided always that it bring with it no taint of the body, but
wipe off all stain and pass forth like an armed man, lightly equipped,
nimble, modest in his wants... Here at last the soul comes to learn
what it has long sought, it begins to know God” (Seneca, Natural
questions I, 9-11). According to Marcus Aurelius, contemplation is
characterized by an unusual widening of the ordinary human vision
that seems to transcend the limits of individuality; “[human soul]
traverses the whole universe, and the surrounding vacuum, and sur-
veys its form, and it extends itself into the infinity of time, and em-
braces and comprehends the periodical renovation of all things”
(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations XI, 1). According to Metrodorus,
contemplation involves going out of time and space: “Remember
that by contemplation you have reached infinite and eternal nature
and beheld that which is, that which will be, and that which was”.

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PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

“Now I bid you, mystos, who are purified, as to

your ears, to receive these things... and reveal them
not to any one... For I myself, having been initiated
into the great mysteries by Moses, the friend of
God... did not hesitate to become his pupil” (Philo,
Cher. 49).

Philo was born between 30 and 20 BC, in the bosom of a Jewish

family of the community of Alexandria, city that was a melting pot
of the Eastern Mediterranean cultures. In fact, Alexandria had re-
placed Athens as the Greek cultural capital, being at the same time
the meeting point between the East and the West. In this sense, Philo
represented the epigone of a whole generation that, though open to
the Hellenistic influence, kept the Jewish faith anyway. Therefore,
Philo can be considered as worthy heir of the spirit that led the LXX
to carry out the Greek translation of the Bible. Precisely, the use of
the LXX version of the Bible and his spirituality with a Hellenistic
signature are the main reasons why Philo is considered as one of the
Church Fathers, even though he was never a Christian, but a Jew255.

Philo’s family is assumed to have been one of the most important

families in the Jewish community of Alexandria, and he himself took
part in the Greek social and cultural life. In one of his works, De
legatione ad Caium he explains how he was appointed as the chief of
the embassy sent about 40 AD by the Jews of Alexandria to Caligula
in order to ask for his protection against the abuses of the Greek
population. Nevertheless, the most noteworthy point of his work was

255
The following is mainly based on J. Daniélou, Philon d’Alexandrie, Paris, 1958.
 JAVIER ALVARADO

his research on the Scriptures, above all on the Pentateuch, and his
contemplative practice. As most of his work consists in glosses on
the Pentateuch, authors such as H. A. Wolfson256 have actually as-
sumed that Philo was a preacher at the synagogue, so his treatises
were the commentaries that followed the public reading of the Scrip-
tures. The ancient custom of interpreting the Law every Saturday
had probably begun in Palestine, from where the Jews took it to Al-
exandria. This religious custom is even considered to be the origin of
the first Christian preaching257.

Philo used several Greek literary genres such as the dialogue or

the philosophical treatise with a Platonic or Aristotelian style. After
studying his work258, it can be stated that Philo is an author who

256
Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam,
Cambridge, 1962, vol. I, p. 96.
257
The Gospels of Lk. 4:14-18, Mt. 4:12 and Mk. 6:1-5 mention how Jesus fol-
lowed the custom of preaching at the Synagogue on Saturday.
258
Some researchers divide the Philonean Corpus into four categories: 1st Miscel-
lany: “historical” or “non-biblical writings”: Hypothetica; Philo summarizes the
constitution given to the nation by the Laws of Moses. Quod omnis probus liber
sit: bundle of Stoic paradoxes with a list of Essene virtues. De vita contemplativa:
about the supplicants or Therapeutae, monastic order settled near Alexandria, by
the coast of lake Mareotis, and about the Essenes. In Flaccum: historical treatise
about the injustices done against the Jewish population of Alexandria during the
rule of Aulus Avilius Flaccus, Roman prefect in Egypt since the year 32 AD, exe-
cuted in 39. Legatio ad Caium: historical and theological treatise about the disturb-
ances that took place in Alexandria and forced the Jews to send an embassy to
Rome. 2nd Explanation of the Jewish Law: De vita Mosis: a treatise on the two as-
pects of Moses, as a philosopher-king-ruler and high priest-prophet. De opificio
mundi: commentaries on the ch. 1 of the Genesis, in which he, closely following
Plato’s Timaeus, reflects about the Creation out of nothing, the eternal existence of
God, the unity and the providence of God. De Abrahamo: reflections about the
non-written Laws of Nature, using Stoic arguments. De Josepho: allegory about
the person of Joseph and about the human way of ruling the city and the non-
written Law. De decalogo: here he comments the relationship between man and
God. He also wrote De specialibus legibus, De virtutibus, De praemiis et poenis,
De providentia and De aeternitate mundi. 3rd Allegorical commentaries on the
Jewish Law: different treatises in which he comments some passages of the Scrip-
tures: Legum Allegoriae I (Gen. 2:1-3, 5-14). Legum Allegoriae II (Gen. 2:18-3.1),
Legum Allegoriae III (Gen. 3:8-19). De Cherubim (Gen. 3:24, 4:1), De posteritate
Caini (Gen. 4:16), Quod Deus immutabilis sit (Gen. 6:4-12). De sobrietate (Gen.
9:24-27), De confusione linguarum (Gen. 9:1-9), De migratione Abrahami (Gen.
12:1-3), De mutatione nominum (Gen. 17:1-5, 15-22), etc. 4th Questions and an-
swers on Genesis and Exodus: only the writings in Armenian have been preserved.

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 AN INITIATE INTO THE GREAT MYSTERIES: PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

lives and explains the Jewish faith, but writes in Greek and is in-
spired by the Greek culture, mainly by Plato and Aristotle, and also
by the Stoics. New wine in old wineskins? Not at all; the final result
is not a syncretism, but a formulation that is loyal to his biblical faith
and adopts new metaphors and garments to facilitate its understand-
ing.

Philo even confesses that, in his youth, he “was first excited by

the stimulus of philosophy” (Congr. 74), and then “There was once a
time when, devoting my leisure to philosophy and to the contempla-
tion of the world and the things in it, I reaped the fruit of excellent,
and desirable, and blessed intellectual feelings, being always living
among the divine oracles and doctrines, on which I fed incessantly
and insatiably, to my great delight, never entertaining any low or
groveling thoughts, nor ever wallowing in the pursuit of glory or
wealth, or the delights of the body, but I appeared to be raised on
high and borne aloft by a certain inspiration of the soul
(ἐπιθειασμόν), and to dwell in the regions of the sun and moon, and
to associate with the whole heaven, and the whole universal world.
At that time, therefore, looking down from above, from the air, and
straining the eye of my mind as from a watch-tower, I surveyed the
unspeakable contemplation of all the things on the earth, and looked
upon myself as happy as having forcibly escaped from all the evil
fates that can attack human life” (Spec. Leg. III, 1-2). In large part,
this and other contemplative experiences were fruits of his with-
drawal periods with the Essenes and the Therapeutae, whom he con-
sidered as the true representatives of Jewish mysticism.

That is why, when Philo describes the ideal Judaism, he turns to

his vital experience near the Essenes and the Therapeutae monks by
the lake Mareotis. According to the author, the authentic Jewish

Vid. Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, preserved in Greek, critical edi-
tion by L. Cohn and P. Wendland, with an index by J. Leisegang, 7 vols., Berlin,
1896-1930.

277
 JAVIER ALVARADO

mysticism can be learned there in its double aspect: Essene and

Therapeutic: “Therefore they always retain an imperishable recollec-
tion of God... And they are accustomed to pray twice a day, at morn-
ing and at evening; when the sun is rising entreating God that... their
minds may be filled with heavenly light, and when the sun is setting
they pray that their soul, being entirely lightened and relieved of the
burden of the outward senses, and of the appropriate object of those
outward senses, may be able to trace out truth existing in its own
consistory and council chamber. And the interval between morning
and evening is by them devoted wholly to meditation on and to prac-
tice of virtue, for they take up the Holy Scriptures and philosophize
concerning them, investigating the allegories of their national phi-
losophy, since they look upon their literal expressions as symbols of
some secret meaning of nature, intended to be conveyed in those fig-
urative expressions. They have also writings of ancient men, who
having been the founders of one sect or another have left behind
them many memorials of the allegorical system of writing and ex-
planation, whom they take as a kind of model” (De vita
contemplativa 26-29). Without a doubt, he learned from them how to
interpret the biblical characters and events allegorically.

I.- THE ALLEGORICAL METHOD

In Philo, the allegorical exposition of the Bible constitutes the

soul of the text, whereas the literal meaning is just the body. We
must not let us be constrained by the apparent meaning of the bibli-
cal narration, because it, as a whole, keeps a hidden or allegorical
meaning of a spiritual nature, intended by its writers under God’s in-
spiration259. Out of all the possible topics, the one that preoccupies
and occupies Philo most is the spiritual itinerary of the soul that, ris-

259
Precisely, the fact that he used the Greek version of the LXX and not the He-
brew text is because he considered that such a translation had been carried out by
divine inspiration.

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 AN INITIATE INTO THE GREAT MYSTERIES: PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

ing above the sensory world, wants to reach the world of the Spirit.
This is the great topic, the central argument of his work, explained
by puzzling out the intimate meaning of the passages of the Penta-
teuch as it was taught to him by the Essenes. That is why part of
Philo’s work is, to a large extent, destined to the initiates, that is, to
those who want to understand God’s mysteries. Already in the first
book, On Dreams (181), talking about the immortality of the soul,
Philo considers the “journey” of the soul toward the body as an exile
to a foreign land, and turns to metaphors about the mystical pilgrim-
age, so common in the Egyptian, Greek and of course Jewish litera-
ture, in order to explain the quest for the contemplation of God as a
return to the Fatherland. Somewhere else, he mentions, “The races of
men are twofold; for one is the heavenly man, and the other the
earthly man. Now the heavenly man, as being born in the image of
God, has no participation in any corruptible or earthlike essence. But
the earthly man is made of loose material, which he calls a lump of
clay” (Leg. All. I, 31). According to Philo, the heavenly man is the
man’s archetype. With this, he turns to the classic topic of the Jewish
esoterism: Adam as a representation of the heavenly Man or the pri-
mal Humankind in its purest state, that is, before knowing the tree of
good and evil.

If Adam’s exile implied his expulsion from the earthly Paradise

and thus the victory of the earthly man, the initiation into the spiritu-
al path, which Philo defines as the Mysteries by Moses, has the goal
to recover the Edenic state, that is, the realization of the heavenly
Man.

II.- GOD CANNOT BE THOUGHT

How to return to the lost Paradise? Or, said in other terms, how
to recover the intimacy with God? Traditionally, the mystical way
has two accesses or, if preferred, two stages: meditation (on God, on

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

Creation, on human condition, etc.) and contemplation (disappro-

priation or absence of thoughts). In several parts of his work, Philo
develops some classic meditation topics. In fact, the allegory that
Philo employs is but a meditation topic that takes as its basis a bibli-
cal episode. However, meditation has the final goal to nullify the
mind, to lead the initiate to the conclusion that his own mind is una-
ble to access the supreme realities. The spiritual seeker must be firm-
ly convinced that the mind has an instrumental nature only, for he
uses it just to apprehend external information. He must confirm the
futility of such information in order to enter the world of the spirit.
This way, when the mind itself recognizes its own inability and gets
withdrawn or nullified, then it gives way to other inner “organ” that
does have the possibility to communicate with the higher world. The
true contemplative way begins there.

In his work De mutatione nominum, he warns: “Do not think that

the living God, He who is truly living, is ever seen so as to be com-
prehended by any human being”, because man, as a man, lacks the
sensory means that allow it to him, since God is not sensible. “In real
fact, God is not as a man, nor again, as the sun, nor as the heaven,
nor as the world, which is perceptible by the outwards senses, but as
God, if it is justifiable to assert that also; since that most happy and
blessed being will not endure similitude, or comparison, or enigmat-
ic description; nay, rather he surpasses even blessedness and felicity
itself, and whatever can be imagined as better than and preferable to
them” (Quest. in Gen. II, 54).

Philo sticks to the monotheistic orthodoxy of traditional Judaism:

“There is one God, the Creator and Maker of the universe; and... He
is the Lord of all created things, since all that is firm, and solid, and
really stable and sure, is by nature so framed as to be connected with
Him alone” (Spec. Leg. I, 30). He refuses the polytheistic fickleness
of those who “have conceived that the sun, and the moon, and the
other stars are independent gods, to whom they have attributed the

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 AN INITIATE INTO THE GREAT MYSTERIES: PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

causes of all things that exist” (Spec. Leg. I, 13), because “the only
God is alone to be honored by me (Ex. 20.3); and nothing besides of
all the things that are inferior to Him, neither earth, nor sea, nor riv-
ers, nor the nature of the air, nor the nature of the winds, nor the
changes of the atmosphere, nor the appearances of any animals or
plants, nor the sun, nor the moon, nor the multitude of the stars mov-
ing in well-arranged revolutions, nor the whole heaven, nor the en-
tire world. This is a boast of a great and magnanimous soul, to rise
above all Creation, and to overleap its boundaries, and to cling to the
great uncreated God alone, according to His sacred commands, in
which we are expressly enjoined to cleave unto Him (Deut. 30.20).
Therefore He, in requital, bestows Himself as their inheritance upon
those who do cleave unto Him, and who serve Him without inter-
mission; and the Sacred Scripture bears its testimony in behalf of this
assertion, where it says, the Lord Himself is His Inheritance (Deut.
10.9)” (Congr. 133-134).

Nonetheless, following the Jewish theology in some parts of his

work, Philo places an entity under the Being, which he calls Logos
(translation of the Hebrew dabar by the LXX). On some occasion,
he defines it as “the most ancient Word of God” (Det. 118), the first-
born son of God (Leg. All. III, 96). In another passage, he explains
that “the divine Logos which is above these does not come into any
visible appearance, inasmuch as it is not like to any of the things that
come under the external senses, but is itself an image of God, the
most ancient of all objects of intellect in the whole world” (De fuga,
101). It seems to be positioned at an intermediate level between the
Being and the powers that Creation has provided; “And the Father
who created the universe has given to His archangelic and most an-
cient Logos a preeminent gift, to stand on the confines of both, and
separated that which had been created from the Creator” (Her. 205).
The whole Creation, even before being manifested260, is already
found in this Logos, which might be identified with the Word of God

260
See also Saint Paul’s Eph. 1 in the Bible.

281
 JAVIER ALVARADO

or Divine Mind (as the world of Platonic archetypes), fact that im-
plies affirming the simultaneity of the whole Creation and, conse-
quently, overcoming man’s ideas of predetermination or free will.
The powers are below the Logos. None of them is separate or inde-
pendent from God, but they are simply His attributes: “God, being
one, has about Him an unspeakable number of powers, all of which
are defenders and preservers of every thing that is created; and
among these powers those also which are conversant with punish-
ment are involved... It is by means of these powers that the incorpo-
real world, perceptible by the intellect, has been put together, which
is the archetypical model of this invisible world” (On the Confusion
of Tongues, 171)261. Philo identifies the two cherubim of the tale of
Paradise that appear in the Bible as a representation of the creating
power and the royal or providential power. Specifically, “The one in
the middle is the Father of the universe, who in the Sacred Scriptures
is called by His proper Name, I AM THAT I AM; and the beings on
each side are those most ancient powers which are always close to
the living God, one of which is called His creative power, and the
other His royal power. And the creative power is God, for it is by
this that He made and arranged the universe; and the royal power is
the Lord, for it is fitting that the Creator should lord it over and gov-
ern the creature” (Abr. 121). The origin of the theological conception
of powers is no more and no less than the ancient biblical doctrine of
the divine names. Judaism had adopted the custom of never pro-
nouncing the sacred Tetragrammaton and instead replacing it by al-
ternative names such as Adonai or Elohim. Anyway, as the sacred
Name of God, Yahweh or even Elohim, was translated by the LXX
as Kyrios and Theos, Philo just followed this tradition in order to ex-
plain the doctrine of powers or attributes of God. Thus, whereas Kyr-

261
See also Somn. 1.140: “the purest and most excellent of all... being as it were
lieutenants of the Ruler of the Universe, as though they were the eyes and ears of
the Great King, beholding and listening to everything”.

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 AN INITIATE INTO THE GREAT MYSTERIES: PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

ios describes the royal power, Theos does God as a Creator (Somn.
1.230)262.

However, as “God is alone, and by Himself being one, and there

is nothing like unto God” (Leg. All. II, 1), man can only nobly and
sincerely accept his own inability as a starting point to begin his
route towards the mysterious spiritual world: “God resembles no
created being whatever, but He is superior to everything, so that the
very swiftest conception is outstripped by Him, and confesses that it
is very far inferior to the comprehension of Him” (Somn. 1.184). As
already seen, Philo seems to anticipate other important Church Fa-
thers such as Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa263 or John
Chrysostom formulating the doctrine of the divine incomprehensibil-
ity. Even though it is true that this doctrine already appeared in some
hermetic and Gnostic texts of his time, it is important to highlight
that such statements were considered by the Jewish mysticism as an
essential part of its doctrinal core and its praxis, so that, rather than
explaining them as cultural borrowings due to external influences,
such similarities were considered to be derived from the essential
identity of the mystical experiences.

But, in addition, our discursive faculties are not only unable to

approach God’s Mysteries, but also unable to know the subtlest
states of the human being: “The intelligence which is in each of us is

262
However, in other passages, he distinguishes up to five powers. Thus, the sym-
bol of these five powers is the Ark of the Covenant: “Five [powers] have had their
figures set forth in the Sacred Scriptures, and their images are there likewise. The
images of the powers of command and prohibition are the Laws in the Ark; that of
the merciful power of God is the covering of the Ark, and He calls it the mercy-
seat. The images of the creative power and of the royal power are the winged cher-
ubim which are placed upon it” (De fuga, 100).
263
This way, he will explain the apophatic theology using terms that will be later
used by Gregory of Nyssa: “When, therefore, the soul that loves God seeks to
know what the one living God is according to his essence, it is entertaining upon an
obscure and dark subject of investigation, from which the greatest benefit that aris-
es to it is to comprehend that God, as to his essence, is utterly incomprehensible to
any being, and also to be aware that He is invisible” (Philo, De posteritate Caini
15).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

able to comprehend all other things, but has not the capability of un-
derstanding itself” (Leg. All. I, 91).

In sum, if man, as an earthly Adam, lacks the qualification re-

quired to attain the world of the Spirit, does this mean that we are in
this life doomed to an earthly existence, separate from and alien to
the world of the higher realities? Certainly, although the essence of
God is incomprehensible to the human mind, it cannot inferred from
this that we know nothing about God. He reveals Himself by means
of the creation of the sensible world, but above all by means of His
action within the soul.

This topic, being the central argument of the universal mysticism

of all times, is developed in some of his writings. In the work On the
principle that the worse is accustomed to be always plotting against
the better (Det.), Philo explains that man cannot know his Creator,
but God, considering that this knowledge was useful, has blown
some of His divinity into the soul, like “a divine and happy spirit”
(90). For that purpose, Philo invokes, among other biblical verses,
this one: “Did you not, as it were, call me Home and Father and
Originator of your maidenhood?” (Jer. 3:4 LXX), in order to demon-
strate that, though God has an incorporeal nature (Cher. 49), Inside
of each man has He put something that can find Him, due to its kin-
ship to God (Op. Mund. 145). It is “an impression of, or a fragment
or a ray of that blessed nature” (Op. Mund. 146).

How can we become aware of or realize that divine spirit? How

to find that impression, fragment or ray of the blessed nature that
connects us to God? In order to set forth on the mystical or spiritual
path of the Mysteries of Moses, we must discover the root of the
problem that torments man, with the aim of achieving a rational un-
derstanding that is previous to the effective spiritual realization.

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III.- ADAM (THE MIND), EVE (THE SENSES), ABEL (THE

DETACHMENT) AND CAIN (THE APPROPRIATION)

For that purpose, Philo uncovers the hidden meaning of one of

the most enigmatic biblical passages. It is about the episode of Adam
and Eve, which, according to his explanation, personifies the origin
of the differentiation between pure mind and specific mind, or, if
preferred, the duality between pure awareness and thoughts.

After eating the apple from the Forbidden Tree, “the Lord called
unto Adam and said unto him: where art thou?” (Gen. 3:9). Facing
this biblical verse, Philo asks himself: “Why now is Adam alone
called, when his wife also was concealed together with him? In the
first place, we must say that the mind is summoned, and asked where
it is. When it is converted, and reproved for its offense, not only is it
summoned itself but all its faculties are also summoned, for without
its faculties the mind by itself is found to be naked, and to be abso-
lutely nothing, and one of its faculties is also the outward sense, that
is to say the woman. The woman therefore, that is the outward sense,
is also summoned together with Adam, that is the mind, but sepa-
rately God does not summon her. Why not? Because being destitute
of reason she is incapable of being convicted by herself. For neither
can sight, nor hearing, nor any one of the other senses be taught, and
moreover none of them are capable of receiving the comprehension
of things” (Leg. All. III, 49-50). With this, Philo means to point out
that he cause of the Fall and expulsion from Paradise (which is re-
freshed in each human being’s birth) is not the perception of the sen-
sible world (Eve), but the appearance of the first duality (fruit of the
tree of good and evil) and the subsequent appropriation of the ob-
jects of the sensible world. Eve, “having thus conceived it becomes
pregnant, and immediately it is in labor, and brings forth the greatest
of all the evils of the soul, namely, vain opinion [Cain], for it con-
ceives an opinion that everything that it has seen, that it has heard,
that it has tasted, that it has smelled, or that it has touched, belongs to

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

itself, and to looks upon itself as the inventor and creator of them all”
(Cher. 57). This way, Man or Humankind debate between being
Abel and detaching itself from the sensible world, realizing that eve-
rything is vain (Abel means united with God or Nothing264), or set
forth on a hectic race to possess (Cain means possession) the
knowledge that comes from the senses and that, therefore, brings no
true peace at all. “Why then, O soul, since it is right for you to dwell
as a virgin in the house of God, and to cleave to wisdom, do you
stand aloof from these things, and rather embrace the outward sense,
which makes you effeminate and pollutes you? Therefore, you shall
bring forth an offspring altogether polluted and altogether destruc-
tive, the fratricidal and accursed Cain, a possession not to be sought
after; for the name Cain being interpreted means possession” (De
Cherubim 52). Thus, men who live bonded to the sensible world are
like Cain because they believe that life consists in hoarding experi-
ences without realizing that such possession is not the true posses-
sion of the spirit, since this should be dispossession or disregard.
And an even subtler idea: man wrongly believes that the thoughts he
experiences are his own, whereas, strictly speaking, there is really
nothing of his own at all.

In order to begin the spiritual path towards disregard, there is

nothing better than observing how our thoughts and feelings, gener-
ated by the sensible world, lash us daily, subjugating us to the alter-
nation of pain and ephemeral peace. Only this way will we realize
that all this is but an empty instability without consistence; “The
law-giver showing, by this expression, that he who gives way to in-
considerate impulses without any stability or firmness exposes him-
self to surf and violent tossing, like those of the sea, when it is agi-
tated in the winter season by contrary winds, and has never even a
single glimpse of calm or tranquility. But as when a ship having
been tossed in the sea is agitated, it is then no longer fit to take a

264
Likewise, in Flavius Josephus, The Judean Antiquities, Brill edition by Steve
Mason, I.52, translation and commentary by Louis H. Feldman, Leiden, 2000.

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voyage or to anchor in harbor, but being tossed about hither and

thither it leans first to one side and then to the other, and struggles in
vain against the waves; so the wicked man, yielding to a perverse
and insane disposition, and being unable to regulate his voyage
through life without disaster, is constantly tossed about in perpetual
expectation of an overturning of his life” (Post. 22). With this, Philo
warns about the hard dilemma that the spiritual seeker shall face: ei-
ther to suffer pain and frustration for being seduced by the unstable,
agitated, imaginary world (dream) of senses, or to transcend his situ-
ation by devoting himself to the path of true knowledge.

Man’s state of agitation is symbolized by the serpent: “And

pleasure has been represented under the form of the serpent, for this
reason, as the motion of the serpent is full of many windings and
varied, so also is the motion of pleasure. At first it folds itself round
a man in five ways... The pleasures from sight are various: there is
all the pleasure which arises from the contemplation of pictures or
statues; and all other works which are made by art delight the sight.
So also do the different stages through which plants go... and like-
wise the diversified beauty of the different animals” (Leg. All. II, 74-
75). Philo, inspired by the Platonic myth of Phaedo, introduces the
spirit as a slave of the senses: “As, therefore, when the charioteer has
his horses under command and guides the animals with the rein, the
chariot is guided wherever he pleases; but if they become restiff, and
get the better of the charioteer, he is often dragged out of his road...
So when the mind, which is the charioteer or pilot of the soul, retains
the mastery over the entire animal... the life of the man proceeds
rightly. But when the outward sense, which is devoid of reason, ob-
tains the supremacy, then a terrible confusion overtakes the man”
(Leg. All. III, 223-224). In sum, the Cainites (in the sense of those
who desire) suffer an illusion or hallucination generated by their own
minds, for they are wrongly convinced that they are the authors of
their own thoughts and actions. Such an error can be dispelled if it is
understood that the mind has two aspects: while looking inwards, it

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is purified when meeting the divine spirit, but while looking out-
wards, it will only find alienation and frustration; “There are two
minds, the mind of the universe, which is God, and also the separate
mind of each individual; he who escapes from the mind which is in
himself flees to the mind of the universe; and, conversely, he who
forsakes his own individual mind, confesses that all the things of the
human mind are of no value, and attributes everything to God”
(Philo, Leg. All. III, 29). Fortunately, the stable world of the spirit
rises before this unstable world, because “God is who remains un-
changed, whereas Creation is change” (Post. 24).

Philo goes further on his mysterious proposal of a spiritual path.

Man is facing the eternal dilemma: either to trust his thoughts, for he
considers them as his own, or to trust in God; “It is best, therefore, to
trust in God, and not in uncertain reasonings, or unsure conjectures.
‘Abraham trusted in the Lord, and it was counted to him for right-
eousness’ (Gen. 15:6)... But if we distrust our own reason, we shall
prepare and build ourselves a city of the mind which will destroy the
truth” (Philo, Leg. All. III, 228). As well: “Being presently to lament
over the self-satisfied and arrogant mind in this manner: ‘Woe to
thee, Moab’ (Num. 21:29). For, if you give attention to the riddles
which arise out of the perception of what is probable, you have de-
stroyed the truth by so doing” (Philo, Leg. All. 228, 231). With these
and other comments, Philo is not trying to defend the refusal of all
critical sense or the skepticism as a doctrine, but something much
subtler. He is suggesting the incompatibility between the specific
thought and the mystical experience, because the latter, as it is radi-
cally supraindividual, transcends the subject-object relationship.

IV.- BEGINNER’S MISTAKES

According to Philo, one of the most common and counter-

productive mistakes of those men who are in a Cainite moral state is

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to claim the authorship of their actions and, in general, to claim the

ownership of something: “And whoever ventures to assert that any
thing is his own shall be at down as a slave for ever and ever” (Leg.
All. III, 198). Therefore, “Who, then, could be a more determined
enemy to the soul than he who out of arrogance appropriate the es-
pecial attributes of the Deity to himself? Now it is an especial attrib-
ute of God to create, and this faculty it is impious to ascribe to any
created being. But the special property of the created being is to suf-
fer” (Cher. 77-78). This was the sin of Cain: “It happens then, that
there are two opinions contrary to and at variance with one another;
the one of which commits everything to the mind as the leader of all
reasoning, or feeling, or moving, or being stationary; and the other,
attributing to God all the consequent work of creation as his own.
Now the symbol of the former of these is Cain, which name, being
interpreted, means possession, from his appearing to possess all
things; and the symbol of the other is Abel, for this name, being in-
terpreted, means referring to God” (Sacr. 2).

Likewise, other of the most widespread mirages is to claim the

authorship of the thoughts and feelings; “By the only true God, I
think nothing so shameful as to suppose that I comprehend with my
intellect, or perceive by my outward sense” (Leg. All. II, 68; cf. III,
81). In other passage, he comments: “The sons are the reasonings
which take place in portions of the soul; if you pronounce that the
sons belong to you, are you speaking reasonably, or are you down-
right mad for thinking so? For melancholic thoughts, and follies, and
frenzies of the mind, and untrustworthy conjectures, and false ideas
about things, and empty attractions of the mind, resembling dreams,
and bringing with them convulsive agitation, and the disease which
is innate in the soul, namely forgetfulness, and many other things
beyond those that I have mentioned, take away the stability of your
master-like authority, and show that these are the possession of some
one else and not of you” (Philo, De Cherubim 69). This demon-
strates that the mind remains a prisoner of its own conceptualiza-

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tions: “Though [the mind] was not only not able to possess even it-
self steadily, but it did not even know of what essence it consisted,
but nevertheless it placed confidence in the outward senses, as being
competent to attain the objects perceivable only by them. Let it tell
us therefore how it will be able to avoid seeing wrongly, or being
mistaken as to its hearing, or to escape even in any other of these
outward senses” (Cher. 65). This way, Philo will state, with a sen-
tence that recalls the Platonic myth of the cavern but that finds its
roots in the Eastern mysticism, that the life of the senses is a so un-
stable, unreal, illusory world as the world of dreams, so “the deep
and long-enduring sleep, in which every wicked man is held, re-
moves all true conceptions, and fills the mind with all kinds of false
images, and unsubstantial visions, persuading it to embrace what is
shameful as praiseworthy” (Somn. 2.162).

Philo summarizes that there are three obstacles that block the
self-knowledge. Thus, in De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini, he explains
the three faults of Cain: “Of those who do not act rightly..., some
through forgetfulness of the benefits which they have received, have
failed in the great and beautiful virtue of thankfulness, and others
form an excessive conceit, have looked upon themselves as the au-
thors of the good things which have befallen them, and have not at-
tributed them to Him, who is really the cause of them. A third class
are they who commit an offense slighter indeed than the fault of
these latter, but more serious than that of the first mentioned, for
though they confess that the supreme Ruler is the cause of the good
that has befallen them, they still say that they deserved to receive it,
for that they are prudent, and courageous, and template, and just, so
that they may well on these accounts be esteemed by God to be wor-
thy of His favors” (Sacr. 54). In sum: forgetfulness of God, arro-
gance of believing oneself a maker, pride of considering oneself to
deserve a reward for one’s own merits.

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Those who forget the benefits received from God are recom-
mended by Philo to meditate on their existence, since “the whole
universe of which all these are parts, namely the world, is clearly a
complete work, worthy of its Maker. Thus, therefore, putting all
these things together, God appropriated the dominion over them all
to Himself, but the use and enjoyment of themselves and of each
other He allowed to those who are subject to Him; for we have the
complete use of our own faculties and of everything which affects
us: I therefore... find that not one of all these things is my own prop-
erty. For where was my body before my birth? And where will it go
when I am departed? ... Whence came the soul, and whither will it
go? And how long will it remain with us? And what is its essence, or
what may we speak of as such? Moreover, when did we acquire it?
Was it before our birth? But then we ourselves did not exist. Shall
we have it after our death? But then we shall not exist, we who are
now a combination... but rather we shall then be hastening to a re-
generation... And now, when we are alive we are governed rather
than governing, and we are understood ourselves rather than under-
standing anything else, for our soul understands us without being
understood by us, and it imposes commands upon us which we are
necessitated to obey, as servants are compelled to obey a mistress;
and whenever it chooses to abandon us and to depart to the Ruler of
all things, it will depart, leaving our house destitute of life. And even
if we attempt to compel it to remain, it will disappear; for its nature
is composed of unsubstantial parts, such as afford no handle to the
body... By all which I think it is shown that we have the use of pos-
sessions which in really belong to others... But having the use of
these things, if we are judicious and prudent, we shall take care of
them as possessions of God, being well aware beforehand that it is
the law, that the Master, whenever He pleases, may reclaim His own
property.” (Cher. 112-118).

Regarding the second obstacle mentioned, the arrogance of those

who consider themselves as author of works and owner of their

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fruits, Philo makes them see that, “for all things belong to God (θεοῦ
γὰρ τὰ πάντα κτήματα), so he who claims anything is taking away
what belongs to another, and receives a very severe blow and one
difficult to heal, namely, arrogance (οἴησις), a thing nearly akin to
imprudence and ignorance” (Leg. All. III, 33).

When Philo states, “all things belong to God”, that “all” also en-
compasses “both things external, and the body, and the outward
sense, and the power of speech, and the mind, and the energies and
essences of all the faculties. And not you, but all this world also, and
whatever you cut off and divide from it, you will find does not be-
long to you; for you do not possess the earth, or the water, or the air,
or the heaven, or the stars, or any of the kinds of animals or plants,
whether perishable or immortal, as your own; so that, whatever from
them you bring to offer to Him as a sacrifice, you are bringing as the
possession of God, and not as your own” (Sacr. 97). And, given that
“all things belong to God by virtue of possession... created things on-
ly have the use of them... being well aware beforehand that... [He]
may reclaim His own property” (Cher. 108-118). Ultimately, “no
mortal is positively and assuredly the master of anything whatever...
There must also be a Ruler and Lord in the universe... the One God,
to whom it was becoming to say, that ‘all things belong to Him’”
(Cher. 83). On occasion of his commentary on Lev. 25:23, he insists,
“The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is Mine; for ye are
strangers and sojourners with Me” (Cher. 107). Philo’s conclusion is
unequivocal: “You have no good thing of your own, but whatever
you fancy that you have, another has bestowed it upon you. From
which it is inferred that all things are the property of God who gives
them, but that they do not belong to the creature which only existed
after Him, and which stretches forth its hands to take them... Even if
you take them, take them not for yourself, but think what is thus giv-
en you a loan or deposit, and be ready to restore it to Him who has
deposited it with, or contributed it to you, requiting an older favor

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with a newer one, and an original kindness with one proffered in-
stead of it, as justice and property require” (Her. 103).

And, regarding the third fault, given that all what is created
comes from God, “they therefore who say that all thinking, and feel-
ing, and speaking, are the free gifts of their own soul, utter an impi-
ous and ungodly opinion, and deserve to be classed among the race
of Cain, who, though he was not able to master himself, yet dared to
assert that he had absolute possession of all other things; but as for
those persons who do not claim all the things in Creation as their
own, but who ascribe them to the divine grace, are men really noble”
(Post. 42).

With this discourse, Jewish metaphysics teaches the sterility of

the worldly life and points out some of the most common perspec-
tive errors. If the candidate for being initiated into the Mysteries of
Moses has the required qualifications, he will be helped to take the
first step. The first step to wake up from that alienating dream is to
realize that one is dreaming, that is, to understand that the infor-
mation that comes from the specific mind is false; “The virtuous and
purified mind suffers pain in the least degree, for the outward senses
have the least degree of power over it. But passion is exceedingly
powerful in the case of the foolish man, inasmuch as he has no anti-
dote in his soul by which he can ward off the evils which proceed
from the outward senses and from those objects which can only be
perceived by them” (Leg. All. III, 200). Once this is understood, “he
who had dreamed, waking up, found that all the motions and all the
advances of the foolish man are merely dreams that have no portion
of truth in them, for the very mind is found to be a dream” (Leg. All.
229).

From that moment on, he must deny the validity and authenticity
of all experience that comes from the mind and from the senses; “He
who is held in bondage by these [senses and the offspring of the

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mind: reflection, reasoning, etc.] can never enjoy even a dream of

freedom; for it is only by a flight and complete escape from them
that we arrive at a state of freedom from fear” (Philo, De Cherubim
74). After this initial understanding, he can begin the spiritual path.

V.- STAGES OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

Since in his own writings, Philo affirms that he devoted himself

to contemplation for years, it is to be assumed that most of his theo-
retical-practical formulations are based on his personal experience
and the teachings received during his cohabitation with the brother-
hoods of Essenes, Therapeutae and other Jewish mystical groups.

Following the traditional doctrine, already present in the Egyp-

tian and Greek cultures, Philo distinguishes three stages of the spir-
itual life: the first stage is characterized by the eagerness to look for
knowledge, which leads to a moment of conversion, when the candi-
date is given some introductory, initial or “initiatic” teachings. In the
second stage, the ascesis is deeply practiced in order to facilitate the
passing from the sensible world to the intelligible world. In the third
stage, the passing from the intelligible world to the presence of God
is completed.

In his work On Dreams (1.166-188) and above all in De

migratione Abrahami, Philo personifies these stages in certain bibli-
cal characters, specifically in Abraham, Jacob and Isaac.

The first stage of the spiritual life (Abraham) starts with an initial
conversion that takes place as a triple migration or departure. The
candidate or convert who aspires to know himself is intended to stop
identifying himself with the body, the senses and the thoughts: “God,
wishing to purify the soul of man, first of all gives it an impulse to-

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wards complete health265, namely, a change of abode, so as to quit

the three regions of the body, the outward sense and speech accord-
ing to utterance (λόγος κατὰ προσφοράν)... You must... return to
your native land, the land of the sacred Logos and in some sense of
the father of all those who practice virtue, which is wisdom, the best
possible abiding place for those souls which love virtue. In this
country you have a race which learns everything of itself, and is self-
taught... surnamed Isaac... And the fountain from which good things
are poured forth is the union with of the bounteous (φιλόδωρος) God
(De migratione Abrahami 2, 28-30).

Abraham represents this first degree of the spiritual path because,

while guided by his faith, he experienced this triple migration: the
first one out of his body, symbolized by his departure from Chaldea
(Migr. 1). But he had to pass from the knowledge about the world to
the knowledge about himself. Thus, after studying the celestial phe-
nomena in Chaldea, he travels to Haran, which represents the cav-
erns of the senses (Abr. 72 and Somn. 1.60); and he finally emigrates
from the speech, which is the field of the discursive intelligence
(Migr. 2). That is why Terah, Abraham’s father, “died in Haran”
(Gen. 11:32), that is, he died in the body, the “mother-city of the
senses”, since Haran means “excavated” or “cavern”, for the body
was dug in order to find the sensory organs (Somn. 1.41-42) and thus
he never passed that state (Somn. 1.48). According to Philo, the jour-
ney to Haran represents the “self-knowing”, the passing from the re-
search on the nature (Chaldea) to the knowledge of the senses: “This
disposition the Hebrews called Terah” (Somn. 58). Terah (which
means “the investigation of a smell”) is called that way because he
represents the sensory knowledge that could only smell the virtue.
That is why Abraham, when leaving Haran (perception) (Gen. 12:4)
after seeing his father (the senses) die, could return to his native land.
Abraham renounced himself after knowing him in order to know

265
The word σωτηρία is usually translated as “preservation”, “salvation”, but I
consider it more correct to translate it as “health” or “peace”.

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Him who Is (Somn. 60). The soul returns to the intelligible world
from which it departed.

Likewise, he interprets the carnal union of Abraham and Hagar,

who is the acquired, “profane science”, as the opposite of the God-
given, “revealed science”, represented by his marriage with Sarah
(Abr. 100). Thus, Abraham, the beginner, symbolizes the progress
from the knowledge about the world through the senses and the
speech (Hagar) to the true knowledge that is given by God without
need of senses or thoughts (Sarah). In sum, “the Lord said to Abra-
ham: ‘depart from thy land, and from thy kindred, and from thy fa-
ther’s house’ (Gen. 12:1)... Depart therefore from the earthly parts
which envelop you... fleeing from that base and polluted prison
house of the body, and from the keepers as it were of the prison, its
pleasures and appetites... Depart also from your kindred, outward
senses, for now indeed you have given yourself up to each of them to
be made use of as it will, and you have become a good, the property
of others who have borrowed you, having lost your own power over
yourself... But now rise up and quit speech according to utterance...
that you may not be deceived by the specious beauty of words and
names, and so be separated from that real beauty which exists in the
things themselves which are intended by these names” (Migr. 1-12).
When the beginner or convert understand that he, as a Man, does not
consist in the body, the sensory experiences or the thoughts, he be-
gins the second stage of the proficient.

The second stage (Jacob) is the path of the proficient who ad-
vances in the ascetic effort and in the fight against the passions that
lead him to the apatheia. “The way that leads to virtue... is account-
ed rough, and steep, and difficult” (Post. 154), so “others, with much
endurance and great vigor, supporting the fearful and terrible events
of the wilderness, pass through the contest of life... And the cause of
this is not merely labor, but also the sweetness with which it is com-
bined; for the scripture says, ‘and the water was made sweet’ (Ex.

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 AN INITIATE INTO THE GREAT MYSTERIES: PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

15:25)” (Congr. 165-166). But such an effort must be made with dis-
regard to the results, without a reason, since everything is ultimately
in the hands of God. As most mystics, Philo deals with the apparent
paradox between ascetic effort and divine grace. On one hand, the
ascesis essentially consists in an effort. However, the fruits of the
spiritual life are considered as a Grace of God, not necessarily con-
nected to any human activity. No sum of efforts, no matter how sus-
tained and intense they may be, can ensure us the vision of God. It is
not possible to attain any spiritual degree without the Grace of God:
“Human intellect would not have dared to mount up to such a height
as to lay claim to the nature of God, if God Himself had not drawn it
up to Himself... It is right for God to plant and to build up the virtues
in the soul” (Leg. All. I, 38, 48). Such a process is represented by Ja-
cob’s “mystical journey” from the Well of the Oath to Haran and his
stay at Bethel, where he achieves the vision of God at the end of the
ladder on which the angels ascended and descended. Those journeys
mean that the ascetic cannot stand living in the senses (Haran) except
for a short period of time, and that he must return to his home (Somn.
1.109-119), towards the contemplation of God.

The third and last stage is the one of the perfect (Isaac). This last
stage begins with the search for God beyond the spirit and culmi-
nates with the devotion of oneself in the hands of God. The model of
this spiritual degree is Jacob, whose name means “laughter”, that is,
the joy and happiness that is achieved when one returns to the pres-
ence of God.

The detachment practiced by the perfect initiate leads him to a

complete unidentification with the body, desires and thoughts. Now
he knows that such instruments are not his own, and his thirst to ap-
propriate experiences has ceased. Now there is just one last step left:
to renounce what remains of oneself after relinquishing the body, the
senses and the mind; “Therefore if any desire comes upon you, O
soul, to be the inheritor of the good things of God, leave not only

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your country, the body, and your kindred, the outward senses, and
your father’s house, that is speech, but also flee from yourself, and
depart out of yourself, like the Corybantes, or those possessed with
demons, being driven to frenzy, and inspired by some prophetic in-
spiration. For while the spirit is in a state of enthusiastic inspiration,
and while it is no longer mistress of itself, but is agitated and drawn
into frenzy by heavenly love, and drawn upwards to that object, truth
removing g all impediments out of its way, and making every thing
before it plain, that so it may advance by a level and easy road, its
destiny is to become an inheritor of the things of God” (Her. 69-70).
As he has transcended the indirect knowledge derived from the sub-
ject-object relationship, he accesses the God-given wisdom, that is,
he knows in a direct, intuitive way, because, strictly speaking, it is
not him who knows, but God who inspires him. That is why Philo
considers him as an automathēs or autodidact (Somn. 1.168).

When Philo describes this state as a “withdrawal” from the world

or a “departure” from oneself, he is not being rhetorical, but he does
literally describe the ecstatic experience. When stating that the per-
fect must withdraw his bonding to the intelligible world (body, sens-
es and thoughts) in order to access a transcendent reality, Philo is
just describing his own personal experiences about that final state in
which the soul is carried away by the divine presence: madness, so-
ber inebriation, love, etc.: “I am not ashamed to relate what has hap-
pened to me myself, which I know from having experienced it ten
thousand times. Sometimes, when I have desired to come to my usu-
al employment of writing on the doctrines of philosophy, though I
have known accurately what it was proper to set down, I have found
my mind barren and unproductive, and have been completely unsuc-
cessful in my object, being indignant at my mind for the uncertainty
and vanity of its then existent opinions, and filled with amazement at
the power of the living God, by whom the womb of the soul is at
times opened and at times closed up. And sometimes when I have
come to my work empty I have suddenly become full, ideas being, in

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an invisible manner, showered upon me, and implanted in me from

on high, so that, through the influence of divine inspiration (ὡς ὑπὸ
κατοχῆς ἐνθέου κορυβαντιᾶν), I have become greatly excited, and I
have known neither the place in which I was nor those who were
present, nor myself, nor what I was saying, nor what I was writing...
having such an effect on my mind as the clearest ocular demonstra-
tion would have on the eyes” (Migr. 34-35. Also in Somn. 2.250-
254, Conf. 59). In another fragment, he identifies that ecstatic mo-
ment with some biblical passages: “When it calls the soul to itself, it
excites a congealing power in everything which is earthly, or corpo-
real, or under the influence of the external senses. On which account
it [the Manna] is said to be ‘like the hoar-frost on the Earth’ (Ex.
16:14). For when a man who beholds God, meditates a flight from
the passions, ‘the waves are frozen’ (Ex. 15:8), that is to say, the im-
petuous rush, and the increase, and the haughty pride of the waves
are arrested, in order that he who might behold the living God might
then pass over the Passion” (Philo, Leg. All. III, 172). In other pas-
sage, he explains: “As long therefore as our spirit still shines around
and hovers around, pouring as it were a noontide light into the whole
soul, we, being masters of ourselves, are not inspired (ὄντες οὐ
κατεχόμεθα); but when it approaches its setting, then, as is natural,
an ecstasy (ἔκστασις), which proceeds from inspiration (κατοκωχή),
takes violent hold of us, and insanity (μανία) seizes upon us, for
when the divine light sets this other rises and shines, and this very
frequently happens to the race of prophets; for the spirit (νοῦς) that is
in us is removed from its place at the arrival of the divine πνεῦμα,
but is again restored to its previous habitation when it departs, for it
is contrary to holy law for what is mortal to dwell with what is im-
mortal” (Her. 264-265). It is a supraindividual state of realization.
The idea itself of quest or progress has disappeared because the hu-
man mind has emptied itself in order to give way to God’s inspira-
tion: “He who, by reason of the happy constitution of his own nature
and by the prolific fertility of his soul, has attained to wisdom with-
out encountering labor or enduring hardship, stands in need of no

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further improvement, for he has at hand the perfect gifts of God, in-
spired by means of those most ancient graces, and he wishes and
prays that they may remain lasting” (Congr. 37-38). These three
stages describe the initiation and culmination of the Mysteries of
Moses, the access and effective realization in the spiritual level that
come up with the joy of the presence of God. In other passages of his
work, Philo synthesizes the three stages of the spiritual ascension,
represented by Abraham, Jacob and Isaac, in only one character:
Moses.

VI.- MOSES AND THE THICK DARKNESS

Philo interprets the events of Moses’ life in the same metaphysi-

cal way. The death of the libidinous Egyptian administrator at the
hands of Moses represents the victory against the worldly desires.
After that, Moses withdraws in the solitude of the desert (ascesis),
where he will free the seven daughters of Jethro (the five senses, the
speech and the sexual instinct) from the evil shepherds who want to
take them away from the field of the spirit. He also interprets Moses’
marriage with Sephora in an allegorical way, as the union between
spirit and wisdom (Post. 78). Likewise, his departure from Egypt is
“a passing over from the body and the passions... The Passover fig-
uratively represents the purification of the soul” (Spec. Leg. II, 147).
All these episodes of the life of Moses symbolize the process of puri-
fication of the human soul, which tries to see God face to face. Until
then, it has only indirectly seen God, that is, through His reflection in
Creation, so the images generated by that mirror, no matter how
beautiful they might be, are changeable and inconsistent because
they are subject to time (change) and space (shape). Meditation, no
matter how subtle it may be, as it is based on the separation between
meditating subject and meditated object, cannot get out of that mir-
ror. “The spirit beholds God in this as in a mirror” (Dec. 105).

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 AN INITIATE INTO THE GREAT MYSTERIES: PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

But Moses aspires to overcome this indirect knowledge of God

(by means of meditation) and then to know Him face to face (con-
templation): “Do not you be manifested to me through the medium
of the heaven, or of the earth... or, in short, of anything whatever of
created things... For the images which are presented to the sight in
executed things are subject to dissolution, but those which are pre-
sented in the One uncreate may last for ever266” (Leg. All. III, 101).
This way, interpreting the episode of Moses before the burning bush
in a contemplative way, Philo reveals the keys of the last step (the
step without step) that precedes the contemplation of God. In effect,
Philo describes a contemplative state previous to “enlightenment” or
mystical ecstasy, which he describes as “darkness”. Such a state
happens after having refused all information from other things and is
characterized by the most peculiar circumstance that there is noth-
ing: neither ideas, nor shapes, nor understanding267. This initially re-
quires an intense, upright attention (kawwanah), that is, an attention
on oneself (or to pay attention to the own attention) with a complete
disregard of the external objects and a “heart directed to heaven”
(Talmud, Berakhot I, 5b).

Philo recognizes this state in the biblical passage about the Sinai,
where Moses “will now penetrate into ‘the thick darkness where God
Was’ (Ex. 20:21), that is to say, into those unapproachable and invis-
ible conceptions which are found of the living Being” (Post. 14).
This is because “Moses, the spectator of the invisible nature, the man
who really saw God (for the Sacred Scriptures say that he entered
‘into the darkness’, by which expression they mean figuratively to
intimate the invisible essence), having investigated every part of eve-
ry thing, sought to see clearly the much-desired and only God; but

266
This metaphor was also used by Saint Paul: “for now we see through a glass,
darkly, but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). This argument will be widely devel-
oped by Nicholas of Cusa some centuries later.
267
As well, Philo seems to anticipate the descriptions of the state of emptiness of
the soul, which will find its most famous expression in the Dark night of the spirit
of Saint John of the Cross.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

when he found nothing, not even any appearance at all resembling

what he had hoped to behold, he, then, giving up all idea of receiving
instruction on that point from any other source, flies to the very be-
ing himself whom he was seeking, and entreats him, saying ‘show
me thyself that I may see thee so as to know thee’ (Ex. 33:13)” (Mut.
7-8). Such a dark ousia, like the dark night of the senses and the
soul, is the last great test that the initiate must overcome in order to
empty himself from material impurities and give way to the presence
of God. In one of his most remarkable paragraphs, Philo states that
“[Moses] so insatiably desires to behold Him, and to be beheld by
Him, that he supplicates Him to display to his eye His nature of
which it is impossible to form a conjecture, so that he may become
acquainted with it, that thus he might receive a most well-grounded
certainty of knowledge that could not be mistaken, in exchange for
uncertain doubts; and he will never cease from urging his desire, but
even, though he is aware that he desires a matter which is difficult of
attainment, or rather which is wholly unattainable, he still strives
on... At all events, he will now penetrate into ‘the thick darkness
where God Was’, that is to say, into those unapproachable and invis-
ible conceptions which are formed of the living Being. For the great
Cause of all things does not exist in time, nor at all in place, but He
is superior to both time and place... When, therefore, the soul that
loves God seeks to know what the one living God is according to His
essence, it is entertaining upon an obscure and dark subject of inves-
tigation, from which the greatest benefit that arises to it is to com-
prehend that God, as to His essence, is utterly incomprehensible to
any being, and also to be aware that He is invisible” (Post. 13-15)268.

268
The knowledge of the Logos is higher than the knowledge of the powers; how-
ever, it is lower than the apprehension of the ousia in the darkness: “It is very suit-
able... to desire to see Him; and, if they are unable to do that, at least to see his im-
age, the most sacred Logos” (Conf. 97). Thus, “His Logos, which is the interpreter
of His will; for that must be God to us imperfect beings, but the first mentioned, or
true God, is so only to wise and perfect men” (Leg. All. III, 207). This way, Philo
seems to grade the meditative and contemplative states hierarchically as follows:
the Powers, the Logos, the dark Ousia and the Being.

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 AN INITIATE INTO THE GREAT MYSTERIES: PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

In sum, the mystical union between man and God implies a

shapeless, thoughtless vision that, precisely because of that, is out of
the space-time conditionings, that is, in the sacred darkness. Or, in
other terms, in a Nothing that implies the complete absence of indi-
viduality. Only when the contemplative trusts and accepts, with no
reservations, his own sinking and his full, absolute devotion to that
darkness or sacred cloud, only then may he see the light that hides
within. It is there where he may see the divine Light or hear the
soundless “laughter” of Isaac.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION
IN CHRISTIANITY

“About contemplation, any shepherd or old

woman knows more than those well-versed men
without experience” (Antonio de Rojas, Vida del
espíritu, Madrid, 1628, p. 107. 7th Advice).

I.- WHAT IS CONTEMPLATION?

According to the medieval Christian tradition, contemplation is

an immediate experience of God due to the special influence of the
Holy Spirit. It has been defined as “the science of ignoring oneself in
the ecstasy of God” (Philokalia, Diadochus, Definitions, 5). It is a
mystical science (from the Greek verb myein, “to be silent”, from
where mystikos, “silent”, “mute” is derived), not only in the sense
that it is a “hidden science, because the divine Master, who wanted
to keep this teaching to himself, teaches it in the secret hideout of the
heart”269, but also because it implies the silencing of the mind and
the disappropriation of the thoughts, so “strive to keep your intellect
deaf and mute during the hour of prayer; only thus will you be able
to pray” (Nilus the ascetic, On prayer, 35). It is about mystical theol-
ogy, as Saint John of the Cross clarifies: “It is that contemplation,
whereby the understanding has the loftiest knowledge of God, is
called mystical theology, which signifies secret wisdom of God; for
it is secret even to the understanding that receives it. For that reason
Saint Dionysius calls it a ray of darkness”270.

269
Juan Bretón, born about 1560, wrote Mística Theologia, Madrid, 1614, L. IV, p.
110v.
270
Saint John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, VIII, 6
 JAVIER ALVARADO

In effect, it is secret because it is a science that teaches how to

shut oneself in or withdraw within oneself271, how to “refuse the oars
of all understanding, of the five senses and of all capturable
things”272, to “shut oneself in the deepest enclosure, where secret
things of the divinity are usually found”273. Precisely, “the contem-
platives, as they know the secrets of God and enter His chamber, are
called friends of God”274. But, on the other hand, it is a science or art
that teaches how to transcend the intellect. As contemplation “is an
association of the intellect with God, then in what state must the in-
tellect possibly be, without turning elsewhere, to approach its Lord
and converse with Him without the mediation of anything else [such
as the thought]?” (Nilus the ascetic, On prayer, 3). Being “a secret,
inner language with which the soul communicates with God”, such a
dialogue requires calmness and inner peace of mind, so that, “should
God want to talk to them, He had better not find them so busy talk-
ing, or God will keep silence” (Saint John of Ávila275, Letter 1). Per-
fect contemplation happens when there is no appropriation of the in-
formation that comes from the senses or the thoughts; “If Moses, in
his attempt to approach the burning bush, was hindered until he had
removed the sandals from his feet, then should not you who desire to
see God and converse with Him, remove and cast out of yourself
every sinful thought?” (Nilus the ascetic, On prayer, 4). This in-
cludes also the thought itself of wanting to contemplate God; “You
must arrange all of your exercises in order to really love your God
and not just to obtain any news of God, being only interested in his
knowledge”276, because one thing is to think that one is contemplat-
ing God and another different thing is to contemplate Him, for the

271
Bernardino de Laredo (1482-1540), Ascent of Mount Zion III, ch. 31. An Eng-
lish version with translation, introduction and notes by E. Allison Peers, was pub-
lished by Faber and Faber, London, in 1952.
272
Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent of Mount Zion III, ch. 7.
273
Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent of Mount Zion III, ch. 11.
274
Diego de Estella (1524-1578), Vanidad del Mundo, Madrid-Navarra, 1980, p.
231.
275
Saint John of Ávila (1500-1569), Complete Works available in Spanish, BAC,
vol. IV, Madrid, 2003.
276
Diego de Estella, Vanidad del Mundo, p. 320.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

latter involves disregard or, when the contemplation is perfect, even

absence of thoughts, that is, pure attention. According to Francisco
de Osuna, contemplation prayer “consists in a most intense attention
only on God, without turning the thought anywhere else...”277.

That is why some other mystics also define contemplation as

demented, insane or irrational science. Friar John of the Angels278
(1536-1609) defines it like that as well, since the speech ceases in it
and the reason is unable to achieve it. That is why it is true wis-
dom279, since it provides a direct, immediate knowledge of God, dis-
tant from any mistake, such as the ones that come from speculation.
It is a “square knowledge”, that is, complete and all-embracing, on
all four sides280. As God has no parts and, therefore, He is inaccessi-
ble by means of the deductive knowledge, the meditator must use
another form of knowledge, direct and suprarational.

Cassian placed contemplation on top of all the forms of prayer

and described it as the “pure prayer” for “we ought to... aim rather at
those kinds of prayer which are poured forth either from the contem-
plation of the good things to come or from love burning as fire”
(Conf. IX, XVI). That “prayer of fire which is known and tried by
but very few... which transcends all human thoughts, and is distin-
guished, I will not say by any sound of the voice, but by no move-
ment of the tongue, or utterance of words, but which the soul en-
lightened by the infusion of that heavenly light describes in no hu-
man and confined language”, so “the mind, which is advancing to
that perfect state of purity... grasping at that hour and ineffably pour-

277
Francisco de Osuna, Second Spiritual Alphabet (Seville 1530), letter R, ch. 2.
278
Author of Triunfos del amor de Dios (1589-1590), Diálogos de la conquista del
reino (1595), Lucha espiritual y amorosa entre Dios y el alma (1600) and Consi-
deraciones espirituales sobre el libro del Cantar de los Cantares (1607), among
others.
279
John of the Angels, Triumphs of the love of God (Medina 1589-90) part 1, ch.
18 and 15.
280
John of the Angels, Manual, p. 579-580 and 597. The same metaphor of the ex-
empt or “square knowledge” is found in Bernabé de Palma, Via Spiritus ch. VIII
(edit. in Seville in 1532); I use the edition of Salamanca (1541), p. 116.

307
 JAVIER ALVARADO

ing forth in its supplications things so great that they cannot be ut-
tered with the mouth nor even at any other time be recollected by the
mind... I have perceived by a sudden illumination from the Lord an
abounding revelation of most holy ideas which were formerly alto-
gether hidden from me” (Conf. IX, XXV, XV; X, X).

As well, it is defined as prayer or meditation of recollection be-

cause, as the Jesuit Francisco Arias explained, “the thoughts and de-
sires that the soul had over different things are moved away from
them and recollected and concentrated unto God, only thinking about
Him...; the thought and love that it had over different things, though
good ones, are removed from them and given only to its God, who
demands them”. And it is said to be a silent spiritual prayer “be-
cause talking about the soul is thinking... and when one stops think-
ing about other things, and calms down looking at God alone, and
hearing Him, then the soul keeps silence...”281, sheltered from the ag-
itation of desire and the hustle and bustle of the thoughts. He who
recollects himself is like a turtle, a snail or “a hedgehog that, finding
itself pursued by the hounds [the thoughts], curls up into a ball in or-
der to avoid them, so that the hounds that ring it cannot even see its
feet or find anywhere to grab but quills; and, after trying to bite
them, they get hurt and flee”282.

Such a recollection is not immobility, since, as Saint Francis de

Sales clarifies, “The repose of the heart consists not in immobility
but in needing nothing, not in having no movement but in having no
need to move... The blessed ever have repose in their movements
and movement in their repose; only God has repose without move-
ment, because He is sovereignly a pure and substantial act... Love
seeks that which it has found, not to have it but to have it always...

281
Francisco Arias, S. J., Tratado de la oración mental, Valencia, 1588, p. 215.
282
Antonio de Rojas, Libro intitulado Vida del espíritu (A Book entitled Life of the
spirit), Madrid, 1628, ch. 11, p. 65.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

The damned are in eternal movement without any mixture of rest”

(Treatise on the Love of God, V, III).

The Western Christian describes recollection as sobriety of the

heart, because “Sobriety is a spiritual method or way that entirely
frees the man, with the help of God, from impassioned mental repre-
sentations and impassioned words and wicked works when it persists
and is willingly traveled upon. Traveled upon, it bestows, to the ex-
tent that this is attainable, secure knowledge of the God who is inap-
prehensible and the solution of divine and hidden mysteries...
‘Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God’283” (Philo-
kalia, vol. I, Hesychius284, On Sobriety, 1).

In sum, contemplation is pure attention, deprived of all that is not

God285, that is, focused only on the center of the soul (God) and not
on the circumference (Creation), since the core of man “is the most
concealed secret and the most hidden enclosure”286. It must also be
square, that is to say, God must be contemplated on all His four
sides: depth, height, width and length, “because it is the simplest
equality”287. Finally, it must be encouraged288, either by love to
know Him or to know oneself, and humble289.

II.- GOAL OF CONTEMPLATION

All men carry within them a feeling of eternity that leads them to
look for stable peace or happiness. Only few of them understand that

283
Mt. 5:8.
284
The author of this treatise, On Sobriety, was not the famous Hesychius who was
a presbyter of the Church of Jerusalem and died in 433, but another Hesychius, not
yet identified, who would have been the hegumen of a monastery at Mount Sinai
between the 8th and the 10th centuries.
285
Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent of Mount Zion III, ch. 25.
286
Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent of Mount Zion III, ch. 32; II, ch. 39.
287
Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent of Mount Zion III, ch. 39.
288
Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent of Mount Zion III, ch. 3.
289
Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent of Mount Zion III, ch. 35.

309
 JAVIER ALVARADO

that peace cannot be achieved by means of created objects, so they

direct their quest to the transcendent. In the Sacred History of Juda-
ism and Christianity, the episode of the Garden of Eden is the one
that best reflects this anomalous situation of Humankind. Man en-
joyed God’s friendship and presence in Paradise until, after eating
the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil, he was expelled in-
to the world of duality. His nostalgia for the Paradise drives man to
try to recover that lost state by means of a method or way already
proven and sufficiently corroborated by many generations of seek-
ers. Regarding this, as the Benedictine García Jiménez de Cisneros
explained, “to engage in contemplation” is the most suitable meth-
od290. Ultimately, we are gods who have forgotten it, hence “The
soul... should breathe in God as God in it, in the way of participation.
For granting that God has bestowed upon it so great a favor as to
unite it to the most Holy Trinity, whereby it becomes like God, and
God by participation... Souls have by participation that very God
which the Son has by nature, and are therefore really gods by partic-
ipation” (Saint John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, 39, 4, 6). And,
as we are One in God, the same divine nature strives to call our at-
tention when we do not attend to its request: “O souls created for this
and called to this, what are you doing? What are your occupations?
... Oh, wretched blindness of the children of Adam, blind to so great
a light, and deaf to so clear a voice; you do not see that, while seek-

290
The Benedictine García Jiménez de Cisneros (1456-1510) published the Direc-
tory for the canonical hours and the Exercises for the spiritual life (Complete
works available in Spanish, Alicante, 2007). Whereas the topic of the Directory is
the oral prayer in community, the Exercises talks about the mental, personal pray-
er: how to meditate, what time, which topics must be considered, which affections
must emerge from heart. For that purpose, he invokes teachings of Aristotle,
Valerius Maximus, Seneca, Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine,
Cassian, Saint Benedict, Cassiodorus, Saint Gregory the Great, Dionysius the
Areopagite, Saint Bernard Clairvaux, Richard of Saint Victor, Thomas à Kempis,
Jean Gerson, etc. One of the merits of Cisneros was to write in vernacular language
“for the simple believers and not for the arrogant learned men” though, in the 15th
and 16th centuries, not writing in Latin was considered a dangerous novelty. For
that reason, the Exercises were listed in the Index of forbidden books published by
the General Inquisitor Gaspar de Quiroga in 1583. García Jiménez de Cisneros
maintained a great friendship with Friar John of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, abbot of Mont-
serrat and author of the Treatise of the Holy Spirit.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

ing after greatness and glory, you are miserable and contemptible,
and unworthy of blessings so great!” (Saint John of the Cross, Spir-
itual Canticle, 39, 7).

Unlike the wrong opinion of the average people, the practice of

meditation or contemplation does not have the aim of moving man
away from his setting to make him live withdrawn in a monastery.
The practice of contemplation does not consist in the outward ap-
pearance of withdrawing behind “completely closed walls or fences,
but in love bonds and ties, so that the soul, driven to seek God, de-
cides to seek Him within itself, in the most secret, hidden place of it-
self”291. Regardless of each one’s way of life, contemplation pursues
that the external world be not an obstacle when dealing with God292.
The goal of contemplation is “for a man to enter into himself, to
know his own soul and the powers thereof. By this inward sight thou
shalt come to see the nobility and dignity that naturally it had in its
first creation; and thou shalt also see the wretchedness and the mis-
chief which thou art fallen into by sin. From this sight will arise a
desire with great longing in thine heart to recover again that dignity
and nobleness which thou hast lost”293. To verify, by means of con-
templation, that one is beyond the mind or thoughts implies to find
oneself ab-solved of material and mental conditionings. “As Saint
Maximus says: the spirit that obtains the immediate union with God
is able, before anything else, to be free and void of all thinking or be-
ing thought. But when it destroys that ability, as soon as it thinks
about something that comes after God, it becomes proven that the
union beyond thought has been interrupted... The pure spirit
achieves, by means of the union with its origin, a condition beyond
all thought, as soon as the thought has renounced the different

291
Juan Bautista de la Concepción (1561-1613), Obras, T. II, p. 197.
292
Juan Bautista de la Concepción, Obras, T. II, p. 163.
293
Walter Hilton, Augustinian monk of the 14th century who wrote The Scale (or
Ladder) of Perfection (I, 42). The original text can be found in the edition pub-
lished by the Medieval Institute Publications, 2000. I reproduce here the text in
modern English edited by Dom Serenus Cressy, O.S.B. (1659), “by the changing
of some antiquated words rendered more intelligible”.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

movements and habits that are out of the cause of that being, and it
still remains linked only to its origin and is open to that indescribable
peace that is beyond the thought and that is put in action by the si-
lence. No word or reflection can say it, but only he who has experi-
enced it may understand it. The sign of those who have been found
worthy of that joy beyond the thought is easy to distinguish for eve-
ryone: it is a pacified soul that has become indifferent to the things
of this world” (Callistus and Ignatius, Direction to Hesychasts, in a
hundred chapters 70).

Contemplation is the gate to other states of the Being or, as an-

cient Christians would say, the means to go into the divine mysteries.
When one disregards the “thoughts and mind, does so in the hope
that the eyes of his heart may be enlightened, God vouchsafes to him
mysteries in the greatest sanctity and purity, and imparts to him of
His Grace” (Macarius, Hom. XIV). The most important goal of the
thoughtless or objectless meditation (that is, contemplation) is to re-
cover a spiritual state beyond plurality that transcends the state of
duality (space-time, good-evil, pleasure-pain, etc.). It is about attain-
ing peace, the vision of God, the feeling of eternity, etc. or, using
specific symbols of the Judeo-Christian tradition: returning to the
lost Paradise, recovering the fellowship, friendship or presence of
God, enter the Heavenly Jerusalem, finish the ascent to Mount Zion,
etc.

III.- DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEDITATION AND CON-

TEMPLATION

Christian mysticism traditionally distinguishes between medita-

tion and contemplation. Whereas the former is a form of mental
prayer or self-inquiry by means of thoughts, contemplation, on the
contrary, pursues the farthest distance from desires and thoughts, and
even the elimination of all discursive form.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

According to the Franciscan monk Bernardino de Laredo, medi-

tation is an active form of prayer that consists in “flowing without
stillness”, employing different topics for reflection whose aim is to
soften the conceited shell of the meditator until he understands the
futility of his arrogance and may pass to contemplation. In the 14th
century, Walter Hilton stated: “By meditation shalt thou come to see
thy wretchedness, thy sins and thy wickedness; as pride, covetous-
ness, gluttony, sloth and lechery, wicked stirrings of envy, anger, ha-
tred, melancholy, wrath, bitterness and imprudent heaviness. Thou
shalt also see thy heart to be full of vain flames and fears of the flesh
and of the world. All these stirrings will always boil out of thy heart,
as water runneth out of the spring of a stinking well... In meditation,
likewise, shalt thou see those virtues which be needful for thee to
have, as humility, mildness, patience, righteousness, spiritual
strength, temperance, cleanness, peace and soberness, faith, hope and
charity. These virtues thou shalt see in meditation, how good, how
fair, how profitable they be; and by prayer thou shalt thereupon de-
sire and get them. Without which third means of prayer thou canst
not be contemplative, for Job saith thus: ‘In abundantia ingredieris
sepulcrum’ (Job 5:26); that is in plenty of bodily works and spiritual
virtues shalt thou enter thy grave, that is thy rest in contemplation”
(Scale of Perfection, I, 15).

On the contrary, contemplation, since it does not need thoughts

or reasonings, is a simpler, more restful form of prayer, because the
mental silence does not try to know or reflect about anything, or deal
with anything other than waiting for God’s Grace with patience and
perseverance; “contemplation is the unspoken, stillest occupation of
the will alone, occupied with God alone, recognizing His love with-
out knowing anything about Him, with a so straight stillness that it
cannot move; but, even knowing nothing, it desires, as well as the
child that, before having knowledge about his mother, asks for her

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breast, being this the most tacit, silent request”294. In the 15th and 16th
centuries, the Toledan priest Gómez García picked up the medieval
contemplative tradition and distinguished between imagination,
meditation and contemplation. The first one, “for whatever remote
and wandering reason, lazes around here or there, step by step, idly...
The second one, with much hard work and diligence, comes from the
soul and looks for high, sharp things...; but the third one, in its light
flight of wonderful lightness, is attracted to fly in circles over wher-
ever the outburst of the spirit captures it... Imagination crawls; and
meditation barely runs; but contemplation flies in circles over all
things... Imagination is distraction; meditation implies the seeking
for reason; contemplation is admiration... Imagination works by it-
self; meditation by means of reason, contemplation by means of in-
telligence”295.

Discursive or reflective meditation is a previous, necessary, use-

ful but also less perfect form of internalization because “The divinity
is at all unthinkable, fact from which it must be inferred that our un-
derstanding can barely take advantage of this negotiation, but will ra-
ther hinder it”296. That non-understanding or state of disappropria-
tion or eviction of desires and thoughts has the potentiality of mak-
ing the necessary space in the soul so that it may be filled297.

Therefore, inasmuch as the thought implies a mediate, indirect or

subordinate form of knowledge (a thinking subject and thought ob-
jects), it can only provide us with an objectivized knowledge of God.

294
Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent to Mount Zion III, ch. 35; III, ch. 8 insists that we
must “detach ourselves from all thought that may distract us, even though it comes
with a reason”.
295
Gómez García, Carro de dos vidas (Seville 1500, Madrid 1988, FVE), p. 129-
130.
296
Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent to Mount Zion III, ch. 7.
297
This way, the soul is touched “as by a ray that rips the cloud or a sudden light-
ning... it is sometimes touched by an unknown movement and it feels that touch,
but neither sees nor understands him who touches it; and words without syllables
are said within, uncountable for that who hears them, but undeniable, since he who

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And, if God is converted into an object, an idea, a mental concept,

the meditator will just move away from Him; “Do not tie yourself, as
many others, to vocal or compulsory prayers, or even to mental ones,
although they may seem very important to you; do not even to those
that we give you in writing here, if they are to warn you or to perturb
your freedom, since God wants you to give Him your heart clear and
pure”298. Mental prayers and the rest of active spiritual practices are
beneficial because they soften or weaken the sense of individuality.
In addition, contemplation and perfect stillness make it possible for
the seeker to see how his actions and thoughts are pure “nothing” in
comparison with the immediate, direct knowledge. That is why some
mystics, such as John of Ruysbroeck299 (1293-1381), have testified
that contemplation is a form of knowledge that is higher than any
other ways to know300. It is not about a psychological or mental ex-
ercise. It is about developing a faculty latent in every human being, a
power higher than reason and any other form of discursive medita-
tion. That is why the greatest mystics advise passing, sooner or later,
from meditation (thoughts) to contemplation (thoughtless): “Alt-
hough it is the opinion of well-versed mystics that, at the beginning,
the novices in the spiritual path must not pass from meditation to
contemplation until God drags them out and drop them into it... Nev-
ertheless, I am inclined to consider as right the doctrine of some doc-
tors who say that they have experimented with many novices who
were well involved in the world and who, at the beginning, without
discourses or meditations, and applied to the contemplation of God,
were in a few days favored by Him and, as through an effortless

requests this is within and touches its depths with an intimate act”, Bernardino de
Laredo, Ascent to Mount Zion III, ch. 8.
298
Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, p. 15, p. 77.
299
John of Ruysbroeck (1293-1381) was born in Ruysbroeck, near Brussels. Once
ordained a priest, he withdrew to the hermitage of Groenendael, where he estab-
lished the Augustinian rule. There he wrote many of his works, such as A mirror of
Eternal Blessedness, The Seven Enclosures, The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spir-
itual Love, The Twelve Béguines, The Kingdom of the Lovers of God, The Adorn-
ment of the Spiritual Marriage or The Sparkling Stone. He inspired Tauler and
Groote.
300
John of Ruysbroeck, The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, London, 1916.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

shortcut, were led to where they would not have reached for very
long by means of meditation”301.

Of course, as Bernabé de Palma would say, “the contemplative

mystics must not scorn the active ones” (Via Spiritus 3, 1), including
those who are devoted to discursive meditation, since, anyway, the
wind of the Holy Spirit blows wherever it wants. “Therefore, let him
that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall”302.

IV.- CONTEMPLATION IS ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE

A certain widespread misunderstanding is to be dispelled: the

contemplative activity is not exclusive of withdrawn monks or elites
formed around monasteries and seminaries. Certainly, it is not an in-
tellectual activity or one that requires a certain cultural level. On the
contrary, the contemplatives themselves warn against a mere intel-
lectual or mental approach to contemplation, for it is useless: “I beg
you not to judge or try to understand until you have experienced it,
for I am certain that with the light of experience you will awake and
get so fond of the exercises that you will give your soul to God”303.
On the contrary, contemplation, as an impulse or yearning of the
soul, is present in everyone, its blessing being accessible regardless
of the activity or labor. At the beginning of the 17th century, Antonio
de Rojas stated, “About contemplation, any shepherd or old woman
knows more than those well-versed men without experience”304. Ac-
cording to Saint John of Ávila, being the contemplation “a business
of grace, He gives it to whomever He wills, regardless of place or
condition; thus, He may provide in the plaza what He denies in the
cell, and He sometimes gives the laborer what He does not give the

301
Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, ch. 12, p. 67 ff.
302
Saint Paul, 1 Cor. 10:12.
303
Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, Madrid, 1630, foreword to the pious
reader.
304
Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, p. 107 v. 7th Advice.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

monk”305. Since contemplation is love, rather than knowledge, any-

one can achieve that state, “Even though you are a farmer or a sim-
ple old woman, you might be suitably risen by this high wisdom as a
great disciple, depending on what pleased God to give you, either a
large or a small amount of that wisdom, according to the preparation
you had, since, should you be not prepared and you do not what you
must, you shall never come to this wisdom”306.

Regarding this, the science acquired by means of readings or

study may be of help to “those who wish to come to the height of
contemplation”; but they often become a serious obstacle, “not be-
cause of itself, but on occasion of the conceit that comes with it”.
Contemplation is “better attained by means of simple humility rather
than by great wisdom”. It is “impossible for real contemplation to
come through any path other than the path of humility”; that is why
“many learned men found this path blocked until they humbled
themselves”307.

V.- THE BEGINNING OF MEDITATION IN THE CHRIS-

TIAN TRADITION

Contemplative meditation is not a specifically Christian phenom-

enon. Even the II Vatican Council has recognized that we must “re-
flect attentively on how Christian religious life might be able to as-
similate the ascetic and contemplative traditions, whose seeds were

305
Saint John of Ávila, Pláticas espirituales 3, Complete Works, vol. III, p. 400.
Saint John of Ávila deeply knew the mystical recollection as presented in Sol de
contemplativos (1514), Spanish translation of De Mystica Theologia by Hugh of
Balma, and registered in the Third Spiritual Alphabet by Francisco de Osuna
(1527).
306
García Jiménez de Cisneros, Exercises for the spiritual life 32, 34-38.
307
García Jiménez de Cisneros, Exercises for the spiritual life 31, 16-19, 41-44;
32, 39-41. Saint Mark the Ascetic (Philokalia, vol. I, On the Spiritual Law, 86) will
add: “He who neglects action and depends on theoretical knowledge holds a staff
of reed instead of a double-edged sword (Heb. 4:12); and when he confronts his
enemies in time of war, ‘it will go into his hand, and pierce it’ (2 Kings 18:21)”.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

sometimes planted by God in ancient cultures already prior to the

preaching of the Gospel” (Ad Gentes, 18). In effect, the contempla-
tive practices already appear in Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism, in
the Greco-Roman world, in Judaism, etc. India knows the contem-
plative techniques at least since the third millennium before Christ,
as witnessed by the pre-Aryan seals of Mohenjo-Daro (Western Pa-
kistan), in which an ascetic appears sitting in the lotus position
(padmāsana). India has actually been the land of contemplation par
excellence and one of the first civilizations to put in writing the re-
sults of their metaphysical experiences and their spiritual devotions
(Vedas, Upanishads, etc.).

The Hellenic world, as well, has played an important role regard-

ing the configuration of Christian monastic profiles. When, in the
year 323 BC, Alexander the Great died in Babylonia, broad regions
from Egypt to Asia became open to the Mediterranean countries and
vice versa: the Hindu ascetics, anchorites and “gymnosophists”,
known as “naked” or “air-clad” wise men, became very famous
throughout the Hellenistic culture308; together with them, certain re-
ligious brotherhoods of Persian magi, Egyptian and Essene priests
and Jewish Therapeutae achieved also a great fame.

Very important syntheses appeared thanks to this cohabitation for

centuries, such as Gnosticism309 or Hermetism. Pythagoreanism de-
veloped some concepts such as the perfect apatheia achieved
through meditation and the disregard of the things of this world: he
“put away all dishes which contain the flesh of living animals, and

308
A.-J. Festugière, Personal Religion among the Greeks, Berkeley-Los Angeles,
1960; P. Jordan, “Pythagoras and Monachism”, in Traditio, 16 (1961), pp. 432-
441; B. Marqués, “El monaquismo en la comunidad de Pitágoras”, in Lasallianum,
16 (1973), pp. 127-144.
309
An example of religious syncretism is the Gnostic universe of the community
founded by Mani (216-277) with Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Mithraic and Christian el-
ements. In fact, the terms with which he defines the highest aspiration of the “cho-
sen ones” (sophia, charis and agapē: wisdom, grace and love) are derived from the
three concepts with which Vedanta defines Samādhi or contemplation: Sat-chit-
ānanda. Vid. H-Ch. Puech, Le Manichéisme, 1949.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

he must forget wine... he went barefoot, let his hair grow long, and
wore nothing but linen... and took a vow of perpetual chastity”310.
Philosophers such as Socrates, Plato or Plotinus taught the cultiva-
tion of catharsis or ataraxia as a means to free the soul from the
identification or dependence on the body, letting it enter in commun-
ion with God. According to Plato, “to philosophize is to learn how to
die”, so philosophy must be a metastrophē, a radical conversion by
which “the soul rises to contemplation”. Likewise, according to Ne-
oplatonists such as Plotinus or his disciple Porphyry, the aim of as-
ceticism consisted in preparing man for contemplation311.

Precisely, the most fruitful synthesis between Neoplatonic mysti-

cism and Christian dogma provides us with the work of the Pseudo-
Areopagite, who, according to many authors, is but the same Enne-
ads by Plotinus, only christened. From the writings of this Pseudo-
Dionysius starts an immense, vast contemplative tradition that
reaches our days. Actually, a certain historiographical sector has
even stated, maybe exaggerating, that Christian contemplation is not
derived from the Gospel, but it is a pagane borrowing, mainly Hel-
lenic, from which the Greek Fathers started to make new formula-
tions312. However, according to other sector of historiography, the
origin of Christian asceticism is not to be found in the Greek or Far-
Eastern philosophies, but in the reformist tendencies of Jewish mys-
ticism, especially that of the Therapeutae, that is, the Jewish monks,
established in Egypt, who lived their withdrawal in the desert under
a strict ascesis, and, above all, that of the Essenes. Pliny the Elder
describes the Essenes as “a people that live apart from the world, and
marvelous beyond all other throughout the earth, for they have no
women among them... money have none...”; however, “day after
day, their numbers are fully recruited by multitudes of strangers that
resort to them, driven thither to adopt their usages by the tempests of

310
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius vi, 11.
311
Plotinus, Enneads I, 6, 4.
312
This is the opinion of A. Nygren, Agape and Eros, London, 1953.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

fortune, and wearied with the miseries of life”313. The admittance to

the community was preceded by a test period of almost three years;
“If any one hath a mind to come over to their sect, he is not immedi-
ately admitted, but he is prescribed the same method of living which
they use for a year, while he continues excluded, and they give him
also a small hatchet, and the... girdle, and the white garment. And
when he hath given evidence, during that time, that he can observe
their continence, he approaches nearer to their way of living, and is
made a partaker of the waters of purification; yet is he not even now
admitted to live with them; for after this demonstration of his forti-
tude, his temper is tried two more years; and if he appear to be wor-
thy, they then admit him into their society. And before he is allowed
to touch their common food, he is obliged to take tremendous
oaths”314. The Qumran manuscripts have shed some more light on
the coenobitic practice of the Essenes315, especially through texts
such as the Community Rule, the Rule of the Congregation and the
War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, in which they
define themselves as the “chosen ones”, the “poor ones” and the
“sons of light”. Nonetheless, the Essenes do not constitute, strictly
speaking, an original movement regarding their ascetic methods.

In sum, historians have tried to find out the origin of Christian

monasticism and their contemplative practices without reaching
unanimous results316. One of the reasons may be that Christian mo-
nasticism does not arise as an organized tendency, located in a spe-
cific place, but it appears at the same time in Egypt, Syria and Cap-
padocia, apparently in an autonomous way. All attempts to explain it
by extra-Christian influences (the Egyptian worship of Serapis, the

313
Pliny the Elder, The Natural History 5.15.
314
Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews II, 8, 7.
315
J. Pouilly, La Règle de la Communauté de Qumran. Son évolution littéraire, Pa-
ris, 1976; E. M. Laperrousaz, Les Esséniens selon leur témoignage direct, Paris,
1982; M. Jiménez Bonhomme, Los documentos de Qumrán, Madrid, 1976.
316
Especially, from the book by H. Weingarten, Der Ursprung des Mönchtums,
Gotha, 1877, in which he defended the thesis that Christian monasticism, in its

320
 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

Therapeutae, the Neoplatonism, Buddhism, Neopythagoreanism,

Gnosticism, Manichaeism, etc.) have proven insufficient. It is af-
firmed that the contemplative way and the Christian monasticism
were born in Egypt by the hand of the first Coptic anchorite, Saint
Anthony, and of another saint, Coptic as well, Pachomius, founder of
coenobitism. The monastic life will spread from Egypt to Palestine,
Syria, Cappadocia, Gaul, Rome... Certainly, this historical polemic
seems to be about proving that the Christian ascesis is not a daughter
of Jewish or pagane parents, but an essentially original, domestic
product. However, the influence of other fore-mentioned ascetic cur-
rents is not to be forgotten. Nowadays, we know the notable influ-
ence of Buddhist or Jainist monasticism. Porphyry talks about the
Hindu gymnosophists in his Letter to Marcella, and Palladius, in his
Lausiac History, compares them with the Christian monks317. In fact,
in the Syrian Churches appeared certain monks who, externally, re-
sembled more the gymnosophists and the Jainists rather than the An-
thonian anchorites or the coenobites of Saint Pachomius. The Egyp-
tian or Greco-Egyptian influence should not to be radically refused
as well.

Anyway, it is significant that the Christian contemplative tradi-

tion arisen in Egypt stands out over the rest. These monks were
called anchorites because they lived in solitude (anachoresis means
withdrawal from the world). As the founder of the Coptic monastic
tradition, Saint Anthony, decided to live a withdrawn life in the de-
sert, his followers were also defined as hermits (from eremita and
that in turn from eremos, desert). A series of terms derived from the
word monos (alone) appeared then, such as monasterion (dwelling of
a solitary man), monotes or monotikos (solitary life). Regarding this,
one of the first discussions of Christianity was the spiritual perti-
nence of withdrawn life. Some ecclesiastic authorities considered

origin, was a pure imitation of the life of the katochoi (recluses) of the Egyptian
temples of Serapis.
317
De gentibus Indiae et Bragmanibus, ed. W. Berghoff, Meisenheim, 1967.

321
 JAVIER ALVARADO

that a withdrawn life dedicated to contemplation could conceal an

act of egoism that blocked the practice of charity with others or a life
committed to remedy social injustices and inequalities. This dilem-
ma was then solved this way: “When the same Abba Anthony
thought about the depth of the judgments of God, he asked: ‘Lord,
how is it that some die when they are young, while others drag on to
extreme old age? Why are there those who are poor and those who
are rich? Why do wicked men prosper and why are the just in need?’
He heard a voice answering him: ‘Anthony, keep your attention on
yourself; these things are according to the judgment of God, and it is
not to your advantage to know anything about them’”
(Apophthegmata Patrum318, Anthony, 2). That is to say, first address
yourself, fulfill the duty of knowing yourself, because only that way
will you understand the meaning of the happenings, and decide
whether you can take part in them or not. Otherwise, the ignorant
one who strives to help others runs the risk of adding more confusion
to their suffering.

On the other hand, contrary to what might be thought, the ancho-

rites did not live isolated in the desert, but they managed to be locat-
ed near other hermits in order to visit each other and converse about
spiritual topics, ask for advice and build themselves with their exam-
ple. Neither did they hesitate to undertake a long journey in order to
discuss their problems with some famous spiritual father. Hospitality
was a typically monastic virtue319. The newcomer apprentices actual-
ly settled close to the hut of a master in order to learn from his ex-
ample and advice. The solitary life at the hut or cell had the aim of
blocking any way out and making the monk deal with himself face to
face. This way, the neglected mind, unable to bear the emptiness and
nothingness of its own misery, either would flee scared searching for

318
The edition by J. B. Cotelier, Ecclesiae graecae monumenta I, Paris 1677, 338-
713, was reprinted by J. P. Migne in PG 65, 71-840. The systematic version trans-
lated into Latin was reprinted by J. P. Migne in PL 73, 851-1022.
319
The composition of these first references owes a lot to the work by M. García
Colombás, La tradición benedictina; ensayo histórico, vol. I, Zamora, 1989.

322
 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

distractions, or it would rather devote itself nullified to the quest for

the experience of God. This distressing dilemma was continuous
during the first stages of the contemplative life. The Fathers of the
wasteland called it taedium cordis or akedia. It was also described as
“the noonday demon” about whom it is talked in Psalms 91:6, be-
cause he used to assail the anchorites about the midday, when the
heat, hunger, depression and disheartenment got worse. This state,
masterfully described by Evagrius and his disciple Cassian, could
only be fought by means of the diacrisis, the “discernment of spir-
its”, the discrimination, by means of self-observation, that, by dis-
covering the futility of every worldly problem, led into the peace of
the soul or hesychia. By means of self-observation and continuous
attention on his thoughts and emotions, the “solitary one” had to find
out that he did not constitute his own real nature. In order to win this
constant battle, the monk need discernment (diacrisis), which is the
only weapon that will help him understand that man is but his bodily
appearance, his wishes and his thoughts. That is why the contempla-
tive needs to resist all the blows of fate: “Sit in thy cell and thy cell
will teach thee all”, “Eat, drink, and sleep, and toil not, but on no ac-
count go out of thy cell”. This way, the monk will end up defeating
“the noonday demon”. It was precisely these Desert Fathers who
created the first monastic “demonology”, in which the “demons”
were attributed a continuous tenacity to block contemplative’s way
by means of their favorite weapons: the logismoi (thoughts), “sug-
gestions”, “impulses”, “vices” or “passions”. The logismoi were the
great concern of the monk withdrawn in his cell because, whereas he
has left it all behind, his logismoi have not left him and he must bear
them, analyze them and finally defeat them320. In a similar way to
the “solitary” contemplative monks, it was also developed a contem-
plative tradition of monks who decided to live in coenobia (koino-

320
Evagrius summarized the thousands of “bad thoughts” that block contemplation
in eight famous logismoi that Cassian, his disciple, will later call the “eight capital
vices”: 1) gastrimargia (gluttony), 2) porneia (fornicatio, lust), 3) philargyria (av-
arice), 4) lype (tristitia, sadness), 5) orgé (ira, anger), 6) acedia (acedia, listless-
ness), 7) kenodoxia (cenodoxia, vainglory) and 8) hyperephania (superbia, pride).

323
 JAVIER ALVARADO

bios, common life). Certainly, with this form of fuga mundi or dis-
tancing from the profane society, the monk refreshed the Exodus to
return to Paradise. Monastic life was conceived as an imitation of the
life of the angels, a prefiguration of the future life. Saint Pachomius
is the most prominent of them. About 312-313, Pachomius knocked
the door of a well-known hermit called Palaemon, who, admitting
him for seven years, taught him the ascetic techniques of nocturnal
vigils (sometimes even inside of a grave), fasting, daily unceasing
prayer, working night and day, etc. This way, once he learned the
mysteries of the contemplative life, he founded several coenobia
where emerged what, according to many researchers, will be the
precedent of the monastic orders.

As a parallel to the Coptic tradition, a Christian ascetic and con-

templative tradition was developed in the territories between Syria
and Mesopotamia, strongly influenced by Persia (especially by Man-
ichaeism) and India321. In contrast to the Hellenic and Gnostic phi-
losophers, the Syrian and Mesopotamian “athletes of piety” stand out
because of their individual quest by means of an ascesis without ex-
treme austerity. Among other contemplative ascetics of the late 4th
and beginning of the 5th century, “Macarius” and Simeon of Meso-
potamia are to be highlighted.

Monks such as Jerome, Rufinus, Cassian, etc. traveled all around

Egypt and other regions of the East in order to drink directly from
the original source. There they went deeper into the life devoted to
the ascetic and contemplative practices. Later, when they settled in
Western monasteries, they transferred and adapted the Eastern con-

321
Contemporary historiography usually pays more attention to those more eccen-
tric practices such as being enclosed by a wall, living on the trees (dendritai) or on
top of a pillar until fainting (stylitas), always staying standing, feeding only on
herbs and roots (boskoi), etc. Disgracefully, it does not usually stress the seminal
influence that other purer doctrines and practices such as Advaita Vedanta or non-
dual metaphysics have had as much on the Western ancient world as on the Near-
Eastern one.

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templative tradition to the Western mentality322. Cassian stands out

of all these monks because of his subsequent influence. Being a man
of Scythian origin, he got to Marseille in 415 with a firm, copious,
well-organized doctrine323. In fact, Cassian can be considered as the
author of the only systematic work about the Christian monastic the-
ory and contemplative practice written in the 4th and 5th centuries,
since the Asketikon by Saint Basil is unorganized and Evagrius Pon-
ticus almost exclusively wrote works for initiates. Cassian’s Insti-
tutes, composed between the years 420-424, are formed by two dif-
ferent works: the Institutes of the coenobia and the Remedies for the
eight principal faults. The strictly speaking Institutes are successive-
ly about the symbolism of monks’ clothing and, in general, about the
behavior of the “external man”; the institutes he describes are the
ones of the monasteries of Egypt, Syria and Cappadocia. Books 5-12
subtly and exhaustively analyze the eight capital vices and suggest
their corresponding remedies.

Nonetheless, it is to be kept in mind that Cassian’s main source is

his master Evagrius Ponticus, whom he never mentions, for his work
was anathemized, so he took care of changing his master’s character-
istic terms with other words that were better adjusted to orthodoxy
and suitable to the Western mentality. He dissimulated as well, under
biblical formulas and quotations of famous Fathers of the wasteland,
his tight influence from pagane philosophy. For instance, not a single
time does he use the term apatheia, which he replaces by puritas
mentis; he converts the word nous into cor, the anagnosis into
meditatio. Instead of turning to the easy Latin translation
‘impassibilitas’, he uses tranquilitas mentis, cor perfectum, puritas
cordis, etc. Thanks to such changes, he was able to transmit the most

322
One of the consequences of this adaptation was the appearance of the first few
monastic “Rules”, influenced by Roman culture, which was very used to codifying
and institutionalizing the different aspects of social life and strengthening the dis-
cipline of collectivity under the authority of some supervisors.
323
O. Chadwick, John Cassian. A Study in Primitive Monasticism, Cambridge,
1950; J.-C. Guy, Jean Cassien: vie et doctrine spirituelle, Paris 1961.

325
 JAVIER ALVARADO

fertile elements of the Eastern tradition not only to the Western mo-
nastic spirituality, but also to the Latin spirituality in general. Other-
wise, it would have been inaccessible. Ultimately, Cassian adopted
Evagrius’ doctrine so that it could be used by the Western Christian
contemplative tradition324, which, on the other hand, found its own
paths and specificities, as varied as the different contemplative mo-
nastic orders.

VI.- THE CONTEMPLATIVE METHODS

Throughout history, the Christian contemplative tradition has in-

fluenced and, at the same time, has been influenced by other mysti-
cal and religious traditions and tendencies. Regarding the contempla-
tive methods, the first thing that attracts attention is the discretion, if
not secret, that the contemplative master show in their writings.
When going deeper into the works of personalities such as Saint Hil-
degard, Saint Matilda of Magdeburg, Saint Matilda of Hackeborn,
Saint Gertrude of Helfta, Jordan of Saxony, Ulrich and Nicholas of
Strasbourg, Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, David of Augsburg, Helwic von
Germar, Ludolph of Saxony, Dionysius the Carthusian, Ruysbroeck,
Groote, Kempis, Zutphen, Mombaert, Nicholas of Cusa, Friedrich
Spee von Langenfeld, Angelus Silesius, Van Esch, Blosius, etc., the
scarcity, if not absence, of reflections on the contemplative method
seems disconcerting. And, even though it is true that mysticism and
contemplation are up to a certain extent incompatible with all pro-
cess or attempt of rationalization, there also remains the doubt
whether a large part of these Christian medieval or modern authors
did not really have any hermeneutic method or reflection at all. Do-
mingo de Soto even confesses that he did not manage to think about
God unless he was in front of the Gospel, and that he felt envy of

324
V. Codina, El aspecto cristológico en la espiritualidad de Juan Casiano, Rome,
1966, p. 85 ff.; Giovanni Cassiano ed Evagrio Pontico. Dottrina sulla carità e
contemplazione, Rome, 1936, p. 161.

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those who stayed more than two hours kneeling down in front of the
altar because he could not do it325. Already in the 17th century, the
Capuchin José Nájera (1621-1684), author of the Espejo místico
(Mystical mirror), feels sorry about the century-old neglect of con-
templation even within the religious orders: “When I ask my confes-
sor about something related to mental prayer, it is as if I spoke in Ar-
abic, considering the great embarrassment I cause on him326. The
truth is that the methods of some monastic orders, if they really ever
existed, are unknown to us: “The Franciscan observers of Villacreces
and the Benedictine ones of Valladolid systematically practiced a
methodical mental prayer in the mid-15th century. We do not know
the exact method. They used to call it “the habitual one”327. On the
other hand, it is significant that even a defender of late-medieval
Christian contemplation such as Father Osuna recognized that he
himself was introduced into that art by apparently “profane” people:
“An old man, whose confessor I was and who had been exercising
these things for more than fifty years, once told me in great se-
cret...”328. Osuna adds in his Third Spiritual Alphabet that the fact
that the mysticism of recollection were practiced by a philosopher
and a Hebrew (referring to Plotinus and Abulafia329) did not tarnish
it, comment that implied the recognition of the universality of the art
and science of contemplation. Regarding the specific case of Spanish
mysticism330, the following main sources are to be mentioned: Dio-

325
MHSJ, VIII, Litterae Quatrimestres, p. 308.
326
J. de Nájera, Espejo místico (Madrid, 1667), dialogue I, p. 5.
327
Ernesto Pascual Zaragoza, “La práctica de la contemplación entre los monjes
benedictinos reformados españoles durante los siglos XIV y XV”, in Nova et
Vetera, 2 (1976), pp. 183-199.
328
Third Spiritual Alphabet, tr. 21, ch. 4. In the Third (published in 1527) as well
as in the Fourth Spiritual Alphabet, Francisco de Osuna compiles the doctrine and
practice of the contemplative way (also known as the way of recollection) invoking
the authority of mystics and theologians of the Middle Ages such as Dionysius the
Areopagite, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Gerson, Richard of Saint Victor, Saint
Bernard, Saint Bonaventure and other authors.
329
F. de Osuna, Third Spiritual Alphabet, tr. 21, ch.5.
330
Besides the fore-mentioned bibliography, you may want to consult: L. Cognet,
La spiritualité moderne, Paris, Aubier, 1966; Ángel L. Cilveti, Introducción a la
mística española, Madrid, 1974; Manuel Morales Borrero, La geometría mística

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nysius the Areopagite, Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, Saint Basil,

Saint Benedict, Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Bernard, Saint Francis
of Assisi, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Hugh and
Richard of Saint Victor, Joachim of Fiore, the Lyonnais Hugh of
Balma, Jean C. de Gerson, Saint Catherine of Siena, Gerhard of Zut-
phen, John of Mombaert, etc.

Among the first few texts that describe the contemplative meth-
od, the Treatise of the Holy Spirit (1498) is to be mentioned. It was
written by Friar John of Saint-Jean-de-Luz331, born in Valladolid,
abbot of Montserrat and colleague of García Jiménez de Cisneros,
the author of the Exercises (1500). In 1513, Arte de contemplar,
written by an anonymous Franciscan332, was published in Barcelona.
In 1514, Saint John of the Kings of Toledo translates into Spanish
the Sun of contemplatives written by the Carthusian Hugh of Balma
and, in 1527, Francisco de Osuna compiles the mysticism of recol-
lection in his Third and Fourth Spiritual Alphabet or Law of love
(1530). The reading of the following works is also indispensable:
Alonso de Madrid (1480-1592), Arte de servir a Dios (Seville,
1521); Bernardino de Laredo (1482-1540), Ascent to Mount Zion
(Seville, 1535); Saint Peter of Alcántara (1499-1562); Diego de Es-
tella (1524-78) and John of the Angels.

Some of them have recorded the essential steps of the contempla-

tive way in simple pedagogic formulas. These are “think nothing”,
“pay attention only to God and be happy”, “God alone and soul
alone”, “pure love”, “love alone”, “attentive attention on God...”,
“know not to act”, “enter within yourself”, “descend within your-
self”, “go out of yourself”, etc. Others, such as Osuna in his Third

del alma en la literatura española del Siglo de Oro, Madrid-Salamanca, 1975;

Guillermo Serés, Literatura espiritual en los siglos de oro, Madrid, 2003.
331
This Treatise (Tratado del Espíritu Santo) was published by the ed. Sanz y To-
rres, Madrid, 2010.
332
Hun brevísimo atajo e arte de amar a Dios: Con otra arte de contemplar e al-
gunas reglas breves para ordenar la piensa en el amor de Dios, Barcelona, C.
Amorós, 1512, 37 fols.; M. Andrés, Los recogidos, p. 64-70.

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Spiritual Alphabet, developed an extensive diagram that summarized

the method of “recollection” in ten qualities or steps:

“1st It recollects those men who use it, giving them a heart and
love.
2nd It recollects man himself from his distracting businesses, and
makes him reduce them or moderate them.
3rd It recollects the sensuality under the rule of reason.
4th It induces man to recollect and dwell in the most withdrawn
places, and go out not often.
5th It makes the senses recollect.
6th It recollects the limbs.
7th It recollects the virtues from the man who recollects himself.
8th It recollects the senses within the heart.
9th It recollects the powers of the soul into the center, where the
image of God is imprinted.
10th It recollects God and the soul into one. God is recollected in-
to the soul as His own house, as if He had no heavens where to
dwell”333.

For his part, Bernardino de Laredo points out four degrees of in-
ternality:
1st The soul reaches itself, or recollection of imagination
2nd It enters itself, or silence understanding.
3rd It ascends above all created power to be quiet down only in
God.
4th It goes out of itself, in ecstasy, out of itself and into love334.

In a similar way, Saint Teresa of Jesus describes the contempla-

tive process in five degrees:

333
F. de Osuna, Third Spiritual Alphabet, p. 244-247.
334
B. de Laredo, Ascent to Mount Zion (1538) (BAC, vol. 44), p. 432-439.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

1st Recollection or entrance of the powers into the soul, “as a

hedgehog or a turtle which retreats into itself” (St. Teresa of Jesus,
Mansions IV, 3).
2nd Stillness originated by the intuition of the presence of God
while merging our own will with the divine one.
3rd Dream of the powers, once “the will is in captivity” (St. Tere-
sa of Jesus, Way of Perfection 31)
4th Union derived from the momentary suspension or annulation
of the powers, the inner and the outer senses.
5th Ecstatic union, that is, complete annulation of the faculties
and senses, originated by the intensity of contemplation (St. Teresa
of Jesus, Life 20).

Although it could be assumed that the issue of the method is

something secondary or irrelevant, the truth is that, at least in the
first steps or stages, the masters of recollection recommend observ-
ing certain pieces of advice and respect certain rules and procedures.
Large part of the following pages will be dedicated to this matter.

VII.- THE EXPULSION FROM PARADISE

Man seeks a stable happiness that he cannot find in this world

subject to time factors. On one hand, he considers himself as incom-
plete and conditioned but, on the other hand, he senses a vocation of
eternity. His nostalgia for the origin drives him to seek or recover the
lost oneness or wholeness. The Judeo-Christian tradition symbolizes
this drama by means of the episode of the expulsion from Paradise.
In effect, the earthly Paradise symbolizes the “mansion” or spiritual
state commonly described by Christian Patristics and theology as
unaffected by the eventualities of the profane or external world.
Saint Augustine explained that even the Flood was unable to affect
the earthly Paradise.

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The earthly Paradise symbolizes the center of the World, that is,
the most perfect spiritual state of man as an individual being, and ac-
cess gate to the heavenly Paradise. Therefore, it equals being in the
presence of God or, more specifically, inside of God’s heart. When
man moved away from his original center, he was enclosed in the
temporal dimension, that is, he was deprived of his feeling of eterni-
ty. Adam (the pure mind, that is, not polluted by the attention on ex-
ternal objects) happily cohabited with Eve (the door to senses and
thoughts) because he lacked the sense of duality until she tempted
him to eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil (the passing from the state of non-duality to the dual
knowledge that implies the appearance of the subject-object relation-
ship); “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not
eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die”
(Gen. 2:17), that is, man will lose his awareness of immortality.

The loss of that state of original purity leads them to consider

themselves as beings that are separate from God, so that sense of in-
dividuality (when they see themselves naked) throw them out of the
earthly Paradise, that is, into the world of the appropriation of expe-
riences through the gate of the senses. There, Adam (the mind) and
Eve (the door to the senses and thoughts) procreate Abel and Cain,
that is, they can opt between understanding that the external objects
are nothing, recovering the union with God (Abel means “union” or
“nothing”), or persist in the mistake of considering themselves as au-
tonomous beings with the ability to take over the experiences that
come from the senses and the thoughts (Cain means “appropria-
tion”).

Even though the death of Abel at the hands of Cain might repre-
sent man’s definitive, fatal choice of the appropriation of objects, the
birth of the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth (“stability”), implies a
new possibility of redemption. Some texts actually explain how Seth
managed to enter Paradise and stay there in the presence of God for

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40 years (like the 40 years of Noah in the Ark, the 40 nights of Mo-
ses at the Sinai, the 40 years of the exodus of the Israelites, the 40
days of withdrawal of Jesus in the desert, etc.), number that symbol-
izes the reconciliation or the Edenic return to the original purity
(pure awareness without appropriation of thoughts).

What does the Tree of Life, planted in the middle of the earthly
Paradise, represent? Firstly, it is to be taken into account that there is
not one only tree, but two (or, if preferred, one tree with two as-
pects). Next to the Tree of Life placed in the center of the Paradise, it
is found the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” (Gen. 2:9),
which is also in the midst of the Garden (Gen. 3:3). Therefore,
whereas the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has a dual mean-
ing (its fruit contains the world of opposed pairs, that is, plurality),
the “Tree of Life” represents the Axis Mundi, alien to duality, that is,
the vision of the Oneness of Creation. The prohibition to eat the
fruits of the “tree which is in the midst of the Garden” (Gen. 3:3)
clearly refers to the “Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil” (Gen.
2:17), thus, once failed to observe the divine command and hap-
pened the “fall”, that is, when Adam knows good and evil and be-
comes a prey to the time factors, then he moves away from the cen-
ter, point of the primal unity with which the “Tree of Life” corre-
sponds. That center is inaccessible to the fallen man as long as he
considers himself as the author of his own works and thoughts and
his sense of appropriation of objects (Cain) persists in him. In order
to return to the center (sense of unity) and recover the “original
state” or “feeling of eternity”, it is necessary to walk, so to say, an
“inverse” path. It is necessary to stabilize (Seth) the disregard or dis-
appropriation (Abel) of the desires and thoughts that come from the
doors to the senses (Eve) and to turn the mind or consciousness (Ad-
am) toward the Only One (to transcend the fruits of the Tree of du-
ality) that Is: YHWH.

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Niketas Stethatos (1005-1090), in his De contemplatione

Paradisi 1, 14-15335, explains that the tree of life represents God as
well as man, divinely impassible in a contemplative state, whereas
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil symbolizes a common
man involved in the continuous misery of being unceasingly subject
to the alternation of pleasure and suffering. “The tree of life is the
Holy Spirit that dwells in the faithful man, as Paul says: ‘Know ye
not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you?’
(1 Cor. 6:19; Rom. 8:11). The tree of the knowledge of good and evil
is the feeling that bears opposed fruits, a feeling of a double nature
[pleasure and pain]” (De contemplatione Paradisi 2, 20). Thus, there
are two options: either to pay attention to the sensible objects and
trust those which bring happiness, or to access a different form of
suprarational knowledge (contemplation): “We are two manner of
ways, Peter, carried out of ourselves: for either we fall under our-
selves by sinful cogitation, or else we are, by the grace of contempla-
tion, lifted above ourselves” (Pope Saint Gregory the Great336, Dia-
logues: Life of Saint Benedict II, 3).

Man is used to believing that his normal, ordinary state is “to

think” or “to have thoughts” because he does not know that his natu-
ral state is “without appropriation of thoughts” or even “without
thoughts”, that is, pure awareness. As soon as he carefully observe
his thoughts, he will notice that he does not think, but that he “is
thought”, that is, the thoughts sprout when interpreting what the
senses see, hear, taste, smell... or tinge with emotions derived from
their cultural or genetic conditionings. “Most of us do not know that
all thoughts are nothing other than imaginations alone of sensible
and worldly objects” (Philokalia, vol. I, Hesychius, On Sobriety,
154). The thoughts are a so unstoppable instrument that they have
even taken over the mind. It is enough to observe our own thoughts

335
Niketas Stethatos, Opuscules et lettres, edited by J. Darrouzès, Sources Chré-
tiennes no. 81, Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1961.
336
Saint Gregory the Great, Dialogues: Life of Saint Benedict, published by Ed-
mund G. Gardner, 1911.

333
 JAVIER ALVARADO

to realize that they seem to sprout unceasingly and survive regardless

of the human will.

But the problem is not only the thoughts, but also our persistence
in appropriating what they provide. If there is no appropriation, the
information is neutral, so the thoughts end up being as a distant echo
that finally disappears, letting us recover the original Edenic simplic-
ity. “The source and ground of our distractive thoughts is the frag-
mented state of our memory. The memory was originally simple and
one-pointed but, as a result of the fall, its natural powers have been
perverted: it has lost its recollectedness in God and has become
compound instead of simple, diversified instead of one-pointed... We
recover the original state of our memory by restoring it to its primal
simplicity, when it will no longer act as a source of evil and destruc-
tive thoughts... it has also corrupted all its powers... The memory is
restored above all by constant remembrance of God consolidated
through prayer” (Philokalia, vol. IV, Saint Gregory of Sinai, Chap-
ters 60-61337). Or, said in other words, “[Monks’] work is what was
Adam’s also at the beginning and before his sin, when he was
clothed with the glory, and conversed freely with God, and dwelled
in that place that was full of great blessedness. For in what respect
are they in a worse state than he, when before his disobedience he
was set to fill the Garden? Had he no worldly care? But neither have
these. Did he talk to God with a pure awareness? This also do these”
(Saint John Chrysostom, On Matthew. Hom. LXVIII, 3).

Being man’s natural or heavenly state that of disappropriation of

desires and thoughts, that is, that of pure awareness, how can we dis-
regard all of them and recover our original peace? Man is in the
middle of two worlds that he perceives as apparently real: the world
of the spirit and the world of the senses, the world of what we are by
nature, and the world of what we seem to be. According to Saint

337
Saint Gregory of Sinai, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series graeca, ed. by J.
P. Migne, vol. CL, Paris, 1857.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

Bernard, “The knowledge of oneself depends on the knowledge of

the dignity of our nature and on the indignity of our state”. Or, in
other terms: once understood the causes of the Fall, the lost peace
can be recovered.

After the expulsion from Paradise, man inhabits the “region of

unlikeness” (regio dissimilitudinis) and seems doomed to be indefi-
nitely agitated by the unstable plurality of objects. Man lives in the
region of “unlikeness” (Saint Augustine, Confessions, VII, 16) but
he misses the lost Paradise. Because of a movement of the heart,
pride has deformed the image of God that is engraved in his being,
so just because a movement of the heart will he be able to restore the
lost likeness. He must remove his “coats of skins” with which God
clothed him to cover his nakedness. As man’s perfection consists in
resembling God: “haec hominis est perfectio similitudo Dei” (Saint
Thomas Aquinas, Contra Gentiles, III, 25), and he has been created
in God’s image and likeness, his only goal is to recover that image.
Or, expressed by means of another metaphor used in the Bible, to see
God’s face... “When Thou saidst, ‘Seek ye My face’, my heart said
unto Thee, ‘Thy face, Lord, will I seek. Hide not Thy face far from
me’” (Ps. 27:8-9). “Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance
upon us” (Ps. 4:6)338. And this is taken to the extreme of considering
the duration of human existence as a mere setback that is bearable
with just the hope to contemplate God: “If perchance this loveliness
[of God] has grazed the mind and heart of the saints, it left embed-
ded in them a most fiery sting of yearning for it, till at length, as if
languishing in the fires of such love and shuddering at this present

338
Contemplating the face of God in this life equals returning to Paradise, leaving
behind the condition of exiled in a foreign land. In late 6th century, Saint Gregory
the Great wrote: “I have lost the deep joys of my quiet, and seem to have risen
outwardly while inwardly falling down. Whence I grieve to find myself banished
far from the face of my Maker. For I used to strive daily to win my way outside the
world, outside the flesh; to drive all phantasms of the body from the eyes of my
soul, and to see incorporeally supernal joys; and not only with my voice but in the
core of my heart I used to say: My heart has said unto You, I have sought Your
face, Your face, Lord, will I seek”; Saint Gregory the Great, Epistles I.5 MGH, Ep.
I, 5-6.

335
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life, such as these would say: When shall I come and appear before
the face of God? (Ps. 42:2)”339. Meanwhile, as Saint Teresa would
say, this life is like a bad night in a bad inn.

The Bible insists that man possesses the ability to perceive the
Presence of God, since, having been created in His image and like-
ness, he was placed in a Garden where YHWH walked (Gen. 2:8-15
and 3:8). However, the problem is, as Hugh of Saint Victor340 ex-
plained, that man, created with three eyes (a bodily one, a rational
one and a third one, the eye of contemplation), had weakened the
first one, perturbed the second one and blinded the third one when he
left Paradise. That is why being out of Paradise implied no longer
perceiving the Presence of YHWH, He who Is. In order to develop
the art of seeing God (contemplation), man must learn how to disre-
gard the first and the second eyes. Therefore, if there is in man a se-
cret “memory” in which God has left his impression, the more his
soul recover its likeness to God, the more it will know God for it will
know itself.

VIII.- THE NON-APPROPRIATION OF THE THOUGHT AS

A RETURN TO THE STATE OF NATURE

Christian mystics explain that the best form of meditation con-

sists in withdrawing the thoughts in order to give the heart the oppor-
tunity to purify itself once shortly freed from its instinctive inclina-
tion to appropriate objects: “No other thing at all, then, constitutes
purification of heart, through which both humility and every good

339
Saint Basil, Regulae fusius tractatae 2, 21-22.
340
The Abbey of Saint Victor, monastery of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine
near Paris, constituted a great mystical center during the 12th century. Founded in
1108 by the theologian William of Champeaux, its most important representatives
were Hugh of Saint Victor (1096-1141) and his disciple Richard of Saint Victor
(deceased in 1176). Richard’s theory of the “scintilla animae” as a meeting point
between the soul and God will notably influence some later mystics such as Meis-
ter Eckhart.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

are found in us descending from on high, if it is not this: not to per-

mit in any way at all the thoughts which arise to enter into the soul”
(Philokalia, vol. I, Hesychius, On Sobriety, 193). That is why, “In
the moment of meditation, all imaginative representation must be
avoided... until you, fervently and effortlessly, plunge into the divine
things, little by little, and achieve the full knowledge of judgment...”
(Callistus and Ignatius, Direction to Hesychasts, in a hundred chap-
ters 68).

Clement of Alexandria, Christian author who lived during the

reign of Septimius Severus (193-211), went deeper into the myster-
ies of the meditative technique, considering this as the soul’s quest
for stability by means of purity and disappropriation of thoughts. The
true knowledge (epistēmē) is expressed by the derivation of the word
stasis, which means, to position oneself above the plurality of sensi-
ble objects until reaching a suprarational state in which the soul
knows itself by itself, by means of no object at all; “For sanctity, as I
conceive it, is perfect pureness of mind, and deeds, and thoughts... If,
then, we are to give the etymology of epistēmē, knowledge, its signi-
fication is to be derived from stasis, placing, for our soul, which was
formerly borne, now in one way, now in another, it settles in objects.
Similarly, intuitive knowledge (pistis) is to be explained etymologi-
cally, as the settling of our soul respecting that which is” (Clement of
Alexandria, Stromata IV, 22, 142). That which is, that which Saint
Paul (1 Tim. 6:16) and Clement of Alexandria, among others, de-
scribe as the “light which no man can approach unto” or “the light
inaccessible”, defines him who has recovered his Edenic state and
has stopped identifying himself with a body because he knows that
his true nature is that which is: “He has withdrawn his soul from the
passions... And on the other hand he lives, having put to death his
lusts, and no longer makes use of the body, but allows it the use of
necessaries, that he may not give cause for dissolution” (Stromata
VI, 9, 74).

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In sum, to trust in duality (Eve) expels man from his original

Edenic state and, besides, his persistence in appropriating (Cain) the
illusory plurality of objects prevents him from returning. Some me-
dieval theologians even attributed the Fall of Adam not to the mere
ingestion of the apple, but to the fact of attributing the authorship of
his actions to himself. An anonymous theologian of the 14th century
wrote: “This setting up of a claim and his I and Me and Mine, these
were his going astray, and his fall. And thus it is to this day. What
else did Adam do but this same thing? It is said, it was because Ad-
am ate the apple that he was lost, or fell. I say, it was because of his
claiming something for his own, and because of his I, Mine, Me, and
the like. Had he eaten seven apples, and yet never claimed anything
for his own, he would not have fallen: but as soon as he called some-
thing his own, he fell, and would have fallen if he had never touched
an apple” (Theologia Germanica II-III). This sense of individuality,
of considering oneself as a separate being, of attributing the author-
ship of one’s actions to oneself, is really the worst possible mistake
of perception, since “when the creature claimeth for its own anything
good, such as substance, life, knowledge, power, and in short what-
ever we should call good, as if it were that, or possessed that, or that
were itself, or that proceeded from it, as often as this cometh to pass,
the creature goeth astray” (Theologia Germanica II). It moves him
away from his natural center (God’s heart or Paradise) and he is thus
converted into a supposed subject that pursues objects that are expe-
rienceable by means of the senses. The state of that man, prisoner of
the duality of created things, only produces dissatisfaction and anxie-
ty because the experiences are always brief and ephemeral. And, be-
cause of his natural tendency, man is compelled by his feeling of
eternity to seek a stable, durable state of happiness.

That is why man returns to the path toward his central state when
he gets rid of his sense of authorship or possession of his actions,
faculties and thoughts; “The less he taketh this knowledge unto him-
self, the more perfect doth it become. So also is it with the will, and

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

love and desire, and the like. For the less we call these things our
own, the more perfect and noble and Godlike do they become, and
the more we think them our own, the baser and less pure and perfect
do they become” (Theologia Germanica V). Thus, one of the goals
of contemplation is to come not only to rationally understand, but al-
so to experimentally verify, in an effective and unequivocal way, that
his actions, as well as his desires and thoughts, his memories and ex-
pectations, are not really “his own”, “for in that way your soul be-
longs not just to you but to all the brothers, whose souls are also
yours, or rather whose souls are not souls along with yours but are
one soul, that single soul of Christ” (Saint Augustine, Ep. 243.4).

According to the Christian contemplative tradition, thought is our

hidden enemy. And the most dangerous one is the thought “I”. Ordi-
nary men cannot even utter a sentence that does not contain the per-
sonal pronoun “I” as a claim of a self-sufficiency that aspires to
compete and prevail against the “rest”. A certain mystic of the 17th
century stated that “the ‘I’ has two qualities: it is unjust in itself since
it makes itself the center of everything; it is inconvenient to others
since it would enslave them; for each ‘I’ is the enemy, and would
like to be the tyrant of all others. You take away its inconvenience,
but not its injustice, and so... you render it lovable only to the unjust,
who do not any longer find in it an enemy” (Blaise Pascal, Thoughts
455). In order to prove this statement, it is enough that the reader
tries to practice a simple exercise of self-inquiry that consists in real-
izing how extremely difficult it is to remove from our vocabulary, at
least for one day, the word “I”.

The “I”, the “ego”, is insatiable. In its quest for a durable happi-
ness, it strives to hoard experiences, honors, fame, wealth, pleasure,
power, etc., without noticing that the sensible world (emotions, feel-
ings, thoughts) is unstable and dual by nature, so that, strictly speak-
ing, it just knows the pleasure when it has previously felt the suffer-
ing, and “wealth” is a concept that only makes sense if the idea of

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“poverty” exists. Therefore, up to which extent does the “I”, im-

mersed in the world of plurality, confuse the activity with the mere
agitation? “They imagine that if the obtained such a post, they would
then rest with pleasure, and are insensible of the insatiable nature of
their desire. They think they are truly seeking quiet, and they are on-
ly seeking excitement. They have a secret instinct which impels
them to seek amusement and occupation abroad, and which arises
from the sense of their constant unhappiness. They have another se-
cret instinct, a remnant of the greatness of our original nature, which
teaches them that happiness in reality consists only in rest, and not in
stir. And of these two contrary instincts they form within themselves
a confused idea, which hides itself from their view in the depths of
their soul, inciting them to aim at rest through excitement, and al-
ways to fancy that the satisfaction which they have not will come to
them, if, by surmounting whatever difficulties confront them, they
can thereby open the door to rest” (Blaise Pascal, Thoughts 139). In
effect, if true activity is that which helps man uncover his Edenic
state, all the rest can be but useless deviation.

IX.- THE RECOVERY OF THE INTIMACY WITH GOD BY

MEANS OF SUPRARATIONAL MEDITATION

The essential postulate of the mystical way, given that God is not
a thought (He cannot be thought), is that it is only possible to access
Him by non-thinking. Contemplation is precisely the art and science
of quieting the mind so that it may achieve the detachment or void of
thoughts. According to Scotus Eriugena341, “the Being” is everything
that can be perceived by the senses or understood by the understand-
ing, so “the Non-being” is everything that is beyond those means of

341
Johannes Scotus Eriugena (810-872), after being called by the Emperor of
France, Charles the Bold, to direct the Palatine School, translated the works by
Maximus the Confessor, Evagrius Ponticus, Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the
Areopagite into Latin. In this sense, he can be considered as one of the introducers
of the apophatic contemplative tradition.

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knowledge. Following Pseudo-Dionysius, it can be affirmed that

God, simultaneously, “is” and “is not”: “If you ask which thing God
is, you will say: a thing whose nature we cannot understand. He is
neither land, nor sky, etc. He is that darkness where Moses entered to
talk to God and the old men stayed outside. Because, when a soul
leaves all created species behind, the understanding stays in the
darkness and the candles are out, if you ask which thing God is, it
will answer: I do not know. Then, such a soul will be ready to under-
stand and talk about God”342. But that darkness or cloud of unknow-
ing does not consist in accepting a new thought or idea (the idea that
the mind is unable to know God), but, on the contrary, in a void of
thought.

Certainly, it is firstly to be proven, verified and accepted that the

human reason, no matter how complex it may be, is not a suitable in-
strument to know God. “Here in Christendom, those who are ruled
only by their reason are called animals and considered as beasts...
because, no matter how high your judgment may be, you must know
that you will not know the wisdom of God by means of your
knowledge; regardless of how hard you try to stretch out, you will
never reach to know the spirit of God, since you cannot know what
is part of you; even though you be an Aristotle, that knowledge does
not make you better, and it is not enough to know the knowledge of
God, unless you deny your knowledge and your reason, and consider
that you know and understand nothing”343. Strictly speaking, the di-
vine nature is unknowable even for itself, since “God ignores which
thing He is, because He is no thing”. In order to go deeper into the
non-being, it is necessary to unknow, that is, to transcend the
knowledge that comes from the objects (based on the subject-object
duality) and access the immediate or direct knowledge in which the
subject-object relationship is overtaken. This is achieved by means

342
Saint John of Ávila, Lecciones sobre la 1ª de San Juan, Lesson 1; Complete
Works, IV, p. 373.
343
Saint John of Ávila, Sermón 78, 211 ff., Complete Works, III, 249.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

of contemplation, that is, when the subject stops paying attention to

the external objects and is converted (it turns to itself). Then, the
subject pays attention to its own subject, so that, by persisting in this
practice, the subject stops being another object and disappears during
the meditative practice. There is no subject anymore then, but pure
vision, that is, a vision without a seer, pure awareness.

Returning to Paradise, seeing God’s face, contemplating Him

with what Hugh of Saint Victor defined as the third eye, the eye of
the spirit, etc., are metaphors that express the nostalgia for the lost
original oneness. All of them involve soul’s aspiration to return to its
primordial reality, which is the Being. It is about “being in God” or,
as stated by William of Saint Thierry, based on the Gospel of Saint
John, “becoming what God is”. In effect, this essential idea, which
expresses one of the greatest mysteries, appears in different passages
of the New Testament: “Holy Father, keep through Thine own name
those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as We are”
(Jn. 17:11). And further on: “Neither pray I for these alone, but for
them also who shall believe in Me through their word, that they all
may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also
may be one in Us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent
Me. And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them, that
they may be one, even as We are one: I in them and Thou in Me, that
they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that
Thou hast sent Me and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me” (Jn.
17:20-23). In a similar way, Saint Basil: “Just as when a sunbeam
falls on bright and transparent bodies, they themselves become bril-
liant too, and shed forth a fresh brightness from themselves, so souls
wherein the Spirit dwells, illuminated by the Spirit, themselves be-
come spiritual, and send forth their grace to others. Hence comes
foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehen-
sion of what is hidden, distribution of good gifts, the heavenly citi-
zenship, a place in the chorus of angels, joy without end, abiding in

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God, the being made like to God, and, highest of all, the being made
God” (Saint Basil, De Spiritu Sancto 9).

Precisely, from the verses “In Him we live, and move, and have
our being” (Act. 17:28) and, above all, “The multitude of those who
believed were of one heart and of one soul” (Act. 4:32), Saint Au-
gustine (359-430)344 will deduce the monastic motto that he will rec-
ord at the beginning of the Rule: “First, the main purpose for you
having come together is to live harmoniously in the house [of the
Lord] and be of one soul and one heart in Deum” (Rule 1). It is to be
pointed out that he does not say in Deo, “in God”, which would im-
ply rest, peaceful possession, but in Deum, which involves move-
ment “unto God”, “in the quest for God”, since “we all shall be one
in One [=Christ] unto One [=God]”345.

Expelled to the world of unlikeness and plurality of objects, man

aspires to be reinstated in the original oneness. “We are on the road
to oneness”, Saint Augustine says, “having plurality as our starting
point. Love must gather us together in order to reach the One”346.
“This multiplicity perishes, and singleness is observed among the
saints of whom it is said in the Acts: ‘and of the multitude of them
that believed, there was one soul, and one heart’. In singleness, then,
and simplicity... we ought to be lovers of eternity, and unity, if we
desire to cleave to the one God and our Lord”347. How? “Run from
these many to one, gather up thy scattered things into one: flow on
together, fence thyself in, abide with one, go not to many things.
There is blessedness”348. When man believes that he will be happy
by projecting himself on things, he will only find frustration, since
the world of plurality is by its own nature as much inexhaustible as

344
A. Manrique, La vida monástica en San Agustín: enchiridion histórico-
doctrinal y Regla, El Escorial-Salamanca, 1959, in which all the Augustinian texts
regarding monasticism are collected and classified by topics.
345
Expositions on the Psalms, 147, 29.
346
Serm. 282, 4.
347
Expositions on the Psalms, 4, 10.
348
Sermon 96, 6.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

insatiable is the human desire. That quest for the Oneness in Deum
or reinstatement in the original Oneness is defined by some Christian
mystics as the recovery of the Sancta Simplicitas, that is, the simplic-
ity of mind as a consequence of the disappropriation of desires and
thoughts.

How to recover the Sancta Simplicitas? In the year 485, the

Bishop of Hierapolis (Mabbūg, Syria) explained in his homilies: “I
am not talking about the singleness of the world, which is rather stu-
pidity and nonsense. What I am talking about is the singleness that is
characteristic of a single one thought... Because, as the intellectual
capacity of a child is not enough to analyze the actions of adults, the
capacity of our spirit is as well very limited to be able to explain the
divine mysteries... The world considers that the single one is worth-
less. Do not get upset, my disciple, if it considers you useless”
(Philoxenus of Mabbūg, Hom. V, 74 and 142)349.

Therefore, we would make a mistake if we thought that the ex-

pulsion from Paradise was but a mythical or legendary event of the
past. On the contrary, it is a current event, which happens and keeps
on happening here and now. Likewise, man can return to the Garden
of Eden here and now with the suitable disposition.

349
That is why, “As long as Adam and Eve remained in the singleness of their na-
ture and their faith was not darkened by bodily passions, they accepted and ob-
served God’s commandment as soon as they heard it... [Adam did not] judge or in-
quire about this at all, by reason of his singleness. But, when the advice of the en-
emy came and found such a simplicity, it taught him trick and guile, and sowed
opposing thoughts in his single mind. And this one coherent being, which would
have continued being so, had it remained in its singleness, found itself then divided
in two: it did and did not want, it judged and was judged, it doubted whether to do
or not to do. The advice (of the enemy), insinuated in him who was single and son,
converted him into the judge of God’s precept. However, singleness is completely
opposed to duplicity, as it very name shows, because it does not have many
thoughts that contradict each other. Singleness has a name that agrees with God
Himself: in our profession of faith, we say that God is single because... He does not
act with the duplicity of the evil, because there is no room in His head for evil”
(Hom. 80-82), in Philoxenus of Mabbūg (5th century), Homilías sobre la sencillez,
Logroño, 1992.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

X.- THE CORRECT MEANING OF “THINKING OF NOTH-

ING” AND OTHER TREMENDOUS EXPRESSIONS

Christian medieval psychology and theology established a triple

division of man’s faculties, depending on whether they belonged to
the body (the five senses), to the soul (imagination and desires) or to
the spirit (memory, understanding and will). Such a conceptual out-
line also established the successive steps towards the objectless med-
itation. The first task that the candidate must learn consists “in shut-
ting the doors of all five senses and moving the heart away from all
that is not God. The soul, naked of all created things, and God, naked
of all the things He created; that is how the soul that can be calmed
down will say it is within itself; and, if it does not covet anything that
is not God, it passes before itself, and when everything is forgotten,
it rises above itself, reaching closer to God”350. This way, “The body
withdraws, when all its senses obey and keep silent, and the soul,
which is the sensitive part, withdraws its imagination and emotions;
and the spirit, which is the highest part, withdraws its memory, its
understanding and its will, to devote itself to God alone, without no-
ticing anything else in that moment; and there is no better way to
achieve this recollection and this union than dedicating the under-
standing to the truth of the faith, which is followed by the will, and
the will of all the powers, and senses; and, this way, as soon as the
soul begins, it will do the rest alone”351.

About 1600, Pelayo de San Benito, a Benedictine monk of San

Pedro de Arlanza (Burgos, Spain), wrote a Sumario de la Oración
(Summary of Prayer) where he explained that there were three nec-
essary steps to attain contemplation. The first one is the inner recol-
lection: “when the soul enters inside of itself to meditate, to contem-
plate and to love the divine things. Its two feet are understanding and

350
Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent to Mount Zion III, ch. 4.
351
Juan Bretón, Mística Theologia, Madrid, 1614, L. I, p. 141.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

will, with which it walks and enters inside of itself”352. In order to

achieve such a recollection, the soul must be, at least momentarily,
free from desire of the things, so that their possession (though not
their use) may be removed from the powers. The second step is the
inner silence: “when the soul, by its own will, keeps quiet and stops
its vocal prayer, its discourse of understanding, the indeliberation of
its will, the activities of its outer senses, of the imagination and the
desires; and, put this way in presence of God, it dare not speak, or
move, or make any noise, for the great reverence it bares to its Crea-
tor”353. Once the complete silence of the powers and the withdrawal
of the senses have been achieved, it finally comes the third step, the
step of the pure attention or nullification, “when you, keeping si-
lence, pay attention and hear and see whatever God may say, signal
or make you understand”354.

For his part, Judah Leon Abravanel (also known as Leo the He-
brew), in his Dialogues of love, explains that, “When the spiritual
mind (which is the heart of our heart and the soul of our soul), by the
force of desire, withdraws in itself to contemplate an intimate, de-
sired object, it collects the whole soul in itself, restricting itself to its
indivisible unity, and making the spirits withdraw in the middle of
the head, where the thought is, or in the center of the heart, where the
desire is, leaving the eyes without sight, the ears without hearing,
and the rest of the instruments with no feeling or movement, dimin-
ishing even the necessary activity of digestion of the inner sense of
nutrition...”355. Or, in other words, “Give up human senses, discours-
es, imagination and wisdom, should you want to join God; and, if
you do not do it this way, just say goodbye to becoming spiritual”356.

352
Pelayo de San Benito, Sumario de la Oración, Burgos, 1626, p. 39.
353
Pelayo de San Benito, Sumario de la Oración, Burgos, 1626, pp. 39-40.
354
Pelayo de San Benito, Sumario de la Oración, Burgos, 1626, p. 40.
355
Judah Leon, Dialogues of love, translated into Spanish as Diálogos de amor by
Garcilaso Inca de la Vega (Madrid, NBAE), p. 358.
356
Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, p. 47.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

The distinction between meditation and contemplation is quite

clear. Whereas the former uses the thought, the discourse, the imagi-
nation and the senses to soften the soul, contemplation involves the
disregard of the thoughts, no matter how excellent and high they
might be. This implies that, in order to approach the Divinity, all
idea or image that we may have about It will be an obstacle that we
will interpose in the path towards pure contemplation: “Do not imag-
ine any form of God when you pray, or allow any shape to imprint
itself in your mind; only approach in an incorporeal manner the in-
corporeal God” (Nilus the ascetic, On prayer, 67). The existence of
images, visions, thoughts or any other mental form hinders contem-
plation: “If you want to ‘be in peace’ and alone with God, you must
accept nothing that your senses or your spirit can capture, either
within or without: even if it is the image of Christ that is presented to
your spirit, or angelic figures, or saints, or light... Therefore, always
keep your spirit free of colors, shapes or images, either in quality or
quantity” (Callistus and Ignatius, Direction to Hesychasts, in a hun-
dred chapters 73).

Thinking of nothing, seeing nothing, desiring nothing, imagining

nothing... Any vision, hearing or appearance, no matter how excel-
lent it may seem, must be refused. The meditator must even fight the
secret and conceited aspiration to be provided with supernatural vi-
sions by the contemplative practice. Regarding this, a certain Augus-
tine monk said: “Visions, or revelations, or any manner of spirit in
bodily appearing, or in imagining, sleeping or waking, or also any
other feeling in the bodily sense, made as it were spiritually, either
by sounding in the ear, or savoring in the mouth, or smelling at the
nose, or else any sensible heat, as it were fire glowing and warming
the breast, or any other part of the body, or any other thing that may
be felt by bodily sense, though it be never so comfortable and liking,
yet be they not very contemplation” (Walter Hilton, Scale of Perfec-
tion, I, 10).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

What do the mystics of all the religious traditions mean when

they agree that the objectless meditation consists in “thinking of
nothing”? Certainly, it has been said: “Draw in thy thoughts into thy-
self from all bodily things, and then shalt thou find right nought
wherein thy soul may rest” (Walter Hilton, Scale of Perfection, I,
53). Although the concept of “thinking of nothing” has many regis-
ters, from the point of view of the meditative practice, it means deal-
ing with no created thing, not thinking, not desiring, not imagining,
not feeling. Though that “thinking of nothing” may seem a scary,
tremendous expression, it is but a seeing oneself without ego.

In effect, the void or freedom from thoughts is conceptualized as

a nothing because the sensible world of the objects, that is, Creation
or Universe, is pure Nothing in comparison with the Spirit. That
“thinking of nothing” is described as a pure, simple, subtle vision
through the “single eye”. It is about “seeing nothing”, which implies
“seeing everything”, because, once the ordinary vision of the objects
has been transcended, the subject who sees that the objects are
“nothing” can see himself and, after that, understand that there is no
individual vision, that there is nobody, there is not “anyone” who
sees anything, but just a pure transpersonal, supraindividual vision.
This is what some mystics describe as intelligence, intuition or pure
awareness.

That is why Francisco de Osuna clarified that, even though think-

ing of nothing “is when the soul stops all the fantasies and imagina-
tions and species of the visible things and, this way, it silences all
created things”, it does not mean that we must find “perfection in
thinking of nothing, for, this way, the sleeping ones, when they are
not dreaming, and the stunned ones would be perfect; and, therefore,
if you somehow find it good to think about nothing, understand that
this is just said to the novices so that they may learn to turn their at-
tention away from distractions and dedicate it to God. Know, then,
that this thinking of nothing is more than what it seems, and that it

348
 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

cannot be explained in any way, because God, to whom it is dedicat-

ed, is inexplicable; I will rather tell you that this thinking of nothing
is thinking about everything, since we, without discourse, think
about Him who is everything by His wonderful eminence; and the
smallest good that the withdrawn men find in this thinking of noth-
ing is a very simple and subtle attention on God alone. At that time,
according to Gerson, the gate to all deception of the devil is closed,
since it always comes through some of the senses; and, finally, this
thinking of nothing, no matter how low it may be, equals getting
ready by breaking free to fly with the heart towards God alone, who
asks for it free and whole”357.

Under the formula “thinking of nothing”, we find hidden a whole

pedagogy of humility as the indispensable virtue to silence the mind.
The true humility of the mind is the disregard of the appropriation of
thoughts. Humility teaches us our own nothingness in comparison
with the Being, which is God; and the silence is the peace of mind,
needed for the listening to take place.

This silence is not only what pleases God most, but also the most
suitable means He has to work on the meditator. The idea is that,
when the contemplative does not think or act, he makes room so that
God may “think” or work on him. When, during meditation, “you
find stillness and silence and you think of nothing, then you act and
do the work of the Lord, whose justice is carried out in silence. For I
warn you, do not lose the fruit of your good thoughts or, after being
your understanding tired, try to force it, but close the door of your
memory to everything, and block your senses, and think of nothing,
for you must, in that complete inner silence, watch and listen to God,
and lie in wait in that stillness, even if it were half an hour... with an
absolute and total negation...; if you want to please God..., you must
piously soften your heart”358. In this same sense, according to Friar

357
Francisco de Osuna, Third Spiritual Alphabet, tr. 21, ch. 4.
358
Francisco de Osuna, Fifth Spiritual Alphabet, Burgos, 1542, fol. 81v.

349
 JAVIER ALVARADO

John of the Angels, “It is true that the beginners are advised to give
up the thought and to present themselves before God, free from im-
aginations, so that His Majesty may speak to their hearts, as people
who turn to Him, away from the vain distractions and representa-
tions of the creatures. And this dismissal of distracting thoughts is
perfect and needed for recollection”359.

XI.- HOW TO KEEP A CONSTANT ATTENTION?

How to keep the attention fixed and constantly free from

thoughts? The mystics are apprehensive about showing the tech-
niques of their art in writing. This practice requires withdrawing to a
silent, dark place, so that the hearing and the sight may not distract
the attention and the mind can calm down and withdraw into itself.
After a few minutes of body relaxation, some mystics recommend
facilitating recollection by means of meditation with an object, that
is, based on a thought360. Others recommend the observation of the

359
John of the Angels, Dialogues of The conquest of the divine kingdom, Madrid,
1595, X, 16.
360
Regarding meditation topics, Bernabé de Palma, among others, recommended:
“while recollecting your thoughts within yourself, consider what you would be be-
fore you were made. You must keep on reflecting about this until you feel the emp-
tiness or the knowledge of the nothing you were, wondering what you were before
the earth where we all were formed were made. You shall come to this emptiness
or knowledge when you find nothing on which to base the thought that you were
given a beginning” (Bernabé de Palma, Via Spiritus, 2, 3). As well, Saint John of
Ávila advised: “think what you were before God created you, and you will find out
that you were an abyss of nothingness and lack of all goods. Stay a good while
feeling this non-being until you see and notice your nothingness. And, after that,
consider how God... made a creature of you, giving you a true and real being. And
look at yourself... as a gift of God. And after being created, ask yourself: Is this
creature next to itself or to other? Can it stand by itself or does it need anyone
else’s hand? And consider God, who is a being that is, and there is nothing without
Him; and who is life of all that lives, and force of all that works, and there is just
weakness without Him..., and that all the people are before God as if they were not,
and thus they are considered nothing or vanity... and he who thinks he is some-
thing, as he is nothing, deceives himself... and I am before you as nothing...”, Saint
John of Ávila, “Audi filia”, in Complete Works, vol. I, p. 473 (BAC, vol. 302). The
conclusion of this meditation topic is clear: “What were we and where were we be-
fore we had a being? We were God, because we were at that ideal being of God

350
 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

own thoughts so that we may see that they unceasingly arise without
control. From this state of observation of the own thoughts, little by
little, a certain distance from them is set, until the moment comes
when the attention can be more easily concentrated on a single
thought, word or short sentence. Each time the thoughts arise and
distract us, we will turn to that sentence or word in order to focus our
attention. Contemplation is but “shutting the door of understanding
so that there can be no diversity of thoughts, or discourses, even on
holy and good things; for now it is not time for that, but of being as
suspended, quiet, still and calm as possible”361. It is about resigning
the senses and silencing the mind, so “you must neither wish to un-
derstand, nor feel, nor look whether you have gotten that or not”; but
stay there surrendered and humbled, thinking about no created thing,
being certain of this truth: that He alone is who can teach and will
teach how to fulfill His will”362. Otherwise, “you will not be able to
pray clearly if you are preoccupied with material things and are
agitated by incessant cares, because prayer implies riddance of every
thought” (Nilus the ascetic, On Prayer, 12). “Strive to keep your
mind deaf and mute during the hour of prayer. Only thus will you be
able to pray” (On Prayer, 35).

Some contemplatives of the 14th century, such as the anonymous

author of the book The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of the
Privy Counsel363, recommend concentrating on the feeling “I am” in
order to gradually weaken the identification with the thoughts. “Do
not think what thou art but that thou art” (Privy Counsel, 2). By
means of this easy and old method, it is not about reflecting on what
we are or what we should be, but just focus our attention on the feel-
ing “I am”; “Forget thy misery and sinfulness and, on that simple

and all that is within God is God”, Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, ch. 11, p.
65.
361
Pelayo de San Benito, Sumario de la Oración, Burgos, 1626, p. 56.
362
Pelayo de San Benito, Sumario de la Oración, cit., p. 115.
363
A very good English edition is the one published by William Johnston, 1973,
reedited several times: 1996, 2005, etc.

351
 JAVIER ALVARADO

elemental level, think only that thou art as thou art” (Privy Counsel,
2), that is, in the name of God “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14).
This form of meditation is so simple that “surely it is beginner’s fare,
and I consider him hopelessly stupid and dull who cannot think and
feel that he is, not how or what he is, but that he is” (Privy Counsel,
2). It is not about thinking about what I have, that is, my faculties,
my body, my intelligence, etc., but about the first of the gifts, which
is precisely the gift of being, which, up to a certain extent, originates
the rest gifts: “It is the gift of begin itself, the first gift each creature
receiveth” (Privy Counsel, 3); in sum, the gift “I am”. This way,
once all thoughts have been withdrawn in only one, the thought “I
am”, “go no further, but rest in this naked, stark, elemental aware-
ness that thou art as thou art” (Privy Counsel, I). “In this way, thy
thought will not be fragmented or scattered, but unified in Him who
is All” (Privy Counsel, 1). Only this way is the thought unified, “and
thus thou wilt bind everything together, and in a wonderful way,
worship God with Himself because that which thou art thou hast
from Him and it is He, Himself. Of course, thou hadst a beginning,
that moment in time when He created thee from nothing, yet thy be-
ing hath been and shall always be in Him, from eternity to eternity,
for He is eternal” (Privy Counsel, 5). Finally, the sustained, constant
attention on that only one thought “I am” will give way to the feeling
of being, and this will gradually open the gates to a state of Being
that is above the ordinary mental state based on thoughts. It is about
a state of self-attention, self-warning or self-observation that the
metaphysical literature of that age defined as pure awareness or pure
intelligence, that is, a state free from the appropriation of thoughts
that is identified with the original or natural state of man, because
such a state has always been there. And this is the original “state”
because it supports and from it is witnessed the sensible world and
all creations of the thought.

It is not about paying attention to a philosophical or intellectual

“nothing”, but it consists in a meta-physical activity of emptying the

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

senses, the understanding and even the own will, so that the mind
may remain as nothing, that is, empty and clean, without obstacles
that may block the pure vision. This vision from the nothing is, how-
ever, a full, whole vision, since it is not carried out from plurality but
from suprarationality. Therefore, as the Benedictine David Augus-
tine Baker (1575-1641) would say, the soul and God are not two dis-
tinct things, but one only thing: “Understand and bear in mind this
mystick saying, being taken out of the arithmetick, in which one,
being to adde together two ciphers, saies, as I have done: ‘Nothing
and nothing make nothing’. And now this may be applyed to
betoken and expresse mysticall union. For when the soul hath cast
out of her understanding all naturall images and apprehensions, and
out of her will all loves and affections to creatures, then is she
become, as to all naturall things, as if she were nothing: being free,
naked, and clean from them all, as if she were indeed nothing. For so
she is in that case, and for the time, as to creatures. But when she,
being in such case of nothing, apprehendeth God also as nothing,
that is to say, as no imaginable or intelligible thing, but as another
thing that is above all images and species and is expressible by no
species, but as it were nothing as being none of those things which
may be understood or conceived by any image or species and that
she doth further apply and adde her own foresaid nothing to the said
nothing of God: then remaineth there, neither as in respect or the
soul nor as in respect of God, anything, but a certain vacuity or
nothing; in which nothing is acted and passeth an union between
God and the soul. I mean that the said nothing elevating and uniting
herselfe to God and apprehending Him according to His totality and
without any image of Him there resulteth and ariseth nothing; as I
said, that in arithmetick ‘nothing and nothing make nothing’. And
indeed, in such perfect union between God and a soul, she hath no
imaginary apprehension either of herselfe or of God; but being as
truely they are merely spirits, they remain in a nothing, which yet
may be termed a totality. And by this you may conceive what an
active mystick union is. For it is caused by an application of the soul

353
 JAVIER ALVARADO

being for the time ridd of all images to God, apprehended according
to faith, without any image and above all images. And so, in this
case of union, there is nothing and nothing make nothing. For the
lesse there is apprehended by way of image in such union, the purer
is the union; and, if it be perfect, there is neither time nor place, but a
certain eternity that is without time or place. So that the soul, in that
case, discerneth neither time nor place nor image, but a certain
vacuity or emptinesse, both as in regard of herselfe as of all other
things. And then is it as if there were nothing at all in being, saving
herselfe and God; and God and she not as two distinct things, but as
one only thing; and as if there were no other thing in being. This is
the state of a perfect union; which is termed by some a state of
nothing, and by others is with as much reason termed a state of
totality. Because there God is seen and enjoyed in it, and He therein
as the container of all things, and the soul as it were lost in Him”364.

This way, “when our understanding ceases from reasoning by

meditating on any just, holy thought, and it stops to calmly enjoy
what it was meditating on, it is called intelligence; and when there is
no mixture of any created thing in its stillness, then it is called pure
intelligence” (Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent to Mount Zion, XIII).
That is, when the mind disappropriates the thoughts and devotes it-
self to itself, then the state of pure awareness of itself takes place
without appropriation of thoughts (the individual intellect). And even
more: since it remains in that state, it accesses a state of suprarational
consciousness (pure intellect) that is as thinking of nothing. There-
fore, in that “thinking of nothing”, a very subtle mystery is hidden, a
mystery that only a few manage to decipher: “Those who have ears
must listen and know that this thinking of nothing encompasses a
great world, where perfect contemplation comprises and has within
itself all that may be worth loving; and, as this is only God, it is clear

364
This little essay is the fifth of twenty-three miscellaneous pieces of varying
length that Augustine Baker assembled in one volume, in 1633, under the title of

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that all the rest is nothing in His presence, and like that must it be
thought... For about the soul that, by unitive love, finds itself calm by
contemplating its God, it can certainly be said that it can think about
nothing, since it finds in this thinking of nothing all that it must
think” (Bernardino de Laredo, Ascent to Mount Zion, XXVII). Such
state of pure awareness is difficult to understand because man gen-
erally lives so identified with his thoughts that he does not trust any
kind of knowledge other than the strictly rational365 and individual
one.

Paradoxically, this state of pure awareness without thoughts is

eloquent because its silence teaches; “Mounted on contemplation,
approach God and ask Him for advice and support to carry out your
work. And talk to God as a true friend, telling Him the truth of your
heart” (Bernabé de Palma, Via Spiritus, 3, 1). But that communica-
tion is so subtle that it may be interrupted or adulterate if you try to
appropriate it or reason about it because, in that very instant, you will
have generated thoughts. And you must remember that the thought
throws you out of the contemplative state because it is incompatible
with the objectless meditation. The practice of meditation must lead
the meditator from a merely rational understanding of the matter to
an unequivocal verification or metaphysical “experience”.

1.- Constant meditation and the remembrance of God.

Even though the practice of meditation is recommended during

certain moments of the day, the rest of the time can be used to pre-
vent the mind from wandering erratically prey to daydreams. Some
spiritual masters recommend occupying the mind with the most con-

Remains. There is only one complete copy of this book, viz. MS Downside 22,
which was transcribed about the year 1678 by D. Wilfrid Reeve. MS p. 102-103.
365
Some doctors and psychologists have tried to explain such processes; this is the
case of C. Albrecht, vid. H. M. Enomiya-Lassalle, “Meditation and the experience
of God”, in Living in the New Consciousness, Columbus (OH), 1988, chapters 3 to
6; and also K. Kadowaki, Zen and the Bible, New York, 2002.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

stant possible recitation of a sentence in order to favor a continuous

recollection. From the first few centuries of Christianity on, there
have been different short formulas of prayer used to facilitate a con-
tinuous remembrance. Cassian recommended “O God, come to my
assistance; Lord, make haste to help me”. The most ancient and
common is Lord, have mercy or also: God, be merciful to me a sin-
ner!366, whose origin was dated back no more and no less than to
Adam himself; “He should seat himself facing the East, as once did
Adam, and meditate in this way: ‘Adam then sat and wept because
of his loss of the delights of Paradise, beating his eyes with his fists
and saying: ‘O Merciful One, have mercy on me, for I have fallen’’”
(Philokalia, vol. III, Saint Peter of Damascus, A Treasury of Divine
Knowledge).

This way, the mind gradually loses its habit of appropriating the
thoughts. Thus, after moving away from the thoughts, it will also
gradually lose its interest in the thought objects. This is the path of
disregard. In sum, “we should try to find the dwelling-place and
knock with persistent prayer” [Mt. 7:7] (Philokalia, vol. I, Mark the
Ascetic, On those who think that they are made righteous by works
225). This way, “as God, be always within me, withdraw into God,
for the whole night you will be in prayer, or at least it will count as if
you were...”. Any moment of the day or of the night is suitable for
meditation, including the apparently most trivial moments: “Wher-
ever you may be, if you do have nothing to do, withdraw into God;
even dealing with your bodily functions, you must try to be with-
drawn”367. True inner peace consists in keeping the heart “always
fixed and firm in the love of God because of a constant, uninterrupt-
ed desire, so that you may feel like doing no other thing”368. This
way, a moment will come when the former habit to “be in the pres-
ence of God” will become so natural and spontaneous that it will end

366
Lk. 18:13.
367
Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, 3rd Advice, pp. 104 v.
368
John of the Angels, Manual of the perfect life, Madrid, 1609, X, 15, p. 476.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

up giving way to a subtle, constant, higher form of existence in

which the ego is deactivated and transcended in order to give way to
a state of lucid, tranquil self-consciousness.

Constant prayer, also called remembrance of God, is not an ex-

cess, but a commandment of the Lord: You shall always pray tire-
lessly, pray without ceasing369. “The essence of the commandments
is always to give precedence to the one that embraces them all: re-
membrance of God, as stipulated in the phrase, ‘Always be mindful
of the Lord thy God’ [Deuteronomy 8:18]. Our failure or success in
keeping the commandments depends on such remembrance, for it
shrouds the commandments in darkness and strips us of every bless-
ing” (Philokalia, vol. IV, Saint Gregory of Sinai, Chapters 17). The
practice of the “remembrance of God” –mnéme Theoú, memoria
Dei– has been and is still one of the most useful ways to favor the
surrender and nullification of the ego; “When we have blocked all its
outlets by means of the remembrance of God, the intellect requires
of us imperatively some task which will satisfy its need for activity.
For the complete fulfillment of its purpose, we should give it nothing
but the Lord Jesus370 (Philokalia, vol. I, Diadochus, Definitions 59).
The remembrance, that is, the habit of keeping the mind busy pro-
nouncing or invoking the names of God, is to be prolonged until it
becomes almost unceasing; “when you walk, when you eat, when
you drink and when you do nothing”. Its purpose is to withdraw the
thoughts that are unfocused because of the earthly concerns in order
to lead the spirit, once concentrated and purified, towards God. This
way, when the mind is deprived of its ordinary food (the erratic
thoughts), it turns to itself. Or, in other terms, when the ego stops
appropriating or feeding on desires and thoughts, it becomes weak
and ends up dying of starvation; “At all events, when and as often as
it happens that wicked thoughts are multiplied in us, let us cast into
the middle of them the invocation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and at

369
1 Thess. 5:17.
370
That is, the prayer “Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 12:3).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

that time we shall see them immediately dissolved like smoke in the
air, as experience has taught. And the mind alone having been laid
hold of, at that time let us again begin the continual attention and in-
vocation. And as often as we suffer this from temptation, let us do in
this way... everlasting to keep hesychia in the intellect, even, if I may
put it thus, from thoughts which appear to be good; and to be diligent
that the heart be found empty of thoughts, so that the thieves do not
hide” (Philokalia, vol. I, Hesychius, On Sobriety, 98, 103).

Finally, there is another aspect of the remembrance of the name

of God. When a Jew pronounces the sacred name of YHWH, he
knows that this name is derived from the third person singular of the
verb to be, that is, he is saying “He (who) is”. Likewise, the Muslim
who pronounces the sacred name of Allāh knows that he is referring
to an archaic form of the same verb. Nevertheless, this verbal form
of the sacred name of God is but a respectful and pious way to avoid
mentioning the name of God the way He defines Himself in the first
person singular of the verb to be: “I AM THAT I AM (EHYEH ASH-
ER EHYEH, Ex. 3:14). Being the sacred name of God “I AM”, the
devout man must address Him as “He (who) is”. However, from the
point of view of the prayer or the remembrance of His sacred name,
it would be more correct to use “I AM”. This introduces us into a
meditative path, employed by Jewish and Christian mysticism,
whose traces can be found in several biblical texts. Thus, when Jesus
Christ says “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6), or insists
that “before Abraham was, I am” (Jn. 8:58), he is referring to the sa-
cred name of God, since he does not say “before Abraham was, I
was”, but “before Abraham was, I am”. And, in another passage, he
adds: “I and My Father are one” (Jn. 10:30), making understand that
He is “I AM”. Hence, when he says “I am the way, the truth, and the
life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (Jn. 14:6), it might
be interpreted as “I AM (is) the way, the truth, and the life”. As the
reader has surely understood, between these lines of the Bible lies,
more or less concealed, an ancient method of meditation that has

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survived in the Christian monastic tradition and that finds one of its
most important and famous medieval works in the text entitled “The
Book of Privy Counsel”, which is the continuation of “The Cloud of
Unknowing”.

2.- Hesychastic meditation and breathing rhythm.

Within the Christian tradition, the “Hesychasm”, expression that

is derived from hesychia (stillness, peace), is the contemplative way
that has most developed the psychophysical techniques of medita-
tion. As the immediate aim of this method is to silence the mind, it
can be talked about Hesychastic “mysticism”. One of the greatest
Hesychastic mystics, Gregory Palamas († 1357), invoked the author-
ity of Moses in order to justify such a practice: “‘Pay attention to
yourself’, says Moses (Deut. 15:9)... How? By the mind, evidently,
for by no other instrument is it possible to be attentive to the whole
of oneself” (Second Treatise, C.9). Such a method is based on focus-
ing the attention in a special way: “There is a spiritual art or method
swiftly leading whoever pursues it to dispassion and the vision of
God... I will do my best to show you what attentiveness (prosochē)
is and how we may acquire it... Some of the saints have called atten-
tiveness the guarding of the intellect, others have called it custody of
the heart, or sobriety (nepsis), or mental hesychia (Symeon the New
Theologian). Like in other contemplative traditions, the Hesychastic
method371 proposes redirecting the mind towards the heart by quiet-

371
Although it is difficult to clarify the origin of Hesychasm, one of its most an-
cient disseminators was Bishop Diadochus, who, in the 5th century, explained in
Byzantium the doctrine of Evagrius and Macarius. In the 11th century, Symeon the
New Theologian, abbot of St. Mamas of Xerokerkos, taught, in his On sobriety
and attention, the way to achieve the hesychia by means of a way of breathing at-
tuned with prayer. Nicephorus the Hesychast, monk at the Mt. Athos (1261-1282)
wrote a work entitled De sobrietate et cordis custodia, which had a great influence
on later writings as the Method of the holy prayer and watchfulness. The Hesy-
chastic practices have always had detractors. One of the most famous ones was the
Calabrian monk Barlaam of Seminara, who, in 1330, got to Constantinople attract-
ed by the apophatic tendencies of the Eastern theology. In contact with the Hesy-
chasts and their psychophysical techniques, control of breathing, fixation of look,
mental concentration, etc., led by his rationalist spirit, accused them of trying to

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ing the thoughts, but with the novel incorporation of a simultaneous

attention on the own breathing as a means to escape from the flow of
thoughts at the same time that the mind is kept busy with the recita-
tion of a prayer: “If you really wish to cover your evil droughts with
shame, to be still and calm, and to watch over your heart without
hindrance, let the Jesus prayer cleave to your breath, and in a few
days you will find that this is possible” (Philokalia, vol. I, Hesychi-
us, On Sobriety, 182). “Let the remembrance of Jesus be present
with each breath, and then you will know the value of solitude”
(Saint John Climacus, Scala Paradisi, step 27.61372).

This practice is based on the impossibility to breathe in a placid

rhythm and fall at the same time prey to wrath, envy, gluttony, lust,
sloth, greed and desire in general. It is affirmed that the attention on
the breathing has spiritual effects because it helps us control the
mind-ego. Certainly, it is a breathing method whose precedents may
be found in other meditative traditions such as Taoism373 or Hindu-
ism (for instance, the prânâyâma), and that even took root in some
Catholic religious orders that distrusted recollection, such as the So-
ciety of Jesus. Thus, its founder, Saint Ignatius of Loyola374, recom-
mended, as a way to pray, “that with each breath in or out, one has to
pray mentally, saying one word of the Our Father, or of another

perceive the unknowable God by means of the senses, as the Messalian heresy had
already tried. On behalf of the Hesychasts, Gregory Palamas replied with his work
Triads for the defense of the holy Hesychasts. In 1341, all the hegumens of the Mt.
Athos signed the Hagiorite Tome (in PG, CL, 1225-1236), defending their mystical
tradition; that very year, the Second Council of Nicaea in Hagia Sophia confirmed
the Hesychastic method of prayer. Discredited and isolated, Barlaam returned to It-
aly.
372
John Climacus (c. 525-c. 606), The Ladder of Divine Ascent, New York, 1982.
373
Vid. Henri Maspero, “Les procédés de nourrir le principe vital dans la religion
taoïste ancienne”, Journal Asiatique, April-September 1937.
374
In his autobiography, Saint Ignatius narrates: “One day he went to the Church
of St. Paul, situated about a mile from Manresa. Near the road is a stream, on the
bank of which he sat, and gazed at the deep waters flowing by. While seated there,
the eyes of his soul were opened. He did not have any special vision, but his mind
was enlightened on many subjects, spiritual and intellectual. So clear was this
knowledge that from that day everything appeared to him in a new light” (Saint Ig-
natius of Loyola, Autobiography, J.F.X. O’Connor, S.J., New York, 1900, p. 57).

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

prayer which is being recited: so that only one word be said between
one breath and another, and while the time from one breath to anoth-
er lasts, let attention be given chiefly to the meaning of such word, or
to the person to whom he recites it, or to his own baseness, or to the
difference from such great height to his own so great lowness. And
in the same form and rule he will proceed on the other words of the
Our Father” (Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, 258).

Gregory the Sinaite taught this method as the most suitable to

quiet the mind and create the space of peace necessary for prayer:
“No one can master the intellect unless he himself is mastered by the
Spirit. For the intellect is uncontrollable, not because it is by nature
ever-active, but because through our continual remissness it has been
given over to distraction and has become used to that... Holding the
breath also helps to stabilize the intellect, but only temporally, for af-
ter a little it lapses into distraction again. But when prayer is activat-
ed, then it really does keep the intellect in its presence, and it glad-
dens it and frees it from captivity... So when thoughts invade you, in
place of weapons call on the Lord Jesus frequently and persistently
and then they will retreat; for they cannot bear the warmth produced
in the heart by prayer and they flee as if scorched by fire” (Philo-
kalia, vol. IV). In the 13th century, a Hesychast called Nicephorus
the Solitary explained the technique in this way: “First of all, let your
life be tranquil, free from all care, and at peace with all. Then enter
your room, shut yourself in, and, sitting in a corner, do what I shall
tell you: You know that we only exhale our breath, the air that we
inhale, because of our heart... [963b] Sit down, recollect your spirit,
introduce it –I mean your spirit– into your nostrils; that is the route
your breath takes to reach the heart. Pull it in, forcing it to descend to
your heart at the same time as the air is breathed in. When it is there,
you will see the joy that follows; you will have nothing to regret.
Just as the man who returns home after an absence can no longer
contain his joy at being able to see his wife and children again, so the
spirit when it is united with the soul overflows with joy and ineffable

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

delight... [964b] When your spirit is there, you must neither be silent
nor remain idle. But do not have any occupation or meditation other
than the cry: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!’.
No truce, not at any price. This practice, by keeping your spirit pro-
tected from wandering, makes it impregnable and beyond the reach
of suggestions from the enemy, each day it raises it in the love and
the desire of God. [965a] While holding it there do not leave your
mind idle but give it the following holy words to say: ‘Lord Jesus
Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!’. [966a] And let the mind re-
peat them day and night... Then when it gets used to it, the mind will
be happy and joyful to be there”375.

And, in other work entitled The Three Ways of Attention and

Prayer, attributed to Symeon the New Theologian, it is recommend-
ed: “Then sit down in a quiet cell, in a corner by yourself, and do
what I tell you. Close the door, and withdraw your intellect from
everything worthless and transient. Rest your beard on your chest,
and focus your physical gaze, together with the whole of your intel-
lect, upon the center of your belly or your navel. Restrain the draw-
ing-in of breath through your nostrils, so as not to breathe easily, and
search inside yourself with your intellect so as to find the place of
the heart, where all the powers of the soul reside. To start with you
will find there darkness and an impenetrable density. Later, when
you persist and practice this task day and night, you will find, as
though miraculously, an unceasing joy”376.

375
Nicephorus the Solitary or Nicephorus the Hesychast, Patrologiae cursus
completus, Series Graeca, ed. by J. P. Migne, vol. CXLVII, Paris, 1857. There is a
French translation, Petite Philocalie de la prière du cœur, ed. by Jean Gouillard,
Paris, 1953, p. 204.
376
Petite Philocalie de la prière du cœur, ed. by Jean Gouillard, Paris, 1953, p.
216. Or as well: “From early morning sit down on a low stool, about eight inches
high; compress your mind, forcing it down from your brain into your heart, and
keep it there. Laboriously bow yourself down, feeling sharp pain in your chest,
shoulders and neck, and cry persistently in mind and soul: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have
mercy on me!’... Control the drawing-in of your breath, so that you do not breathe
at your ease. For the current of air which rises from the heart darkens the mind and
agitates the intelligence, keeping it far from the heart... Hold back the expulsion of
your breath, so far as possible, and enclose your mind in your heart, continually

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It is about nullifying the mind by means of the unceasing repeti-

tion of some prayer, with the attention fixed on breathing; “Atten-
tiveness is the heart’s stillness, unbroken by any thought. In this
stillness the heart breathes and invokes, endlessly and without ceas-
ing, only Jesus Christ who is the Son of God and Himself God”
(Philokalia, vol. I, Hesychius, On Sobriety, 5). This way, quieted the
mind, it gets used to remaining in the present, in a state of attention
on itself without appropriation of thoughts, that is, “freeing the heart
from all thoughts, keeping it profoundly silent and in hesychia”
(Philokalia, vol. I, Hesychius, On Sobriety, 15).

The most complete explanation of the Hesychastic meditation

method can be found in a work of the 14th century known as
Centuriare, written by the monks Ignatius and Callistus (the latter
was Patriarch of Constantinople), and which will be used here for
further detail. It explains the method of “entering the heart by atten-
tion through breathing, which contributes to the concentration of
thoughts... So, sitting down in your cell, collect your mind, lead it in-
to the path of the breath along which the air enters in, constrain it to
enter the heart together with the inhaled air” (Callistus and Ignatius,
Direction to Hesychasts, in a hundred chapters or Centuriae 18-19).

XII.- STAGES OF THE SPIRITUAL PATH: PURGATIVE,

ILLUMINATIVE AND UNITIVE

Vedanta and Hindu philosophy, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, Jewish

mysticism, Greek philosophy, Hermetism, Gnosticism, Neoplato-
nism, etc. have employed different metaphors to define the spiritual

and persistently practicing the invocation of the Lord Jesus” (Saint Gregory of Si-
nai, On Stillness, 2). The practice of this method requires a certain moderation hab-
it regarding the intake of food, since “the guarding of the intellect begins with self-
control in food and drink, the rejection of all evil thoughts and abstention from
them, and stillness of heart” (Philokalia, vol. I, Hesychius, On Sobriety, 165).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

process by means of degrees, spheres, successive circles, mansions,

states, scales, etc.

For its part, Christian mysticism has also divided the process of
the spiritual Path in a certain number of degrees or stages. The most
widespread tradition divides spiritualists in three categories: proba-
tioner, progressing and perfect, which match with the three stages or
states of the Path: purgative, illuminative and unitive. These phases
date back, at least, to Evagrius Ponticus. The purgative path of the
incipient ones has the goal of purifying the soul, and he who
achieves it, hears “Well done, thou good and faithful servant... Enter
thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Mt. 25:21). The illuminative path, or
the path of the proficient ones, consists in the development of the in-
ner life until becoming a “friend of God”, as it is said: “Henceforce I
call you not servants, but I have called you friends” (Jn. 15:15). The
unitive path, or the path of the perfect ones, is the mystical path of
union with God according to what Jesus said: “That they all may be
one, as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee” (Jn. 17:21). The
purgatio begins when man decides to stop before the multitude of
events that overwhelm his existence and seriously, intensely reflects
on his spiritual life. This conversion is followed by a higher sensi-
tivity to the transcendental and by a recognition of the own imperfec-
tions that “sweep those whom they affect out of themselves” (Diony-
sius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names IV, 13). Determined to get
out of the “house” of appetites, he undertakes the path of purifica-
tion. In this first stage, the distinction between asceticism and mysti-
cism is usually drawn as two successive stages of the path of perfec-
tion, where the latter completes the former377. The word asceticism is
derived from “exercise” because it teaches the candidate to root out
vices and plant virtues instead. It is about showing him the function-
ing of the outer and inner senses of his body and his mind, as well as

377
The commonly accepted differentiation is the one by Scotus and Saint Thomas,
who distinguished between acquired virtues and gifts by grace; Asceticism com-
prises the acquired virtues, whereas Mysticism is not acquired, but given.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

of the powers or faculties of the soul, so that he may catch them in

their constant alienating activity, and learn how to resign them. In
this sense, the asceticism has two aspects: a negative one and a posi-
tive one, depending on whether it refers to the denial and purification
of the passions, affections or appetites, or it may have the aim of
practicing the virtues.

The purgative path is previous or preparatory because it is, in

sum, about withdrawing the outer man into the inner one; “Before
withdrawing yourself, make whatever actions you may want, but af-
ter that... be still, hand yourself to God, the same way this paper was
handed to me so that I could do whatever I wanted to do with it.
There is no time... to meditate, or to pray, but it is time to be like a
still image painted by a painter, which should not move or otherwise
he will smudge it trying to paint an eye. Thus, all this doctrine is
about making us understand that we, who must let the divine painter
paint us, are to paint nothing”378.

When the soul has been purified by the personal effort, it enters
the illuminative path or “passive purification”, called like that be-
cause man cannot acquire it by himself. Unlike active or ascetic pur-
gation, achieved with personal effort and eagerness, in the passive or
mystical one, the power of the Grace takes a more intense part. In
turn, two different modalities of passive purification are to be distin-
guished: the one of the sense and the one of the spirit. The purifica-
tion or night of the sense is focused on the lower part of the soul
(outer and inner senses), whereas the purification of the spirit works
on the higher powers (memory, understanding and will).

Finally, the unitive way takes place when the soul entirely “de-
votes” itself or withdraws in God. That is why this is also called
transforming union or spiritual marriage. All is one there, because

378
Antonio de Rojas, op. cit., p. 106.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

God is apprehended in the multiplicity of things as Saint John of the

Cross points out (The Living Flame of Love, IV, 1).

The important point here is that these stages or states of the Path
respectively match three forms of meditation or prayer. Thus, for in-
stance, Bernabé de Palma, in his Via Spiritus379, explains that the
first degree or stage is called bodily state, because its goal is “to
humble and tame the flesh and sensuality, by fasting, waking, sleep-
ing on hard and poor beds, avoiding pointless..., hollow..., harmful
words..., avoiding hindering friendship...”380. To this state belongs
the external withdrawal by which it is tried to reduce to the maxi-
mum extent possible the information that reaches the body senses:
“It means that, once you have closed your bodily eyes and are away
from all outer noise, as well as from the inner one, you must start re-
flecting within yourself or, as common people call it, among your-
self. That is why it is called deep, because it happens in the deepest
depths of our thoughts. And when this is done for long, always in-
creasing the attentiveness..., it is called very deep”381. The second
degree is an intermediate, bodily and spiritual state whose main ex-
ercise is the called annihilation prayer or knowledge about the own
nothingness as a method to root out vices and plant virtues, especial-
ly humility. In this sense, one of the exercises preferred by Palma,
Saint John of Ávila and many other mystics consists in considering
what we were before being born. The third and last state of the spir-
itual Path is the union or stillness, which, precisely because of that, is
called supernatural degree. Such union of resemblance, even though
it exceeds all understanding, because its nature is suprarational or
supernatural, takes place during perfect contemplation, “when the
two wills, that is, the soul’s will and God’s will, agree both in one,
not finding each one anything repulsive in the other”382.

379
Bernabé de Palma, Vía Spiritus, I will quote the edition of Salamanca, 1541.
380
Bernabé de Palma, Via Spiritus, ed. by T. H. Martín, Madrid, 1998, p. 29.
381
Bernabé de Palma, Via Spiritus, p. 28.
382
Juan Bretón, Mística Theologia, Madrid, 1614, L. II, p. 19.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

In order to achieve the understanding of the own state, humility

is indispensable. Saint Benedict already converted Jacob’s ladder in-
to the ladder of humility383. The abbot of Clairvaux developed this
subject in his treatise The twelve degrees of humility and pride. One
of the images that are most widely used to represent the spiritual as-
cent is the ladder that the patriarch Jacob saw in his dreams, which
“was set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven” (Gen.
28:12).

The Rule of Saint Benedict (RB 7, 8) still uses it as a ladder of

twelve steps that leads to the perfect love of God. To ascend on Ja-
cob’s Ladder is to practice the memoria Dei, that is, to constantly
remember God (Jn. 6:38). “Nihil opera Dei praeponatur”, “let noth-
ing be preferred to the work of God” (RB 43, 3). The Carthusian
Hugh of Balma explains in his work Sol de contemplativos384 that
Jacob got to Bethel (house of God) escaping from Esau’s men (the
vain), which means that, according to the ancient composers of the
Genesis, contemplation implies a fuga mundi, that is, the certainty
that everything is vain, vacuous, fleeting illusion: “which, through
three steps of wonderful doctrine, teaches us to ascend to this con-
templation, by applying what is said about the patriarch Jacob in the
Genesis. He, escaping from Esau, who was chasing him, arrived at a
place called Bethel, where he slept using a stone as his bedhead and,
in his dreams, he saw a ladder that, even though it was set up on the
earth, the top of it reached to heaven. And the angels ascended and
descended on it... And, what is the meaning of Esau, whose name
means vain, but the vanities of this world? Therefore, the first thing
to do by someone who wants to ascend on this ladder is to move
away from the vanities of the world. The second thing that must be

383
RB 7, 6-9. Cf. Gen. 28:12.
384
Strictly speaking, the work Sol de contemplativos is a Spanish translation, made
in 1514 by a Franciscan, of the work On Mystical Theology or Viae Syon Lugent,
written by the Carthusian Hugh of Balma, prior of Meyrat, diocese of Lyon, who
lived at the end of the 13th century. His main sources are the Pseudo-Dionysius, the
Bible, Thomas Gallus, Richard of Saint Victor and Saint Augustine.

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done by someone who wants to ascend to this contemplation is to

gather all his senses and keep them locked away from the things of
the world, and stay only in Christ. This is meant by what Jacob did
when he used a stone as his bedhead and then slept after the sun set.
What does the stone mean but Christ the Redeemer, about whom
Saint Paul says: the stone is Christ? And what means to sleep on the
stone, but to stay in Him?” (Sol de contemplativos 1).

Besides the ascent on Jacob’s ladder, Christian spirituality has

always turned to other symbols such as the ascent to Mount Zion, the
Heavenly Jerusalem, etc. in order to express the soul’s route towards
God: “Sobriety is like Jacob’s ladder: God is at the top while the an-
gels climb it... Just as valleys produce copious wheat385, so this wis-
dom produces copious blessings in the heart, or, rather, our Lord Je-
sus Christ produces them, for without Him we can do nothing386. At
first, you will find that it is a ladder; then, a book to be read; then, as
you advance, you will find that it is the heavenly city of Jerusalem,
and you will have a clear spiritual vision of Christ, King of the hosts
of Israel, together with His co-essential Father and the Holy Spirit,
adored in our worship” (Philokalia, vol. I, Hesychius, On Sobriety,
51, 117). It is significant that the place where the ladder is set up is
the same where Melchizedek or Abraham offered their sacrifices and
where Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself for the humankind: “The sub-
limity of Mount Zion exceeds all the rest of the mounts... On this
mount did Melchizedek offer bread and wine as a sacrifice, and on it
did Abraham build the altar of obedience, where he was meant to
sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. In that very same place did Jacob
sleep and see the ladder that reached to heaven, on which the angels
ascended and descended. There was built the altar of the cross,
where our gentlest Christ offered himself by his own will. And this
Mount Zion, before Abraham, was called Mount Moriah, which
means high land. And, after building a tower on this mount, it was

385
Ps. 65:13.
386
Jn. 15:5.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

called in the Hebrew language Zion, which in our language means

watchtower” (Laredo, Ascent to Mount Zion I). In mid-12th century,
Peter Cellensis, in his work De disciplina claustrali387 (The school of
the cloister), explains that, thanks to contemplation, the worshiper
becomes a citizen of the Heavenly Jerusalem; “citizens of Jerusalem
are those whose only desire, affection and longing consists in the
contemplation of the heavenly things, among which they dwell, as
the Apostle says: ‘we are citizens of heaven’”388. All these symbols
come to mean that contemplation is the suitable path to ascend on
the ladder-mount and enter a sacred space (lost Paradise, Heavenly
Jerusalem, etc.). They are, in sum, metaphors that indicate that the
human being contains “something” that constitutes his true spiritual
nature, which can be recovered and realized right “now”.

In the second half of the 4th century, John of Lycopolis, also

known as John the Solitary, a monk who lived thirty years enclosed
in a cave of the Thebaid, wrote a Dialogue on the soul389. Invoking
Saint Paul as his only authority, he explains the three stages or de-
grees of the path towards contemplation, using a Gnostic language.
According to the monk: “There are three kinds of men mentioned by
the Scriptures: the somatic [or carnal] ones, the psychic ones and the
pneumatic [or spiritual] ones”. Whereas it is extraordinarily difficult
for the carnal one to practice meditation, since he is a prisoner of the
sensory experiences, the psychic man shows a good disposition and
determination; however, as he still pays attention to the game of the
world, he is unable to move his attention away from the thoughts and
concentrate in a state of withdrawn, because, deep down, he trusts
the external world more than the internal one: “the psychic man feels
love for the doctrine, but, when the time comes to withdraw his un-

387
Besides the edition published in PL 202, 1110-1146, it can also be consulted G.
de Martel, Pierre de Celles, L’école du cloître: SC 240 (Paris, 1977), with a French
translation, and H. Feiss O.S.B., Peter of Celles: Selected works, Kalamazoo (MI),
1987, in English.
388
Serm. 18: PL 202, p. 695. Cf. Phil. 3:20.
389
John the Solitary, Dialogue sur l’âme et les passions des hommes, ed. by I.
Hausherr, Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, Rome, 1939.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

derstanding into prayer, he can manage to do it just after a strong

fight; besides, the withdrawal of his understanding has a very limited
duration. Why? Pay attention: As his soul is occupied with the
movements of distractions, reflections on knowledge or bodily ac-
tions, the things become agitated within him during the time of pray-
er. He is then unable to look at God in a withdrawn way, since his
understanding wanders from phantom to phantom, and these are dis-
solved in each other, above all because he has not attained the level
that is higher than the psychic one, in which God is seen by means of
something higher than men’s understanding” (John the Solitary, Dia-
logue on the soul I, 13).

What is that which prevents man from practicing meditation?

John the Solitary presents a masterful discourse on the concerns or
problems that block contemplation, for each one of these kinds of
men: “The laments of the carnal man, even when he weeps before
God in prayer, are caused by the following thoughts: the concern
about his poverty, the memories of his troubles, the request of his
children, the suffering because of the oppressors, the care for his
house, the memories of his deceased, and things of the like... Re-
garding the carnal man, his jealousy comes from: his wish to domi-
nate others, the wealth of those who are richer than him, the life of
those who are happier than him. Each passion of his jealousy is de-
termined by envy...” (John the Solitary, Dialogue on the soul I, 20).
Likewise, “the psychic man is prey to jealousy because he is elevat-
ed over the evil actions of the body but he does not perceive the ex-
istence of those who are superior, and therefore he believes that the
state in which he finds himself is perfection. And, since all the rest
are inferior to him regarding visible actions, he starts experiencing a
feeling of jealousy and disapproval of their actions, and that is why
he accumulates hatred within himself. His jealousy does not come
from envy, but from his ambition for justice...” (John the Solitary,
Dialogue on the soul I, 21).

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

In sum, all this makes it very difficult to suppress the thoughts

during contemplation; “The laments of the psychic man during pray-
er come from the following thoughts: his fear of the judgment, the
conscience of his sins, the memories of God’s gifts to him, the medi-
tation on death, the promise of things to come, the fear of finding
himself deprived of them, and other things of the like. Concerning
the laments of the spiritual man, these are the thoughts that deter-
mine them: his admiration for the majesty of God, his astonishment
before the depth of His wisdom, the glory of the world to come, the
deviation of men, and things of the like. However, they are not de-
rived from a feeling of sadness, but from an intense joy” (John the
Solitary, Dialogue on the soul I, 16).

“The same way that, by closing mouth and nostrils, man’s vital
breathing decreases, then by ceasing the [inner] words directed
against others, the passion within [man] gets damaged; and after the
destruction of this passion, the passion of love takes over” (John the
Solitary, Dialogue on the soul I, 26). The most important act of love
is the disregard of the passions for the love to know God or, what
might be the same, to know oneself; “The bodily disregard: the re-
nunciation of the own possessions; the psychic disregard: the evic-
tion of the passions; the spiritual disregard: the elimination of the
opinions” (John the Solitary, Dialogue on the soul IV, 85). “The car-
nal man is led to love by the feelings of desire and longing. Desire
feeds on the care for the body, and the longing for the good grows
with the longing of abundant pleasures. In those who want to be rec-
ognized in the world by his force or magnificence arises the love for
this or that, which possesses such things. This is the reason why love
is not stable in the carnal ones, for it is sparked in their hearts by ob-
jects capable of change, and thus their love is founded on non-
durable things... Let us talk about the level of the psychic men: there
is no love in them; either for truth, or for falseness. The psychic man
does not love falseness because he does not have a strong passion for
wealth, nor does he long to fulfill the will of his lust. That is why no

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reason impels him to love men, for he does not even desires wealth
or beauty. Therefore, it is not easy that there be love passion in him.
Even though it could be thought that he loves men for the love of
God, the truth is that he has not yet approached that level. In effect,
the love of God is not acquired by the comprehension of the myster-
ies, so he, not having yet reached so far, is unable to love men. If the
psychic man loves this or that, his love does not come from science,
but it has a reason that has not been caused” (John the Solitary, Dia-
logue on the soul I, 19).

XIII.- OTHER MISTAKES AND OBSTACLES OF THE SPIR-

ITUAL SEEKER

As the Pseudo-Macarius warned, one of the obstacles that are

most difficult to beat is pride and, above all, spiritual pride, that is,
the conceit to have attained a certain mystical state. That is why the
main virtue of the contemplative life is humility, which may make us
find out our own misery and help us catch ourselves in the arrogant
attitude of believing we are “somebody”. Even to consider oneself as
humble is a symptom of pride. That is why Saint John of Ávila said
that “If you asked me what the way to heaven is, I would have to tell
you that it is humility; and if you asked it to me once again... or
twice again... or thrice again... or a thousand times again, then a
thousand times would I tell you that there is no other way than hu-
mility alone”390. According to Friar John of the Angels, humility is
the foundation of stillness, and of the ecstasy in God, because “noth-
ing is what we are, and nothing what we can do, and towards the
nothing we walk, and we will soon become nothing, if God raises
His powerful hand on us”391.

390
Saint John of Ávila, “Audi filia”, in Complete Works, vol. I, pp. 472-475 (BAC)
[An English version of this work can be found in Audi filia = Listen, O daughter,
tr. by J. F. Gormley, New York, 2006].
391
John of the Angels, Manual, p. 604, 501.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

What is humility? “Humility is the attentive forgetfulness of what

one has accomplished” (Philokalia, vol. I, Diadochus, Definitions 6),
so it is so spontaneous that no trace of the feeling of being humble
can remain. Humility is the best tool for self-inquiry, since “What
means, for example, to be truly humble without knowing one’s self?
Or rather, what is humility but a knowledge of one’s sins, of one’s
miseries, and of one’s unworthiness?”392. The knowledge of our-
selves, which brings us humility, gives us the ability to catch our
mind in the middle of its activity of appropriation of experiences: “I
once caught this mad imposter [the pride] as it was rising in my heart
bearing on its shoulders its mother, vainglory. I roped them with the
noose of obedience and thrashing them with the whip of humility”
(John Climacus, Scala Paradisi, step 23.37). It is written that God
resisteth the proud393. “It was with reference to this that the Apostle
said: And what hast thou that thou did not receive?394 Did you create
yourself? And if you received from God soul and body, from which
and in which and through which every virtue comes into being, why
dost thou glory as if thou had not been given it? For it is the Lord
who has given you these things. (Philokalia, vol. I, Hesychius, On
Sobriety, 192).

Another common mistake of the contemplative is individualism.

He aspires to a solitary life, supposedly renouncing the world, and
what he really does is to build a crystal bubble on whose walls he
projects his own mirages. But one thing is to renouncing the appro-
priation of thoughts, another very different thing is to live thinking
about the disregard: “A self-indulgent monk has achieved nothing
through his renunciation. For what he once did through possessions
he still does though possessing nothing” (Philokalia, vol. I, Mark the
Ascetic, On the Spiritual Law, 96).

392
Pierre Nicole (1625-1695), Of the knowledge of one’s self, XXXIV.
393
James 4:6.
394
1 Cor. 4:7.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

Likewise, it is counter-productive to start the path loaded down

with prejudices and absurd expectations; “I have often asked God
through prayer for something I thought to be good. And I insisted il-
logically on asking for it, thus violating the divine will. I would not
let God provide whatever He knew would be to my benefit” (Nilus
the ascetic, On Prayer, 32). Others get discourage right away when
they do not obtain what they looked for. Facing this, it is recom-
mended: “Do not be sorrowed if you do not immediately receive
from God that which you asked for, because He desires to benefit
you even more through your patient perseverance in prayer. Indeed,
what is more superior to associating with God and conversing with
Him?” (Nilus the ascetic, On Prayer, 34).

The suitable attitude of the meditator can be summarized in the

expression “desiring nothing”, because “where men are enlightened
with the true light, they perceive that all which they might desire or
choose is ‘nothing’ to that which all creatures, as creatures, ever de-
sired or chose or knew. Therefore they renounce all desire and
choice, and commit and commend themselves and all things to the
eternal Goodness. Nevertheless, there remaineth in them a desire to
go forward and get nearer to the eternal Goodness; that is to come to
a clearer knowledge, and warmer love, and more comfortable assur-
ance, and perfect obedience and subjection” (Theologia Germanica
X). Said with the words of Saint Gregory the Great: “Moreover de-
siring nothing, fearing nothing, in this world, I seemed to myself on
a certain summit of things, so that I almost believed to be fulfilled in
me what I had learned of the Lord’s promise through the prophet: I
will lift you up upon the high places of the earth (Is. 58:14). For he is
lifted up upon the high places of the earth who treads under foot
through looking down upon them in his mind even the very things of
the present world which seem lofty and glorious” (Ep. I.5. MGH, Ep.
I, 5-6).

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Again, the apparently mysterious paradox is found: the “desiring

nothing” compatible with the “desiring the divine Goodness”, which
seems to be solved with desiring nothing but the presence of God. In
fact, the language of the contemplatives is often paradoxical. On one
hand, he is warned against the sense of appropriation of the benefits
of meditation, and he is recommended to “desire nothing” or to med-
itate without a reason. On the other hand, he is presented the benefi-
cial results of the meditative practice: “If you wish to pray... forsake
all things, so that you may inherit everything” (Nilus the ascetic, On
Prayer, 37). These paradoxes not only have a pedagogic value be-
cause they try to encourage the candidate, but also reflect the dual
essence of the world of human mind. The meditator finds out that the
effort is not enough to attain the Grace, but it is also necessary to de-
sire nothing in order to find everything; that the ecstasy is not an ex-
perience, even though he may live it like that; that the disregard im-
plies living without a reason, even though he may live seeking God,
etc. This indicates that the realm of the mind cannot be used to ex-
plain the world of the spirit, and that only in the latter are the duali-
ties (coincidentia oppositorum) resolved. Ultimately, meditation and
contemplation must be vivified by a suitable attitude395. By means of
virtues such as humility, devotion, acceptance, etc., you must try to
“expel your will from yourself and let God’s will and love reign and
dwell in your soul”396. According to the 17th-century monk Antonio
de Rojas, the perfect resignation or dedication consists in collecting

395
The right attitude is defined by the New Testament as poverty in spirit: “Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. 5:3). As this verse
does not refer to economic poverty, a more correct translation might be proposed:
“Blessed are the poor according to the spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven”,
in order to emphasize that it is a blessing accessible to the impersonal men who
have disappropriated the desires of the world. Saint Augustine already interpreted
this sentence as “Blessed are those who are not swollen with boastfulness”; like-
wise, Chrysostom affirmed that Jesus Christ meant: “Blessed are those who are
humble”. In sum, it is “poor” him who “has nothing of his own” because he has
disregarded his sense of individuality. Poor in spirit are, ultimately, those who,
having realizing the Nothing as men and having emptied themselves, have then
been filled by the Grace; in E. Delebecque, Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume
Budé III, 4; IV, 1.
396
Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, p. 40.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

the external man within himself, into the center of his soul, since
God “is in all and within you”. By means of this act of con-fidence,
that is, of faith, “does God in such a soul what He wills, and it can-
not hinder Him”397. But, even in this case, although one may believe
to be favored by the divine grace or proud of what he has accom-
plished, or may achieve the peace of mind, he must never think that
it has been a result of his effort. He must always remember that it is
written: “Without Me ye can do nothing”. “When you have done
something good, remember the words: Without Me ye can do noth-
ing (Jn. 15:5)” (Philokalia, vol. I, Mark the Ascetic, On the Spiritual
Law, 41). Realizing that truth implies a total submission of the own
will under the will of the Only One. It is then when one understands
and proves that it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to do
of His good pleasure398 (Philokalia, vol. I, Diadochus, On Spiritual
Knowledge and Discrimination, 93).

1.- The suitable attitude.

On the other hand, to affirm that the objectless meditation is an

art or a science does not mean that it can be mechanically carried
out. It is not a science in the sense that it cannot provide a technique
that guarantees certain results. If there is someone who may assume
that contemplation or spiritual realization is a consequence of space-
time factors subject to a physical rule, he will just collect headaches
and anxiety attacks. Universal mysticism insists in the need for a
right spiritual disposition before entering the practice of meditation.
René Guénon wrote some lucid pages about the differences between
the doctrine of the eye (merely rational comprehension) and the doc-
trine of the heart (the passing from the mental comprehension to the
spiritual realization)399. As the Jesuit Jerónimo Nadal said: “if you
seek God in the understanding, you will not find Him. It is in the

397
Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, ch. 11, p. 65.
398
Phil. 2:13.
399
René Guénon, “Heart and brain”, in Symbols of Sacred Science, Hillsdale (NY),
2004, ch. 70.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

heart where the mystical theology lies”400. Otherwise, we will be just

carrying out a merely speculative activity with no spiritual effects at
all. “When you seek God apart from you, you just tire your under-
standing, and it is the least useful action to receive the soft influence
that exceeds our capacity” (Bernabé de Palma, Via Spiritus 3, 4).

What is, in sum, the right attitude to advance in the objectless

meditation? The mystics highlight the important role of the will to
resign all the faculties, so that one can concentrate with a sustained
attention. It is about employing all our will power to move away
from the desires and thoughts, in a sort of “saintly allowing our-
selves to be consumed and annihilated, so that we may not feel, or
love, or desire, or enjoy anything but God alone; and all this with a
so great serenity and joy that it seems to be carried out without notic-
ing it”401. This way, “once refused the concepts, the will remains free
and easy to enter the open see of the divinity with the most efficient
acts of love, and that is why we will here say that the will ascends
where the understanding cannot reach”402. Therefore, we must “close
our understanding to everything, and remain suspended with a very
vivid attention on God..., as him who listens to someone who speaks

400
In Miguel Nicolau, S. J., Jerónimo Nadal. Obras y doctrinas espirituales, Ma-
drid, 1959, p. 250. This loving aspect of the contemplative activity has been even
an object of doctrinal speculations that have tried to separate what is merely affec-
tive or sentimental (as sensitive manifestations) from what is strictly spiritual. Au-
thors such as Gerard of Liège (14th century), in his work The Doctrine of the heart,
based on the biblical passage: “prepare your hearts unto the Lord” (1 Sam. 7:3),
explains the steps or stages through which the heart gets ready for recollection: 1)
Praeparatio cordis: The heart is to be arranged like a room, clean and adorned
with many virtues for the mystical marriage. 2) Custodia cordis: The heart is like
an entrenched camp, attentively watched so that the combatants are not carried
along by illusions. 3) Apertio cordis: The heart is to be opened to regret, joy, chari-
ty, etc., the same way as the door of a house, so that the love may embrace God
and the neighbor. 4) Stabilitas cordis: The understanding of the heart must be
strengthened in the testimony of the martyrs, revelations, prophecies, etc. 5) Datio
cordis: Man must offer his heart in love and obedience. 6) Elevatio cordis: Medita-
tion on faith, hope, straight intention. 7) Scissio cordis: The rupture of the heart by
ecstatic love. Vid. Gerard of Liège, “Un traité inédit de l’amour de Dieu”, in RAM,
12 (1931), p. 374.
401
Pelayo de San Benito, Sumario de la Oración, p. 167.
402
Pelayo de San Benito, Sumario de la Oración, p. 165.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

from above, although the understanding is always stalking. And

there is no reflection in what he is doing, as a child or whoever lis-
tens to an organ and he likes it; he does not know the art and remains
still; and he who knows is paying attention to his own mistakes”403.
The mystics explain that this form of prayer without the distraction
of the thoughts is the one that pleases God most and the most valued
by Him: “the attention on God alone with piety and faith, believing
that this is a huge work made to please His Majesty; since it is not at
our hands to completely restrain the thought, our Lord perfects it,
sending His visitation from above and extending the hand of His
grace so that there be silence” (Third Spiritual Alphabet, tr. 21, cap.
4).

The Franciscan Francisco de Osuna (c. 1492-1540), author of

works such as the six Spiritual Alphabets, Gracioso convite, Norte
de estados and some collections of sermons, considered attention
and happy as the two pillars of the meditative practice: “Take this
two words and use them very much if you want to please God...: pay
attention only to God and be happy. If you want to use pay attention
only to God and be happy at any time in that attention dedicated only
to Him, be sure that you will obtain a valuable fruit just by paying
attention to God and being happy with such an attention... The atten-
tion only on Him is the eye of the soul, which penetrates and opens
the heart of God... it cleaves through all the creatures, it cleaves
through the mysteries of God, it cleaves through the favors and gifts
that He has given you, it penetrates up to Himself... up to His heart...;
warm, repeated, continuous and pure attention on Him alone... Do
not seek your happiness in the things of the world..., honors..., fa-
vors..., human sciences, since he who reaches God attentive and
happy is richer than that”404. The meditator who follows the way of
silence (mystika) must quiet his mind so that God may speak to him.
He must be like the “little dog that, while its master is at the table,

403
Saint John of Ávila, Plática 3ª, A los Padres de la Compañía, 1.228-233.
404
Francisco de Osuna, Fifth Spiritual Alph., fols. 57-58.

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places itself opposite him and, rising its hands and looking at its
master, remains still without moving, waiting for him to give it some
bit”405.

The art of the objectless meditation consists in remaining little by

little in the state of consciousness without thoughts (including the
thought “I” or “mine”!), that is, with nobody who claims the actions
of thinking or meditating. That is why it has been said, “prayer is
then every way complete, when he that prayeth doth not consider
that he is before God in prayer”406. Turning to a more radical image,
some others compare the meditator’s attitude with that of a dead man
who hears, or sees, or feels nothing of this world because his atten-
tion is only and exclusively concentrated on the silence of death: “He
who prays like this must quiet his understanding... so that, by making
this act of faith, he may remain as if he were dead, without knowing
any creature or paying attention to the sensible things, in order to de-
vote his understanding only to God, not to phantoms, images, crea-
tures or discourses; thus, at last, dead to what is sensible and created;
that is why it is said: ‘beati mortui’ (blessed are the dead)”407. But it
is also necessary a certain predisposed eagerness. Or, rather, no ea-
gerness. For instance, it is not possible to go deep into with the pur-
pose of profiting from it. The meditative practice must not be ac-
cessed in order to get any material or spiritual benefit (even though
there may be!). That is why Meister Eckhart said that the true quest
is an unselfish action made without a reason, that is, with a complete
devotion and detachment, always accepting God’s will. The medita-
tor must deeply and honestly examine the reasons that drive him to
enter the contemplative way so that he may correct his possible per-
spective errors, since he must keep in mind that “[God] stands con-
templating thy mind, thy thoughts, thy intellections, observing how

405
Francisco de Osuna, Fifth Spiritual Alph., fols. 57-58.
406
Saint Peter of Alcántara (1499-1562), Treatise on prayer and meditation, ch.
XII, Eight Document (as translated by M. Fithian, Philadelphia, 1844).
407
Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, p. 73.

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thou sleekest Him, whether with thy whole soul, not indolently, not
carelessly” (Macarius408, Hom. XXXI, 3).

The contemplative way has personified the virtues of persistence

and perseverance in Jacob (Gen. 29:25), who was permitted to ask
for Leah’s hand after seven years working for Laban. Leah was not
beautiful, because she symbolized “our childhood in the spiritual
path”. Thus, after seven years more, he finally got married to the
beautiful Rachel. Laredo takes up, from The Book of the Twelve Pa-
triarchs by Richard of Saint Victor409, the mystical exegesis of this
biblical episode, interpreting that “Rachel means graceful vision: in
order to get married to this gracious vision, Jacob worked for twice
seven years; those who seek God, who is an ineffable vision, must
not consider that twice seven years are too long, since it is a number
of perfection” (Laredo, Ascent to Mount Zion XII).

Finally, the sustained self-attention attracts the gaze of the Grace.

But it is to be understood that the Grace is not the result of any ef-
fort. No sum of efforts can lead us to the spiritual realization. In any
case, the effort might be a necessary condition, but not sufficient to
obtain the Grace. The implicit idea in this assertion is that, ultimate-
ly, man cannot completely purify himself, but it is the Holy Spirit
which does purify him. “The Lord leads each one as He sees is nec-
essary”410 and He finally grants His gifts to him “to whomsoever the
Son will reveal Him” (Mt. 11:27). On the other hand, the volunta-
rism belongs to the world of the “ego-doer”, since the “Spirit” needs
no effort to be what it is. Every effort is directed to unbuild the ego,
that is, the sense of individuality that blocks the spiritual influence.

408
The Lausiac History gives us the news of a monk who lived at the desert in the
4th century, called Macarius Alexandrinus (contemporary with Macarius of Egypt),
to whom some Homilies and several treatises (De perfectione in spiritu; De
oratione; De elevatione mentis; De libertate mentis) are attributed.
409
Richard of Saint Victor, Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina, ed. by J.
Migne, vol. CXCVI, Paris, 1844.
410
Saint Teresa of Jesus, Mansions, VI, 8, 10.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

However, the role that the Grace plays in man’s spiritual realiza-
tion has not been and is not a peaceful issue. Nonetheless, it has trig-
gered intense discussions that found their high point in the contro-
versy known with the name of De auxiliis411, which took place after
the publication of the Concordia by the Jesuit Luis de Molina412,
whose work was criticized in the publication of the Dominican Do-
mingo Báñez413. In a simple way, Antonio de Rojas explained that
“All the rosettes and noise of the schools regarding the auxilia (help)
of God can be reduced to saying that God does everything, but not
alone. Thus, here we teach how to use the closest, more propor-
tioned, main means to attain the union with God. The soul is nulli-
fied and entrusted to God’s hands...; in that soul does God what He
wills, with no obstacle at all... This way you will become what you
are not, if you were not what you are... Think about a hedgehog that,
finding itself pursued..., curls up into a ball, withdrawing into itself...

411
Jacques-Hyacinthe Serry, O. P.: Historia Congregationum “De auxiliis”, Ven-
ice, 1740.
412
Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia,
praedestinatione et reprobatione, ad nonnullos primae partis Divi Thomae
articulos, Lisbon, 1588.
413
The discussion was about the value of the Grace regarding the doctrine of pre-
destination and free will. According to those who believe that God ineffably knows
what will happen, all man’s actions are predestined by the ineffability of the divine
knowledge. This means not only that all things exist because God already knows
them, but also that He consents to it. If this is like that, how to explain man’s free-
dom and responsibility, and his sense of salvation? From this can be deduced that,
if God promotes the human will, his bad deeds could not be done without the di-
vine agreement. And if the true cause of sin is due to God and not to man’s free
will, does this mean that God has already decided who will be saved and who
doomed? As the discussion had ended up confronting Jesuits and Dominicans, the
issue was transferred to the Spanish Inquisition, and from there to the Pope, who,
in 1607, declared that none of both stances was to be considered heterodox, so that
Dominicans and Jesuits could freely keep their respective opinions, just with the
express prohibition of describing the others’ doctrine as against the Faith: Apologia
fratrum praedicatorum in provincia Hispaniae Sacrae Theologiae professorum,
adversus quosdam novas assertiones cuiusdam doctoris Ludovici Molinae
nuncupati, Theologi de Societate Jesu, quas defendit in suo libello cui titulum
inscripsit “concordia…”, et adversus alios eiusdem novae doctrinae sectatores ac
defensores eadem Societate (1595), which he signed together with other brethren
of the Order: Friar Diego de Yangüas, Friar Pedro de Herrera, Friar Pedro de
Ledesma and Friar Diego Álvarez. There is a Spanish translation, Apología de los
hermanos dominicos contra la Concordia de Luis de Molina, translation,
introduction and notes by Juan Antonio Hevia Echevarría, Oviedo, 2002.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

In the same way, you, being in the crux of God’s will, carried along
wherever God wants, bury yourself in being the increate of God...
withdrawing yourself into God for faith and love”414. Medieval au-
thors and later mystics had distinguished between active and passive,
natural and supernatural, perfect and imperfect contemplation. Re-
garding this, numerous distinctions or gradations have been created
over time, so many that they may originate more problems than solu-
tions, overwhelming the neophyte.

The distinction between acquired contemplation and infused con-

templation has also been drawn, making understand that, although
certain gifts of the Grace could be accessible to everyone (infused),
however, there would be others set aside just for a few. However,
“acquired” does not mean that it is achieved by means of the own
strength, but that “this contemplation is the normal development of
the sanctifying grace, and that the soul can achieve it, helped by
God, using a suitable method”415. Nevertheless, current Catholic
theologians agree that there is no other contemplation than the in-
fused one, that is, the one which is carried out under the action of the
gifts of the Holy Spirit, being accessible to all believers, and not only
to a few favored ones.

XIV.- THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING AND THE RAY OF

DARKNESS

When the recollection in the objectless meditation is complete,

that is, when the activities of the senses and the understanding cease
and the will is firmly determined to “think nothing”, an extraordinary
phenomenon, very difficult to explain, may happen: the conscious-
ness seems to penetrate an intense, silent, bottomless and impressive

414
Antonio Rojas, Vida del espíritu, Madrid, 1630, p. 80-81.
415
Melquiades Andrés, Historia de la mística de la Edad de Oro en España y
América, Madrid, 1994, p. 381.

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

darkness that seems to dilute all barriers and limits, including the
own sense of individuality; precisely for that reason, it puts the de-
termination of the contemplative to the test. Also for that reason, it is
called the cloud of unknowing, because it is a preliminary state bor-
dering on the supraindividual states in which there is forgetfulness of
oneself. The contemplatives have called it supra-essential nothing,
mystical darkness or cloud of unknowing, given that nothing is
known there because the relation of a subject that knows objects is
transcended. Some philosophers have used a more intellectual vo-
cabulary when affirming that this “profound abyss of darkness... was
termed... nothing, non-end, non-entity” (Robert Fludd416, Mosaical
Philosophy I, 1). The Kabbalists defined it dark aleph, because it
hides the brilliant aleph, and also Ain Sof (Cesare della Riviera, The
Magical World of the Heroes, Milan, 1603, I, 8).

At the beginning, that darkness is terrifying because it forces the

meditator to face his deepest fears and anguishes. It is like a thick
dark room where one fears risking his life passing through it. Only
he who has experienced that emptiness and darkness can understand
the description that Jacob did of it as a “startling” place. Saint John
of the Cross has a golden rule to pass through that time-place or
night of the spirit: “I will gather no flowers, I will fear no wild
beasts, and I will pass over the strongholds and the frontiers” (Spir-
itual Canticle, 3), that is, appropriating nothing. In some Eastern as
well as Western literary traditions, that dark cavern is the dwelling of
a dragon that guards its small gate, blocking the way to the people
who do not possess the suitable qualification, that is, who intend to
enter being “somebody”. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is
the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it417. It

416
He was born in Milgate (Kent) in 1574, studied in Oxford and traveled through
Europe. He died in 1637. Besides publishing Philosophia mosaica (1638), he also
wrote Medicina catholica (Frankfurt, 1629), Monochordon mundi symphoniacum
(1620), Philosophia sacra (1626), Integrum morborum mysterium (1631) and
Clavis philosophiae et alchimiae Fluiddianae (1633).
417
Cf. Mt. 7:14.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

can only be accessed by desiring and thinking nothing, that is, being
nobody. “But thy darkness is not restful, not quiet to thee by reason
of thy uncleanness and unacquaintedness with it, and therefore use it
often, and in process of time through feeling of grace it will be more
easy and more restful to thee, and that is when thy soul through
grace is made so free, and so able and so good and so gathered into
itself that it listeth to think on just nothing, then is it in a good dark-
ness” (Walter Hilton, Scale of Perfection, II, 24). Although it is a
“dark silence in which all lovers lose themselves” (John of
Ruysbroeck, The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, III, 4), we
must endure inside this darkness until it cleanses and frees us from
all restlessness.

This darkness is the antechamber of Paradise. And, as Paradise is

within every man, the darkness is associated to the spiritual heart
that can be accessed through the suitable recollection: “Adam... after
this transgression... his thoughts became base and material... The
closing of Paradise, and the placing of the cherubim with the burning
sword to prevent his entrance (Gen. 3:24), must be regarded as actual
events; but they are also realities encountered inwardly by each soul.
A veil of darkness... surrounds the heart” (Philokalia, vol. III,
Symeon the Metaphrast, Paraphrase of the Homilies of St. Macarius
of Egypt 37). It is a place that leads to another mansion. Only when
one cedes control and devotes himself to it unreservedly, that dark
cloud shows its true friendly essence. Night becomes day and dark-
ness becomes light, “for within this nought is Jesus hid in His joy,
whom thou shalt not find with all thy seeking, unless thou pass this
darkness of conscience” (Walter Hilton, Scale of Perfection, I, 54).
Behind the dark cloud of the sensory self-deprivation is the Light
hid, because “the Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness com-
prehended it not” (Jn. 1:5).

It is precisely the abundance of light that creates the darkness it-

self. It is the called ray of darkness, an exquisite light that emerges,

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

happens or is seen by those who pass through the cloud of unknow-

ing: “doing this by yourself, you will be led to the ray of the divine
darkness. Thus, what you must do is to position yourself in that dark
faith”418. It is a “bright ray that is beyond all thought about this most
divine light, which is touched by the heart in a supernatural way”
(Callistus and Ignatius, Centuriae 68). Therefore, it is verified that
“he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9). In effect, “il-
lumination is an ineffable activity which is unknowingly perceived
and invisibly seen” (John Climacus, Scala Paradisi, step 7.55). It
cannot be understood because the mind cannot attain that state. The
mind does not understand it because it was not. It is the prize of
those who have transcended the senses and the intellectual activities,
the sensible and the intelligible, in order to attain, by virtue of this
denial, the union with God, who dwells in the darkness, and be there
enlightened by the “inaccessible light of God”419. Some mystics
connect this spiritual state with a state previous to the holy places of
the Christian tradition: the heavenly Paradise, the Heavenly Jerusa-
lem, Mount Zion: “This is that Jerusalem and that Kingdom of God
hidden within us, according to God’s will. This place is the cloud of

418
Antonio de Rojas, Vida del espíritu, p. 47.
419
It is the Grace that is granted to those who persevere guarding the intellect,
since “The guarding of the intellect may appropriately be called light-producing,
lightning-producing, light-giving and fire-bearing, for truly it surpasses endless
virtues, bodily and other... And when they have become contemplatives, they bathe
in a sea of pure and infinite light, touching it ineffably and living and dwelling in
it. They have tasted that the Lord is good (Ps. 34:8), and in these harbingers are ful-
filled the words of David: Surely the righteous shall give thanks unto Thy name,
and the upright shall dwell in Thy presence (Ps. 140:13)” (Philokalia, vol. I, Hesy-
chius, On Sobriety, 171). That is why it has been said: “God, who commanded the
light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts” (2 Cor. 4:6); in Jerónimo
Nadal, Anotationes et meditationes in Evangelia, Dominica III post Pascha; adnot.,
439 b. One of its characteristics is that it produces the intuitive vision that sees “all
in all”, because the separation between I and That has been beaten; “Standing
there, all of a sudden in the dead of the night, as he looked forth, he saw a light that
banished away the darkness of the night and glittered with such brightness that the
light which shone in the midst of darkness was far more clear than the light of the
day. During this vision, a marvelously strange thing followed, for, as he himself af-
terward reported, the whole world, gathered together, as it were, under one beam of
the sun, was presented before his eyes” (Saint Gregory the Great, Life of Saint
Benedict, ch. 35).

385
 JAVIER ALVARADO

God’s magnificence, where only the pure of heart may enter to con-
template God’s face” (Callistus and Ignatius, Centuriae 68).

Is this the end of the path? The Christian tradition is unanimous

when it affirms that any vision in this life will never be as pure and
beatific as that which will take place after death, when all the veils
fall: “Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man
can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see...” (1 Tim.
6:16). But, in any case, the visions or states experienced in our life
are not so far or separate from us, but they constitute a foretaste of
our true nature. We are the light, because “whatsoever doth make
manifest is light” (Eph. 5:13), so that all the creatures already have it
by nature (datum) and can verify it in this life by grace (donum). In
the Gospel of Saint John it is said: “There was a man sent from God,
whose name was John. The same came as a witness to bear witness
of the Light, that all men through him might believe” (Jn. 1:6-7).
That “Light Unchangeable” (Saint Augustine, Confessions, VII, 10)
is the light of the Grace that is achieved in the osculum
contemplationis, the cognitio secretorum, that is not acquired by
“understanding”, for God is incomprehensible, unknowable and in-
accessible. It is a so direct and verifiable mode of knowledge that
some mystics define it as a God’s “touch” to the soul.

Make that state your dwelling and “you will then attain a vision
of the Holy of Holies and be illuminated by Christ with deep myster-
ies. For in Christ the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3)
are hidden, and in Him the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily
(Col. 2:9). In the presence of Christ you will feel the Holy Spirit,
spring up within your soul. It is the Spirit who initiates man’s intel-
lect, so that it can see with unveiled face (2 Cor. 3:18)” (Philokalia,
vol. 1, Hesychius, On Sobriety, 29).

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

XV.- THE REVIVAL OF THE MEDITATIVE PRACTICE IN

THE 20TH CENTURY: THOMAS MERTON, THOMAS KEAT-
ING, WILLIGIS JÄGER, FRANZ JALICS...

The age-old mistrust that the Western rationalistic culture has

always had of the forms of mental prayer and contemplative practic-
es has been one of the reasons why the Christian traditional methods
of internalization were gradually relegated to a few monasteries, un-
til being practically forgotten. That is why, by the middle of last cen-
tury, a Trappist monk called Thomas Keating, determined to provide
a Christian method of contemplative prayer comparable to the Hin-
du, Buddhist or Islamic ones, confessed that “In the 1970s very few
were coming to Christian monasteries while many –10,000 every
summer according to some estimates– were going to India in search
of a guru. They did not find comparable spirituality in the Christian
tradition either in catechism classes, high school, college, the local
parish, or even in religious life. This seemed to me to be tragic be-
cause through my studies and experience in the monastery, I realized
the rich treasures that the Christian contemplative heritage pos-
sessed”420. His experience as an abbot had led him to know some of
the perspective errors of the monastic life. One of them was the as-
sumed incompatibility of active life and contemplative life, and the
subsequent reduction of the latter to the monasteries, depriving lay
people of the benefits of the forms of mental prayer421. Likewise,

420
Thomas Keating, The Better Part: Stages of Contemplative Living, New York,
2000, p. 47.
421
For example, the research made by Marilyn May Mallory on the contemplative
prayer has shown that, in the Spanish version of the work of Dionysius the Areop-
agite, in one point at least there is a serious mistranslation of the original text. Ac-
cording to the mentioned translation, the text read: “We must be detached from all
our desires in order to reach divine union”. But what the Pseudo-Dionysius actual-
ly wrote was that we must be detached in all our desires. Thus, this mistranslation,
popularized by Saint John of the Cross, made people believe that it was necessary
to break free from all desire, which reduced the contemplative practice to the mo-
nastic life. On the contrary, to be detached in our desires implies a radically differ-
ent point of view, which places the center of attention on the motivations of the
false I; Marilyn May Mallory, Christian Mysticism. Transcending Techniques, As-
sen, 1977.

387
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Keating himself demanded a reappraisal of the sacred symbols and

the attention on breathing as means to turn attention away from the
thoughts422 until entering the complete recollection, which he de-
fined as centering prayer. “There is no I to enjoy the experience dur-
ing the time it perdures. If there is self-reflection, this grace is not
full union. When we emerge from the experience, there may be the
sense of a gap”423. Finally, after his contact with the Indian meta-
physics, Father Keating took up again the contemplative methods
practiced in the original Christianity. Of course, the example of
Keating is not an isolated case. Thomas Merton, another Trappist
monk, had already pointed out the similarities between the contem-
plative experience of Eastern and Western monks424. Another Bene-
dictine abbot, Willigis Jäger425, immersed himself in Zen Buddhism
in order to vivify the ancient Christian contemplative practices,
which caused then-Cardinal Ratzinger to forbid him from speaking
in public.

Paradoxically, it was a Jesuit priest (order that has traditionally

undervalued the contemplative practice), Franz Jalics, who, in his
Contemplative Retreat, explained one of the most complete contem-
plative methods, letting the Christian tradition regain recitation
(mantra), body postures, breathing, etc. as means to move away
from the mental flow and attain inner peace. These and many other
examples that could be mentioned of the recognition of the efficacy
of meditation426 or contemplation have an even higher value for they
come from people who practice a religion, Catholicism, which is so

422
Thomas Keating, The Better Part, cit., p. 86.
423
Thomas Keating: The Better Part, cit., p. 92.
424
Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation, New York,
2004.
425
Willigis Jäger, Contemplation: A Christian path, Liguori (MO), 1994, among
other works by the same author.
426
In the last few decades, it has been developed some important movements that
have adapted the traditional meditation methods to the Western format. One of
them, arisen in the Massachusetts General Hospital with the aim of studying its
beneficial properties against stress, anxiety and other psycho-mental problems, is

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 SCIENCE AND ART OF MEDITATION IN CHRISTIANITY

little inclined to open itself to a possible external influence on its

own tradition. Anyway, as the works of the mentioned authors are of
easy access, the interested reader is referred to them.

After this tight synthesis of the contemplative method in the

Christian tradition, it is time now to stop to study the works of some
authors who more explicitly put the fruit of their metaphysical expe-
rience in writing.

the Mindfulness, whose experimentation has also spread through different uni-
versities.

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 SEEING IN NON-SEEING; A NON-HUMAN FORM
OF KNOWLEDGE: SAINT GREGORY OF NYSSA

“Here is the true knowledge of what has been

sought and here is the seeing that consists in not
seeing... that is to say, to realize that nothing known
by human comprehension can be known about
Him” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, II,
163, 166).

Gregory of Nyssa was born in the region of Caesarea of Cappa-

docia about 335-340427. The education level of his father, who had
the profession of rhetorician, as well as the availability of economic
resources in his family, contributed to provide young Gregory with a
solid philosophical education. Although he was professor of Rheto-
ric, his mystical vocation and the influence of his friend Gregory of
Nazianzus, drove him to withdraw to the monastery on the Iris, in
Pontus, in order to dedicate himself to his ascetic practices and to the
study of Theology. His brother Basil, metropolitan of Caesarea, con-
secrated him as Bishop of Nyssa in 371 and, in 372, he was appoint-
ed as the Archbishop of Sebaste. He had a prominent role in the First
Council of Constantinople of 381, which completed the First Council
of Nicaea.

He wrote different works, such as Commentaries on Song of the

Songs or On Christian perfection. One of them, the Life of Moses,
written about 392, is particularly important because of his descrip-
tion of the contemplative way. This text is divided in two parts.

427
Jean Daniélou, Platonisme et Théologie mystique. Essai sur la doctrine spiri-
tuelle de saint Grégoire de Nysse, Paris, 1944; A. Spira (ed.), The Biographical
Works of Gregory of Nyssa, Philadelphia, 1984.
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Whereas the first one talks about the most noteworthy events of Mo-
ses’ life, narrated in the passages of the Exodus and Numbers, the
second part, Theoria (Contemplation on the Life of Moses), makes an
allegorical interpretation of such episodes from the point of view of
the contemplative route. For this purpose, Gregory starts from the
Life of Moses as a perfect model of the soul that makes an effort and
finally attains the union with God. Although he starts from the works
of Philo of Alexandria and Origen, he is also inspired by Plato, Plo-
tinus, Proclus and the Stoics.

Man aspires to perfection by means of the virtue. But, deep

down, “the person who goes after true virtue participates in nothing
except God, who is absolute virtue” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Life of
Moses, I, 7-8). Nonetheless, given that the virtue consists in resem-
bling God, since “There is none good but One, that is, God” (Mk.
10:18), how to find God if He is infinite and exceeds all knowledge?
With this question, Gregory introduces us into the contemplative
way: “Neither sight nor hearing produce contemplation of God nor is
it grasped by any of the usual perceptions” (Life of Moses, II, 157),
“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard” (1 Cor. 2:9). It is about a non-
human or theological knowledge, that is, a direct knowledge “not in
mirrors and reflections” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, II,
232).

Gregory of Nyssa takes as his main theme of his metaphysical

teachings the biblical episode of Moses’ ascent to Mount Sinai,
where YHWH, “He who Is”, show and reveal His Sacred Name. As
the ascent of Moses to Mount Sinai that is described in the Exodus
19:16 is a mystical trance or ecstasy, Gregory of Nyssa428 lays out in
his work the possibility that such a trance can be reproduced by

428
Gregory of Nyssa relates how Moses, after entering the darkness, felt that “his
soul was seized with terror and his body trembled with fright, so that the emotion
of his soul was not hidden from the Israelites. He admitted to them that he was ter-
rified at what appeared to him, and his body was not without trembling” (Life of
Moses, I, 43).

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 SEEING IN NOT-SEEING: A NON-HUMAN FORM OF KNOWLEDGE

those who have the suitable disposition and find the hidden keys of
the process in certain biblical passages. Gregory explains that the
way to access the Divinity is a different process of knowledge from
that of human comprehension: “to realize that nothing known by
human comprehension can be known about Him” (Saint Gregory of
Nyssa, Life of Moses, II, 166). Using a strictly etymological mean-
ing, he defines this way or gnosis as theognosia (theology,
knowledge about God): “The mountain of the knowledge of God
(theology)... Truly the mountain of God is steep and difficult to
climb” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, II, 152, 158). More
specifically, in order to explain this route, Gregory takes his time to
describe the three theophanies or “appearances” of God to Moses:
the burning bush (Ex. 3:1-15), the thick cloud (Ex. 19:16-25) and the
cleft of the rock (Ex. 33:18-23).

This mystical (that is, secret or silent) theology is, therefore, a

non-human form of knowledge showed by Moses, which initially
consists in disregarding the information that comes from the senses,
since “in the contemplation of the perceptions we transcend the
knowledge which has its root in the senses” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa,
Life of Moses, II, 156) and in the own understanding, that is, the
thoughts (the clamor of the trumpets that harass the ascent to the
mount according to Exodus 19:19). Certainly, that way to know God
also requires certain qualities and virtues that only a few are able to
cultivate, since most people give up the ascent just at the base be-
cause of their fear to die to (the vanities of) this world.

Common people are accustomed to an ordinary, human form of

knowledge, that is, the kind of knowledge that is processed by the
five senses and is interpreted by the understanding. They are so
clung to their small world of sensations and concepts that they can-
not or they do not want to conceive any other form of non-human
(supraindividual) cognition. A state without such human sensory
(that is, individual) experiences would simply be unbearable, so “All

393
 JAVIER ALVARADO

the people could not bear what had appeared and was heard. A
common request was brought to Moses in order that the Law be arbi-
trated through him” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, I, 45).
In order that they may approach, ascend and reach the summit of the
Sacred Mountain, God commands him to wash their clothes: “the
garments represent for us the external figure of life” (Saint Gregory
of Nyssa, Life of Moses, II, 155). Likewise, they need to take their
sandals (the understanding) off, since it is necessary to completely
strip the soul: “The voice from the light prohibited Moses to ap-
proach the mountain who was weighed down with lifeless sandals...
The dead and earthly skins... must be removed from our soul’s feet”
(Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, I, 20, 22).

Reaching the summit of Mount Sinai, the second theophany

takes place, represented by the image of the mystical darkness429.
“Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was” (Ex.
20:21), reached the “tabernacle, not made with [human] hands”
(Heb. 9:11), where “Moses was instructed by a type in the mystery
of the tabernacle which embraces the universe”430.

Gregory of Nyssa wonders, “What does it mean that Moses en-

tered the darkness and then saw God?” (Life of Moses, II, 162). What
mysteries are there in the “tabernacle which embraces the universe”?
Certainly, when it is said that Moses drew near unto the thick dark-
ness where God was (Ex. 20:21), that He made darkness His secret
place (Ps. 18:11), it is to be understood that he is beyond the senses
and the human intelligence. This way, “Having left behind every-
thing visible, not only regarding what sense grasps but what the
mind thinks it sees, he continues to advance deeper until by the pur-

429
J. Daniélou, Mystique de la ténèbre chez Grégoire de Nysse, in Dictionnaire de
Spiritualité, II, Paris, 1952-1995, pp.1872.1885.
430
“This tabernacle would be Christ, who is the power of God and the wisdom of
God (1 Cor. 1:24), who in His own nature was not made with hands, yet capable of
being made when it became necessary for this tabernacle to be erected among us”
(Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, II, 174).

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 SEEING IN NOT-SEEING: A NON-HUMAN FORM OF KNOWLEDGE

suit of the mind he gains entry to the invisible and incomprehensible

and there he sees God” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, II,
163). In this way, “Once he entered the inmost sanctuary (adyton) of
the divine mystagogia, there while concealed from sight, he was with
that which was invisible, I think he teaches that, by what he had
done, that the person wishing to associate with God needs to leave
all visible things, raising his mind to the invisible and incomprehen-
sible as to the top of a mountain, believing that there is the Divinity
in which comprehension does not attain” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa,
Life of Moses, I, 46).

Once the senses and the intelligence have been suspended, the
soul remains at an astonishing darkness where, paradoxically, there
is a non-human way of seeing or understanding. It is about a seeing
in non-seeing: “Here is the true knowledge of what has been sought
and here is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which
is sought transcends all knowledge, separated on all sides by incom-
prehensibility as by a kind of darkness. Thus that profound Evange-
list, John, who penetrated into this luminous darkness, tells us that
no man hath seen God at any time431, defining by that negation that
knowledge of the divine essence is unattainable not only by men but
by every intelligent creature” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Mo-
ses, II, 163). And, as that supra-essential darkness allows “seeing
without seeing”, that darkness is luminous.

Finally, the third theophany takes place when Moses begs God to
show him His face (Ex. 33:18) and then he is replied: thou canst not
see My face, for there shall no man see Me and live (Ex. 33:20).
However, He allows him to see His back: “And the Lord said, ‘Be-
hold, there is a place by Me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock. And it
shall come to pass, while My glory passeth by, that I will put thee in
a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with My hand... and thou shall
see My back parts, but My face shall not be seen” (Ex. 33:21-23).

431
Jn. 1:18.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

This indicates that the perfect vision of God can only take place after
death and that, therefore, the most excellent vision in this world can
only be that of the back parts of God432. However, it is to be remind-
ed that this previous “death”, necessary to see the face of God, also
has another meaning. It is about the “death” of him who dies to the
created world, that is, of him who no longer believes the sensible ob-
jects at all because he understands that his true nature, “our king-
dom”, is not of this world. He who wishes to die (to the vanities of
the world) before dying (biological death) knows that only that death
(of the ego) is the one which will give him Life in this life.

432
This is used by Gregory of Nyssa to introduce us into the symbolism of “seeing
the back of God, after those lofty ascents and fearful, glorious theophanies” (Life of
Moses, II, 255) as equivalent to following God (Life of Moses, II, 220). Saint
Gregory of Nyssa insists that the Lord says, if any man will come after Me (Lk.
9:23), and not “if any man will come before Me”. Come, follow Me (Lk. 9:23). He
who follows Him sees His back, “therefore, now Moses, who seeks to see God,
now is taught how he can behold Him: to follow God wherever He might lead is to
behold God. For his passing signifies He is leading the one who follows. For a per-
son who does not know the way cannot finish it safely except by following behind
his guide. Therefore, He who leads by His guidance shows the way to the person
who is following. He who follows, then, will not turn aside from the right way if
always he keeps the back of his leader in sight. (Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Life of
Moses, II, 252).

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 SAINT AUGUSTINE AND THE METHOD
OF SELF-ATTENTION

“What man is at present able to live as he wish-

es, when it is not in his power so much as to live?”
(City of God, XIV, 25).
“You were within and I was without, and I
sought You out there” (Confessions, X, 38).
“I am still a burden to myself because I am not
yet filled by You” (Confessions, X, 39).

Augustine was born in Thagaste (Numidia) on November the

th
13 , 354 in a well-off family that facilitated him to complete all the
three scholastic degrees in Thagaste, Madaurus and Carthage. The
first of the mentioned degree involved the children’s elementary les-
sons of reading, writing and mathematics. The second degree, which
was attended from twelve to sixteen years old, covered the study of
the Latin language through the texts of historians and poets. Finally,
the third degree, taught to students of sixteen to twenty years old,
encompassed rhetoric and philosophy. In Carthage, he specialized in
in eloquence, a discipline that was traditionally recommended to
those who wanted to work in the law or teaching. Despite the at-
tempts of his mother, Monica, to educate him in Christianity, the in-
quisitiveness of young Augustine led him to frequent the company of
certain esoteric and philosophical personalities and groups, reading
every text that fell into his hands (Virgil, Cicero, Sallust, Horace,
Varro, Apuleius, Terence, Quintilian, Homer, Aristotle, Plato, the
Neoplatonists, etc.). Augustine himself indicates the moment when
he began his spiritual quest, at nineteen, after the reading of Cicero’s
Hortensius. “It was this book which quite definitely changed my
 JAVIER ALVARADO

whole attitude and turned my prayers toward You”433 because it un-

doubtedly laid out that happiness does not consist in the satisfaction
of the senses or the possession of wealth, but in contemplation. This
seeking for a contemplative way drove him to become a member of
a Manichaean community, though he quit before passing the first
degree (Conf. V, 13; V, 18). Already in those years, he cherished the
project to form a group of people who devoted themselves to the
monastic life434. Disappointed by Manichaeism, he tried with a
group of friends the way it had been practiced since ancient times by
some movements of Epicurean inspiration435. It is known that the
Epicureans advocated a sort of withdrawal in communities that lived
apart from the worldly social life with the aim of devoting them-
selves to ascetic exercises and to the practice of philosophy, in the
shelter of a fraternal cohabitation. “Many in my band of friends, con-
sulting about and abhorring the turbulent vexations of human life,
had often considered and were now almost determined to remoti a
turbis otiose vivere (undertake a peaceful life, away from the turmoil
of men). This we thought could be obtained by bringing together
what we severally owned and thus making of it a common house-
hold, so that in the sincerity of our friendship nothing should belong
more to one than to the other; but all were to have one purse and the
whole was to belong to each and to all” (Conf. VI, 24).

When he was about thirty, the reading of Plato and Plotinus

causes a new spiritual crisis on him. He himself would years later
admit that, even though his vision of Neoplatonism made him disre-
gard materialism, it also filled him with pride, because he was unable
to see that the human soul cannot heal itself, no matter how much
ascetics, philosophy or fraternal cohabitation he practiced. Thus, un-

433
Conf., III, 7; VI, 18; VIII, 17. The Spanish translation of the Complete Works of
Saint Augustine has been edited by the BAC.
434
Project from which he gained important experiences for his later plans. Regard-
ing this, Lope Cilleruelo (O.S.A.) studied the similarities and differences of the
Neoplatonic ascetic and contemplative method and the one set out later by Augus-
tine; El monacato de san Agustín, Valladolid, 1966, p. 51 ff. and pp. 76-81.
435
A-J. Festugière, Épicure et ses Dieux, Paris, 1946, p. 69 ff.

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 SAINT AUGUSTINE AND THE METHOD OF SELF-ATTENTION

covered the tyranny caused by the vanity of the merely intellectual

knowledge, the experience of the ecstasy described by Plato or Ploti-
nus became an obsession that will cause Augustine further spiritual
crises: “For now full of what was in fact my punishment, I had be-
gun to desire to seem wise. I did not mourn my ignorance, but rather
was puffed up with knowledge” (Conf. VII, 26). The reading of Saint
Paul and, above all, the conversations and example of Bishop Am-
brose, drove him to convert to Christianity. Some years later, he will
have the opportunity, in On True Religion, to unmask the false reli-
gious worships and the distortions of the vera philosophia (true phi-
losophy), noting one of the essential points of his disagreement: the
necessary intervention of the Grace and, therefore, the need to resign
the own will and devote oneself to a Higher Will. It has been dis-
cussed that, against the way of purification and withdrawal from
temporary things and the practice of virtue proposed by the Pla-
tonists, Saint Augustine’s proposed way is the one of the Grace (City
of God, X, 32). He insists, on several occasions, that he was only
able to find himself when God helped him do it, since only He can
restore his condition of a fallen man. All the rest is but vanity and
pride caused by knowledge: “For thus we see pride wearing the
mask of high-spiritedness, although only You, O God, are high
above all. Ambition seeks honor, whereas only You should be hon-
ored above all, and glorified forever... Thus the soul commits forni-
cation when she is turned from You, and seeks apart from what she
cannot find pure and untainted until she returns to You” (Conf., II,
12, 14). That is why he will insist several times that humility is the
main virtue of the spiritual seeker who aspires to reach the summit of
the contemplative way: “In that way (for seizing and holding the
truth), the first part is humility, the second, humility, the third, hu-
mility, and this I would continue to repeat as often as you might ask
direction” (Letter 118, 22). After his ordination, he will return to
Thagaste, where he reorganized the monastic life of the Christian
community. In 391, despite having to give up the monastic life for
being appointed as the auxiliary bishop of Valerius, he managed to

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

introduce the monastic life into the Episcopal see. About 395, he was
consecrated as the Bishop of Hippo. He died on August the 28th, 430.

I.- SAINT AUGUSTINE’S ECSTATIC EXPERIENCES

There is no doubt that Augustine’s teachings regarding contem-

plation were the fruit of his own mystical or ecstatic experiences,
even though some authors have doubted it or relativized it436. How-
ever, from some paragraphs of the work of Saint Augustine (specifi-
cally, The greatness of the soul, 33, 76), some authors deduce that he
never experienced a mystical ecstasy and that he talked about it ac-
cording to the narrations of Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry, Ambrose or
Manlius Theodorus, and that, therefore, the supposed experiences at
Ostia Tiberina and Milan described by Saint Augustine were merely
rhetorical437. Certainly, in the mentioned text, Augustine confines
himself to talking, not in the first person but in the third person,
about the mystical experiences of the last few mansions of the spir-
itual path. But that could be owing to the saint’s modesty. It is
enough to read the researches by Father Fulbert Cayré438, Gustave
Combès or P. C. Jean van Lierde to be convinced that Saint Augus-
tine is one of the greatest ascetics and mystics of the Christian tradi-
tion.

Out of his ecstatic experiences, the so-called “vision of Ostia”

(Conf. IX, 23) has come to be the most explicit439. This experience is
described as a wondrous mystery to which one can only react with

436
The Augustinian Ephraem Hendrikx (O.S.A.), in his day, examined some of the
many interpretations that have been expressed regarding this issue: Augustins
Verhältnis zur Mystik, Würzburg, 1936.
437
Lope Cilleruelo, El monacato de san Agustín, Valladolid, 1966, p. 97.
438
Fulbert Cayré, La contemplation augustinienne, Paris, 1927.
439
Thus, P. Henry, La vision d’Ostie. Sa place dans la vie et l’œuvre de Saint Au-
gustin, Paris, 1938. Connected with the descriptions of the Plotinian “ecstasy” in
A. Mandouze, “L’extase d’Ostie, possibilités et limites de la méthode des paral-
lèles textuels”, in Augustinus Magister, Paris, 1954, vol. I, pp. 231 ff.

400
 SAINT AUGUSTINE AND THE METHOD OF SELF-ATTENTION

horror and fervor –inhorresco et inardesco– (Conf. XI, 11). Here is

one of those ecstatic descriptions: “And thus by degrees I was led
upward from bodies to the soul which perceives them by the bodily
senses, and from there on the soul’s inward faculty, to which the
bodily senses report outward things, and this belongs even to the ca-
pacities of the beasts; and thence on up to the reasoning power, to
whose judgment is referred the experience received from the bodily
sense. And when this power of reason within me also found that it
was changeable, it raised itself up to its own intellectual principle,
and withdrew its thoughts from experience, abstracting itself from
the contradictory throng of phantasms in order to seek for that light
in which it was bathed. Then, without any doubting, it cried out that
the unchangeable was better than the changeable. From this it fol-
lows that the mind somehow knew the unchangeable, for, unless it
had known it in some fashion, it could have had no sure ground for
preferring it to the changeable. And thus with the flash of a trem-
bling glance, it arrived at that which is. And ‘I saw Your invisibility
understood by means of the things that are made’” (Conf. VII, 23).

Augustine admits that, in order to take the last step and penetrate
the seventh mansion, we need God’s help. Only that way is it possi-
ble to see that light which is different from all the rest that the eyes
or the mind may see: “And being admonished by these books to re-
turn into myself, I entered into my inward soul, guided by You. This
I could do because You were my helper. And I entered, and with the
eye of my soul, such as it was, saw above the same eye of my soul
and above my mind the Immutable Light. It was not the common
light, which all flesh can see; nor was it simply a greater one of the
same sort, as if the light of day were to grow brighter and brighter,
and flood all space. It was not like that light, but different, yea, very
different from all earthly light whatever... You did beat back the
weakness of my sight, shining forth upon me Your dazzling beams
of light, and I trembled with love and fear. I realized that I was far
away from You in the land of unlikeness (et contremui amore et

401
 JAVIER ALVARADO

horrore: et inveni longe me esse a te in regione dissimilitudinis)”

(Conf., VII, 16). Suffice these two examples to understand why Saint
Augustine is described as the metaphysician of the inner being.

II.- TRACES PREVIOUS TO HUMAN EXISTENCE

Saint Augustine assumes the Platonic concept of philosophy as

the silent and secret conversation of the soul with itself about the be-
ing. In its quality of “effective science”, he defines philosophy as the
wisdom that is aimed at contemplation (On the Trinity, XII, 22). This
is really the vera philosophia in the sense of amor sapientiae (love
of wisdom), because, “if wisdom is God, who made all things, as it
attested by the divine authority and truth, then the philosopher is a
lover of God” (City of God, VIII, 1). And, as the supreme goal of the
vera philosophia is to know and love God and our neighbor by love
to God, it is firstly necessary that the soul detaches itself from all
earthly things. That is why it has been said: Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God. In sum, Augustine understands the
vera philosophia like the Platonic tradition (Phaedo, 81a) did, as a
“learning to die” to the world of the sensible things, in order to be
reborn in the heavenly world (Letters 9 and 19).

In Saint Augustine, therefore, an already classic point of view is

found: “Man has no other reason for philosophizing than that he
may be happy” (City of God, XIX, I), since “You all will to be hap-
py, you do not will to be wretched” (On the Trinity, XIII, 6). Be-
sides, “No one is wise unless he is happy” (The happy life, II, 14).
Adapting the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus, Saint Augustine af-
firms that there is in man an instinctus naturalis that drives him to
seek happiness. This idea of “happiness” is something previous to
human existence, it is a recollected idea. Let us remind that, accord-
ing to Plato, “Seeing then that the soul is immortal... it is no wonder
that it should be able to recollect all that it knew before about vir-

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 SAINT AUGUSTINE AND THE METHOD OF SELF-ATTENTION

tue... since, it would seem, research and learning are wholly recollec-
tion (Plato, Meno, 81c-d). Given that the fall is a consequence of the
forgetfulness that we are gods (Phaedrus, 248c), the recovery of that
condition requires a learning that is but recollecting. In sum, “what
we call learning is recollection”, so that “there is no teaching but on-
ly recollection” of our original Fatherland440. Augustin himself, in
the book VII of his Confessions, mentions that the Neoplatonism
helped him take his first steps from that region of unlikeness toward
contemplation, by means of the disregard of passions and the resig-
nation of the senses. Saint Augustine calls this innate ideas the
vestigia Trinitatis or “traces of the Trinity” (On the Trinity, IX-
XV)441, so that, through those embers or traces, we can re-know our
condition of beings made in the image of God and be transformed in
Him by means of the Grace. But, taking into account that, “when
man is said to have been made to the image of God, it is said with
reference to the interior man, where reason is to be found and intelli-
gence” (The literal meaning of Genesis, I, 28). This way, taking up
likewise another Neoplatonic idea that conceived man as a “micro-
cosm” supplied with a divine spark, the Bishop of Hippo explained
man as a “microtheos” or deus creatus.

But, although man “was made from nothing”, he does not come
from anything or anyone, but he is created by Him who Is. That is,
as the creator of man, God is in man. And it is precisely that foot-
print or image which drives him to long for happiness. And it is also
that footprint, memory or image which inspires him the conscious-
ness of his own immortality. In effect, “I would not exist, I would
simply not be at all, unless You were in me” (Conf., I, 2). His peace,
his durable happiness and his consciousness of immortality imply a
return to his point of Origin, an encounter with his Creator. But that

440
Plato, Meno, 81e-82a; Phaedrus, 278a; Plotinus, Enneads, I, 6, 7; V, 1, 6.
441
The one and triune Christian God with the Platonic hypostases, or the Plotinian
ones (the One, the nous and the soul), with God, the angels and the soul (cf. M.J.B.
Allen, “Marsilio Ficino on Plato, The Neoplatonists and the Christian Doctrine of
the Trinity”, Renaissance Quarterly, 37, 1984, pp. 555-584).

403
 JAVIER ALVARADO

return to God is firstly a gradual return to himself, “for if you wish

more and more to exist, you will draw near to Him who exists su-
premely” (On Free Will, III, 21).

To distance himself from God leads man to the “region of un-

likeness”, that is, to the world subject to space-time factors: “If, then,
one is nearer to God the liker he is to Him, there is no other distance
from God than unlikeness” (City of God, IX, XVII). To return to
himself in order to return to God implies to resemble God, so that,
the more eager the soul is for temporary things, the more unlike it
will be (City of God, IX, XVII). He invokes again the wisdom of the
Greek masters: “At present, it is sufficient to mention that Plato de-
termined the final good to be to live according to virtue, and af-
firmed that he only can attain to virtue who knows and imitates God”
(City of God, VIII, VIII). This is the right meaning of the Socratic
precept of the “autognosis” (self-knowledge). But the famous apo-
thegm “know thyself” must not be a goal, but the starting point of
the spiritual path: “noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi; in interiore
homine habitat veritas; et si animam mutabilem inverneris,
transcende te ipsum”442 (On true religion, 39, 72). When man refus-
es that return (redire), he incurs pride (superbia); “Be she confound-
ed that she may return (to her origin), who was vaunting herself that
she should not return. It was pride then that hindered the soul’s re-
turn... As she had gone away from herself, so went she away from
her Lord” (Sermon 142, 3). Then, the question is, how to escape
from the world of unlikeness and resemble God? (City of God, IX,
XVII).
Man places himself in the world of unlikeness when he lives pay-
ing attention to external things. Most times, it is because of his pure
eagerness for novelties, mere “lust of the eyes” (1 Jn. 2:16), wish ex-
periencing and knowing (Conf., X, 35), that is, he is carried along by
his instinct of appropriation of the things. Thus, he believes that the

442
“Do not roam abroad, return unto yourself. Truth dwells in the inner man.
And, if you find your soul changeable, transcend yourself”.

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 SAINT AUGUSTINE AND THE METHOD OF SELF-ATTENTION

things serve him, but it is him who lives alienated by them, that is,
forced to go out of himself. He assumes that happiness lies in hoard-
ing possessions and other external objects, but “men who desire
what is outside are exiled from themselves” (Expositions on the
Psalms, 57, 1). The problem is that many people are confident that
they can gain happiness by means of the possession of wealth, the
enjoyment of all kinds of pleasures, etc. Nonetheless, all these joys
are unstable, since they go by; and they are not full, for they drive us
to desire them more intensely. Therefore, man lives as a slave of his
desires and of the faith he has placed in the perceptions that come
from the senses. When he questions whether such perceptions may
be wrong and distorting the reality, generating mirages that stupefy
the soul, man will be starting to wake to the true freedom. As well as
Plato explained in his myth of the cavern, freedom can only be
achieved when one breaks free from the heavy sleep of the senses.

III.- THE QUEST

Man feels impelled to inquire about his origin and about his des-
tiny, that is, to assure himself of his transcendence. However, he
soon realizes that everything that is subject to change (mutabilia)
does not really exist. Therefore, he cannot count on the changeable if
he wants to finish his internalization. We hear Plotinian echoes
again: “‘Everlasting’ was adjoined to ‘Being’, and ‘Being’ to ‘Ever-
lasting’, and we have ‘Everlasting Being’. We must take this ‘Ever-
lasting’ as expressing no more than Authentic Being” (Enneads, III,
7, 6). Augustine adapts even to the most rationalist positions, adding
that, even admitting that the things may last long, the truth is that
human life does not (Sermon 109). The death itself is presented to us
as the end of our quest for eternal happiness and impels us to guess
what will happen with us after the final door443. Thus, we aspire to

443
The fact itself of the spiritual quest seems paradoxical, since it involves the ex-
istence of a seeker, what is sought and the action of seeking. And while I seek my-

405
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experience the state that we will have after death, in order to be con-
vinced of our own immortality.

Nevertheless, in this quest for the own transcendence, for happi-

ness or for God, what instruments do I have? If every man already
possesses something intimate that links him to God, we do not have
to seek anything outside of us, but we must carry out a process of in-
ternalization that facilitates the detachment of all those things which
are blocking our way, a process that connects us with what we our-
selves are. In sum, when I have sought God, “I have not found any-
thing about Him, except what I had already retained in my memory
from the time I learned of Him” (Conf., X, 35). The soul seeks itself
because, in some way, it already knows itself. “Wherefore, the very
fact that the soul seeks itself argues convincingly that the soul is
more known than unknown to itself. For the soul, as it seeks to know
itself, knows its own seeking and its own unknowing” (On the Trini-
ty, X, 5). Nonetheless, “how can soul come into soul, as though it
were possible for the soul not to be in the soul?” (On the Trinity, X,
6). How is it possible to seek something that has not been lost be-
cause it is always present within us? Regarding this, Augustine dis-
tinguishes between knowing oneself and thinking of oneself. The
soul knows itself, it is always conscious. But it is not always think-
ing of itself or recalling itself, because the soul remains forgotten by

self, who am I then? Where am I while I seek myself? Can I find myself out of me?
And if what is sought is out of me, am I not converting my spiritual quest into a
mere appropriation of external objects? Likewise, if I want to know myself, the
fact itself of knowing already alienates me from the essential oneness of the spir-
itual knowledge, because it implies a knower, a known object and the action of
knowing. In order to explain the paradoxes of the spiritual knowledge, Saint Au-
gustine turns to the example of love: “Well then, when I, who make this inquiry,
love anything, there are three things concerned: myself, and that which I love, and
love itself” (On the Trinity, IX, 2). How to solve this plurality in order to favor the
necessary withdrawal of the senses, the will and the imagination? Saint Augustine
does not solve the paradox, but he subsumes them in the rhetoric employed to ex-
plain the mystery of the Trinity: “But in these three, when the mind knows itself
and loves itself, there remains a trinity: mind, love, knowledge; and this trinity is
not confounded together by any commingling: although they are each severally in
themselves and mutually all in all, or each severally in each two, or each two in
each. Therefore all are in all” (On the Trinity, IX, 8).

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 SAINT AUGUSTINE AND THE METHOD OF SELF-ATTENTION

itself when it is focused outside, on the external objects that enter

through the windows of the senses. “But the mind errs when it so
lovingly and intimately connects itself with these images, as even to
consider itself to be something of the same kind” (On the Trinity, X,
8). Consequently, so that the soul may find out itself, “let it withdraw
that which it has added to itself” (On the Trinity, X, 11), and thus it
will be able to return from the attention on the plurality of objects to
its essential, transcendent oneness.

IV.- THE METHOD OF SELF-ATTENTION

All the works by Saint Augustine contain references to the stages

of the spiritual life and the internalization method, but it is The
greatness of the soul where we can find the greatest development
about these topics. In it, he enumerates the seven stages or levels of
the spiritual path, although he clarifies that the seventh one is not
strictly a level, but a dwelling or mansion: “neque iam gradus, sed
quaedam mansio, quo illis gradibus pervenitur”444 (The greatness of
the soul, 33, 76), since there is no change or evolution, but pure con-
templation or rest in the eternal life. As well, in other of his writings
(Christian Doctrine, II, VII), he explains the characteristics of each
successive level that must be passed in solitude: Cum nobis solis
loquimur445 (Soliloquies, II, 14):

1st To be converted –converti– to God with the aim of knowing

Him and attach ourselves to Him.
2nd To humble oneself –mitescere– for piety, subduing our ego to
another authority.
3rd To exercise –exercere– in science by means of the study of
the Scriptures.

444
“Here we no longer have a level but in reality a mansion at which one arrives
via those levels”.
445
“We speak to ourselves alone”.

407
 JAVIER ALVARADO

4th To persist in science so that the spirit may detach from the
temporary things and guide its love to the eternal ones.
5th With the detachment from the temporary things is the purifi-
cation of the senses and the soul attained.
6th Then you die to the earthly world in order to be reborn in the
life of the spirit.
7th Finally, you access true wisdom, peace or pure contemplation.

Nevertheless, this arrangement of the stages or states of the spir-

itual path can be simplified even more. For this purpose, Augustine
takes up the three moments of the Neoplatonic introversion that
summarize the process of internalization that starts with the detach-
ment from the sensible objects and the withdrawal of the senses and
leads us to concentrate all our attention on the quest for our spiritual
core. Actually, in Against the Academics, he praises the Neopla-
tonists for having clarified that contemplation implies to overcome
the senses in order to access the intelligible world. Thus, he will talk
about the three moments of aversio, introversio and conversio. And,
in On true religion, he goes over it again, synthesizing the three
steps of the contemplative step in these terms: 1st Do not spill out of
yourself. 2nd Return to yourself, for there is where the light of God
dwells. And 3rd Transcend yourself, guiding your steps towards the
light itself (Soliloquies, II, 19, 33).

First of all, the process of internalization implies the inquiry

about what is corporeal. The first question lies in understanding that
the external objects are concepts or words that are formed in the
mind by the action of thinking. The question is, which ones of all
those objects defined by words are real? The human mind lives fed
on concepts and words that are like labels that it assigns to the dif-
ferent pieces of information that come from the senses, but, up to
which extent is all the information that reaches the mind through the
senses real or true? Following the Platonic method, Augustine con-
cludes with the impermanence of the external knowledge and the

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need to delimit or mark out the world of reality or permanence, for it

is where the soul (spirit) moves.

How? The first step consists in disregarding the external attach-

ments that keep it confused and out of itself: “As therefore the soul is
within, it goes forth in some sort from itself, when it exerts the affec-
tion of love towards these, as it were, footprints of many acts of at-
tention. And these footprints are, as it were, imprinted on the
memory, at the time when the corporeal things which are without are
perceived” (On the Trinity, X, 11). Saint Augustine defines this turn-
ing of the attention to the external world as dispersion. The first dis-
persion is the one of the senses, because each one of them calls for
attention, forcing me to be outside of myself and to be what I am not.
Secondly, the dispersion of the mind: the imagination that sinks me
into an endless multitude of worldly experiences. Such a dispersion
leaves man at the mercy of an undefined sequence of “I’s” that strive
to call for attention, displacing the true “I”, that is to say, that which
can affirm “I am”. One can doubt everything; one can even doubt his
doubt. But he cannot doubt his own existence: “Yet who ever doubts
that he himself lives, and remembers, and understands, and wills,
and thinks, and knows, and judges? Seeing that even if he doubts, he
lives; if he doubts, he remembers why he doubts; if he doubts, he
understands that he doubts; if he doubts, he wishes to be certain; if
he doubts, he thinks; if he doubts, he knows that he does not know; if
he doubts, he judges that he ought not to assent rashly” (On the Trin-
ity, X, 14). In sum, one can doubt everything but that “I am” or “I
exist”. And this is the starting point, because it is that “I” on which
the process of internalization converges.

The spiritual seeker must find out that, being permeable to the
external things, his attention is spilled and identified with the objects,
so that it forgets itself and the “I”: tanquam sui sit oblita, sic agit446.
The mind must withdraw its attention from outside and pay attention

446
“As if forgetful of itself, it acts in this way”.

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to itself: “Go not abroad but enter into yourself: truth dwells in the
inner man; and if you should find your nature mutable, transcend
yourself. But remember, in doing so that you must also transcend
yourself even as a reasoning soul” (On true religion, 39, 72)447. For
that purpose, we must withdraw within ourselves: “Alibi non inveniet
quam penes se ipsum”448 (On the Trinity, XIV, 8), since “Semper
foras exis, intro redire detrectas. Qui enim te docet intus est”449
(Exp. on the Psalms, 139, 15). It is about taking a healthy, necessary
distance from the sensible world and the information that comes
from the senses and the mind.

It is necessary to move away from the external objects, to close

our eyes, our ears, and withdraw in our own inner being (On Order,
I, 13), refusing all product of imagination so that we may not take a
seat on anything foreign (Conf. X, 12). Once established that dis-
tance from the sensible world, it is the moment when it takes place
the suitable calm or tranquilitas animi, from which we will begin the
process of internalization, since “I cannot taste and love that pure
good unless I enjoy a certain carefree repose. Believe me, there is a
need of a great withdrawal from the tumult of perishing things in or-
der to produce in a human being a freedom from fear... This also
produces that solid joy that is absolutely not to be compared with
any delight in the smallest degree” (Letter 10, 2). In this process of
recovery of the original oneness and return to the world of likeness,
Saint Augustine advises us to invoke the One God so that “He may
gather me up out of those fragments in which I was torn to pieces”
(Conf. II, 1). Ultimately, through the first step of recollection or
meditation, the attention must detach the sensory information, must
close its eyes, its ears, and grow apart from the thoughts. This way,

447
This texts synthesizes the philosophical methods of Plato and Plotinus (En., I, 6,
7; V, 1, 6; V, 1, 12).
448
“He will find it nowhere else but in himself”.
449
“You always go out, and chafe at returning inside. Now he who teaches you is
found inside”.

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 SAINT AUGUSTINE AND THE METHOD OF SELF-ATTENTION

when the mind is emptied of external objects, it remains momentari-

ly purified.

Secondly, once withdrawn the attention from the external ob-

jects, the next step consists in looking within familiarly, in internaliz-
ing: “It is bidden to become acquainted with itself, let it not seek it-
self as it were withdrawn from itself” (On the Trinity, X, 11). Augus-
tine compares the self-attention with the thinking or recollecting
oneself, being such recall (of Platonic resonance) a “gathering my-
self out of my fragments”, gradually ascending on “the fields and
spacious halls of memory” until finding “Him who made me” (Conf.
II, 11; X, 11-12).

More specifically, one of the keys of the Augustinian contempla-

tive method lies in making the soul think of itself: se ipsam cogitet
(On the Trinity, X, 7). But, in this process, it must not confuse itself
with what it possesses, because the soul is not what comes from the
senses, that is, it does not consist of shapes, colors, fragrances,
sounds, flavors. In that thinking of itself, the soul must detach from
all memories, since otherwise “[the images of sensible things] have
marvelously cohered with it by the close adhesion of love. And here-
in consists its uncleanness, since while it strives to think of itself
alone, it fancies itself to be that, without which it cannot think of it-
self... Because it is in those things which it thinks of with love, and is
wont to be in sensible, that is, in corporeal things with love, it is un-
able to be in itself without the images of those corporeal things. And
hence shameful error arises to block its way, while it cannot separate
from itself the images of sensible things, so as to see itself alone”
(On the Trinity, X, 11). The key of the method is not in the profusion
of reflections or reasonings, or in the hoarding of experiences, be-
cause the soul is not a warehouse, but rather quite the contrary; the
key is to evict everything that comes from the external world and
empty the soul until making it receptive to the power of the Grace. In
sum, in order that the soul may know itself, it must not seek itself

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outside. And, as the soul is already here and now, it just needs to in-
ternalize itself, that is, to disregard what has been added to it, with-
drawing its attention from the external objects and paying attention
to itself: “Let the soul... fix upon itself the act of voluntary attention,
by which it was wandering among other things, and let it think of it-
self. So it will see that at no time did it ever not love itself, and at no
time did it ever not know itself; but by loving another thing together
with itself it has confounded itself with it, and in some sense has
grown one with it. And so, while it embraces diverse things, as
though they were one, it has come to think those to be one which are
diverse” (On the Trinity, X, 11). It is to be clarified that the contem-
plation that is to lead us to the supreme vision does not consist in an
intellectual comprehension of God, but in a vision that transcends the
information coming from the senses and the reflective mind (Sermon
243, 6, 5: PL 38, 1146), since, as it is only possible to see God
through the mirror we are, it is necessary to erase from the mind all
the sensible images that block the true vision so that the image of
God becomes sharper and clearer.

Finally, the third step consists in staying or dwelling as constant-

ly as possible in that state in which the attention is focused on itself.
Initially, in the first stages of the practice of self-recollection, in or-
der to maintain a continuous attention on oneself, the own thoughts
are to be observed with a longer distance each time. But, after that,
once that distance from the thoughts has been consolidated, the at-
tention is to be turned inward in a so natural, spontaneous way that,
“when it is said to the mind: ‘know thyself’, then it knows itself by
that very act by which it understands the word ‘thyself’, and this for
no other reason than that it is present to itself” (On the Trinity, X,
12).

Dwelling in that state of original simpleness or innocence, it can

only stay there in a tensionless attention, humbly waiting for God to
see where I am and “have mercy upon me... heal me” (Ps. 6:2). It is

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 SAINT AUGUSTINE AND THE METHOD OF SELF-ATTENTION

in that state of internalization free from distractions when it is easier

that the spiritual influence works on us as an “inner master”; “do not
love to live the Temple, but to live in Him who has built it”, since
“in interiore homine habitat Christus”450 (On the Gospel of John,
XVIII, 10). It is in that state of deep internalization when, once the
soul has gotten rid of all its sensory attachments, a luminous pres-
ence or consciousness is revealed; it is not a product of our imagina-
tion or of our thought, but it is pure intellect or spirit (the soul): “For
it knows these things in itself, and does not imagine them as though
it had touched them by the sense outside itself, as corporeal things
are touched. And if it attaches nothing to itself from the thought of
these things, so as to think itself to be something of the kind, then
whatsoever remains to it from itself, that alone, is itself” (On the
Trinity, X, 16). It also finds out that this luminous presence has not
emerged from anywhere outside, but it has always been there, con-
cealed by the prattle of the mind.

Of course, this attention must not only be exercised during the

moments of meditation and recollection, but during most of the day.
Nonetheless, it is true that, by firstly exercising that ability to with-
draw during the meditative prayer, man will more easily be able to
extend that habit of self-attention or self-recollection to the rest of
the day, while he acts or thinks, while he has contact with others, in
sum, while he pays attention to the present, to the now.

450
“In the inner man dwells Christ”.

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 KALĒ APODĒMIA (THE BEAUTIFUL MIGRATION):
THE CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE ACCORDING TO
EVAGRIUS PONTICUS

“You are not able to pray purely if you are en-

meshed in material affairs and shaken about by
constant cares, because prayer is the putting aside
of thoughts” (Evagrius, On Prayer, 71).

Evagrius was born about 345 in the city of Iberia, in Pontus. His
religious vocation led him at an early age to frequent the company of
monks and to start a close friendship with Gregory of Nazianzus,
whom he accompanied to the First Council of Constantinople. A lit-
tle later, he is reported to be in Jerusalem. However, disappointed by
the relaxed atmosphere of the cities, about 383, he will embrace the
monastic life and move to Egypt, to the mountains of Nitria, from
where he later went to the desert of Kellia, where he stayed until his
death in the year 399. His intellectual education facilitated him the
access to a wide range of manuscripts. In fact, during a large part of
his life, Evagrius subsisted on his own work as scribe, selling copies
of manuscripts with the Oxyrhynchus style. He also wrote some no-
table works that make him be considered one of the most important
Desert Fathers451. Out of them, maybe the most important one is On

451
Very interesting studies have been dedicated to Evagrius’ doctrine: G. Bunge,
“Évagre le Pontique et les deux Macaire”, in Irénikon 56 (1983), pp. 215-227; A.
Guillaumont, Un philosophe au désert; Évagre le Pontique, Paris, 2004. Of the
same author, “Les Kephalaia Gnostica d’Évagre le Pontique et l’histoire de
l’Origénisme chez les Grecs et chez les Syriens”, Patristica Sorbonensia 5, Paris
(1962), pp. 124-159. I. Hausherr, “Contemplation et sainteté: une remarquable
mise au point par Philoxène de Mabboug” in Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 14,
Toulouse-Paris (1933), pp. 171-195; of the same author, “Ignorance infinie” in
Orientalia Christiana Periodica 2, Rome (1936) pp. 351-362. Under the title of
Obras Espirituales, it has been published the Praktikos, For Monks, Exhortation to
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Prayer (Or.). Likewise, the hundred chapters of The Praktikos (TP)

stand out. In this introductory work to the monastic life, it is ex-
plained the nature and means to defeat the eight evil thoughts in or-
der to achieve impassibility. In another work, the Gnostikos (G), he
writes to the already initiates and impassible, who will access con-
templation. In the so-called Chapters or Kephalaia Gnostica452
(KG), he develops some aspects of his teachings with a deliberate
crypticism. For its part, his For Monks (M) and Exhortation to a Vir-
gin (V) are two short collections of sentences inspired by the biblical
book of Proverbs. Other works by him have also been preserved,
such as Bases of the monastic life, several exegetic Commentaries
and more than 60 Letters. Because of his ideas about the nature of
Jesus Christ and the Gnostic, Neoplatonic and Buddhist influence on
his doctrine, he was accused of Messalianism and condemned of
heresy at the Second Council of Constantinople of the year 553453. In
order to avoid the destruction of Evagrius’ writings, his disciples
safeguarded some of them by signing them over to other people (for
instance, under the name of Nilus of Ancyra); thus, the Treatise to
the Monk Eulogius, Treatise on various evil thoughts and On the
eight spirits of evil.

Despite his blemish of heresy, Evagrius’ work had a great influ-

ence on the theologians of that age. This is the case of Maximus the
Confessor, who, even having attended the Lateran Council (649),
which confirmed Evagrius’ sentence, owes him most of his spiritual
ideas. He was also imitated by John Climacus, despite openly criti-
cizing him. But the most significant examples are his disciples Cas-
sian and Saint Macarius of Egypt. The latter will connect with the
tradition of the Eastern Byzantine Christianity, whereas Cassian will

a Virgin and On Prayer, preceded by a remarkable introductory study by José I.

González Villanueva, Madrid, 1995.
452
A. Guillaumont, Les six centuries des Képhalaia Gnostica d’Évagre Pontique,
critical ed. of the common Syriac version and edition of a new Syriac version, with
a French translation, Paris, 1958.
453
Messalianism had already be condemned at the Synods of Side (390) and Con-
stantinople (426) and the Council of Ephesus (431).

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 KALĒ APODĒMIA (THE BEAUTIFUL MIGRATION): EVAGRIUS PONTICUS

divulge the synthesis of Evagrius in the West. Cassian introduced

Evagrius’ thought and his contemplative doctrine in Europe without
mentioning him even once in his writings, in order to avoid the sus-
picion of heresy. For that purpose, he confined himself to disguising
the most characteristic and recognizable concepts of the discourse of
the Pontic, attributing their authorship to the Egyptian monks in gen-
eral. This way, Evagrius’ doctrine was suitably adapted to be used
within an Orthodox context, especially his teaching about the mysti-
cal way and the practice of “pure prayer”454. The main contribution
of Evagrius was a certain diffusion of the techniques and attitudes
that were suitable to enter meditation and, from that, to access con-
templation, basically using the Neoplatonic language, especially the
contents of Plotinus’ Enneads.

Certainly, the mystical ecstasy appears as a vision that transcends

the subject-object duality (Enneads, VI, 7, 36), in which everything
becomes pure light (Enneads, VI, 7, 9). And, although that vision
may be momentary, it is still a short advance of a state of the Beyond
(Enneads, VI, 9, 10). Facing the question of how to achieve such an
experience, Evagrius assumes the way proposed by Plotinus, which
is that the meditator must detach from everything (Enneads, V, 3,

454
For that reason, it is possible to rebuild part of Evagrius’ contemplative tech-
nique through Cassian’s works. Thus, according to Cassian’s Conferences (I use
the translation by Edgar C. S. Gibson, New York, 1894), “Wherefore for this high-
est learning also, by which we are taught even to cleave to God, I have no doubt
that there are some foundations of the system... These are its first principles: that
we should first learn by what meditations God may be grasped and contemplated,
and next that we should manage to keep a very firm hold of this topic whatever it is
which we do not doubt is the height of all perfection” (X, VIII). By insisting with
the right attitude, the gates of contemplation will be opened. Likewise, he recom-
mends practicing the remembrance of God by means of a model formula that he
borrows from the Psalms: “This formula then shall be proposed to you of this sys-
tem, which you want, and of prayer, which every monk in his progress towards
continual recollection of God, is accustomed to ponder, carelessly revolving it in
his heart, having got rid of all kinds of other thoughts... This is a secret of incalcu-
lable value that was delivered to us by a few of those who were left of the oldest
Fathers... And so for keeping up continual recollection of God this pious formula is
to be ever set before you: ‘Deus in audiutorium meum intende. Domine ad
adiuvandum me festina’ (O God, make speed to save me. O Lord, make haste to
help me) (Ps. 70:1) (X, X)”.

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17), so that the intellect (the consciousness) may cover with a thick
veil every object of this world and be withdrawn into itself (Enne-
ads, V, 5, 7).

I.- ENTRANCE TO THE BEAUTIFUL MIGRATION

Evagrius defines “beautiful migration” (kalē apodēmia) as the

way that leads to contemplation through the perfect apatheia (TP 60-
61). He also describes it as a Gnostic immigration (gnostikē
endēmia) (Eul. 24) into a place or state that, in another work, he also
defines, turning to a Platonic concept, as the “region of the incorpo-
real beings” (KG I, 85).

How can we access that subtle state? By means of purification,

through meditation (pure prayer). Meditation is the most suitable
means to facilitate the encounter with the darkest part of our being
and favor the self-inquiry, the acceptance of our faults and the wish
to detach ourselves from them. In this examination of conscience
whose aim is to soften the ego, repentance (which is born from true
humility) is not to be confused with the feeling of guilt, which comes
from pride. According to Evagrius, the objectless contemplation or,
as he calls it, the “pure prayer”, is the most effective way of the mys-
tic or the spiritual seeker because the contemplative vision can be at-
tained through it: “Among tasty things none is sweeter than honey
and the honeycomb, and the knowledge of God is said to be superior
to these things” (KG III, 34). But it is to be understood that the
summit of perfection is not the mystical ecstasy. This is an event by
which we verify the true nature of the soul and we understand the fu-
tility of all that which hinders the intellect from being itself (Or.
117).

In the treatise On Prayer and in the Skemmata, he explains the

nature and steps to come to see the “Light” or the face of God. First

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 KALĒ APODĒMIA (THE BEAUTIFUL MIGRATION): EVAGRIUS PONTICUS

of all, it is essential to be a “Gnostic”, that is, to have acquired the

spiritual science. In Skemmata 2, he writes: “If you would see the
state of their intellect, let them deprive themselves of all concepts
and then they will see themselves like a sapphire or the color of
heaven”. To describe this vision of the intellect by the intellect itself,
he takes up a certain passage of the Exodus (24:9-11) in which the
Seventy replaced the word “God” with the expression “place of
God”. The intellect is the “place of God” and, when it sees itself in
fleeting moments, it sees itself with His light: “The intellect would
not see (the place of) God in itself unless... the light [of God] has
been manifested to it” (Skem. 23). According to Evagrius, “A monk
becomes the equal of the angels through true prayer, desiring to see
the face of the Father who is in heaven” (Or. 113). But, in order to
attain that “vision” of the face of God, it is necessary to have
achieved the apatheia or imperturbability455, that is, the “soul’s
health” (TP 56). The characteristics of the authentic peace, typical of
the true impassibility, are humility and a limitless longing for God
(TP 57). Humility helps us understand the uselessness of all own ef-
fort because the result always depends on God’s will (Or. 131-136).
Regarding the limitless longing for God, only when it is sincere, the
intellect stops being interested in the things of the external world and
withdraws into itself, turning to the “prayer without distraction” (TP
63; Or. 118).

455
Apatheia is usually translated as apathy but, given the pejorative meaning this
term has, it is more suitable to translate it as impassibility or imperturbability. Ac-
cording to Evagrius, the impassible (apathēs) or the perfect (teleios) is not who still
makes the effort to exercise the virtues of perseverance and temperance (TP 68),
but who does not make that effort to acquire them because “a man who has estab-
lished the virtues in himself and is entirely permeated with them no longer remem-
bers the law or the commandments or punishment” (TP 70). He has achieved the
perfect impassibility and he is in the excellent condition (ariste hexis). Christian
authors started from the concept of apatheia that the Stoic philosophers had previ-
ously established. According to the Stoics, every passion is a disease that alters the
soul (alterity, otherness, that is, it forces it to be another different thing from what
it must be) and moves man away from himself. Peace is only achieved by breaking
free from passions.

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Some of the ideas of Evagrius make him the precedent of the

apophatic way and the path of the learned ignorance of Christian au-
thors such as Gregory of Nyssa, the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopa-
gite, Saint Augustine, Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Anselm, Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Champeaux, Hugh and Richard of
Saint Victor, Saint Bonaventure, the author of The Cloud of Un-
knowing, Eckhart, Saint John of the Cross, Nicholas of Cusa, Miguel
de Molinos, etc. The essential core of the doctrine of Evagrius Ponti-
cus starts from the total and absolute impossibility to understand
God by means of the natural knowledge (KG I, 71), since God is in-
effable. As the object of knowledge of God is infinite, so is the igno-
rance of those who try to understand Him. “He whose knowledge is
limited, his ignorance is also limited; and he whose ignorance is un-
limited, his knowledge is also unlimited” (KG III, 63). According to
Evagrius, as man is an image of God, the contemplative acquires, by
the Grace, an unlimited knowledge that makes him enjoy the unlim-
ited science of God. That knowledge or “gnosis” is acquired by
means of the contemplative or pure prayer. The contemplative pray-
er aspires to establish an intimate relationship with God, it is “the as-
cent of the intellect to God” (Or. 36); “If Moses was hindered when
he attempted to approach the bush burning on earth, until he had tak-
en off the shoes from his feet, do you not think that, if you wish to
see the One who is above every concept and perception, and to con-
verse with Him, you should cast away from yourself every impas-
sioned mental concept?” (Or. 4).

II.- OBSTACLES THAT HINDER CONTEMPLATION: THE

LOGISMOI

According to Evagrius, the most important obstacle that hinders

us from attaining contemplation is the thoughts or logismoi. Not only
the evil thoughts, but, ultimately, all kind of thoughts that distracts
the concentration of the pure intellect.

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 KALĒ APODĒMIA (THE BEAUTIFUL MIGRATION): EVAGRIUS PONTICUS

The technical term logismoi is taken by Evagrius from the alle-

gorical interpretation that Origen does of Deut. 7:31456, identifying
them as demons. However, the Jewish source that Origen himself
cites is The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Origen, in his
commentary on Matthew 15:19, also states that “The source and
origin of every sin is the evil thoughts”457. The personification or
“objectification” of the thoughts as odd, evil or diabolic products is
found in different Eastern Mediterranean cultures. In Genesis 8:21,
the word yeser (thought) has a pejorative meaning: “The Lord said in
His heart: ‘I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s
sake, for the thought of man is evil from his youth’”. The yeser ap-
pears as an autonomous and negative entity: “He created humanity at
the beginning, and He left them to the power of their yeser” (Ecclus.
15:14). But the text that has conditioned the pejorative meaning of
the term logismos most is Matthew 15:19 (also Luke 2:35; 5:22; 6:8;
9:46 ff.; 24:38). Evagrius’ genuine point in this issue is that, since he
states that the thoughts do not come from the human nature or from
the objects themselves, he has placed their origin in the demons. This
way, the fight against the thoughts is not a combat of man against
himself, but against an external adversary that is continuously alter-
ing him, that is, making him be another one who he really is not.

In the Evagrian doctrine, the process of cognition begins with the

subject-object relationship. The perception of the objects causes sen-
sations, which, in turn, cause desire. For their part, the memories of
the pleasure that the possession of the object provided us (TP 4) in-

456
This passage mentions the seven peoples that Israel confronted before taking
possession of the Promised Land. The Egyptians, already defeated, are missing, so
the number of enemies would be eight. Cassian assumes this tradition in his Con-
ferences (V, XVII-XVIII). Origen takes up this topic to maintain that each one of
the seven nations also represented the vices of Israel (Hom. 12, on Joshua).
Whereas in the East, the tradition preserved in a basic way the Evagrian outline of
the eight evil thoughts (gluttony, lust, greed, sadness, wrath, acedia, vainglory and
pride), in the West, Saint Gregory the Great (13th century), who knew it through
Cassian, will definitively fix it in the seven deadly sins that are still preserved.
457
Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 21, ed. Benz and Klostermann, GCS 40,
p. 58.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

cite us to retain it. If that “phantom” was passionately embraced, the

memories will be passionate (TP 34; 37). As if he were using a fine
scalpel, Evagrius dissects the hidden, confusing aspects of the eight
evil thoughts, insisting once and once again that their aim is to be-
siege man in order to hinder him from pure prayer. The eight evil
thoughts agree in one thing: their hatred to prayer (Or. 50-51). It is to
be warned that Evagrius analyzes the eight logismoi from the point
of view of the meditative practice, that is, of the obstacles that hinder
contemplation. Thus, for instance, the sadness (lypē) (TP 10) or the
demon of gloominess (TP 19) put the idealized memories of past
moments into our mind as if they were being lived, so that, after the
desire to recover those instants, comes the frustration for realizing
that they have already gone by. The acedia (akēdia in ancient Greek
means annoyance, torpor, sloth, indifference, listlessness) was identi-
fied by the Desert Fathers as the noonday demon, because it mainly
fights at that time, when the fast is harder and the desert sun burns in
sharp and hot. The most dangerous logismos is pride. When he who
follows the spiritual path reaches a certain state of spiritual realiza-
tion (Evagrius describes it as imperfect impassibility), this demon
suggests him that it has not been a gift of God, but the result of his
own effort (TP 14; 33). Because of this deception, man believes that
the peace is due to his merits and to the fact that he has defeated the
demons. In reality, the logismoi have only momentarily withdrawn
in order to give way to spiritual pride and vainglory (TP 57; Or. 133-
134). In this subtle way, when the contemplative notices that no de-
mon is fighting against him, he can fall in vainglory (TP 57; 31), los-
ing what he had achieved. “The demon of pride conducts the soul to
its worst fall. It urges it not to admit God’s help, and to believe that
the soul is responsible for its own achievements, and to disdain the
brethren as fools because they do not all see this about it” (TP 14).
Evagrius insists that the results of the meditative practice have a cer-
tain limit beyond which the “gnosis” can only be granted by God.
No human effort, no virtuous life, no merit can guarantee that
achievement. Actually, they might rather become an obstacle if such

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 KALĒ APODĒMIA (THE BEAUTIFUL MIGRATION): EVAGRIUS PONTICUS

meritorious deeds are done not because they are intrinsically good,
but to obtain some end458. Therefore, given that pure contemplation
is not a state that can be attained by the own forces, it is only possi-
ble to persevere in it with patience and humility, waiting for God to
grant us such a precious “charisma (Or. 87; TP 32). In sum, the
“gnosis” is a gift of God.

III.- HOW TO COMBAT THE LOGISMOI

The Desert Fathers turned to certain methods to fight against the

thoughts in general: reading, vigils, prayer, toil, solitude, psalmody,
patience, mercy... (TP 15). On the other hand, the reflections about
the eight evil logismoi led to develop a scale of eight (or seven) vir-
tues corresponding the stages of the spiritual life. Clemens of Alex-
andria already mentioned faith, fear, hope, repentance, temperance,
perseverance... They are also found in the Epistle of Pseudo-
Barnabas. The most complete text of Evagrius is found in the preface
of the Praktikos, encompassing the three stages of the spiritual life:
“Faith (pistis), o my child, is steadied by the fear (phobos) of God,
and this in turn is strengthened by temperance (enkrateia); this latter
is made unshakable by perseverance (hypomonē) and hope (elpis).
From these is born impassibility (apatheia), which brings into being
charity (agape). Charity is the door to knowledge of nature (gnosis
physikē), which leads to theology (theologia) and the supreme bless-
edness (makariotes)”.

The cultivation of these virtues leads man to understand the futil-

ity of the world, the evanescence of life and the uselessness of de-
sires. This way, as the intellect loses interest in the surrounding ex-
ternal objects, its ability to concentrate on the inner life increases.
That is why it is affirmed that, “if you wish to pray laudably, deny

458
That is why “It is just to pray not only for your own purification, but also for
your own kindred, so as to imitate the angelic way” (Or. 40).

423
 JAVIER ALVARADO

yourself every hour” (Or. 18), because your thoughts are not really
yours, your imagination is not really yours, your memories are not
yours, but just suggestions, incitements or additions coming from
outside. Only by breaking free from all kind of desires will we attain
the state of apatheia. And the first quality that shows the possession
of impassibility is the “prayer without distraction” (TP 63; 69).

IV.- THE METHOD OF THE OBJECTLESS PRAYER

What Evagrius defines as “pure prayer” is a traditional form of

meditation in which the mental flow is stopped or cut. The subject,
lacking objects of perception, plunges itself into the emptiness, ex-
empt of thoughts, that leads to contemplate the face of God. But the
main enemy of this objectless meditation is precisely the thought
(Or. 10; 47). In order to hinder this kind of meditation, the demons
of phantoms get into the meditator’s memory and suggest him con-
cepts or ideas (Or. 64), sometimes even brilliant ones (Or. 10),
weakening the intellect and thus preventing it from praying (Or. 45).
On other occasions, they attack the flank of vanity, making him be-
lieve that he has more than enough merits to see God (Or. 41) or that
he has already seen God (Or. 68; 73-74).

In effect, some contemplatives aspire to literally see fabulous im-

ages of God, of the angels and all kind of extraordinary phenomena.
Evagrius warns against these mistakes, so “do not in any way seek to
receive any form or shape or color in the time of prayer” (Or. 114).
It is a radical contradiction to try to perceive sensations and, at the
same time, enjoy the immaterial contemplation of the divinity. They
are two opposing things. “Do not desire to see angels or powers or
Christ visibly, in case you become completely mad, accepting a wolf
instead of a shepherd and worshiping your enemies, the demons”
(Or. 115). “Once the intellect is praying purely unwaveringly, and
truly, completely apart from the passions, the demons no longer in-

424
 KALĒ APODĒMIA (THE BEAUTIFUL MIGRATION): EVAGRIUS PONTICUS

sinuate themselves from the left, but from the right459. They set be-
fore it the appearance of God and shape it in the form of things be-
loved by the senses, so that the intellect will believe it has perfectly
achieved its goal concerning prayer. An admirable and knowledge-
filled man explained that this is caused by the passion of vainglory
and by the demon that attaches itself to a particular place in the brain
and makes the veins pulsate” (Or. 73)460. Certainly, in the deepest
states of meditation, “the demon touches that place thus manipulat-
ing the light surrounding the intellect however it wishes” (Or. 74),
giving way to phenomena we should mistrust, since they will just
move us away from our final goal. “Noises, crashes, voices and tor-
tured screams will he hear, the person carefully attending to pure
prayer, but he will not cave in or surrender his rationality” (Or. 97).

What is the perfect form of meditation like, according to Evagri-

us? “Exert your intellect to stand at the time of prayer as if deaf and
dumb, and then you will be able to pray” (Or. 11).

1.- Praying without thoughts.

The foundation of the Evagrian method is that, once we have

emptied ourselves from thoughts (Or. 3; 9; 10-12; 21-22; 24; 26-27;
41; 54 etc.), we achieve impassibility. The thoughts darken the intel-
lect (TP 74) and hinder it from acting according to its nature, which
is to know God. Any thought hinders pure prayer (Or. 4; 9; 11; 54).
“You are not able to pray purely if you are enmeshed in material af-
fairs and shaken about by constant cares, because prayer is the put-
ting aside of thoughts” (Or. 71). In order to meditate, the thought is
required to withdraw in God (Or. 4), the mind must be empty of all

459
The left eye is used for the contemplation of the beings, and the right one con-
templates the light of the Holy Trinity.
460
The stratagems of the demon to defeat the contemplative include getting into his
body and altering his brain so that he believes to perceive the divine light.

425
 JAVIER ALVARADO

appearances, and on guard against every sensible shape of the Divine

(Or. 67-74).

2.- Praying without images.

Mental silence implies getting rid of visual thoughts, that is, of

images, no matter how elevated they may be: “Do not give any
shape to the Divine in yourself when you pray, nor should you per-
mit any form to stamp an impression on your intellect: instead, ap-
proach immaterially what is immaterial, and you will understand”
(Or. 67). It is not possible to receive the contemplation of God with
preconceived images, since God has no shape. Nothing in this world,
no sensible shape can resemble God; therefore, to turn to them will
only block the pure vision of the intellect, which “is strong when it
does not imagine any worldly thing at all during the time of its pray-
er” (TP 65). Ultimately, the worshiper must be fully devoted to God
during his meditation, so that nothing may disturb him (Or. 67-68).

3.- Praying without memories.

But not feeling passion for the objects is not enough (TP 67; 64;
65): it is necessary to break even with the memories or to remain im-
perturbable (atarachos) to them. “The soul possesses impassibility
not when it is unmoved by matters, but when it remains undisturbed
by the memory of them” (TP 67), no matter how elevated they may
be, since they are really generated to move you away from medita-
tion; “When the demons see that you are eager to truly pray, they in-
sinuate mental concepts of certain affairs that seem to demand atten-
tion; and within a short time they arouse the memory of these things
and move the intellect to seek them out” (Or. 10). This way, the
mind is incited to give up meditation when it allows itself to be in-
vaded by the plans, projects and expectations of daily life, when it
remembers something that it left undone or when it speculates about
future events.

426
 KALĒ APODĒMIA (THE BEAUTIFUL MIGRATION): EVAGRIUS PONTICUS

How can we stop the mental flow? How to block the evocation
of memories? How to maintain pure prayer? The truth is that
Evagrius, who uses a so colorful language when showing us the ob-
stacles that hinder meditation, keeps this secret as part of the oral
teaching of his doctrine. In some moments, he seems to indicate
some hints, as when he insists in the watchfulness (nepsis) (Bases,
XI) that is required by pure prayer, or when he advises the worship-
per: “Hold your eye from wandering while you pray; deny your flesh
and your soul, and live the life of the intellect” (Or. 110). But the
truth is that Evagrius did not want to go beyond what his sense of
caution and his discretion marked. Anyway, he was one of the first
monks to reveal in writing the secrets of the contemplative life and
practice, adopting for that purpose a literary style that was deliber-
ately cryptic. Thus, in the Praktikos, as well as in the Gnostikos and
the Kephalaia Gnostica, and especially in his treatise On Prayer, he
will warn: “And some things I have concealed and shadowed over,
so that we do not throw holy things to dogs nor cast pearls before
swine (Mt. 7:6). But this will be clear to those who have embarked
on the same quest”461. Therefore, Evagrius only speaks to the initi-
ate, that is, to those who take their first few steps in the anchoretic
life, to the Gnostics.

Only from this “Gnostic” perspective can Evagrius’ words make

sense when he states that, ultimately, the true monk, the authentic
contemplative who has seen the Light of God, “is one who is both
separated from all and yet united with all” (Or. 124), and who under-
stands that the salus (health) of each man is the salus of all; “Blessed
is the monk who sees the salvation and progress of all with perfect
joy, as if it were his own” (Or. 123).

461
TP, Prologue: Letter to Anatolius, 9.

427
 AN ANCIENT SECRET OF INCALCULABLE VALUE:
THE FORMULA OF SAINT JOHN CASSIAN

“The formula for this recollection, by which we

may conceive and ever keep the idea of God in the
mind... is a secret of incalculable value that was de-
livered to us by a few of those who were left of the
oldest Fathers” (Cassian, Conferences, X, VIII-X).

Cassian462 was born around the year 360 in Lesser Scythia (cur-
rent Romania). According to what is mentioned in one of his works,
between the years 378 and 380, his religious vocation led him and
his friend Germanus to Palestine, travel which they “undertook for
the sake of spiritual service, as also in the pursuit of the monastery”
(Conf. XVI, I). They both became monks there and received the ru-
diments of the coenobitic life, after which they started a pilgrimage
through the most important centers where the hermitic life was prac-
ticed. Thus, in Egypt they went across the desert of Panephysis
(Conf. XI, II) and “Diolcos, lying on one of the seven mouths of the
river Nile” (Conf. XVIII, I). They also visited the monks of the de-
sert of Nitria, the Cells and finally Scetes, where they met Evagrius
Ponticus. “We came urged not so much by the necessities of our
journey as by the desire of visiting the saints who were dwelling
there” (Conf. XVIII, I). However, the expulsion of the Origenist
Christians forced Cassian to leave Scetes. Soon after that, attracted
by the fame of John Chrysostom, he settled in Constantinople. In

462
J. Daniélou, “San Juan Casiano y sus maestros orientales”, in Cuadernos Mo-
násticos 27, no. 101 (1992), pp. 201-211. I. Gómez, “Maestros de oración en el
monacato latino (3). Juan Casiano (360-435)”, in Schola Caritatis, 7 (1995), pp.
24-32. J-C. Guy, Jean Cassien. Vie et doctrine spirituelle, Paris, 1961. A. de
Vogüé, “Para comprender a Casiano. Una ojeada a las Conferencias”, in Cuader-
nos Monásticos 27, no. 103 (1992), pp. 437-462.
 JAVIER ALVARADO

404, he was ordained a deacon and later received the priestly ordina-
tion. In 416, he returned to the West, specifically to Provence, found-
ing two monasteries in Marseille according to the teachings of his
master Evagrius, but suitably adapting his doctrine to the Christian
orthodoxy. In order that the monks of his monasteries could access
the coenobitic theory and practice, between 420 and 430, he wrote
his Spiritual Conferences (or Collationes). These writings had the
merit of transferring to the West a large part of the contemplative
tradition that was lived at the Near East. Cassian died in Marseille
about 434-435.

In reality, his Institutes and Conferences are two parts of the

same discourse. Whereas the Institutes (De Institutis Coenobiorum et
de octo principalium vitiorum remediis463) are about the outer man,
the Conferences or Collationes Patrum, which Cassian subtitles as
Verba Seniorum (the words of the elders) inspired by the twenty-four
elders of the Revelation, are about the inner man464. In the preface,
he specifies: “Let us therefore pass from what is visible to the eye
and the external mode of life of the monks, of which we treated in
the former books (that is, in the Institutes), to the life of the inner
man, which is hidden from view” (Conf. preface). According to Cas-

463
Institutes, translated by B. Ramsey, New York, 2000; Conferences, translated
by C. Luibheid, New York, 1985; besides the classic edition translated by Edgar C.
S. Gibson, New York, 1894. The Institutes are about the dress of the monks (I), the
nocturnal prayers in Egypt (II), the daily prayers practiced in Palestine and Meso-
potamia (III), the learnings for the community life (IV), the eight vices against
which the candidate for the purity of heart must fight: gluttony or gastrimargia
(V), lust or fornication (VI), greed, covetousness or philargia (VII), anger (VIII),
dejection or sadness (IX), acedia (X), vainglory or kenodoxia (XI) and pride (XII).
The Conferences are about the goal of the monk and the means to achieve it (Conf.
I-III), the obstacles that hinder us from achieving that goal (Conf. IV-VI), the
soul’s spiritual fight (Conf. VII-X), the tactics used by the demons though the
thoughts (Conf. VII), the different forms of prayer and the contemplative life
(Conf. IX-X), clarification about perfection (Conf. XI-XIV), the virtue of charity
(Conf. XI), the “apatheia” (Conf. XII), complete perfection and its signs (Conf.
XV-XVII), modalities of monastic life (Conf. XVIII-XIX), about the spiritual life
(Conf. XX-XXIV).
464
For that purpose, he presents several real or imaginary conversations with Mo-
ses, Serapion, Abraham, Joseph, Nesteros, Paphnutius, Abbot Daniel, Abbot
Serenus, hundred-year-old Cheremon, etc.

430
 AN ANCIENT SECRET: THE FORMULA OF JOHN CASSIAN

sian, the quest for God implies the purification of the whole spirit
and the most complete detachment from everything (ascesis). That
final state, which he calls “purity of heart”, can be attained by means
of contemplation.

What is contemplation? According to Cassian, it is a science and

an art: “Wherefore for this highest learning also, by which we are
taught even to cleave to God, I have no doubt that there are some
foundations of the system... These are its first principles: that we
should first learn by what meditations God may be grasped and con-
templated, and next that we should manage to keep a very firm hold
of this topic whatever it is which we do not doubt is the height of all
perfection” (Conf. X, VIII). What Evagrius calls pure prayer is de-
fined by Cassian as igneous prayer. In the Conference IX, Cassian
explains that the “igneous” prayer is fully effective when the medita-
tor attains impassibility or “apatheia”, that is, “an immovable tran-
quility of soul and a perpetual purity”465. Evagrius, Cassian and the
hermitic tradition defined it as such an absence of passions that
caused the perfect integration of body and soul, resembling the an-
gelic state466.

The best symptom of detachment from the passions or carnal

bondings is the ability for contemplation in the moment of contem-
plative prayer, since “no one will persevere lastingly, if anything of
carnal affections still survives in him, because ‘thou canst not see
My face, for there shall no man see Me and live’467” (Conf. I, XV).
How to detach ourselves from the thoughts? Given that the mind
needs its daily portion of thoughts and initially refuses to be “domes-
ticated”, the first aim is to occupy the mind with suitable readings
and meditations. In effect, “It is impossible for the mind not to be
approached by thoughts, but it is in the power of every earnest man

465
Cassian is very careful to avoid the term apatheia because of the way the Pela-
gians used to employ it. He translates it with “immovable tranquility of soul”.
466
Col. XII, 6, and XXII, 3.
467
Ex. 33:20.

431
 JAVIER ALVARADO

either to admit them or to reject them... For this purpose frequent

reading and continual meditation on the Scriptures is employed that
from thence an opportunity for spiritual recollection may be given to
us... that the mind may be brought low and not mind earthly things”
(Conf. I, XVII). Likewise, “if we do not want anything to haunt us
while we are praying, we should be careful before our prayer, to ex-
clude it from the shrine of our heart... We must leave no room for not
merely the care but even the recollection of any business affairs”
(Conf. IX, III). But the problem is that, in the first few stages of med-
itation, the mind is so agitated and uncontrolled that it is unable to
calm down and focus its attention on one only thought for long.
Thus, the meditative practice becomes an endless, exhausting fight
between our intention to meditate and the mind’s desire to take us
out of meditation in order to entertain itself with its daydreams. This
way, we find that, “when we have wandered away from our spiritual
speculations and have come back to ourselves as if waking from a
deadly sleep, and, being thoroughly roused, look for the subject mat-
ter, by which we may be able to revive that spiritual recollection
which has been destroyed, and we are hindered by the delay of the
actual search before we find it, and are once more drawn aside from
our endeavor, and before the spiritual insight is brought about, the
purpose of heart which had been conceived has disappeared” (Conf.
X, VIII). No matter how many times we may try to discipline the
mind by means of concentration on only one thought, we will soon
see how dozens of them call our attention, so “it comes to pass that
as the mind is constantly hindered by this want of knowledge and
difficulty, and is always tossed about vaguely, and as if intoxicated,
among various matters, and cannot even retain firm hold for any
length of time of anything spiritual which has occurred to it by
chance rather than of set purpose: while, as it is always receiving one
things after another, it does not notice either their beginning and
origin or even their end (Conf. X, VIII).

432
 AN ANCIENT SECRET: THE FORMULA OF JOHN CASSIAN

How to avoid distractions during meditation? How can we solve

the lack of concentration? According to Cassian, such problems can
be solved by means of a formula: “This trouble is certain to happen
to us for this reason: because we do not keep something firmly set
before our eyes like some formula to which the wandering thoughts
may be recalled after many digressions and varied excursions; and, if
I may use the expression, after long storms enter a quiet haven”
(Conf. X, VIII).

The immediate question is: what can be that “formula for this
recollection, by which we may conceive and ever keep the idea of
God in the mind”? (Conf. X, VIII). Cassian confesses that this for-
mula “is a secret of incalculable value that was delivered to us by a
few of those who were left of the oldest fathers” (Conf. X, X). In or-
der that the thought of God may unceasingly dwell in the meditator,
Cassian reveals that the formula of devotion, extracted from Psalms
70:1, is this: “Deus in adiutorium meum intende. Domine ad
adiuvandum me festina (O God, make speed to save me. O Lord,
make haste to help me)” (Conf. X, X). But even to get this formula
work little by little, it is to be employed not only to make concentra-
tion easier during meditation, but also the rest of the day. This way,
“Let sleep come upon you still considering this verse... When you
wake let it be the first thing to come into your mind... Let it... send
you forth to all your work and business, and let it follow you about
all day long... This you should write on the threshold and door of
your mouth, this you should place on the walls of your house and in
the recesses of your heart” (Conf. X, X).

The goal of such a formula is that the monk’s mind may be con-
stantly focused on the remembrance of God, making of this a habit
that ends up disregarding the rest of the thoughts. And, in effect, it is
a traditional method to facilitate detachment, since, ultimately, the
combat against vices, faults, tendencies, or whatever they may be
called, is the fight against the thoughts. Therefore, by defeating the

433
 JAVIER ALVARADO

thoughts, the path of virtue is smoothed. And, according to the De-

sert Fathers, the best and easiest way to resign the thoughts consisted
in reducing them just to one. This way, the unification of the thought
gradually gave way to the disappropriation of the thought and, from
there, to the suprarational states468.

468
Taking up Plotinus again: “Such logic is not to be confounded with that act of
ours in the vision; it is not our reason that has seen; it is something greater than
reason, reason’s Prior, as far above reason as the very object of that thought must
be. In our self-seeing There, the self is seen as belonging to that order, or rather we
are merged into that self in us which has the quality of that order. It is a knowing of
the self restored to its purity. No doubt we should not speak of seeing; but we can-
not help talking in dualities, seen and seer, instead of, boldly, the achievement of
unity. In this seeing, we neither hold an object nor trace distinction; there is no two.
The man is changed, no longer himself nor self-belonging; he is merged with the
Supreme, sunken into it, one with it: center coincides with center, for centers of
circles, even here below, are one when they unite, and two when they separate; and
it is in this sense that we now (after the vision) speak of the Supreme as separate.
This is why the vision baffles telling; we cannot detach the Supreme to state it; if
we have seen something thus detached we have failed of the Supreme which is to
be known only as one with ourselves” (Enneads, VI, 9, 10, 5-20).

434
 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING
TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

“That Mystery Itself we strive to apprehend by

casting aside all the activities of our intellect” (On
the Divine Names, 645A).

The identity of the so-called Areopagite is still a mystery. He

presents himself as if he were that Dionysius converted by Saint Paul
in the Areopagus (central square) of Athens: “When they [the Athe-
nians] heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked... Howev-
er, certain men cleaved unto him and believed, among whom were
Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others
with them” (Act. 17:32-34). Therefore, Dionysius could be a culti-
vated, wealthy Athenian who, as many other people who frequented
or lived near the Areopagus, “spent their time in nothing else than
telling or hearing some new thing” (Act. 17:21). However, contem-
porary historiography considers that this Dionysius the Areopagite
could not be the person converted by Saint Paul, though, on the other
hand, there is no unanimity in identifying him with any other histori-
cal person469. Probably, he was a Syrian monk, maybe a bishop (be-
cause of the great regard he shows to have for the episcopal dignity),
who lived around the year 500, since he knew the custom of singing
the Apostle’s Creed in mass, which was introduced by the Monophy-
site Peter the Fuller in 476 and used by Proclus (†485) in his De
malorum subsistentia. And it is also known that he wrote before 553,

469
Hilduin (9th century) identified him with Saint Dionysius (Denis) Martyr, Bish-
op of Paris. Father Stiglmayr thought that the Pseudo-Dionysius was Severus of
Antioch. Monsignor Athenagoras and B. Romeyer supposed that he was Dionysi-
us, Bishop of Alexandria. For his part, Father Elorduy proposed the candidacy of
Ammonius Saccas, one of Plotinus’ masters. Vid. E. Elorduy, “¿Es Ammonio Sac-
cas el Pseudo Areopagita?”, in Estudios Eclesiásticos, 18 (1944-1945), pp. 501-
557.
 JAVIER ALVARADO

when the work of the Areopagite was alleged by the Monophysites

of Constantinople.

H. Koch and J. Stiglmayr explained the parallelisms between Di-

onysius and Proclus, finding up to four hundred passages that are
almost identical in both authors470. Nonetheless, whereas according
to Stiglmayr, Dionysius “has brazenly abridged” Proclus, other au-
thors think that they both drank from the same sources: Plotinus’
work. For his part, E. Elorduy identifies the Pseudo-Dionysius with
Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus’ master. The truth is that they all main-
tain a common line of thought regarding practical metaphysics, the
ineffability of ecstasy and the mystical union. It is to be reminded
that, for instance, the ineffability of ecstasy is derived from the union
itself between the seer and the object of sight, when the distinction
between them disappears. That is why the seer sees “nothing”471.

Why did our author write under the pseudonym of Dionysius the
Areopagite? Probably, by dating his works in the time of Saint Paul,
he tried to lend a certain authority, almost apostolic, to his writings.
But, in addition, by not recording his name, he was also doing an act

470
J. Stiglmayr, S. J. “Das Aufkommen der Pseudo-Dionysischen Schriften und ihr
Eindringen in die christliche Literatur bis zum Lateranconcil 649. Ein zweiter
Beitrag zur Dionysios-Frage”, in IV. Jahresbericht des öffentlichen
Privatgymnasiums an der Stella matutina zu Feldkirch 1894-95, Feldkirch, 1895,
p. 78-82; H. Koch, Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita in seinen Beziehungen zum
Neuplatonismus und Mysterienwesen, Mainz, 1900.
471
And this ineffability is inexplicable and inapprehensible because “Thus The
One is in truth beyond all statement: any affirmation is of a thing; but all-
transcending, resting above even the most august divine mind, this is the only true
description, since it does not make it a thing among things, nor name it where no
name could identify it: we can but try to indicate, in our own feeble way, some-
thing concerning it... How, then, do we ourselves come to be speaking of it? No
doubt we deal with it, but we do not state it; we have neither knowledge nor intel-
lection of it. But in what sense do we even deal with it when we have no hold upon
it? We do not, it is true, grasp it by knowledge, but that does not mean that we are
utterly void of it; we hold it not so as to state it, but so as to be able to speak about
it. And we can and do state what it is not, while we are silent as to what it is...
But... it is none of these, but a nobler principle than anything we know as being;
fuller and greater; above reason, mind, and feeling; conferring these powers, not to
be confounded with them” (Enneads, V, 3, 13-14).

436
 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

of humility beyond personal references and individual prominences

that, precisely in that time, were ravaging Christianity. Surely, in or-
der to avoid the discussions that took place after the Council of
Chalcedon, in his seventh Epistle, he clarifies: “I do not wish to
spark polemics; I simply speak the truth, I seek the truth”. Regarding
the doctrine of the Pseudo-Dionysius, all the researchers agree that,
though his philosophical background is Neoplatonic, the projection
of his discourse takes place within the Christian orthodoxy. In effect,
in his Letter to Polycarp (VII), he confesses to be making the effort
to place the Neoplatonic philosophy in the service of the Christian
Faith. The writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius, who will here be called
Dionysius the Areopagite as a courtesy to this author, were men-
tioned as authentic for the first time in 533, in a colloquium celebrat-
ed in Constantinople between Catholics and Monophysites; howev-
er, it was Maximus the Confessor who, with his epistles, contributed
most to spread the thought of Dionysius the Areopagite through the
East. In the West, the work of the Areopagite was accepted by sever-
al Popes such as Saint Gregory the Great and Saint Martin I, who in-
voked him as an authority in the Lateran Council of the year 649.
Thus, the Corpus Dionysiuacum or Corpus Areopagiticum472 is
made up of the following treatises: The Heavenly Hierarchy (119-
369), The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (370-584), On the Divine Names
(585-996), The Mystical Theology (997-1064), and ten letters (1065-
1120).

Another enigma, laid out by the researchers on the Areopagite,

concerns the nature of his contemplative experiences. According to

472
The quotations from Dionysius’ treatises are based on the Greek text established
by the edition of B. Cordier, reproduced in the vol. 3 of the P(atrologia) G(graeca)
by Migne, Paris, 1857, used by the Spanish translation with which I work: Teodoro
H. Martín, Obras Completas del Pseudo Dionisio Areopagita, Biblioteca de Auto-
res Cristianos (BAC), Madrid, 1990, which cites the texts according to the Migne
edition, that is, by columns and paragraphs. For instance, 648A means column 648,
paragraph A [An English version of the text following the Migne edition can be
found in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, translated by Colm Luibhéid
and Paul Rorem (New York, 1987)].

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

some authors, the descriptions of the mystical route followed by Di-

onysius the Areopagite came from his personal experience and cor-
responded with the contemplative states achieved during meditation.
However, according to other authors, the Syrian monk did not expe-
rience ecstasy, so that the images described in his work just have an
allegoric value473. This last statement is based on a sentence in which
the Areopagite explains that “the Divine Darkness is the unap-
proachable light in which God is said to dwell” (Letter V, 1073A).
However, although this “is said” seems to point out that Dionysius
speaks from hearsay and not by own experience, it is also true that
such use of language might be due to the literary custom that he had
to fulfill, according to the Christian modesty. Therefore, this would
be just another evidence, as well as his anonymity, of the humility of
the Syrian monk.

I.- THE INEFFABILITY OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

The Areopagite affirms that, being God absolutely transcenden-

tal, since He is above not only the beings but also above the Being
Itself, which is the first participation of God, it is to be inferred that
the divine essence is inaccessible to the senses as well as to the ra-
tional speculations: “But if any one should say that Divine manifes-
tations were made directly and immediately to some holy men474, let
him learn, and that distinctly, from the Scriptures, that no one has
seen475, nor even shall see, the hidden of Almighty God as it is in it-
self” (The Heavenly Hierarchy, 180C – IV, 3). Following the wake

473
This is the case of Henri-Charles Puech, “La ténèbre mystique chez le Pseudo-
Denys l’Aréopagite et dans la tradition patristique”, in Études carmélitaines 23
(1938), p. 33-53, later compiled in En torno a la Gnosis I, Madrid, 1982, pp. 165-
189.
474
Saint Augustine says that Moses and Saint Paul were exceptionally granted to
see God in “trance” (The Literal Meaning of Genesis, XII, 26-27). According to
the Areopagite, it is “normal” to achieve the experience of God “hidden in a dark-
ness more luminous than silence”. But this vision is still, by definition, a “non-
vision”.
475
Jn. 1:18; Ex. 33:20-23; 1 Tim. 6:16; 1 Jn. 4:12.

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

of Plotinus, Dionysius categorically affirms that “God cannot be

spoken or thought”. Precisely because the language is useless when
trying to approach God, any attempt to approach His nature is radi-
cally a Mystery. This has already been pointed out by some re-
searchers on the Areopagite, such as Vanneste, who defines Diony-
sius’ style as laborious and esoteric, taken from the ancient Myster-
ies476. And, even though this may be an obstacle to the exact under-
standing of Dionysius’ doctrine, it is true that it comes from the inef-
fability itself of the Divine Nature, since He is beyond all affirmation
and all negation. But this obstacle is, at the same time, the first key
to the mystery, since it determines the attitude that the mystical sub-
ject must adopt. The mystic must break free from all his ties, from
the activity of the senses and the intelligence, until abolishing,
though momentarily, the duality between subject and object: “He
made darkness His secret place, His pavilion round about Him” (Ps.
18:11); however, although it is impossible to “know” God by means
of concepts, He has wanted to reveal Himself to men through His
many Names (On the Divine Names, 596) that appear in the Holy
Scriptures. This provides Dionysius with a rational method to know
God that, by removing the traces of anthropomorphism, purifies the
understanding and prepares it for a higher form of knowledge that he
defines as angelic and that closely approximates the knowledge God
has about Himself.

Therefore, to those who long for elevating themselves more (The

Mystical Theology, 1000) or for having a purer knowledge of God
does Dionysius propose a double method (positive and negative),
with Platonic resonances, which analyzes the divine names.

476
J. Vanneste, S. J., Le Mystère de Dieu, Paris, 1959 and “La théologie mystique
du pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite”, Studia Patristica 5, 3 (1962) 401-415. It can also
be consulted R. Rocques, L’Univers Dionysien, Paris, Aubier, 1954; Y. de Andia,
“Neoplatonismo y cristianismo en Pseudo Dionisio Areopagita”, in Anuario Filo-
sófico XXXIII, (2 vols.), Pamplona, Universidad de Navarra, 2000 and J. Rico Pa-
vés, Semejanza a Dios y divinización en el Corpus Dionysiacum: platonismo y
cristianismo en Dionisio el Areopagita, Toledo, 2001.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

The affirmative rational way consists in attributing (affirming) all

the positive attributes or qualities such as holiness, wisdom, benevo-
lence, light, life, truth, power, justice, redemption, salvation, etc. to
God: “They attribute many manes to Him when, for instance, they
speak of Him as declaring: ‘I am that I am’477, or ‘I am the Life’478,
or ‘the Light’479, or ‘God’480, or ‘the Truth’481... Him that is ‘the
same’482... while remaining Himself, He is at the same time within
the world, around it and above it, above the sky and above exist-
ence483, and they call Him a Sun484, a Star485, and a Fire486, and Wa-
ter487, and Wind488, a Dew489, a Cloud490, the Head Stone of the cor-
ner491... and All Creation, who yet is no created thing492” (On the Di-
vine Names, 596B). And this enumeration could go on ad nauseam,
until the mind surrenders and admits its inability. Only then will it
stop playing with the concepts and conclude that God is Nameless,
Sine Nomine: “And is not this Name that is above every name493 in
reality wonderful: the Nameless?” (On the Divine Names, 596A).
“Nameless” can only be comprehended without thoughts, without
bodily senses... And, as well as it is understood that the Divinity has
no end and cannot be constrained by adjectives, the same can be said
about the names preceded by the prefix arch-, which belong to the
positive or affirmative theology.

477
Ex. 3:14; Rev. 1:4, 8.
478
Jn. 11:25; 14:6 and 1:4; 5:26.
479
Jn. 8:12 and 1:4-9; 9:5; 1 Jn. 1:5.
480
Gen. 28:13; Ex. 3:6, 15; Is. 40:28.
481
Jn. 14:6.
482
Ps. 102:27.
483
Ps. 113:4.
484
Mal. 4:2.
485
2 Pt. 1:19; Rev. 22:16.
486
Ex. 3:2.
487
Jn. 7:38.
488
Jn. 3, 5-8.
489
Is. 18:4; Hos. 14:5.
490
Ex. 13:21-22; 24:16; 33:9; Job 36:27-32; Is. 4:5; 1 Cor. 10:1.
491
Ps. 118:22; Mt. 21:42; Mk. 12:10; Act. 4:11.
492
Statement that Eckhart takes pleasure in repeating, and one out of the list why
he was condemned in Avignon in 1329: “omnes creaturae sunt unum purum nihil:
non dico quod sint quid modicum vel aliquid, sed quod sint purum nihil”.
493
Phil. 2:9.

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

Therefore, if we want to attain a deeper knowledge of God, we

must deny those names (negative theology), because, even though
we may use them to rationally elevate ourselves towards Him, strict-
ly speaking, none of them really expresses His essence. That is why
there is another way, the negative way, to know God, considering
that any idea that we may speak about Him is unsuitable. The names
or attributes of God that begin with hyper-, or those that are preceded
by ἀ, belong to this negative theology that tries as well to express
His ineffability. “If He is greater than all reason and all knowledge,
and has His firm abode altogether beyond mind and being... and
cannot be reached by any... name, discourse... or understanding...
how then is our discourse concerning the Divine Names to be ac-
complished, since we see that the Godhead is unutterable and name-
less?” (On the Divine Names, 593A). Nevertheless, according to the
Areopagite, there is a way to solve, sublimate or transcend the nega-
tive (apophasis) theo-logy (knowledge of God), as well as the posi-
tive one (cataphasis). It is the superlative theology, which preaches
that God is not a being, but a super-being; He is not life, but super-
life; He is not goodness, but super-goodness; and so on. Strictly
speaking, it is not a rational or speculative method, but the contrary:
a way to admit the mind’s inability to access supraindividual forms
of knowledge. Thus, once the mind and the senses have yielded, man
finds the most suitable spiritual predisposition to focus his attention.

In what consists this superlative (suprarational) way or theology

that, in its quest for the Divinity, aspires to reach beyond the divine
attributes?

II.- HOW TO ACHIEVE THE SUPRARATIONAL

KNOWLEDGE

First of all, Dionysius does not understand God as a Being that is

far away from and totally inaccessible to man, but, on the contrary,

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he conceives Him as an immediate, present Being in him: “Further-

more, we must ask how it is that we know God when He cannot be
perceived by the intellect or the senses and is not a particular being.
Perhaps it is true to say that we know not God by His nature, for this
is unknowable and beyond the reach of all reason and intuition, yet
by means of that ordering of all things which are projected out of
Him” (On the Divine Names, 869C).

Taking up the ancient Platonic metaphor, developed by Plotinus,

according to which every being, as a being, is light, Dionysius will
state that that light494 of God is present in each and every one of the
beings (On the Divine Names, 820), which implies that all individu-
al, despite the limitations and conditionings derived from his person-
al circumstances, has the possibility to connect or access that Divine
essence.

The motive principle of this process of quest for God that drives
man to go out of himself as an individual and detach himself from
his thoughts, from the information that comes from his sensory or-
gans, from the result of his actions... and forget it all, is the love to
know God (On the Divine Names, 869; The Mystical Theology,
1034). Love is the force that leads man to ecstasy, to go out of his
psycho-mental stronghold and his bodily shape in order to access a
supraindividual state that is described by Saint Paul when he states
that only then “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20).
With this quotation, the Areopagite explains the mystical ecstasy of
him who “was and being beside himself unto God, and not pos-
sessing his own life but possessing and loving the life of Him for
whom he loved” (On the Divine Names, 712A). For that purpose, he
insists that “We must be transported wholly out of ourselves and
given to God. For it is better to belong unto God and not unto our-

494
The metaphor of the spirit as light will also be used by Scotus Eriugena, Robert
Grosseteste, Saint Bonaventure, etc.

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

selves, since thus will the divine bounties be bestowed, if we are

united to God” (On the Divine Names, 868B).

But this leap cannot be taken just out of curiosity, or eagerness

for knowledge, or, in sum, out of desire to experience. Such a leap,
as it implies a (momentary) cession of the sensory control and, there-
fore, a surrender of the I, it can only take place by love: “The Divine
Love brings ecstasy, not allowing them that are touched thereby to
belong unto themselves but only to the beloved. And hence the great
Paul, constrained by the Divine Love and having received a share in
its ecstatic power, says, with inspired utterance: ‘I live; and yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me’” (On the Divine Names, 712A).

In sum, there are two forms of knowledge. Firstly, there is an or-

dinary subject-object knowledge, based on the straight reason, lan-
guage, shapes, etc., which is indispensable to survive in the world.
There is an ordinary and merely human knowledge that, “through the
partial and manifold activities of their complex nature, are inferior to
the unified intelligences” (On the Divine Names, 868C) because it is
based on the division or duality of the subject who knows and the
plurality of objects that are known495.

495
Based on 1 Cor. 8:7; Mt. 13:11; Lk. 8:10: “For any one might say that the cause
why forms are naturally attributed to the formless, and shapes to the shapeless, is
not alone our capacity which is unable immediately to elevate itself to the intelligi-
ble contemplations, and that it needs appropriate and cognate instructions which
present images, suitable to us, of the formless and supernatural objects of contem-
plation; but further, that it is most agreeable itself to the revealing oracles to con-
ceal, through mystical and sacred enigmas, and to keep the holy and secret truth re-
specting the super-mundane minds inaccessible to the multitude. For it is not every
one that is holy, nor, as the Scriptures affirm, does knowledge belong to all” (The
Heavenly Hierarchy, 140B). The “secret”, the “revealing oracles”, are part of the
method of the School of Alexandria. Thus, Philo will say that they are not to be re-
vealed to anyone unless “his head has been anointed with oil” (On flight and find-
ing, 110). That is why Origen recommended the priests not to “betray the mysteri-
ous declarations of God’s wisdom” by revealing them openly (Hom. IV, 3), and, in
a similar way did also Gregory of Nyssa (Life of Moses, II, 161), emulating Jesus
Christ, who spoke in parables to let him who sees, see more, and him who does not
see, see less (Mt. 13:13 ff.).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

But there is also a subtle knowledge that needs no concepts or ac-

tivity of the senses and that is only accessible to the “lovers” of God:
“We ought to know, according to the correct account, that we use
sounds, and syllables, and phrases, and descriptions, and words, on
account of the sensible perceptions; since when our soul is moved by
the intellectual energies to the things contemplated, the sensible per-
ceptions by aid of sensible objects are superfluous” (On the Divine
Names, IV, 11). Certainly, the ordinary or discursive knowledge is
important because it helps us reflect on the most spiritual meaning of
the Holy Scriptures or decipher the correct meaning of the allegories
and the rest of the symbols. But that rational or discursive
knowledge is not enough to access God because it is based on the
senses. Ultimately, both the positive and the negative way to dis-
course about the Names or attributes of God are insufficient: “We
must not then dare to speak, or indeed to form any conception, of the
hidden super-essential Godhead” (On the Divine Names, 585). As a
consequence, Dionysius insists, “That Mystery Itself we strive to ap-
prehend by casting aside all the activities of our intellect” (On the
Divine Names, 645A).

That is why, besides the knowledge of God that is fruit of a pro-

cess of philosophical and theological speculation, there is another
higher form of knowledge of God: the contemplative knowledge,
which is a superlative knowledge, as it transcends or overflows the
activities of the senses and the mind. Nonetheless, “The lack of intel-
lect and sensation must be predicated of God by excess and not by
defect... Thus the Mind of God embraces all things in an utterly
transcendent knowledge” (On the Divine Names, 869A). In what
consists that modality of superior “knowledge” that transcends
knowledge, intellect and sensation? Dionysius attempts a first ap-
proach when stating that “The angelic minds derive their blessed
simple perceptions, not collecting their knowledge of God in partial
fragments or from partial activities of sensation or of discursive rea-
son, nor yet being circumscribed by aught that is akin to these, but

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

rather, being free from all taint of matter and multiplicity, they per-
ceive the spiritual truths of Divine things in a single immaterial and
spiritual intuition. And their intuitive faculty and activity shines in its
unalloyed and undefined purity and possesses its Divine intuitions all
together in an indivisible and immaterial manner... through the work-
ing of the Divine Wisdom” (On the Divine Names, 868C).

This other higher modality of knowledge, in which the subject-

object duality disappears, happens when the subject concentrates on
only one object. This is precisely the modality that the angels pos-
sess: “yet they too, through the concentration of their many faculties,
are vouchsafed intuitions like unto those of the angels” (On the Di-
vine Names, 868C). Nonetheless, there is only one case in which the
subject is identified or concentrated on one object. This happens
when the subject makes God or himself his object of attention or
concentration. Only that way, the subject is object or, rather, the sub-
ject-object duality disappears. The subject is dissolved into the “ob-
ject” God, or transforms into his own object of knowledge (himself).
This is what the Areopagite calls superior or transcendent
knowledge: “And thus the Mind of God embraces all things in an ut-
terly transcendent knowledge... knowing all other things inwardly
and, if I may so put it, from the very beginning, and thus bringing
them into existence... And methinks this is taught by the Scripture
when it says ‘O eternal God, who knowest hidden things, who
knowest all things before they come to pass’496. For the Mind of God
gains not Its knowledge of things from those things, but of Itself and
in Itself It possesses” (On the Divine Names, 869A). Ultimately,
“[God] cannot be grasped by intuition, language, or name... He is all
things and nothing in any... The Divinest knowledge of God, which
is received through Unknowing, is obtained in that communion
which transcends the mind, when the mind, turning away from all
things and then leaving even itself behind, is united to the dazzling
rays, being from them an in them, illumined by the unsearchable

496
Dan. 13:42.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

depth of Wisdom” (On the Divine Names, 872A). Of course, such a

contemplative way requires a certain previous work or effort of puri-
fication of the senses and discrimination of the mind by means of
meditation and reflection. In that unceasing activity of discrimina-
tion, the candidate must distinguish what is real and what is a vain il-
lusion, so that, “In the earnest of mystic contemplation, you leave the
senses and the activities of the intellect and all things that the senses
or the intellect can perceive, and all things in this world of nothing-
ness, or in that world of being, and that, your understanding being
laid to rest, you strain, so far as you may, towards a union with Him
whom neither being nor understanding can contain” (The Mystical
Theology, 999). As God is above all relative knowledge, the mystical
subject that aspires to an immediate, direct knowledge must suspend
all the activity of the senses and the intelligence. This anenergēsia
(The Mystical Theology, 1001A) comes together with the closing of
the mouth, aphthenktos, that is, not only the verbal silence but also
the silence or emptiness of thoughts, with the closing of the eyes,
ablepsia (The Mystical Theology, 1925A), as Moses did, symboliz-
ing that the contemplative soul “plunges... unto the Darkness of Un-
knowing wherein he closes his eyes (apomyei) to all the apprehen-
sions of his understanding”. In sum, Moses “breaks forth, even from
the things that are beheld and from those that behold theme” (tōn
horōmenōn kai tōn horōntōn) as a previous step to access the “ray of
darkness” (The Mystical Theology, 997B-1000A, and 1001A).

The less the thoughts intervene, the purer and more concentrated
the meditation is, up to reach a state of mental silence that the Are-
opagite describes as thinking of nothing: “The more that we soar
upwards, the more our language becomes restricted to the compass
of purely intellectual conceptions... We shall find ourselves reduced
not merely to brevity of speech but even to absolute dumbness both
of speech and thought” (The Mystical Theology, 1033). And that
mental silence is the base on which is built the beginning of the path
or the ladder of contemplation. That silence, fruit of the detachment

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

from the thoughts, is what pleases God more, because, through it, He
can manifest the way He wants, free from obstacles that may stain,
distort or influence His presence. When the faculties of the contem-
plative are empty of all human knowledge, when the human mind
has been emptied of itself, of the creatures and the rest of the objects,
thrives the necessary mystical silence, so that God may pour His
light. In sum, the mental silence is the previous, necessary condition
for the divine attainability (On the Divine Names, 696B; 724B;
949A). When that inner effort is made by the “lovers”, God “gives
them first a moderate illumination; then, when they taste the Light
and desire it more, He gives Himself in greater measure and shines
in more abundance on them, because they have loved much497, and
ever He constrains them according to their powers of looking up-
wards” (On the Divine Names, 701A). To achieve the mental peace
or silence, closing the gates of the senses and giving up the intellec-
tual activities momentarily, implies a certain abandonment of one-
self, that is, a renunciation of that part of our being that enjoys the
pleasures of the senses. Only that way, “by the unceasing and abso-
lute renunciation of yourself and all things, you shall in pureness call
all things aside, and be released from all, and so shall be led upwards
to the Ray of that divine Darkness which exceeds all existence” (The
Mystical Theology, 1001A).

III.- THE THREE STAGES OF THE MEDITATOR

Dionysius the Areopagite compares the stages of the mystical

way with Moses’ ascent of Mount Sinai up to the vision of the burn-
ing bush and the revelation of God. What does it mean that God
commanded Moses to take his shoes off? To leave the shoes behind
symbolizes the need to detach oneself from the thought (mind and
body) because everything is spare in the presence of God. Free from
bodily and mental clothing, concentrated on oneself, one, like Mo-

497
Lk. 7:47.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

ses, heads toward the nothing: “[Moses] plunges unto the Darkness
of Unknowing... belonging wholly to Him that is beyond all things
and to none else, whether himself or another, and being through the
passive stillness of all his reasoning powers united by his highest
faculty to Him that is wholly unknowable, of whom thus by a rejec-
tion of all knowledge he possesses a knowledge that exceeds his un-
derstanding” (The Heavenly Theology, 121 and 140). As it has been
said, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, neither the affirmative
nor the negative way can be used to know the Being Itself, because
they have just a preparatory nature. However, there is a way to make
the Being reveal to our soul: the way of the contemplative prayer.
Before the three classic ways (purgative, illuminative and unitive)
were set, the Areopagite explains that the contemplative prayer or
meditation has three degrees498, matching the stages of the ascension
process of detachment from the senses. Vanneste499 already affirmed
that Dionysius’ work explained the three degrees or stages of the
soul’s path toward God: a first logical stage of successive denials,
which is the aphaeresis; a second stage that is the completion or fin-
ishing of the first one, the agnosia; and, finally, the end of the Way,
which is the union with God or enōsis.

The aim of the first degree is the sensory purification by means

of asceticism. It consists in a pedagogy about the body and the mind,
in order to learn how to control and detach oneself from the activity
of the senses and the mind in a natural way, until one becomes puri-
fied and plunged into the luminous, silent darkness (The Mystical
Theology, 1033). “Methinks he has shown by these words how mar-
velously he has understood that the Good Cause of all things is elo-
quent yet speaks few words, or rather none, possessing neither

498
According to Dionysius, these stages of the spiritual progress match the three
successive motions of the soul: circular, straight, and oblique or helical, which, in
turn, match the three steps of the ecclesiastical hierarchy: catechumens (purified
ones), believers who have received Enlightenment (enlightened ones) and monks
who have managed to attain perfection (perfect ones).
499
J. Vanneste, S. J. “La théologie mystique du pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite”, in
Studia Patristica 5,3 (1962), pp. 401-415.

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

speech nor understanding because it exceeds all things in a super-

essential manner, and is revealed without veil to those alone who
pass right through the opposition of fair and foul, and pass beyond
the topmost altitudes of the holy ascent and leave behind them all di-
vine enlightenment and voices and heavenly utterances and plunge
into the Darkness where truly dwells, as says the Scripture, that One
which is beyond all things (The Mystical Theology, 1000-1001). In
sum, with this purification of the senses, one accesses the mystical
silence (The Mystical Theology, 997).

The second degree is defined as enlightenment, because the spirit

establishes communication with the highest states of the Being
(which are called angelic by Dionysius). In this stage, the contem-
plative ascetic must take precautions against certain phenomena that
usually go along with the meditative practices but that are to be re-
fused if one wants to correctly go deeper into this way. Thus, for in-
stance, in The Mystical Theology 1000C, the Areopagite expressly
warns against the divine lights and the rest of shining phenomena:
lightings, burning mountains, flames, sounds, trumpet blasts, etc.,
that may appear before the mystic as they did before Moses500 when
he was heading toward the burning bush (Exodus 19:13, 16; 20:18).
Such phenomena, strictly speaking, do not constitute the true mysti-
cal experience. They are rather obstacles, evidences or at the most
symptoms of the increasing detachment from the profane world and
the gradual settlement on the spiritual world.

500
“For not without reason is the blessed Moses bidden first to undergo purifica-
tion himself and then to separate himself from those who have not undergone it;
and after all purification hears the many-voiced trumpets and sees many lights
flash forth with pure and diverse-streaming rays, and then stands separate from the
multitudes and with the chosen priests presses forward to the topmost pinnacle of
the Divine Ascent. Nevertheless he meets not with God Himself, yet he beholds,
not Him indeed, for He is invisible, but the place wherein He dwells. And this I
take to signify that the divinest and the highest of the things perceived by the eyes
of the body or the mind are but the symbolic language of things subordinate to Him
who Himself transcends them all. Through these things His incomprehensible
presence is shown walking upon those heights of His holy places which are per-
ceived by the mind” (The Mystical Theology, 1000-1001).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

Finally, the third degree is the perfection, also described as true

contemplation, union with God, divinization, sanctification, etc. be-
cause the spirit goes out of its darkness and completely unites God
for love (The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 392). “Then [Moses] breaks
forth, even from the things that are beheld and from those that be-
hold them, and plunges... unto the Darkness of Unknowing wherein
he renounces all the apprehensions of his understanding and is en-
wrapped in that which is wholly intangible and invisible, belonging
wholly to Him that is beyond all things and to none else, whether
himself or another, and being through the passive stillness of all his
reasoning powers united by his highest faculty to Him that is wholly
unknowable, of whom thus by a rejection of all knowledge he pos-
sesses a knowledge that exceeds his understanding (The Mystical
Theology, 1001A). It is a state that is the “fruit of the intimate union
with a sublime light that is irradiated on the soul and enables it to
plunge into the bottomless depths of the divine wisdom” (The Mysti-
cal Theology, 1033). One is His name, “and the title One implies that
He is all things under the form of Unity through the Transcendence
of His single Oneness... And without the One there can be no multi-
plicity; yet contrariwise the One can exist without the multiplicity”
(On the Divine Names, 912D).

IV.- THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS

Different explanations have been given to define the mystical

Darkness of Dionysius the Areopagite501. And that diversity of inter-
pretations precisely proves the ignorance, or even incomprehension,
of some modern researchers regarding the metaphysical phenome-

501
Regarding the different interpretations given to Dionysius’ Darkness: B. Cordi-
er, adnotationes of his edition, P. G., 3, 1002-1007; P. Porrat, “La spiritualité chré-
tienne, vol. I, Paris, 1921, p. 351; Gabriel Horn, Amour et extase d’après Denys
l’Aréopagite”, in Revue d’Ascétique et de Mystique, 6 (1925), pp. 278-289; G.
Horn, “Le ‘miroir’ et la nuée, deux manières de voir Dieu d’après S. Grégoire de
Nysse”, in Revue d’Ascétique et de Mystique, 8 (1927), pp. 113-131.

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

non in general, and the work of the Areopagite in particular, for ex-
ample, when they state that the Darkness mentioned by the Areopa-
gite only represents the mental or intellectual limitation of the human
being when experiencing the sacred.

What does then the unknown Syrian monk mean when he men-
tions the mystical Darkness? First of all, there is a Darkness where
God dwells or that is even God Himself, for it is above all knowable
reality (Ps. 18:12). In Psalms 18:11, it is explained that God’s “pavil-
ion round about Him was... thick clouds”, wherein only those who
truly love Him may enter. This is adapted by Dionysius when he
states that “the Divine Darkness is the unapproachable light in which
God is said to dwell” (Letter V, 1073A). Therefore, the Divine
Darkness is a liminal zone where the Divinity tells man how he can
and how he cannot pass through the Cloud. And, contrary to what
could be supposed, such a Cloud does not constitute an opaque or
impassable barrier that hides God. On the contrary, it is a place,
mansion or state that indicates the correct disposition that must be
adopted by those who long for knowing their Creator. In sum, we
can pass through the Cloud, but only when we have the necessary
qualifications of disappropriation of the senses and the thoughts.

On the other hand, regarding Exodus 20:21, the Areopagite ex-

plains that God cannot be perceived by the sight, since He is
atheatos (invisible) (The Mystical Theology, 1000), so the Cloud and
the Darkness would symbolize the impossibility to know God as an
object among others because God is neither an object nor, strictly
speaking, objectifiable. Precisely for that reason, being God the
Light or even superior to the Light, He seems, to the eyes of man, a
Darkness or Gloom. But it is to be understood that it is not being de-
scribed here a merely intellectual human state derived from the ordi-
nary form of knowledge through the usual relationship of a subject
that knows by apprehending objects. Dionysius is referring to anoth-

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er higher form of knowledge that transcends, for it unifies, the sub-

ject-object relationship.

How to define a direct, immediate form of knowledge in which

the knowing subject tries to know an object that is itself inconceiva-
ble and inapprehensible? What is more, how to know God without
converting Him into an object? Therefore, how to define that form of
knowledge that surpasses or unifies the subject-object relationship?
How to describe a form of knowledge in which the subject knows
himself without converting himself into an object of his own
knowledge? How to define, in sum, a form of knowledge in which
the supposed knowing subject has momentarily disappeared? Diony-
sius the Areopagite defines this peculiar, paradoxical form of
knowledge as “unknowing”, “non-knowing”, agnōsia (The Mystical
Theology, 1001A; Letter I, 1065A). But that agnōsia is not a mere
privation of knowledge or a simple ignorance, but a luminous or
learned ignorance (docta ignorantia502), since, thanks to it, “enters
every one deemed worthy to know and to see God, by the very fact
of neither seeing nor knowing” (Letter V, 1073A). Thus, once puri-
fied by this humble agnōsia, the most spiritual part of man is con-
sidered equal to the Being and then receives the Light. And even
though that cloud of unknowing represents the culmination of the ab-
solute denial, only there, paradoxically, He “is revealed without
veil”: aperikalyptōs (The Mystical Theology, 1000C). Thus, the
agnōsia, the unknowing, becomes a true knowing. It is not a great
paradox based on the irrationality of the mystical knowledge; it is the
access to another state or degree of existence in which nothing is
known because the ordinary knowledge has been transcended. It is a
previous or higher than the ordinary knowledge.

502
As it would be said by Saint Bonaventure in Breviloquium, P. 5, ch. 6, and
Commentary on the Sentences, L. II, d. 23, a. 2, or by Nicholas of Cusa in his work
De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance).

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

This way, it is clear that the apophatic way is not only an intel-
lectual activity, but it is a progress of purification toward the union
that takes place in the agnōsia: “And, if any one, having seen God,
understood what he saw, he did not see Him... And the all-perfect
ignorance, in its superior sense, is a knowledge of Him, who is
above all known things” (Letter I, 1065A). Therefore, gloom and
darkness define a state that deprives man of his human inclination
that obstruct or interfere with knowledge. The agnōsia consists in an
immediate, direct knowledge, in knowing without a subject who
knows. Therefore, in such a state, the contemplative knows neither
that he is contemplating, nor that he is enlightened, because the true
light “escapes those who possess existing light” (Letter I, 1065A). It
is not known because it is been. There is no individual knower, but a
supraindividual knowledge. From the point of view of the individual
or subject, such knowledge equals Nothing, unknowing. But from
the supraindividual or spiritual point of view, that unknowing is the
All. Dionysius invokes Ps. 36:9, “in Thy light shall we see light”, to
define a non-dual or unitive state of the non-knowledge of God in
which there are no mental discourses or reflections: “And, if any
one, having seen God, understood what he saw, he did not see Him”
(Letter I, 1065A). On the contrary, when that degree of the Darkness
where God dwells is achieved, the contemplative disappears as a
subject and then he knows that he knows, because there is no subject
to whom he may attribute the action of knowing or who claims the
appropriation of any knowledge. That knowledge of nothing from
nothing, which equals All in All, is the natural state of the spirit
when it is free of corporal, sensory and mental ties (which equals the
state of every man in the earthly Paradise). And all this without for-
getting that, ultimately, the divine essence is above knowing and un-
knowing, as well as above darkness (The Mystical Theology,
1048A).

The ineffability of the mystical knowledge does not prevent Dio-

nysius from explaining his ecstatic experiences with precision. By

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means of the purification of the senses and the control over the
thoughts, the first few fruits of the contemplative prayer are attained:
“By the unceasing and absolute renunciation of yourself and all
things, you shall in pureness cast all things aside, and be released
from all, and so shall be led upwards to the Ray of that divine Dark-
ness which exceeds all existence” (The Mystical Theology, 1001A).
The contemplative must persevere in that dark Darkness, since, as
the Areopagite explains, the higher we ascend on the Darkness, the
closer we are to the source of the divine Light. In fact, it is “in the
darkest” of the Cloud, “in the absolutely intangible and invisible”,
where enlightenment happens. That is why the contemplative must
frequent that Darkness of the senses and the thoughts if he aspires to
see the light that blinds, which is now defined as the Luminous
Darkness.

There seems to be, thus, two Darknesses or, rather, a Darkness

with two aspects: a dark Darkness and a luminous Darkness or Ray
of Darkness that, should the comparison be allowed, are a precedent
of the night of the senses and the night of the spirit of Saint John of
the Cross. In effect, by means of the Darkness or night of the senses,
the mind is disciplined and purified until detaching itself from the at-
traction of the objects and the rest of requests of the world; by means
of the Darkness or night of the spirit, the contemplative forgets even
himself, his own will and everything other than what God wants.
This way, “By the unceasing and absolute renunciation of yourself
and all things, you shall in pureness cast all things aside, and be re-
leased from all, and so shall be led upwards to the Ray of that divine
Darkness which exceeds all existence” (1001A).

What is the Ray of Darkness? Doubtlessly, it is the enlighten-

ment or vision of the light already described by the Platonism and
that was called many names by the Christianity503. It is clear that it is

503
Vid. Plato, Republic 7.518a and Phaedo 99e. In the patristic tradition, the
obumbratio (darkening) of the spirit was admitted by Tertullian (Adversus

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

not, strictly speaking, a vision with the physical eyes, since Dionysi-
us himself explains that enlightenment frees man from “the heavy
burden of darkness” (tōi pollōi barei tou skotous) (On the Divine
Names, 700D-701A) that keeps our eyelids closed. That is to say, en-
lightenment takes place while the eyes are closed, being the blind-
ness of The Mystical Theology 1001A a consequence of the volun-
tary disconnection of the senses. Therefore, the dazzle of the “Ray of
Divine Darkness which exceeds all existence” (The Mystical Theol-
ogy, 1001A) describes an extra-sensory state that takes place in the
most intimate place within the contemplative.

That supra-personal knowledge of God is not accessed through

the reading and study of books, or through any human effort, but it is
a divine gift. It could be inferred that this requires a certain prepara-
tory ascesis that, in any case, would be a necessary but not sufficient
condition to attain a contact with the divine essence. Therefore, there
is an active contemplation that is the consequence of the human will
and efforts, but there is also a passive contemplation that is a gift or
grace of God (On the Divine Names, 648), since “Eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things
which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9; cf. Is.
64:4). Dionysius often defines that eminent knowledge of God as
“enlightenment”. Such metaphors were profusely used by the Pla-
tonists and Neoplatonists, but also by Christians: “God is Light” (1
Jn. 1:5), “God is Light and those who are granted His vision see Him
as light; we see Him as light, because the light of His glory comes
before His face and it is impossible that He appears in a different
way than as light; those who have not seen that light have not seen
God, since God is Light”504. “God is Light, an infinite, incompre-
hensible light”505. The light is not a mere metaphor for the Eastern
Church, but a real aspect of the divinity: “In Thy Light shall we see

Marcionem, IV, 22, P. L., 2, 413C, and De anima 45, P. L., 2, 726B) as a symptom
of ecstasy.
504
Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Homily LXXIX, 2.
505
Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Theological Discourse, III.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

Light” (Ps. 36:9). As well, according to Dionysius, the light comes

from God “From the Good comes the light which is an image of
Goodness; wherefore the Good is described by the name of Light...
The image of the Divine Goodness, faintly reechoing the activity of
the Good, illumines all things that can receive its light while retain-
ing the utter simplicity of light, and expands above and below
throughout the visible world the beams of its own radiance... Even so
does the light... draw together all things and attract them unto itself...
those that can receive its light and warmth, those that are merely held
in being by its rays” (On the Divine Names, IV, 4). It is in this Light,
which exceeds the intellect and the senses, under the shape of “invis-
ible fire” or “burning bush”, that God makes Himself known. There,
the body does not hinder the mystical experience anymore, since, not
for nothing, man was created in the image and likeness of God. The
Grace is Light; it is “the splendor of things all holy, which sheds its
light clearly and without symbol to men inspired, as being congenial
to the thing contemplated” (The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, IV, III, 2).
And, as this mystery is beyond all theological speculation, it is only
possible to keep a respectful mental silence.

V.- LATER INFLUENCE OF DIONYSIUS THE AREOPA-

GITE AND THE TOPIC OF THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS

The metaphor of the Darkness or Cloud that appears in the Are-

opagite’s Corpus comes from Ex. 19:16 and 20:21, which describe
Moses’ ascent to Mount Sinai. As well, other biblical passages (2
Chr. 6:1; 2 Sam. 22:12; Ps. 18:9-12; 97:2) turn to the darkness in or-
der to represent the cloud that covers God (Job 22:14; 26:8-9) or
marks His presence (Ex. 40:34-38, Num. 9:14:14; 15-23; Deut. 1:33;
31:15; Neh. 9:12-19; Ps. 78:14; or even Lev. 16:2; 1 Kings 8:10-11;
Ez. 10:3-4). Certainly, this topic also appears in Plotinus (Enneads
V, 3, 13), Proclus and other Neoplatonists.

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

The image of Moses passing through the Cloud had been used
before by Philo of Alexandria in order to symbolize the “invisible,
shapeless and incorporeal” nature of God (Vit. Mos. I, 158; De
Mutat. nomin., 7) that can only be passed by the initiates into “the
most sacred mysteries” (De gigant., 54). It was also used by Gregory
of Nyssa (Exhortation to a Virgin, P. G., 46, 413C; In Hexaem., P.
G., 44, 65B-C), above all in his Homilies on the Song of Songs, to
symbolize the progressive renunciation of the sensible and intelligi-
ble objects: “Having disregarded the sensible, the soul is surrounded
by the Divine Night, looking for Him who is hidden in the Darkness.
She has the love of Him who she looks for. But this Lover escapes
all attempt to be captured by her thoughts” (VI, 892D-893A). After
persevering in the Darkness, the vision of the Ineffable is attained.
But, even so, the vision is not complete in this life. That is why the
Exodus says that God refuses to show His face and confines Himself
to showing only His back, because the created being cannot know
God but through His later manifestations.

Anyway, during the Middle Ages, the work of Dionysius the Ar-
eopagite reached a high prestige for being the object of notable
commentaries by Saint Maximus the Confessor (PL 91, 1031-1060),
who can be considered its main promoter. Maximus (582-662) was
born in Constantinople, in a noble family. Though he was an imperi-
al civil servant, he gave up this life and withdrew to a monastery
when he was about 30 years old. After that, he traveled through Al-
exandria, Carthage and Rome. His thought, with a Neoplatonic
background, dates back to Origen through Evagrius Ponticus. He is
also profusely mentioned by John of Damascus, Saint Theodore the
Studite, Gregory Palamas, George Pachymeres, etc.

In the West, his works were very appreciated by Saint Gregory

the Great and Johannes Scotus Eriugena. Saint Bonaventure ex-
plained, “it is called darkness because the intellect does not see;
however, the soul is extremely illuminated!”. The Book of Twenty-

457
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Four Philosophers (13th century) had also a special influence. It af-

firms, “God is the darkness in the soul being left after all light” and
“God is that which the mind only knows in ignorance”506. But, most
of all, The Cloud of Unknowing, whose anonymous author presents
himself as based on Dionysius: “And truly, whoso will look in Dio-
nysius’ books, he shall find that his words will clearly affirm all that
I have said or shall say, from the beginning of this treatise to the
end” (LXX). Hugh of Saint Victor (1095-1141) wrote one of the
most important commentaries on The Heavenly Hierarchy: the
Corpus Dionysiacum Parisiense, which was the base of the Neopla-
tonic thought during the 13th and 14th centuries. As well, Richard of
Saint Victor (who died in 1176), Hugh’s disciple, is inspired by the
agnōsia of Dionysius when he explains ecstasy, rapture or alienatio
mentis. Saint Albert the Great (1206-1280), who mentions Dionysius
1,200 times, started to study The Heavenly Hierarchy and The Eccle-
siastical Hierarchy in Paris about 1246, believing that Dionysius
was a disciple of Paul and, above all, because he considered him a
truly inspired man.

For his part, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1221-1274) studied the

commentaries on The Heavenly Hierarchy and The Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy in Paris until 1248. Dionysius is the only author about
whom Saint Thomas publicly proclaims that he follows his teach-
ings, and he mentions him 1,700 times. As well, the Franciscan mys-
tic Angela of Foligno (1248-1309) knows and uses the Areopagite’s
language507. Likewise, Dante (1265-1321) states, “Here we must ob-

506
Anonymous, The Book of Twenty-Four Philosophers, XXI and XXIII. Vid. El
libro de los veinticuatro filósofos, Madrid, 2000.
507
“Once my soul was elevated, and I saw the light, the beauty, and the fullness
that is in God in a way that I had never seen before in so great a manner. I did not
see love there, I then lost the love which was mine and was made non-love. After-
ward, I saw Him in a darkness, and in a darkness precisely because the good that
He is, is far too great to be conceived or understood. Indeed, anything conceivable
or understandable does not attain this good or even come near it. My soul was then
granted a most certain faith, a secure and most firm hope, a continual security
about God which took away all my fear. In this good, which is seen in the dark-
ness, I recollected myself totally. I was made so sure of God that in no way can I

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 THE MYSTICAL DARKNESS ACCORDING TO SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

serve that in a certain way these things dazzle our intellect, insofar as
certain things are affirmed to exist which our intellect cannot per-
ceive: namely God, eternity, and primal matter... But given the na-
ture of their essence, we cannot understand them: only by negative
reasoning can we approach an understanding of these things, and not
otherwise” (Convivio, III, 15). In the same direction, Dionysius in-
spired Peter Olivi, Thomas Gallus of Vercelli, Eckhart, Tauler and
Ruysbroeck. In fact, Dionysius van Rijkel the Karthusian (1402-
1471) affirmed that “John [of Ruysbroeck] can be named, due to his
most excellent wisdom, the alter Dionysius”.

The Flemish Franciscan Hendrik Herp (1420-1477) reproduces

some of Dionysius’ paragraphs almost literally in his Golden Direc-
tory of Contemplatives508. It would be pointless to mention here the
list of authors that belong to the school of the Areopagite: Nicholas
of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, Saint Francis de Sales, Fénelon... Con-
cerning the Spanish mysticism, the following authors are to be high-
lighted: Peter of Hispania, Francisco de Osuna, Saint Teresa of Je-
sus, Saint John of the Cross, Miguel de Molinos...

ever entertain any doubts about Him or of my possession of Him. Of this I have the
utmost certitude. And in this most efficacious good seen in this darkness now re-
sides my most firm hope, one in which I am totally recollected and secure... The
soul sees nothing and it sees everything... And the many, indescribable displays of
friendship, and all the words which God spoke to me, and also everything you have
written, I understand that they are so inferior to that good which I see with such
great darkness; consequently, I do not place my hope in them; indeed, my hope is
not in them. In fact... in no way should I diminish my hope, my most secure hope,
which remains certain in the All-Good seen by me with such great darkness... And
when I am in that darkness, I do not remember anything about humanity or the
God-Man, or anything that has form. Yet I am in that darkness, I see everything
and I see nothing”, Angela of Foligno, Book of Life ch. XI. Vid. Libro de la Vida,
Salamanca, 1991.
508
“... gathered the intellectual powers inside the unity of the spirit and crossed the
unity of the spirit until being immediately before God, a light emerges from the di-
vine unity, radiating in the elevated unity of our spirit, manifested under a triple
likeness. Firstly, as a darkness, about which we will speak later. After that, a great
stillness appears... Thirdly, this light manifests itself as an absolute emptiness... It
is so bright that the understanding is dazzled and blinded, as anyone would be if he
tried to reach for the Sun itself” (Golden Directory of Contemplatives, ch. 58).

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 ECKHART AND CONTEMPLATION

“If I did not exist, then neither would God have

existed as God. I am the cause of God’s existence
as God”. (Meister Eckhart, Sermon Beati pauperes
spiritu...).

Little is known about the life of Meister Eckhart (1260-1328).

When he was very young, he entered the Dominican monastery of
Erfurt and, before 1280, he had already attended Theology lessons in
Cologne. He finishes his studies as a “Bachelor of Theology” in Par-
is in 1293 and, at the beginning of the academic year 1293-1294, he
is known to be a lecturer of the Sentences (Collationes) at the Sor-
bonne. A few months later, he is appointed as Prior of the Domini-
cans of Erfurt and Vicar of Thuringia. During this period (1294-
1298), he will write his Talks of Instructions, following the style of
the ancient monastic collationes that were held between a spiritual
director and the young postulants.

Around 1302, he is promoted to ordinary professor of Theology

at the University of Paris (Magister Actu Regens), in a chair reserved
for non-French professors. Once finished that academic year in Sep-
tember 1303, he returns to Erfurt as the responsible for the new reli-
gious province of Saxony, in order to manage the spiritual and ad-
ministrative direction of nearly fifty monasteries and participate in
different general chapters (Toulouse 1304, Strasbourg 1307, Piacen-
za 1310). Precisely, in the General Chapter of Toulouse, he was ap-
pointed as General Vicar of the Order for the province of Bohemia.
In the Chapter of 1311, he is exempted from this duty in order that
he may hold a chair in Paris again, an honor that, until that moment,
had only been granted to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Between 1323-

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

1324, he will teach from his chair of Theology at the Studium

Generale of Cologne.

His academic success and his increasing prestige provoked the

suspicion and envy of some brethren of the Order, who finally de-
nounced the suspicious contents of certain statements written in his
works. For this reason, in 1326, the Archbishop of Cologne, Hein-
rich II of Virneburg, receives from Hermann von Summo and Wil-
helm von Nidecke a list of suspicious sentences extracted from the
writings by Eckhart. In those years, the inquisitorial activity was par-
ticularly focused on the spiritual movements of Beghards,
Beguines509 and mystics who were on the edge of the institutional
church. Once the process was started, Eckhart died at the beginning
of the year 1328 in Avignon, waiting for a resolution that would
come on March the 27th, 1329 by means of the Bull “In Agro
Dominico”510. Despite the surprising and opportunistic papal con-
demnation, only explicable by the particular conditionings of that
time, Eckhart’s work was perpetuated by his disciples, the Domini-
cans Henry Suso and Johannes Tauler, and it influenced different au-
thors, among whom it is to be mentioned John of Ruysbroeck (1291-
1381), Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), Saint Teresa of Jesus, Saint
John of the Cross, etc.

Eckhart had conceived a united plan for his works written in Lat-
in that had the name of Opus Tripartitum and consisted of the Opus
Propositionum, composed of more than a thousand propositions ar-

509
One year before Eckhart’s arrival in Paris, the Beguine Marguerite Porete, au-
thor of The Mirror of Simple Souls, was executed. Even though there are evident
similarities between Porete and Eckhart, the German Meister fiercely criticized
certain excesses of the Beguine movement in his famous sermon Beati pauperes
spiritu... and in his short treatise On the Noble Man.
510
The limited information that we have about Meister Eckhart precisely comes
from the documents and news that were part of this inquisitorial trial. A study on
such proceedings and the suspicious sentences can be consulted in Jeanne Ancelet-
Hustache, Master Eckhart and the Rhineland Mystics, New York, 1957, pp. 135-
155; and also in G. Faggin, Maestro Eckhart y la mística medieval alemana, Bue-
nos Aires, 1953, pp. 95 and 107.

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 ECKHART AND CONTEMPLATION

ranged in fourteen treatises, out of which only the preface and a de-
velopment of the topic Being is God are preserved. After that comes
the Opus Quaestionum, whose plan is similar to the Summa by Saint
Thomas; he actually planned to answer “Questions” related to the
Summa. Finally, the Opus Expositionum, where, following the dis-
cursive model of the Questions by Saint Augustine, he would ex-
pound his main ideas by commenting some texts of the Holy Scrip-
tures. The second part of this Opus Expositionum was composed of
Latin sermons with different levels of development. From the Opus
Expositionum, only six Commentaries are preserved: on the Genesis
(two), Exodus, Ecclesiastes, Book of Wisdom and on the Gospel of
Saint John.

Whereas the Latin works by Eckhart that have survived are few,
on the contrary, numerous manuscripts written in German have been
preserved, in their majority sermons that, according to the main spe-
cialist and researcher about Eckhart, Prof. Josef Quint, can be count-
ed to be more than two-hundred511.
Eckhart’s sources are many, and most times expressly men-
tioned. Thus, he cites Saint Albert and Saint Thomas, the Neopla-
tonists, Saint Augustine, the Pseudo-Dionysius, Scotus Eriugena, the
thinkers of the School of Chartres, the Victorine mystics... He also
invokes Muslim and Jewish writers such as Averroes, Avicenna, Al-
gazel, Maimonides, etc. Eckhart also mentions Hermes Trismegistus
even before Marsilio Ficino edited the Corpus Hermeticum.

511
A complete Spanish edition of Meister Eckhart’s works is the one co-edited by
Sanz y Torres/Ignitus, Tratados espirituales, Madrid, 2008 and Sermones, Madrid,
2009, which is based, in turn, on the critical edition written in German by Josef
Quint: Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke, composed with the
support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (W. Kohlhammer Verlag,
Stuttgart), and the edition revised by Largier, Meister Eckhart, Werke, 2 Vol.,
Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 1993 [An English edition of Eck-
hart’s complete works can be found in The Complete Mystical Works of Meister
Eckhart, translated by Bernard McGinn, Crossroad, 2010, as well as some selec-
tions such as the ones published by Oliver Dates (1994) or David O’Neal (2005)].

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

I.- SUFFERING CAUSED BY THE SEPARATION FROM

GOD

What is the starting point of the teachings of Meister Eckhart? If

there is any starting point, it is man’s suffering. Where does this suf-
fering come from? Its origin is found in man’s separation from or
unlikeness to God, caused by his expulsion from “Paradise” and his
subsequent entry into the realm of unlikeness. This situation is ex-
plained with the following example: “If I placed a piece of red-hot
coal in my hand, then that would cause me pain. This comes solely
from nothingness”, that is, from what my hand does not have (Ser-
mon In hoc apparuit charitas Dei...). Consequently, I suffer because
there is no likeness to God, I suffer because of my unlikeness to
God. And precisely that suffering is a call of attention of the soul:
“The fastest animal that brings you to perfection is suffering” (Trea-
tise On Detachment), so that “The greater the suffering, the less we
suffer” (Sermon Praedica verbum...). Here begins the path of the
seeker, of the pilgrim who longs to return to his original Fatherland
and recover his happiness. Many seekers spend their lives hoarding
experiences that provide them with objects; “Therefore we want first
one thing and then another. Now we practice wisdom and now some
art or other. It is because the soul does not possess the One that she
will never find rest until all things are one in God. God is one; this is
the blessedness of the soul, her adornment and her peace” (Sermon
Unus Deus et Pater omnium). But man is still dissatisfied because he
does not obtain a full satisfaction in the external world. Then, the
moment comes when he realizes that it is not about experiencing, but
about being... and that the way to be is not outside, in the external
objects and experiences, but inside. It is not about possessing, adding
or hoarding things by oneself, but about detaching oneself from what
is accessory.

Eckhart insists that there is something sweet that drives man to

disclose or uncover that “little spark” that is within him: “When the

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soul is borne into God by His divine wisdom, she is clarified and
sublimed in light and in grace, all that is foreign to the soul being de-
tached and shelled away, together with a portion of herself. Further, I
related how the soul, not thoroughly purged of soul accretions, is
carried up and flows back into the son as pure as she flowed out in
Him. The Father created the soul in the Son, so if we are ever to get
into the ground of God, into His innermost heart, we must take the
lowest place in our own ground” (Sermon Our Lord lifted up...).
And, in another sermon, he elaborates: “There is something very
pleasant that moves and impels and drives all things to return there
from where they emanated, while that something remains still in it-
self. And the nobler a thing is, the more constant its flow will be.
Their original ground impels them all. Wisdom and goodness and
truth add something; the One adds but the ground of the being”
(Sermon Vidi supra Montem Syon).

On another occasion, he compares man’s anxiety, restlessness or

desperation to find his Creator with a hound scents the rabbit. Not all
the hounds will reach the prey because not all of them have the same
eagerness or determination. This example is used by the German
Meister to distinguish the many psychological profiles of the spiritu-
al seekers: “The hound, when it sees the rabbit and catches its scent,
rushes after the rabbit. The other hounds, when they see the first one
running, rush after it as well, but they soon get tired and give up.
This is what happens to a man who has seen God and has scented
Him: he does not give up, he rushes all the time after Him. That is
why David says: ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good’ (Ps. 34:8).
That man will not get tired, but the other ones will soon get tired.
Some people rush so fast that they overtake God, some others run
beside God, some follow God. Those who overtake Him are the ones
who follow their own will and do not want to accept God’s will; this
is absolutely wrong. Others, those who run beside God, say: ‘O Fa-
ther, I want nothing as I will, but as Thou wilt’ (cf. Mt. 26:39); but,
when they are ill, they wish God want them to become healthy. The

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third kind of men follows God wherever He want to go; they follow
Him with good will, and these ones are perfect” (Sermon Prophet
Daniel says: And now with all our heart we follow...).

II.- THE QUEST FOR THE HIDDEN GOD

Nevertheless, this quest for happiness in God also contains cer-

tain paradoxes. First of all, God seems to avoid us, but “The fact that
He is concealed is entirely our own fault. We are the cause of all our
obstacles” (Sermon In hoc apparuit charitas Dei...). One of those
obstacles, maybe not the most important one but indeed the first one
a seeker must face, is to represent God as an object that is to be lo-
cated and grasped by the subject. This way, God is converted into
something external to oneself, and the quest is imagined as a meth-
od, path or process full of the most laborious stages and tasks. The
seeker’s mind ends up projecting its own speculations on that object
that it believes it is God, moving further and further away from Him.
According to Eckhart, “There are people who savor God in one way
but not in another, and they want to possess God according to one
manner of devotion and not another. I can tolerate this, but it is quite
wrong... Therefore you should not confine yourself to just one man-
ner of devotion, since God is to be found in no particular way, nei-
ther this one nor that. That is why they do it wrong who take God
just in one particular way. They take the way rather than God. Re-
member this then: intend God alone and seek Him only” (Sermon In
hoc apparuit charitas Dei...). To think in God purely implies to re-
linquish the idea to approach God with the purpose of obtaining any
benefit. The idea itself of “purpose” is contrary to the mentioned pu-
rity. Even the persistence of thought (that is, an I as a subject who
thinks about separated objects) is another ballast we must throw out.
And rather than seeing God as an object, we should consider that he
who sees God in such a way is but another object, since he depends
on God: “Know that when you seek anything of your own, you will

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never find God, because you do not seek God purely. You are seek-
ing something along with God, and you are acting just as if you were
to make a candle out of God in order to look for something with it.
Once one finds the things one is looking for, one throws the candle
away. This is what you are doing: Whatever else you are looking for
in addition to God, it is nothing, no matter what it might be, whether
it be something useful or reward or devotion or whatever it might be.
You are seeking nothing, and so you also find nothing. The reason
why you find nothing is that you are seeking nothing. All creatures
are a pure nothing. I do not just say that they are insignificant or are
only a little something: They are a pure nothing. Whatever has no
being is not. Creatures have no being because their being depends on
God’s presence. If God were to turn away from creatures for an in-
stant, they would turn to nothing. I once said, and it is true: if some-
one were to have the whole world and God, he would not have more
than if he had God alone. All creatures have nothing more without
God than a gnat has without God, just the same, neither less nor
more. (Sermon Omne datum optimum...).

Then, how can an object or a nothing become united with God?

No way. As God is not an object, it is only possible to “approach”
Him through that part of man that is not an object. That is what Eck-
hart calls “little spark” or ground of the soul. To discover what is that
part of man equals to discover who or what God is; “Twenty-four
philosophers came together and wanted to discuss what God is512...
One said: ... God is something that is of necessity above being...
Whatever has being, time, or place does not touch God; He is above
it. God is in all creatures, insofar as they have being, and yet He is
above them... God is neither being nor goodness. Goodness adheres
to being and is not more extensive. If there were no being, neither
would there be goodness. Yet being is purer than goodness. God is
neither good, nor better, nor best of all. Whoever would say that God

512
Eckhart refers to the Liber XXIV Philosophorum by the Pseudo-Hermes Tris-
megistus.

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is good would be treating Him as unjustly as though he were calling

the sun black” (Sermon Quasi stella matutina...). God is neither this
nor that. Eckhart thus connects with that lineage of Christian mystics
that associated their intellective discourse and their ecstatic experi-
ence with the overcoming of opposites by means of a “negative”
(apophatic) way. God is Nothing, that is, He is out of our intellectual
categories. According to the German Meister, God is “the One where
all multiplicity is one and homogeneous” (Table Talk: Solitude and
God-Getting), because “where there are two, there is lack” (Sermon
Hoc est praeceptum meum...). All the attributes belong to God and
He is none of them: “God is neither being nor rational being, nor
does He know either this or that. Therefore, God is free of all things,
which is why He is all things” (Sermon Beati pauperes spiritu...).
And the Meister himself asks: “And if He is neither goodness nor be-
ing nor truth, what is He then? He is nothing. He is neither this nor
that” (Sermon Jesus constrained His disciples...). “However, He is
neither this nor that, and thus the Father is not satisfied with it. Ra-
ther, He returns to His origin, to His innermost heart, to the ground
and core of the Father-being where He has eternally been, within
Himself, in His Fatherhood, where He delights in Himself, the Fa-
ther as the Father of Himself in the Only-begotten Son. There, all
blades of grass, wood, and stone, all things are One” (Sermon Hec
dicit Dominus...). In sum, no name fits God. Even the formula found
in the Exodus, “I AM THAT I AM”, means, according to Eckhart, that
God wants to be considered without attributes, and that it is not pos-
sible to add any predicate to the verb “to be”. “God is neither good,
nor better, nor best”. He is (the only one) who Is. God is one, the
One, the Only One. “One is the negation of negation... With God
there is a negation of negation: he is one and negates all else, since
there is nothing outside God” (Sermon Unus Deus et Pater omnium).
Nonetheless, God has given Himself certain names so that we can
think, reflect and meditate on the divine names. “David says: ‘The
Lord is His name’ (Ps. 68:4)... But I say that if someone perceives
something in God and gives it a name, then that is not God. God is

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above names and nature... There is no name we can devise for God.
But some names are permitted to us, with which the saints have ad-
dressed Him and which God has so consecrated in their hearts and
bathed in a divine light... We should learn that there is no name we
can give God so that it might seem that we have praised and honored
Him enough, since God is above names and is ineffable” (Sermon
Misit dominus manum suam...). He is Deus absconditus, the unmen-
tionable, and that is why Eckhart recommends: “listen and keep si-
lence”.

The essence of this via remotionis or negative theology (God is

neither this nor that) is that “God, who is nameless, since he has no
name, is ineffable, and the soul in her ground is also ineffable, as He
is ineffable” (Sermon Qui odit animam suam). If it can be found out
that “Verily Thou art a God who hidest Thyself” (Is. 45:15) is be-
cause the soul witnesses it, it is present there to understand that there
is a place, which is non-place, and a moment, which is non-moment,
where and when God and Soul are alike: “In the ground of the soul,
where God’s ground and the soul’s ground are one ground. The
more one seeks you, the less one finds you. You should so seek Him
that you find Him nowhere. If you do not seek Him, then you will
find Him” (Sermon Homo quidam nobilis...).

In order to approach God, to become united with God, one must

know what God is. And what God is, is known through what He is
not. But that personal inquiry or reflection must also be used as a
means of introspection or internalization about what our real nature
is, that is, the deepest ground of the soul. That meditation must re-
form the meditator, helping him to absorb himself; “we should be in-
formed back into the simple goodness, which is God” (Sermon Misit
dominus manus...). Such in-formation, that is, the return of the crea-
ture to its Creator, implies not only a change or conversion of the
idea of God, but also an overcoming of the mere discursive or dual
thought (subject-object) into another spontaneous, natural, unitive

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form of cognition. Already in his Talks of Instruction, Eckhart points

out that: “A man should not have, or be satisfied with, an imagined
God... Rather, one should have an essential God, who far transcends
the thought of man and all creatures” (Talks of Instruction, 6), so that
“The more He is known as One, the more He is known as All” (Ser-
mon Our Lord lifted up...). In order to achieve that goal, we must
approach the “naked” God: “Strip away from God therefore every-
thing which clothes Him and take Him in His dressing room where
He is naked and bare in Himself” (Sermon Manete in me...). What is
left? That which is left is the immanent God... the Soul. Said with
Eckhart’s words, the quest of God (the little spark of the Soul) im-
plies a process of “uncreation” (Ungeschaffenheit) by which the soul
loses its name or personal attributes in order to become united with
That who is beyond all names. To assume and verify that we are not
the body, that we have neither a past nor a future, that we are neither
this nor that... is to lose our name, to lose our being (Entwerdung) in
order to attain God’s being, which is identical to His Name (Ex.
3:13-14).

III.- GOD AND GODHEAD

It is to be specified that one of the most noticeable distinctions

that Meister Eckhart draws is that, when referring to God, he distin-
guishes between the completely inapprehensible and ineffable
“Godhead”, and “God” as He is presented to man. This distinction
refutes any suspicion of pride when Eckhart affirms: “If I did not ex-
ist, then neither would God have existed as God. I am the cause of
God’s existence as God” (Sermon Beati pauperes spiritu...); without
the creatures, “God would not be God”, so that, “when I... received
my created being, I came into the possession of a God for, until crea-
tures came into existence, God was not God”. He was “the eternal
abyss of divine being”. More specifically, “God and Godhead are as
far apart from each other as heaven and earth... All creatures speak

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God forth... And why do they not speak of the Godhead? All that is
in the Godhead is One, and of this no one can speak. God acts, while
the Godhead does not act. There is nothing for it to do, for there is no
action in it. It has never sought to do anything. The difference be-
tween God and Godhead is that one acts and the other does not”
(Sermons Beati pauperes spiritu... and Nolite timere eos...). Based
on this metaphysical distinction between God and Godhead, Eckhart
thus expounds one of his subtlest conclusions: “When I existed in
my first cause, I had no God and I was my own cause. I willed noth-
ing and desired nothing, for I was naked being and I knew myself by
the savor of truth. Then I desired myself and nothing else. What I de-
sired, that was myself, and I was myself what I desired, and I was
free both of God and of all things. But when I emerged by free
choice and received my created being, I came into the possession of
a God for, until creatures came into existence, God was not God, but
was rather what He was. Then, when creatures emerged and received
their created being, God was not God in Himself but in creatures”
(Sermon Beati pauperes spiritu). In sum, man is the cause of him-
self, insofar as he is an unborn (ungeborn). And, from that perspec-
tive, either timeless or previous to Creation, it makes no sense to
speak about God. That is why, when Creation takes place, it makes
no sense as well to speak about Godhead. This is used by Eckhart to
explain the key to retrace the path back to the original poverty or
simplicity: “They who are to have this poverty must live in such a
way that they do not know that they do not live either for them-
selves, for truth or for God. They must rather be free of the
knowledge that they do not know, understand or sense that God lives
in them. More even than this: they must be free of all the knowledge
that lives in them, for when we were contained in the eternal essence
of God, there was nothing other than God in us, but what was in us
was ourselves” (Sermon Beati pauperes spiritu...).

Keeping in mind this distinction, we can understand Eckhart’s

statement that the final goal of man cannot be the God of Creation,

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but the Godhead that is beyond God’s being and the creatures. And
only from this viewpoint does it make sense the assertion of those
mystics that, like Eckhart, stated that man must aspire to break free
from God (Gotes ledic werden), “... to make me free from God”,
since only the created being is subject to time, that is, to birth and
death. But the heavenly man, as an essential being previous to time,
is an unborn (ungeborn) and, therefore, he can never die; his eternity
consists in this. This return to the Godhead implies an ontological
journey through Creation in order to reach the Godhead being abso-
lutely free from himself, and become one in it; in sum, to realize the
Supreme Identity.

What hinders that vision of God? The most common error is to

consider oneself as separated from God. “Many simple people imag-
ine that they must consider God over there and themselves here. This
is not the way it is. God and I are one” (Sermon Iusti autem in
perpetuum vivent). The saying of Saint Paul: “One God and Father
of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all” (Eph. 4:6), is
used by Eckhart to explain that “One is that to which nothing has
been added. The soul takes the Godhead where it is purified in itself,
where nothing has been added to it, where nothing has been thought.
One is the negation of negation. All creatures contain a negation
within themselves: one creature denies that it is another. One particu-
lar angel denies that he is another. But with God there is a negation
of negation: He is one and negates all else, since there is nothing
outside God. All creatures are in God and are His own Godhead,
which signifies the fullness of which I spoke above” (Sermon Unus
Deus et Pater omnium). Ultimately, “All that God does is One; this
is why he gives birth to me as His Son without any difference”
(Sermon Iusti autem in perpetuum vivent). He uses this idea to con-
clude that alle crêatûren sint ein wesen, “all creatures are one being”
(this was one of the incriminated theses).
Then, if there is just one Being, what is the “I”? Eckhart distin-
guishes three modalities of “I”, equivalent or symmetrical to the no-

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tions of Godhead, God and Creation: a) as unborn, b) as only son of

the Father, and c) as a mortal, illusory entity:

a) In effect, commenting Paul’s statement that “By the grace of

God I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10), the German mystic expounds:
“Now if you ask me, since I am an only son whom the heavenly Fa-
ther has eternally borne, if then I have eternally been a son in God,
then I say: yes and no. Yes, a son, as the Father has eternally borne
me, and not a Son, as to being unborn”. With the biblical expression
“In principio”513, “we are given to understand that we are an only
Son whom the Father has been eternally begetting out of the hidden
darkness of eternal concealment, indwelling in the first beginning of
the primal purity which is the plenitude of all purity. There I have
been eternally at rest and asleep in the hidden understanding of the
eternal Father, immanent and unspoken” (Sermon Ave Gratia
plena...). Insofar as I am unborn and previous or external to Crea-
tion, I did not know a “God”. In that pure and original state, there
was nobody or nothing; “When I dwelled in the Ground, in the Bot-
tom, in the Stream, and in the Source of the Godhead, no one asked
me where I was going or what I was doing. There was no one who
could have asked me... When I enter the Ground and the Bottom, the
Stream and the Source of the Godhead, no one asks me where I
came from or where I have been. No one missed me there, for there
even God disappears” (Sermon Nolite timere eos...). That is why, as
I am unborn, “therefore I am my own self cause according to my es-
sence, which is eternal, and not according to my becoming, which is
in time. There I am unborn, and according to the manner of my un-
bornness, shall never die. According to the manner of my unborn na-
ture, I have been eternal, as I am now and ever shall be” (Sermon
Beati pauperes spiritu...).

b) “I” as only son of the Father makes understood that “we are an
only son whom the Father has eternally borne. When the Father be-

513
“In the beginning” (Jn. 1:1).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

got all creatures, He begot me and I flowed forth with all creatures
while remaining within the Father” (Sermon Ave Gratia plena...).
“Many years ago, I did not exist yet: a little later, my father and my
mother ate meat and bread and vegetables that grew in the Garden,
and that way I became a man” (Sermon Hec dicit Dominus...). Inso-
far as I am born and creature, “what I am according to my nature
which was born into the world, that shall die and turn to nothing, for
it is mortal. Therefore it must decay with time. In my birth, all things
were born, and I was the cause of my own self and of all things. Had
I wished that I should not exist, then neither would anything else
have existed. And if I did not exist, then neither would God have ex-
isted as God. I am the cause of God’s existence as God” (Sermon
Beati pauperes spiritu...).

c) But there is also a mortal, illusory “I” that is precisely that

identity that pretends to be the most real, tangible and consistent one.
It is paradoxically the most evanescent one, because man does not
possess the being by himself, but his being comes from the Only
One “who Is” (Ex. 3:14). First of all, “Ego, the Latin word for ‘I’,
can be used properly by God alone in His unity. Vos, which means
‘you’, says that you should be one in this unity. This means that ego
and vos, ‘I’ and ‘you’, refer to unity” (Sermon Ego elegi vos de
mundo). In addition, metaphysically, that “I” would imply an other-
ness (Anderheit), which is something intolerable for God. “That who
says ‘I’ has to do the best deed imaginable. No one can utter this
word in its proper meaning unless the Father” (Sermon Ecce ego
mitto angelum meum). That imaginary, non-existing ‘I’ is a ‘nothing’
unable to achieve the union with God, simply because He is the only
existing ‘I’. Nonetheless, the important point is that there is a place
and a moment where and when the ‘I’ of God and the ‘I’ of man are
alike; that is when the eternal birth takes place in the ground of the
Soul.

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IV.- GOD IS IN THE GROUND OF THE SOUL

As aforementioned, man suffers because he has been thrown out

to the world of unlikeness. But when everything seems to be lost, all
will be saved because God is looking after His creatures. This is be-
cause there is “something” in man that incites him to find out where
he comes from, who he is and where he goes. It is from that “some-
thing” from where God pulls us and calls us; “A person can turn
away from God; but no matter how far a person goes from God, God
stands there on the lookout for him and runs out to meet him una-
wares” (Sermon Surge illuminare Iherusalem...).

How to define or describe that something? “Sometimes I have

said that there is a power in the soul that can alone be said to be free.
Sometimes I have said that it is a refuge of the spirit and sometimes I
have said that it is a light of the spirit. Sometimes I have said that it
is a spark. But now I say that it is neither this nor that, and yet still it
is a something which is as far above this or that as heaven is above
earth” (Sermon Intravit Iesus in quoddam castellum...). Certainly,
“there is a power in the soul, which is not merely a power but is ra-
ther being, and not just being, but rather something that liberates
from being. It is so pure, exalted and sublime in itself that no crea-
ture can enter into it, but only God, who dwells within it. In truth,
God Himself cannot enter in there in so far as He has a particular
manner, in so far as He is wise or good or rich. Indeed, God cannot
enter there with an particular manner of being but rather only with
His naked and divine nature” (Sermon Adolescens, tibi dico: surge).
That non-place of the Soul where God dwells without attributes is
what urges or drives us “to know from where this being comes. It
wants to penetrate to the simple ground, to the still desert, into which
distinction never peeped, neither Father, Son nor Holy Spirit. There,
in that most inward place, where everyone is a stranger, the light is
satisfied and there it is more inward than it is in itself, for this ground
is a simple stillness which is immovable in itself. But all things are

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moved by this immovability and all the forms of life are conceived
by it which, since they possess the light of reason, live of them-
selves” (Sermon All things which are alike).

In another sermon, he invokes the Gospel of Saint John 15:14:

“Henceforth I call you not servants... but I have called you friends”
in order to deal with another subtle aspect of our relationship with
God: “Whoever accepts something from another is a servant; and
whoever rewards, a master. I was wondering the other day whether I
should accept something or wish something from God. I shall con-
sider this carefully, for if I accepted something from God, I would be
inferior to God like a servant, and He, in giving, would be like a
master. But in eternal life, such should not be our relation” (Sermon
Iusti vivent in aeternum). And not only friends, since that friendship
can become a loving intimacy. Based on Saint Paul, Saint Peter and
Saint John (Gal. 4:7; Gal. 2:20; Rom. 8:29; 2 Pet. 1:4; 1 Jn. 3:1-2),
Eckhart will affirm that the ground of the Soul is the ground of God
and Christ514: “Here God’s ground is my ground, and my ground is
God’s ground. Here I live from what is my own, as God lives from
what is His own. Whoever has looked for an instant into this ground,
to such a man a thousand marks of red, minted gold are no more than
a counterfeit penny” (Sermon In hoc apparuit charitas Dei...).

Does that mean that I am God? According to the German Meis-

ter, “Now should we say that if we love God, we become God? That
sounds like paganism. The love that someone gives contains not two
but one and oneness, and when I love I am more God than I am in
myself. The prophet says: ‘I have said ye are gods and all of you are
children of the Most High’ (Ps. 82:6). It may sound strange to say
that we can become God in such a way in love, and yet this is true in
the eternal truth. Our Lord Jesus Christ proves it” (Sermon In hoc
apparuit charitas Dei...). And, in other sermon, he invokes an indis-

514
The identification of the purest part of the soul with Christ Himself was one of
the objections of the inquisitors.

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putable authority: “Saint Augustine says515: ‘The soul becomes like

that which it loves. If it loves earthly things, then it becomes earth-
ly’. We might ask: if it loves God, does it then become God? If I said
that, it would sound incredible to those whose understanding is too
limited to grasp this. But Augustine says: ‘I do not say it, but I refer
you to Scripture, where we read: ‘I have said that you are gods!’ (Ps.
82:6)’” (Sermon In illo tempore missus est angelus...). The spiritual
seeker discovers and realizes that statement by means of a “process”
of introspection by which our divine essence is freed from the ‘I’ or,
said in other words, the ego is emptied until becoming the nothing it
is. Only that way does the soul withdraw into its ground and is nulli-
fied in God.

V.- OBSTACLES TO DETACHMENT

In several writings, Meister Eckhart constantly points out which

are the obstacles that hinder the disregard or detachment from one-
self and the surrounding world. In one of his most notable sermons
(Sermon Intravit Iesus in Templum...), he compares the process of
detachment and emptying of that inner temple that is the soul with
the episode of the New Testament about the expulsion of the mer-
chants from the Temple. To empty the Temple from merchants and
commodities equals to defeat the obstacle of the attachment to the I
in all the deeds with which man just seeks material benefits. That is
why Jesus Christ said in the Temple: “Take these things hence!”.

But man, obsessed with the idea that his happiness comes from
the accumulation of material objects, also experiences that this kind
of pleasure is as temporary as mutable and evanescent are all objects.
As soon as an object is enjoyed, the ego is already coveting a new
experience on which to project its dissatisfaction. Thus, man’s life
consists in a crazy race to get things with which to attain a happiness

515
Cf. Saint Augustine, On the Letter of John to the Parthians, tr. 2 n. 14.

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that will never be satiated. He can only put an end to this agitation if
he realizes that he is chasing a mirage created by his own ego. The
ego needs the time, that is, the past (memories) and the future (pro-
jects, expectations) to survive, because it disappears in the present. It
needs objects to keep on being the central subject and thus maintain
the duality of knower and known, that is, the plurality of objects that
may bring it endless experiences. Subtly, Eckhart points out the three
main obstacles to detachment: “Somehow, three things hinder man
from recognizing God. The first is time, the second corporality, the
third multiplicity. While these three things are within me, God can-
not be inside of me or truly act within my innermost heart. Saint Au-
gustine516 says that it is because of the soul’s concupiscence that it
wants to grasp and possess many things, and that is why it stretches
its hands to time, corporality and multiplicity. By doing it, it loses
precisely what it possesses, since, as there will be more and more
things within you, God will never dwell or act inside of you. If God
is to enter, then those things must be expelled” (Sermon Impletum
est tempus Elizabeth...).

But it is to be noticed that to empty the temple (soul) of objects

does not necessarily mean to carry out an action of material renunci-
ation that may imply a withdrawal from the world or a hermitic life,
but indeed a suitable orientation to face the world, because the ob-
jects are not neutral. The problem does not lie in the objects, but in
our own attitude toward them: “these are not to blame for the fact
that you are held back by devotional practices and by things; rather it
is you as you exist in these things who hold yourself back, for you do
not stand in the proper relation to them” (Talks of Instruction, 3).
That is why it is not about refusing the external goods, but about re-
fusing the ego, detaching ourselves from the idea that there is an ‘I’
that does and desires: It has been said, “If any man will come after
Me, let him deny himself” (Mt. 16:24); “Start with yourself therefore
and take leave of yourself. Truly, if you do not depart from yourself,

516
Saint Augustine, Confessions X, 41.

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then wherever you take refuge, you will find obstacles and unrest,
wherever it may be. Those who seek peace in external things,
whether in places or devotional practices, people or works, in with-
drawal from the world or poverty or self-abasement, however great
these things may be or whatever their character, they are still nothing
at all and cannot be the source of peace. Those who seek in this way,
seek wrongly, and the further they range, the less they find what they
are looking for. They proceed like someone who has lost their way:
the further they go, the more lost they become. But what then should
they do? First of all, they should renounce themselves, and then they
will have renounced all things” (Talks of Instruction, 3).

The withdrawn life, the spiritual quest in far and exotic countries,
to frequent the company of certain people or to undertake social
works are all useless if the ego is still intact. “This cannot be learned
by taking flight, that is by fleeing from things and physically with-
drawing to a place of solitude, but rather we must learn to maintain
an inner solitude regardless of where we are or who we are with. We
must learn to break through things and to grasp God in them, allow-
ing Him to take form in us powerfully and essentially” (Talks of In-
struction, 6). Eckhart speaks ironically about the surreptitious argu-
ments adduced by the ego, which is reluctant to be tamed: “People
say: ‘O Lord, I wish that I stood as well with God and that I had as
much devotion and peace with God as other people, and that I could
be like them or could be as poor as they are’, or they say: ‘It never
works for me unless I am in this or that particular place and do this
or that particular thing. I must go to somewhere remote or live in a
hermitage or a monastery’. Truly, it is you who are the cause of this
yourself, and nothing else. It is your own self-will, even if you do
not know it or this does not seem to you to be the case” (Talks of In-
struction, 3). And, in what is maybe his most substantial treatise, he
reaffirms that the external objects, the external works (and our atti-
tude toward them) only have the aim to help us achieve the under-
standing of the true nature of man: “All the external works have been

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instituted and prescribed in order that the external man may orientate
himself through them to God, and may be led to the spiritual life and
the goodness, so that he may stop going astray from himself due to
his excessive efforts, and he may have a curb that prevents him from
fleeing out of himself toward foreign things. Or, in other words:
when God wills to carry out His work, let Him find man ready; oth-
erwise, He will have to withdraw him first from the far, rude things.
For the greater the eagerness for the external things, the harder to
move away from them: the greater the love, the greater the suffering
when we must separate. Thus, either prayer, or reading, or songs, or
wakefulness, or fast, or expiation exercises, or other things of the
like, all the devotional practices have been invented in order that,
through them, man may steady himself and keep himself far from
foreign, non-divine things. That is why, when man realizes that the
Spirit of God is not acting within him or, rather, that his inner man
has been detached from God, it is then when it is more necessary that
the external man deal with the devotional practices, above all those
that are the most efficient and beneficial ones for him; but not to take
advantage of them, but the contrary: truly speaking, to avoid being
led astray by what is close at hand and to help him intensely grasp
God, so that He may find him really close” (Treatise On the Eternal
Birth). And, in the same treatise, he insists that “Fasting, wakeful-
ness, prayer, genuflections, mortifications, rag clothing, sleeping on
a hard surface and all the things of the kind have been invented be-
cause the body and the flesh are always opposed to the spirit: the
body is too strong for it, and there is always a living, eternal battle
between them. Here below, the body is audacious and strong, since
here below it is at home, the world supports it, the earth is its home-
land, and all his allies: food, drink, amenities, are against the spirit.
The spirit, here below, is a foreigner; it is in heaven where it has its
allies”. Ultimately, “Those who are in the right state of mind, are so
regardless of where they are and who they are with, while those who
are in the wrong state of mind will find this to be the case wherever
they are and whoever they are with. Those who are rightly disposed

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truly have God with them” (Talks of Instruction, 6). And the way to
restrain the ego has many names: humility, love, detachment... “but
if you would capture and curb it in a thousand times better fashion,
then put on it the bridle of love! With love you overcome it most
surely, with love you load it more heavily” (Treatise On the Eternal
Birth).

VI.- HOW TO UNDERSTAND? THE MODELESS MODE

Even the spiritual language, including its poetic form, is unable

to express that which is ineffable by nature. That is why obscure ex-
pressions and equivocal or paradoxical metaphors are plentiful in it.
First of all, it is talked about spiritual way, steps, levels, journey, pil-
grimage, etc., which implies to conceive the soul as something mov-
able and foreign to God that goes from one place to another, an ob-
ject that moves in a non-existing space. It uses verbs of action or
movement such as reach, make, meditate, purify, realize, rise, etc.
that seem to present the soul as an imperfect, incomplete entity that
needs experiences in order to mature. It is talked, ultimately, about a
process, a method, a way to reach God, as if the soul were not al-
ready in God; because, in effect, if it were true, while the soul has
not yet arrived to God, where is it then? In a place that is foreign and
different from God? Is that otherness or alienation maybe possible?
The paradox is rationally unsolvable; therefore, it is only possible to
attain a spiritual understanding that transcends the knowledge based
on the subject-object relationship, that is, a unitive or supraindividual
knowledge. On several occasions, Eckhart’s mystical language
comes across these paradoxes and solves it in the only way it can.
The route towards God is a “Way without way” (wec âne wec), be-
cause “God is to be approached as a modeless mode and a beingless
being, since He has no mode” (Sermon Surrexit autem Saulus de
terra...). Certainly, a certain subtleness is required to understand the
mystical language. For instance, when it is talked about going out of

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oneself (ûzgân), it does not mean to project anything outside, for, in

that case, “The further they range, the less they find what they are
looking for. They proceed like someone who has lost his way: the
further they go, the more lost they become. But what then should
they do? First of all, they should renounce themselves, and then they
will have renounced all things” (Talks of Instruction, 3). It is a
“modeless” mode (âne wise) of understanding. Only those who seek
God without a mode will apprehend Him as He Himself is, without
reasonings, or reasons, or whys. “If someone asked life for a thou-
sand years, ‘why do you live?’, then, if it could answer, it would say
nothing other than ‘I live because I live’”. In sum, there is no true
knowledge if the subject is not transformed into the object of under-
standing. This is the circle of eternity, a centerless circle in which
subject and object are transcended not only in the oneness but rather
in the uniqueness. There we will find perfect peace and stability, be-
cause there is no longer a desire to be anyone or to get anywhere,
since we Are; “No man still on the ascent, still growing in Grace and
in Light, has ever yet come into God. God’s light does not grow, but
it is by growth that we attain Him. Not that we attain God in the pro-
cess of growing. If God is at all to be seen, it must be in a light that is
God Himself. A master says: In God there is no more nor less, nei-
ther this nor that. As long as we are still in the ascent we do not at-
tain into Him” (Sermon Surrexit autem Saulus de terra...). But man
allows himself to be deceived by the mirage of the appearance of the
objects, considering them as true.

The cause of the problem is that we believe to see duality where

there is only a timeless, spaceless oneness. The German Meister
brings up the biblical passage of the conversion of Mary Magdalene,
altered because she is in the world of duality until she turns over,
that is, she looks inside herself. In that unitive fullness, “where there
is neither day nor night. In it that which is more than a thousand
miles away is as near to me as the spot where I am now standing.
There is the fullness and abundance of the Godhead; there is one-

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ness. As long as the soul knows difference, things are not right with
it. As long as anything peers out or peers in, there is no oneness.
Mary Magdalene sought our Lord at the grave and sought a dead
person but found two living angels; but she was still inconsolable.
Then the angels said, ‘Why are you troubled? What are you looking
for? A dead person, and you have found two alive’. And she said,
‘That is exactly why I am troubled. I have found two but am looking
for one’ (cf. Jn. 20:11 ff.). As long as any differences from created
things can gaze into the soul, it is troubled” (Sermon Convescens
praecepit eis...)”. Fortunately, there is always a gardener who, like
Jesus, will go to meet us in order to guide our quest.

In another sermon, Meister Eckhart stresses the importance of the

constant attention that we must pay in order not to make the mistake
of considering ourselves as a different being, separated from the rest,
since we all are one being. Duality implies to consider oneself as dif-
ferent, that is, to believe that one is an autonomous individual who
has being by himself and lives comparing himself to others in order
to foster those differences. With that arrogant attitude, we just harm
ourselves; “If you want to be one Son, separate yourself from all not
because the not causes distinction. How is that? Note the following:
That you are not a certain person, it is the not which differentiates
you from this person. If you want to be without distinction, rid your-
self of not. There is a power in the soul which is separated from the
not since it has nothing in common with any things. Nothing is in
this power but God alone” (Sermon Haec est vita aeterna). Or, ex-
plained with another example, we are not the eye that sees, but the
sight or, rather, we are that which understand or transcends the sub-
ject who sees, the seen objects and the action of seeing, that is, pure
sight, light...: “When my eye is open, it is an eye, but if it is closed, it
is still the same eye. Nor does a block of wood decrease or increase
in size by being looked at. Now listen carefully: If it now happens
that my eye, which is one and simple in itself, is opened and directed
towards the piece of wood in the act of seeing, then both remain

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what they are and yet both are so united through the act of seeing
that we can truly say: ‘eye-wood’, the wood is my eye. But if the
wood had no material form and was as immaterial as the seeing of
my eye, then we could truly say that the piece of wood and my eye
share a single being in the act of seeing. If this is the case with mate-
rial things, then how much more so with spiritual ones! And you
should also know that my eye has far more in common with the eye
of a sheep which exists beyond the sea and which I have never seen,
than it does with my own ears with which it actually coexists. This
stems from the fact that the eye of a sheep exercises the same func-
tion as my own eye, and therefore I say that these have more in
common with each other than my eyes do with my ears, which are
distinct in their functions... This light has more unity with God than
it does with any of the soul’s faculties, although it coexists with
these. For you should know that this light is not nobler in the being
of my soul than the lowest or most basic faculty, such as hearing or
sight or some other of the senses which fall victim to hunger or
thirst, cold or heat. This is so because of the homogeneous nature of
being” (Sermon All things which are alike). Man can “find” God be-
cause it exists in him a divine and uncreated “something” that is able
to touch Him directly. In this does man’s nobleness consist, since
“God is with us in our inmost soul, provided he finds us within and
not gone out on business with our five senses” (Sermon Gaudete in
domino...).

VII.- HOW TO ACHIEVE THE ETERNAL BIRTH? THE RE-

FUSAL OR DETACHMENT

The Meister analyzes his own spiritual experience in the light of

other mystical texts and, with a clear simplicity, notes that the union
with God, “when it does not take place in me, what do I care? How-
ever, that it takes place in me is the whole matter!” (Treatise On the
Eternal Birth). Metaphysics, theology, philosophy... must not be just

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theoretical or speculative sciences, but empiric ones, so that they

may be used by the wise man, the true philosopher, theologian or
whatever name he may be called, to testify to that fullness of time
with his experience. It is useless that he tells us what one or another
thinks if that knowledge does not indicates us the right direction.
True metaphysics is about me, only and exclusively about how to re-
alize my Selfness. Otherwise, knowledge is a mere intellectual enter-
tainment or a way among hundreds to earn a living.

Eckhart dedicates one of his treatises to explain this inner jour-

ney from the earthly man to the heavenly man, “where God... plant-
ed His image and likeness and where He throws the good seed... the
Son of God, the Word of God (Lk. 8:11)” (Treatise On the Noble
Man). For this purpose, Eckhart turns to the Apostle’s account: “A
certain noble man went into a far country to receive for himself a
kingdom, and to return” (Lk. 19:12). Following a literary tradition
that starts with Jacob’s vision, he compares this spiritual pilgrimage
with the ascent on the steps of a ladder. More specifically, he is in-
spired by Saint Augustine’s On True Religion when he points out the
levels of ascension of the heavenly or noble man. At the first step,
the noble man is like a child who feeds on milk and follows the ex-
ample of the adults. At the second level, he turns his back on the
world and seeks the face of God. At the third step, he loses his fear
and approaches God by love. At the fourth one, he calmly accepts
suffering. At the fifth one, he achieves silence, peace of spirit and
detachment. And at the sixth one, he is transformed beyond himself
in the eternity of God. Saint Augustine described a seventh level of
supreme rest and eternal blessedness, so that, even though Eckhart
does not talk about the seventh level, the truth is that he talks about
eternal rest and blessedness in similar terms to the ones used by the
Saint of Hippo. That “state” or “place” of rest is the house of God.
That is the sacred place where Jacob rested and slept, and was over-
awed by the divine presence. That is why he called it “house of God”
(Bethel). Eckhart adds that “Jacob wanted to rest in the place. The

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place is God... The place has no name, and no one can utter a word
concerning it that is appropriate” (Sermon Then the same day at
evening...). The place is the ground of the soul.

How to go deeper into the soul? How can man return to the lost
Paradise? According to Eckhart, “the surest foundation for this per-
fection is humility, for he whose nature here creeps in deepest depths
shall soar in spirit to highest height of Godhead, for love brings suf-
fering and suffering brings love. And, therefore, he who wishes to
achieve pure detachment must pursue humility, and thus he will ap-
proach the Godhead” (Treatise On Detachment). In another passage,
he insists that “if we are ever to get into the ground of God, into his
innermost heart, we must take the lowest place in our own ground, in
our own innermost self... When the soul enters into her ground, into
the innermost recesses of her being, divine power suddenly pours in-
to her, producing much activity, both manifest and secret, and the
soul grows big and high in favor with God” (Sermon Our Lord lifted
up...). Both grounds or abysses, the divine one and the humane one,
involve and unite with each other because they share a similar na-
ture.

What are the conditions required in order that that singular mo-
ment, which is defined by the German Meister as “enlightenment”,
“union with God”, “eternal birth”, “fullness of time”, “blessedness”,
etc., may take place? Eckhart confesses: “I have read many works of
both heathen masters and prophets... and have sought earnestly and
with the utmost diligence to find out what is the best and highest vir-
tue, with the aid of which man could be most closely united with
God, by which man could become by grace what God is by nature,
and by which man would be most like the image of what he was
when he was in God, when there was no difference between him and
God, before God had created the world. And when I search the
Scriptures thoroughly, as far as my reason can fathom and know, I
just find that pure detachment stands above all things, for all virtues

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pay some regard to the creatures, yet detachment (Abegeschieden-

heit) is free from all creatures” (Treatise On Detachment).

With the expression Abegeschiedenheit, coined by Eckhart him-

self and later used by his School, he tries to reflect not only the indi-
gent condition of the spirit that detaches itself from all the created
things, but also the process of mystical knowledge par excellence:
the objectless knowledge, the unknowing, or what more than a cen-
tury later would Nicholas of Cusa call docta ignorantia. It is an ex-
perience of estrangement by which the ‘I’ is deprived of food (ob-
jects), so that it starves to death and may not hinder the nullification
of the soul. By means of the release or detachment
(Abegeschiedenheit), man must renounce himself completely and
aspire to nothing, not even to the heavenly kingdom. Eckhart in-
vokes Saint Paul in order to affirm that it is necessary even not to de-
sire God. “Therefore I beg God to make me free from God”, because
the soul that has emptied itself of absolutely everything will neces-
sarily be flooded by God (Eckhart’s distinction between God and
Godhead is to be reminded).

In the mystical language in general and in Eckhart’s language in

particular, the nothingness that leads to detachment has at least three
definitions that must be clarified: firstly, there is an ascetic nothing-
ness, since the soul must totally empty or detach itself from its pow-
ers and from itself in order to reach God. Secondly, there is a cosmo-
logical nothingness, because Creation is nothing if compared with
God, and comes from the nothing. And finally, there is an ontologi-
cal or metaphysical nothingness that refers to the oneness of the Be-
ing: the Identity with itself, which equals the fullness beyond time,
space and all qualities.

On different occasions, Eckhart refers to that first meaning. For

example, when he comments the ecstatic experience that made Saint
Paul fall from his horse (Act. 9:3-8) and see a blinding light in which

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he saw nothing; “And Saul arose from the ground; and when his
eyes were opened, he saw nothing. Saint Augustine says: when Saint
Paul saw nothing, he saw God... because, when the soul reaches the
one and enters there in a pure refusal of itself, it finds God as if in
the nothing” (Sermon Surrexit autem Saulus de terra...). That is,
when he renounced and emptied himself from himself, when he saw
the nothing of his ‘I’, only then could he see God. Regarding the
second meaning, the German mystic explains that “All things are
created from nothing; therefore their true origin is nothing, and so far
as this noble will inclines toward created things, it flows off with
created things toward their nothing... All the creatures cause impuri-
ty since they are nothingness and nothingness is a deficiency which
sullies the soul. All creatures are pure nothingness; neither angels
nor creatures can be said to be something... They touch all things and
cause impurity, since they are made of nothingness. They are and
were nothingness. Nothingness is what is counter to all creatures and
displeasing to them” (Sermon In hoc apparuit charitas Dei...). Final-
ly, there is a nothingness that is fullness: “We should be at one with-
in ourselves and distinct from all things, and should be unshakably at
one with God. Outside God there is only nothingness. Therefore it is
impossible that there could be any change or instability. Whatever
seeks a place beyond itself, undergoes change. But God contains all
things in Himself in fullness; therefore God seeks nothing beyond
Himself but seeks something only in the fullness in which in it al-
ready exists within Himself. And no creature can comprehend any-
thing as it exists in God” (Sermon Unus Deus et Pater omnium).

It is useless to devote oneself to the practice of detachment while

trying to imagine it, define it or think it, because that implies a men-
tal process in which the ego will try to obtain some benefit. “Now I
ask: What is the object of pure detachment? I answer that neither this
nor that is the object of pure detachment. It aims at a mere nothing
and I will tell you why: pure detachment aims at the highest goal in
which God can work entirely according to His will” (Treatise On

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Detachment). Those who have finished the full detachment and emp-
tying that adorns the heavenly man are “those who have wholly gone
out of themselves, and who do not seek for what is theirs in any-
thing, whatever it may be, great or little, who are not looking beneath
themselves or above themselves or beside themselves or at them-
selves, who are not desiring possessions or honors or ease or pleas-
ure or profit or inwardness or holiness or reward or the kingdom of
heaven, and who have gone out from all this, from everything that is
theirs...” (Sermon Iusti vivent in aeternum). That is how the noble
man returns home; “Such a man returns richer than when he depart-
ed. He who had ‘departed’ from himself like that will be restored to
himself in the most proper sense. And all the things that he had
abandoned in multiplicity will be restored to him in simplicity, be-
cause he finds himself and the things in the present ‘now’ of the
oneness. And he who had ‘departed’ like that will return nobler than
when he ‘departed’. Such a man lives then with a more independent
freedom and in a pure nakedness, because he must not worry about
anything or undertake anything, much or little, because he possesses
everything that God possesses” (Sermon Homo quidam nobilis...).

Eckhart shows us that the model or key to explain the spiritual

conversion of man is found in the passage of Ex. 3:14: “I AM THAT I
AM” (Ego sum qui sum), without modes or attributes. If the being of
God is beyond all attributes, likewise, those who wish to realize the
being will have to refuse their personal modes or attributes, for they
are accessory and evanescent, since nothing external to the Being
may have any entity. Such spiritual detachment, simplicity or pov-
erty is the only thing that can cause “the temple to be empty... as
when it was not yet”. That is why that inner emptying equals a return
to the virginal state previous to Creation and to the born being; “The
soul cannot become pure unless it be reduced to its initial emptiness,
as God created it” (Sermon Vidi civitatem sanctam Ierusalem). In
order to return to that state of purity, that is, to be “an only son of the
Father”, the individual features must disappear, “for [the individual]

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man is an accident of nature” (Sermon Haec est vita aeterna). The

renunciation of all what is external is justified because created things
have no essential value. “All creatures are pure nothing”. Nothing
can hinder the detached man, the heavenly man, because he pursues
or seeks nothing outside God. And, as multiplicity cannot distract
him from anything, he is only one in the One, where all multiplicity
is dissolved into the oneness; “God must enter into your being and
powers, because you have bereft yourself of all possessions, and be-
come a desert, as it is written: ‘The voice of Him that crieth in the
wilderness’ (Is. 40:3). Let this eternal voice cry out in you as it lists,
and be a desert in respect of yourself in all things” (Treatise On the
Eternal Birth). Whereas on another occasion did the Meister extol
the virtue of love as the essential impulse to reach God, in another
passage, he qualifies his statement: “But I extol detachment above
any love. First, because, at best, love constrains me to God, but de-
tachment compels God to love me. Now it is a far nobler thing my
constraining God to me than for me to constrain myself to God... be-
cause God is more readily able to adapt Himself to me and can more
easily unite with me than I could unite with Him That detachment
forces God to me, I can prove thus: everything wants to be in its nat-
ural place. Now God’s natural place is unity and purity, and that
comes from detachment. Therefore God is bound to give Himself to
a detached heart” (Treatise On Detachment). As no one can force
God to do anything, this paragraph can only be understood in a met-
aphysical context in which man, detached and dead to the world, re-
mains abandoned or suspended between Heaven and earth, at the
mercy of the Lord. The essential point is that, when man has wholly
emptied himself, then God fills him with His Grace. That is why, in
another paragraph, Eckhart makes it understood that all this spiritual
process is wholly directed by God from beginning to end, and that its
eventual end depends on the Grace. On one hand, it is an entirely
free gift of God but, on the other, God not only does not skimp on
His Grace, but He is even eager to give it to those who seek Him
with the suitable attitude: “But however great this eradication and

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reduction of self may be, it remains insufficient if God does not

complete it in us. For our humility is only perfect when God hum-
bles us through ourselves. Only then are they and the virtue perfect-
ed, and not before” (Talks of Instruction, 23).

VIII.- WORK TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE DE-

TACHMENT FROM THE OWN WILL

“Saint Augustine states, ‘A loyal servant is him who seeks noth-

ing in all his works other than the Glory of God’ (cf. Confessions, X,
26)” (Sermon Qui mihi ministrat...). But, how to work for the Glory
of God? In some prayers, such as the Our Father, we exclaim: “Thy
Will be done!”. However, when His Will does not satisfy us, we get
angry and look for some argument to justify our stubbornness; “Now
sometimes a thought comes to you and you say: ‘Alas, if it had only
turned out differently, things would be better’, or, ‘If it had not hap-
pened this way, things might perhaps have turned out better’. As
long as you think this, you will never gain peace. You should take it
as the best” (Sermon Omne datum optimum). Paradoxically, the
straight intention is that which is realized without intention. In one of
his sermons, Eckhart even teaches his audience that it would be bet-
ter to tell God: “The Will Itself be Thine” rather than “Thy Will be
done”, because, this way, human will is completely nullified. Quot-
ing his words: “The Our Father [says]: ‘May Your Will be done’
(Mt. 6:10). But it would have been better to say: ‘May Will Itself be
Yours’, that my will be His Will and that I may be Him” (Sermon
Praedica verbum...). That is to say, I become Him when I renounce
the idea that there is an “I” with an autonomous will, which is author
of works. Therefore, this is not about the conceited belief that works
are done in the name of God as mere instruments in His hands. It is
not that “I do” in the name of God, because that implies the idea that
there is an ‘I’, different from God, which is the author of the works;
on the contrary, it is God who does (in His ineffable metaphysical

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immovability), that is, we must accept or understand that there is

nothing outside God. According to Eckhart, “This is what a good
man must be like, so that he, in all his works, may not seek his own,
but only God’s honor. Insofar as you, with all your works, tend to-
ward yourself or more toward one person than toward another,
God’s will has not yet become your will. Our Lord says in the Gos-
pel: ‘My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me’ (Jn. 7:16). A
good man must proceed in the same way, thinking: ‘My work is not
mine, mi life is not mine’” (Sermon Moyses orabat...). Ultimately,
am I really the author of my works? Can I claim the authorship of
the results of my works? Eckhart brings up two verses of the New
Testament regarding this subtle issue: “Without Me ye can do not-
ing” (Jn. 15:5), and any work I do, if “I have not love, I am nothing”
(1 Cor. 13:2).

But Eckhart takes one more step to explain his ideal of detach-
ment, affirming even that true detachment implies to detach oneself
from the desire of detachment. True liberation consists in breaking
free from the idea that there is an ‘I’ that seeks liberation; it implies
to renounce the idea that there is an ‘I’ that renounces. It is not only
about renouncing the own will, but even renouncing the idea that
there is an ‘I’ that wishes to fulfill God’s will. According to Eckhart,
it is clear that “as long as it is someone’s will to carry out the most
precious will of God, such a person does not have that poverty of
which we wish to speak. For this person still has a will with which
he wishes to please God, and this is not true poverty. If we are to
have true poverty, then we must be so free of our own created will as
we were before we were created. I tell you by the eternal truth that as
long as you have the will to perform God’s will, and a desire for
eternity and for God, you are not yet poor. They alone are poor who
will nothing and desire nothing” (Sermon Beati pauperes spiritu...).

In several sermons, Meister Eckhart elaborates on one of the fea-

tures of true detachment: inner poverty. True poverty implies the re-

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nunciation of the own “I”, that is, of the own will, including the ap-
propriation of the consequences of the own actions. According to the
Meister, there are two kinds of poverty: outer and inner poverty. Je-
sus Christ refers to the latter when he states, “Blessed are the poor in
spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. 5:3). According to
Eckhart, this is the poverty of him who “desires nothing”, which im-
plies not to do the works aiming at a result, even though this could
be spiritual, because, in this case, it is the “I”, the “ego”, which is
behind working out whether such a penance will be enough to
achieve the salvation of our soul. However, there are “some people...
who cling to their own egos in their penances and external devo-
tions... These people are called holy because of what they are seen to
do, but inside they are asses, for they do not know the real meaning
of divine truth” (Sermon Beati pauperes spiritu...). The renunciation
of the own will means that one only desires and works that which
pleases God and not the “ego”, “but if there is to be true poverty of
spirit, someone must be so free of God and all His works that if God
wishes to act in the soul He must Himself be the place in which He
can act” (Sermon Beati pauperes spiritu...). The philosophy of de-
tachment implies that, when one accepts that there is no subject of
the action, the soul loses interest in the external objects and the atten-
tion is turned 180º, that is, it is turned inward.

What is the suitable attitude before the world of works? Or, more
correctly, what is the right action? According to the German Meister:
“The just person does not seek anything with his work, for every
single person who seeks anything with his works is working for a
why and is a servant and mercenary. And so, if you want to be in-
formed and transfigured into justice, then intend nothing in your
works and figure no why in yourself, neither in time nor in eternity,
neither reward nor blessedness, neither this nor that; for these works
are all truly dead... And so, if you want to live and want your works
to live, you must be dead to all things and have become nothing. It is
a characteristic of creatures that they make something out of some-

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thing, while it is a characteristic of God that He makes something out

of nothing. Therefore, if God it to make anything in you or with you,
you must first have become nothing. Hence, go into your own
ground (Grund) and work there, and the works that you work there
will all be living” (Sermon Iustus in perpetuum vivet).

On several occasions, Eckhart turns to the motto “to live without

why”, to live with no intention or goal. The only good intention is
the absence of intention, which can only happen within the ground of
the soul: “It is out of this inner ground that you should perform all
your works without asking why. I say truly: So long as you perform
your works for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, or for God’s
sake or for the sake of your eternal blessedness, you are going com-
pletely astray” (Sermon In hoc apparuit charitas Dei...). “Thus turn
away from all things and apprehend yourself purely in being, for
what is outside being is accident and all accidents give rise to why
and wherefore” (Sermon Iustus in perpetuum vivet). Certainly, the
first why could be the incentive to initiate our quest but, at the end of
the quest, we find out that the answer is sine quare, without why:
“The end is universally the same as the beginning, or principle. It
does not have a why, but is itself the why of all things and for all
things” (Commentary on John). Once the thought has been trans-
cended, there is no longer “reason” of the reason. Attained the mysti-
cal union and overcome the subject-object distinction, who is there
to be asked about anything? Who is there to consider himself doer of
anything? Who is there to contemplate what?

The detachment from action includes the renunciation to consider

oneself as author, as well as to appropriate the consequences of such
an action. It implies the acceptance that the will does not participate
in that process because there is no other will than God’s. The argu-
ment with which Eckhart justifies the need for detachment or renun-
ciation to have an own will is, certainly, indisputable and convinc-
ing: God never gives Himself to an alien will. “We must learn to free

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ourselves of ourselves in all our gifts, not holding on to what is our

own or seeking anything, either profit, pleasure, inwardness, sweet-
ness, reward, heaven or our own will. God never gives Himself, or
ever has given Himself, to a will that is alien to Himself” (Talks of
Instruction, 21). Otherwise, “if you are intent on anything other than
God, if you expect anything else than God, whatever your work may
be, it is neither yours nor God’s” (Sermon Impletum est tempus
Elizabeth). And if there is any purpose, this must be, in any case, the
mystical union. There is another argument as clarifying as the previ-
ous one: If you renounce your will in order to put yourself in the
hands of God, then God wills on your behalf and through you: “If
then, you want God to be your own in this way, make yourself His
own and have as your intention nothing but Him; then He is the be-
ginning and the end of all your activity, just as His Godhead depends
on His being God. The person who in all his works considers noth-
ing but God and loves nothing but God, to him God gives His divini-
ty (Sermon Surge illuminare Iherusalem...). In another passage, he
elaborates on the same idea; “When we go out of ourselves through
obedience and strip ourselves of what is ours, then God must enter
into us; for when someone wills nothing for themselves, then God
must will on their behalf just as He does for Himself... And so in all
things I do not will for myself, God wills on my behalf” (Talks of In-
struction, 1).

Strictly speaking, what Eckhart sets out is a way to discipline the

pride of the “ego” by making it see that it is not the author of any-
thing and that it lacks a decision-making ability. Therefore, it is not
an annihilation of the will, but a total change of perspective. The “I”
must gently cede control. The outer man must give his will to the in-
ner man. Only that way will man detach or free himself from the
servitude of the body, the conditionings of time and the illusion of
considering himself as separate from God: “The will is perfect and
right when it has no selfhood and when it has gone out of itself, hav-
ing been taken up and transformed into the will of God. Truly, the

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more this is so, the more the will is right and true” (Talks of Instruc-
tion, 10). Certainly, from the metaphysical point of view, when one
renounces the own will and works, one renounces nothing, since
these are futile before God, but this is the path towards the emptying
of the “ego”: “And nothing makes us true so much as the giving up
of our will. Truly, without giving up our will in all things, we can
achieve nothing at all for God. Indeed, if we went so far as to give up
the whole of our will, daring to abandon all things for God’s sake,
both inner and outer, then we would have accomplished everything,
and not before” (Talks of Instruction, 11). And, in effect, only the
love understood as desire of God can drive man to give up his own
will and accept God’s will.

On the other hand, the common idea that the contemplative life is
incompatible or contrary to the active life was a topic to which Eck-
hart paid special attention because it affected an essential aspect of
detachment as a spiritual path. Essentially, the question is that action
and contemplation are complementary aspects, on condition that the
former inspires the latter, that is to say, that the works only have a
true significance if they are done with detachment. “How about
those works of love which are wholly external, such as teaching and
comforting, those who are in need? ... One pours out the love he has
received in contemplation. Yet it is all one, for what we plant in the
soil of contemplation we shall reap in the harvest of action and thus
the purpose of contemplation is achieved... It is still a single process
with one end in view, that God is, after which it returns to what it
was before. If I go from one end of this house to the other, it is true, I
shall be moving and yet it will be all one motion. In all he does, man
has only his one vision of God. One is based on the other and fulfills
it. In the unity one beholds in contemplation, God foreshadows the
harvest of action. In contemplation, you serve only yourself. In good
works, you serve many people” (Treatise On the Eternal Birth). Ul-
timately, the right action is so because it takes place in contempla-
tion, that is, with no sense of “I” author or doer that appropriates an-

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ything. Otherwise, the works and their consequences, no matter how

magnificent they may be, are futile, including those that pretend to
be externally inspired by God; “Nothing is to work in the just person
other than God. All works are surely dead if anything from the out-
side compels you to work. Even if it were God Himself compelling
you to work from the outside, your works would be dead. If your
works are to live, then God work from the inside, from the innermost
region of the soul... There is your life and there alone you live and
your works live” (Sermon Iustus in perpetuum vivet). Following the
mystical contemplative tradition, Eckhart turns to the well-known
biblical passage of Luke 10:41-42 to affirm the superiority of the
contemplative life (Mary listens to Jesus by His feet) over the active
life (meanwhile, Martha prepares the food and complains about
Mary’s passiveness); “That is why she said: ‘Lord, tell her to help
me’... Christ answered her by saying: ‘Martha, Martha, thou art anx-
ious and troubled with many things, but one thing is needful, and
Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away
from her’” (Sermon Intravit Iesus in quoddam castellum...). The epi-
sode of the dispute between Martha (the active life) and Mary (the
contemplative life) is used by the German mystic to explain that one
thing is to be with the things, that is, attached or identified with the
works, and another very different thing is to be in the things, without
being affected by them. “Therefore Christ says: ‘You stand with
things and with concern’, meaning thereby that [Martha] was ex-
posed to troubles and depression with her lower faculties since she
was not swamped by the enticements of the Spirit. She was with
things and not in them” (Sermon Intravit Iesus in quoddam
castellum...). Certainly, Martha (the active life) is the perfection that
is achieved when the inner action is exercised. But, in order that
Martha’s life be not sterile, she must previously be Mary, because
the action just makes sense after the understanding, and not before.

Ultimately, the true contribution to the Glory of God does not

consist in doing, but in Being. As Eckhart would say: “People should

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not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they
are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If
you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We
should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on
what we are” (Talks of Instruction, 4).

IX.- OBJECTLESS CONTEMPLATION

It is to be warned that Eckhart’s discourse does not pursue a

merely theoretical or speculative goal. On the contrary, it is due to
his own contemplative experience. The Meister constantly shows
that only detachment may lead to the contemplation of God. During
the first steps, the contemplation of God requires a very specific
practice that is generally called contemplative prayer. Under this
practice hides a specific teaching and even, if the expression may be
used, a precise technique. Above all, it is a unitive prayer that leads
to God. It is not only necessary to withdraw the senses, but also to
forget all desires and thoughts, no matter how spiritual it may seem,
and to subordinate everything that comes from the created world to
the vision of God.

Why to keep the powers of the soul suspended and stopped?

Strictly speaking, when the attention is focused on the external ob-
jects, the powers get distracted and dispersed, that is, they are weak-
ened. On the contrary, when we collect what is dispersed, we can fo-
cus all our attention on the ground of the soul: “The soul, with all its
powers, has divided and scattered itself in outward things, each ac-
cording to its functions: the power of sight in the eye, the power of
hearing in the ear, the power of taste in the tongue, and thus they are
the less able to work inwardly, for every power which is divided is
imperfect. So the soul, if she should work inwardly, must call home
all her powers and collect them from all divided things to one inward
work” (Treatise On the Eternal Birth). It is an attitude of pure con-

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centration or attention in which the soul, free from thoughts and

from attachments to objects, becomes completely empty and gives
itself to God. This way, he who prays “is untroubled and unfettered
by anything, which has not bound his best pan to any particular
manner of being or devotion and does not seek his own interest in
anything but is always immersed in God’s most precious will, hav-
ing gone out of what is his own... We should pray with such intensity
that we want all the members of our body and all its faculties, eyes,
ears, mouth, heart and all our senses to turn to this end; and we
should not cease in this until we feel that we are close to being unit-
ed with Him who is present to us and to whom we are praying: God
(Talks of Instruction, 2).

Therefore, it is a prayer that not only is not oral, but that is not
even mental. It is an objectless prayer because its goal is to lack a
goal, that is, a pure and selfless prayer. In fact, we should not even
pray. Eckhart clarifies the nature of contemplative prayer a bit more:
“What is the prayer of the detached heart? I answer that detachment
and purity cannot pray. For if anyone prays, he asks that something
be given him, or asks that God may take something away from him.
But the detached heart does not ask for anything at all, nor has it
anything at all that it would like to be rid of. Therefore it is free of all
prayer, and its prayer is nothing else than to be uniform with God.
On this alone the prayer of detachment rests. In this sense we may
understand what was said by Saint Dionysius on the words of Saint
Paul: ‘There are many of you who all run for a crown, and yet only
one can win it’ (cf. 1 Cor. 9:24). All the powers of the soul run to-
ward the crown, and yet only one being can obtain it. Dionysius says
in this connection517: ‘The race is nothing but a turning away from
the creatures and unification with uncreatedness’. When the soul
comes to this, she loses her name and God draws her into Himself,
so that she becomes nothing in herself, as the sun draws the dawn in-
to itself, so that it is annihilated. Nothing brings man to this but pure

517
Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, IV, 9 and XIII, 3.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

detachment. Here we may cite the words of Augustine: ‘The soul has
a heavenly entrance into the Divine nature in which all things be-
come nothing to her’. On earth this entrance is simply pure detach-
ment. When the detachment reaches its highest perfection, it be-
comes unknowing through knowledge, loveless through love, and
dark through light” (Treatise On Detachment).

Eckhart’s teachings mean the subordination of meditation to con-

templation. Indeed, when he expounds “what it does a man to do in
order to deserve and procure this birth to come to pass and be con-
summated in him: is it better for him to do his part towards it, to im-
agine and think about God, or should he keep still in peace and quiet
so that God can speak and act in him while he merely waits on God’s
operation?” (Treatise On the Eternal Birth), he unequivocally pleads
for the superiority of contemplation. “Thus a man must abscond
from his senses, invert his faculties and lapse into oblivion of things
and of himself. Anent which a philosopher apostrophized the soul:
‘Withdraw from the restlessness of external activities!’ And again:
‘Flee away and hide you from the turmoil of outward occupations
and inward thoughts for they create nothing but discord!’” (Treatise
On the Eternal Birth). But, in order to prevent the candidate from
comfortably settling in false conceptualizations, the Meister under-
mines again the argumentative building of those who try to absolu-
tivize the contemplative life: “Truly, when people think that they are
acquiring more of God in inwardness, in devotion, in sweetness and
in various approaches than they do by the fireside or in the stable,
they are acting just as if they took God and muffled His head up in a
cloak and pushed Him under a bench. Whoever is seeking God by
ways is finding ways and losing God, who in ways is hidden. But
whoever seeks God without ways will find Him as He is in Himself”
(Sermon In hoc apparuit charitas Dei...).

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X.- EMPTYING THE TEMPLE OF THOUGHTS

Guided by his own mystical experience, Eckhart advocates the

suspension of the senses and the thought, that is, the detachment
from the ordinary knowledge, as a means to transcend individuality.
He explains that: “The soul has two eyes: an inner and an outer eye.
The inner eye of the soul is the one which perceives being and re-
ceives its own being directly from God” (Sermon In diebus suis
placuit Deo...). The predominance of one of these two forms of sight
produces two kinds of men: the inner man, whose longing for God
drives him to contemplation by means of withdrawal or suspension
of the powers of the soul, and the outer man, who lives identified
with the objects of thought; “But there are people who squander all
the soul’s powers on the outer man. They are those who apply all
their intelligence and reason to perishable goods, and who know
nothing about the inner man” (Treatise On Detachment).

Pure meditation requires the withdrawal of the powers of body

and soul (the senses and the thought), disregarding all external dis-
traction and focusing all our attention inward: “Whoever wants to
understand the doctrine of God must withdraw and enclose himself
within himself and detach himself from any care and failure and agi-
tation of inferior things. He must overcome the powers of the soul,
which are so many and so divided, when they are in the thought and
when the thought, acting by itself, works wonders. He must even
overcome this thought, in order that God may speak in all powers
without division” (Sermon Videns Iesus turbas...). In the contempla-
tive practice, the emptying of oneself equals the silence of the mind,
the absence of thoughts (gedenken); “you must cease being active
and must draw all your powers to a point of stillness, if you truly de-
sire to experience this birth to take within yourself; if you wish to
find the new-born king, you must ignore everything which you
might otherwise find, and cast it aside” (Sermon Ubi est qui natus
est...). “Therefore a master says: If someone is to perform an inner

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work, he must draw in all his powers as if in the corner of his soul,
hiding from all images and forms, and then he shall be able to act.
He must thus enter a forgetfulness and an unknowing. Where this
word is to be heard, there must be stillness and silence. We cannot
serve this word better than with stillness and silence; there it can be
heard and properly understood, and there we are in a state of un-
knowing. Where we know nothing, there it reveals itself and makes
itself known” (Sermon Ubi est qui natus est...). The episodes of Mo-
ses before the burning bush and Saint Paul’s ecstasy are used by the
German mystic to rationalize his contemplative experience: “Here
the spirit had so entirely absorbed the faculties that it had forgotten
the body: memory no longer functioned, nor understanding, nor the
senses, nor even those powers whose duty it is to lead and feed the
body; vital warmth and energy were arrested” (Treatise On the Eter-
nal Birth).

All what comes from the senses, all what can be apprehended or
experienced, must not be part of our true nature because it implies
that there is a subject who acquires something that he did not have
before. And, as the ground of the Soul is self-sufficient, pure essence
and oneness, all what the “I” may acquire, including knowledge,
constitutes something superimposed and skin-deep onto the soul as
an accessory husk. Consequently, the true peace cannot come from
something that is so mutable as knowledge because “If I have wis-
dom, I am not myself wisdom. I can gain wisdom and also lose it.
But whatever is in God, is God; it cannot be removed from Him”
(Sermon Nunc scio vere...). “If you visualize anything or if anything
enters your mind, that is not God; indeed, He is neither this nor that.
Whoever says that God is here or there, do not trust him. The light
that is God shines in the darkness. God is a true light. To see it one
must be blind” (Sermon Surrexit autem Saulus de terra...). That is
why the knowledge through the external powers (the senses and the
understanding) is imperfect, because, as it is based on the subject-
object duality, it does not allow knowing the essence and ground of

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things. On the contrary, the knowledge in God or like God allows

discovering the unitary essence of everything because the subject is
at the same time the object of attention or, said with other words, it is
an objectless, pure, direct knowledge that transcends the apparent
plurality of objects when it they are contemplated in their essential
oneness; “To know something of exterior things is to be invaded by
it, or, at the very least, to have received an impression of it. To ob-
tain a representation of a thing, for example of a rock, I do not draw
into myself what is grossest about it; abstraction leaves that outside.
It is found in the ground of my mind in its highest and noblest form,
as nothing other than a spiritual image. Something alien falls into my
soul with everything it learns about the outside. But what I know of
creatures in God introduces into my soul nothing but God alone, for
in God there is only God. When I know all creatures in God, I know
them as nothingness” (Sermon Surrexit autem Saulus de terra...). By
invoking John 17:3, “And this is life eternal: that they might know
Thee, the one true God”, he affirms the futility of all knowledge in
which God is not the subject-object: “If I knew all things but not
God, I would have known nothing. But, if I knew God and knew no
other thing, I would have known all things. The more insistently and
deeply we know God as “one”, the more we know the root from
which all things have germinated. The more we know the root and
core and ground of Godhead as “one”, the more we know all things.
That is why He says: ‘to know Thee, the one true God’. He says nei-
ther ‘wise God’, nor ‘righteous God’, nor ‘mighty God’, but only
‘one and true God’, and He means that the soul must be detached
and shelled away from all what is added to God in the thought or in
the knowledge, and that she should take Him naked, as He is a pure
being: that is a true God” (Sermon Our Lord lifted up...).

But, is then there any infallible form of knowledge? Man must

understand that God cannot be known through the senses. The peace
and the happiness of the vision of the face of God cannot be experi-
enced through the powers of the understanding. Man wrongly be-

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lieves that he can fulfill himself by means of the senses and the
thoughts, and throws himself into a crazy race to hoard experiences,
desires, possessions. He believes that the more things he has, the
more fulfilled he will be. But, as the objects of the thoughts, by their
own nature, come and go continuously, the pleasure that they pro-
vide him is as well intermittent. Happiness itself is a state or feeling
that only makes sense in relation to another state of non-happiness
(suffering, turmoil...). Happiness is experienced when it is accessed
from a state of non-happiness. That is why nobody is always happy,
because, in that case, there would be no feeling or sensation with
which to compare it. The anxiety and frustration caused by the tran-
sience of happiness or any other state impels man to seek stability in
the spiritual world: “Our Lord said: ‘Only in me ye might have
peace’ (Jn. 16:33). To the extent that one is in God, one is in peace.
Whatever of a person is in God has peace; whatever of a person is
outside of God has turmoil. Saint John says, ‘Everything that is born
of God overcometh the world’ (1 Jn. 5:4)” (Sermon Populi eius qui
in te...). Whoever insists on reaching God by means of the human
reason will just build a thought God. And the world of thought is the
vain realm of objects and duality. Strictly speaking, there are no ob-
jects, but concepts created by the mind. “Happiness”, “peace”,
“Soul”, “God”, etc. are mere conceptualizations created or imagined
by the mind and classified among the thousands of files or little
drawers of its memory. From the moment we convert them into “ob-
jects” of thought, we convert them into something external and for-
eign to us. That is why the thought is an imperfect, alienating (that is,
it converts us into “another”) form of knowledge because it sees du-
ality where there is only oneness.

In effect, “God” is also another thought generated by the mind to

feed the duality of a subject (I) who prays and obtains services from
an object (God). The problem of thinking or remembering God is
that we stay in the duality and the separation from God. While we
think about God, we move away from ourselves because we see Him

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as something different and distant. Thus, the spiritual path may never
be finished; “We should not content ourselves with a God of
thoughts for, when the thoughts come to an end, so too shall God.
Rather, we should have a living God who is beyond the thoughts of
all people and all creatures” (Talks of Instruction, 6). The Meister
comes here to an essential conclusion: the man who aspires to unite
with God must transcend the level of thoughts, no matter how noble
and positive they may be. Also the images, since they are but
thoughts of a visual nature: “Now perhaps you will say: ‘But there is
nothing innate in the soul save images!’ No, not so! If that were true,
the soul would never be happy... No image represents and signifies
itself; it stands for that of which it is the image. Now seeing that you
have no images save of what is outside you, therefore it is impossible
for you to be beatified by any image whatsoever” (Treatise On the
Eternal Birth).

Therefore, “soul” is also another instrumental concept that is to

be transcended because, as its nature is not mental, it cannot be
thought or conceptualized. The mere fact of trying to convert it into a
thought, that is, a concept, hinders us from understanding it. That is
why, when commenting the verse of Jn. 12:25: “He who hateth his
soul in this world preserveth it for eternal life”, Eckhart clarifies that
“The word ‘soul’ refers to the soul as it resides in the dungeon of the
body. Thus he wants to say that the soul, with that part of its being
which it can make into an object of its thought, remains in its dun-
geon. Wherever it has still some regard for these things of here-
below and where it draws something into itself through the senses,
the soul feels altogether constrained. Indeed, words are unable to
give a name to what lies beyond it” (Sermon Qui odit animam
suam). Therefore, the dungeon of the soul is not only constituted by
the body (and by time), but also by the soul itself, as long as it ex-
presses itself by means of the conceptual thought.

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The biblical passage of the expulsion of the merchants from the

Temple is used by Eckhart to weave one of his best sermons. He
identifies the Temple with man, and the merchants with all the ob-
stacles that we must face in order to empty and detach ourselves.
“We read in the Gospel (Mt. 21:12) that our Lord went into the
Temple and cast out all them that sold and bought, and said to them
that sold doves: ‘Take these things hence!’ (Jn. 2:16)... God wants
this Temple cleared of everything but Himself. This is because this
Temple is so agreeable to Him, and He is so comfortable in this
Temple when He is there alone” (Sermon Intravit Iesus in Tem-
plum). Why is it necessary to clear the Temple? “After all, light and
darkness cannot coexist any more than God and creatures can. If
God is to enter, then the creatures must leave” (Sermon Intravit Iesus
in Templum). In order that enlightenment takes place, the merchants
must be identified and expelled. They are those who approach God
in search of prizes and rewards for their works. “The merchants are
those who only guard against mortal sins. They strive to be good
people who do their good deeds to the glory of God, such as fasting,
watching, praying and the like, all of which are good, and yet do
these things so that God will give them something in exchange.
Their efforts are contingent upon God doing something they ardently
want to have done. These are all merchants. They want to exchange
one thing for another and to trade with our Lord. But they will be
cheated out of their bargain, for what they have or have attained is
actually given to them by God. Lest we forget, we do what we do
only by the help of God, and so God is never obligated to us. God
gives us nothing and does nothing except out of His own free will.
What we are we are because of God, and whatever we have we re-
ceive from God and not by our own contriving. Therefore God is not
in the least obligated to us, neither for our deeds nor for our gifts. He
gives to us freely. Besides, Christ Himself says: ‘Without Me, ye can
do nothing’ (Jn. 15:5). People are very foolish when they want to
trade with God. They know little or nothing of the truth... If you
want to be rid of the commercial spirit, then by all means do all you

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can in the way of good works, but do so solely for the praise of God.
Live as if you did not exist” (Sermon Intravit Iesus in Templum...).
Eckhart sarcastically criticizes those who love God as they love a
cow that gives milk and cheese; “They for whom God is not enough
are greedy. The reward for all your works should be that they are
known to God and that you seek God in them” (Talks of Instruction,
16). Even the good works become dead if made with any goal or
without detachment: “These are good people who do their works
solely for God’s sake, not seeking to serve their own interests there-
by, but still linking them to the self, to time and number, to a before
and an after. In their works they are impeded in the attainment of the
best truth of all” (Sermon Intravit Iesus in Templum...). Of course,
the metaphysical path has its results, but the suitable attitude of re-
nunciation of oneself implies to approach God without selfish trade
and without eagerness for profit, even though that profit may be ob-
tained anyway: “The more detached you keep yourself, the more in-
ner light, truth and penetration you will have!” (Treatise On the
Eternal Birth), since Jesus already said: “And everyone that hath for-
saken [everything] for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold
and shall inherit everlasting life” (Mt. 19:29).

Ultimately, to be “empty of oneself” and give way to God, “one

should shun and free oneself (ledic machen) from all thoughts,
words and deeds, as well as from all mental images” (Treatise On
the Eternal Birth). Insofar as we withdraw our powers and empty
ourselves from ourselves, we cede control to God and give Him
room to enter our inner Temple and pour His Grace: “Truly, when
man calms down completely and draws his active mind to a point of
stillness, God becomes in charge of the work, He Himself will work”
(Treatise On the Eternal Birth). In effect, when I empty myself of
thoughts, what appears is not put by me. Then, where does it come
from? “Saint Augustine says: ‘Whoever without thought of any kind,
or without any kind of bodily likeness and image, perceives within
himself what no external vision has presented to him, he knows that

507
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this is true’” (Treatise On the Divine Comfort). “Now I ask: How can
it be that separation of the understanding from form and image un-
derstands all things in itself, without going out from or changing it-
self? I reply: This comes from its simplicity, for the more purely
simple a man’s self is in itself, the more simply does he in himself
understand all multiplicity, and he remains unchangeable in himself”
(Sermon Homo quidam nobilis...).

We reach here one of the decisive points of the German Meis-

ter’s thought: the eternal birth, that is, the enlightenment or spiritual
realization. Such an eternal birth is a gift granted by God alone: “It
is a special favor and a great gift to be able to fly up with the wing of
knowledge and make the understanding rise to reach God”518 (Ser-
mon Jesus constrained his disciples...). The conquest of immortality
can only take place in the innermost part of the temple. That place in
the ground of the soul is, paradoxically, a non-place beyond time, in
the eternity previous or beyond Creation: “The ground of God is my
ground and my ground is God’s ground” (Sermon In hoc apparuit
charitas Dei...), “My house and the house of God is the being itself
of the soul, wherein dwells God alone”. In order that this eternal
birth or awakening happens, the temple needs to be exempt and emp-
ty. Only after that emptying or detachment from oneself does God
deign to enter it and speak the Word.

In order that God may speak, there must be absolute silence. The
Temple must be empty of thoughts: “You should know that if some-
one else wishes to speak in the temple, then Jesus must be silent, as
if He were not at home, and indeed He is not at home in the soul for
there are strangers there with whom the soul speaks. If Jesus is to
speak in the soul, then she must be alone and must herself be silent if
she is to hear Jesus. Now then, in He comes and begins to speak”
(Sermon Intravit Iesus in Templum...). In sum, God does not need
thoughts or images to communicate with the Soul. Therefore, all

518
cf. 2 Cor. 3:18.

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 ECKHART AND CONTEMPLATION

thought, desire or memory is an obstacle that stands in the way be-

tween God and the Soul: “God works without instrument and with-
out image. And the freer you are from images the more receptive
you are to His interior operation; and the more introverted and obliv-
ious you are the nigher you are thereto. Dionysius exhorter his disci-
ple Timothy in this sense saying: ‘Dear son Timothy, do you with
untroubled mind swing yourself up above yourself and above your
powers, above all modes and all existences, into the secret, still,
darkness, that you may attain to the knowledge of the unknown su-
per-divine God’. All things must be forsaken. God scorns to work
amongst images” (Treatise On the Eternal Birth). Ultimately, “If we
are to know God, it must be without mediation. Nothing foreign can
be mixed with it” (Sermon Surrexit autem Saulus de terra...). Be-
sides, “Yet know that God requires every spiritual man to love Him
with all the powers of his soul. Of this He said: ‘Love thy God with
thy whole heart’519” (Treatise On Detachment).

In sum, in order that the vision of the face of God takes place, the
mind must be absolutely silent. That silence or void implies the de-
tachment from the external world, including beloved people, family,
friends... including oneself; “This was Christ’s meaning when He
said: ‘Whoever loves anything but me, whoever loves father and
mother and many other things is not worthy of Me. I did not come
upon earth to bring peace, but a sword to cut away all things, to part
you from sister, brother, mother, child and friend that in truth are
your enemies’ (cf. Mt. 10:34-36). For what is familiar to you is in
truth your enemy. If your eye is to see all things, your ear to hear all
things and your heart to consider all things, then truly your soul must
be divided and dissipated among all these things” (Sermon Ubi est
qui natus est...).

519
Deut. 6:5; Mk. 12:30; Lk. 10:27.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

XI.- THE DARKNESS THAT COVERS THE FACE OF GOD

As already mentioned, the first step of the contemplative practice

consists in learning to withdraw all the powers of the soul and stabi-
lize the silence of the mind. When that emptiness of thoughts is sta-
ble and reaches the suitable intensity520, then it is attained a singular
state, very difficult to describe, in which all the senses are discon-
nected and any identification with the body or the mind is stopped.
That deep state in which there is no trace of anything other than a
pure awareness is what Jacob describes as “startling place” or what
the mystics define as cloud of unknowing, which heralds the vision
of the Light or face of God. By those who have never experienced it,
this state of absolute darkness can only be described as an essential
Nothingness, a Cloud of unknowing or an ignorance or forgetfulness
of oneself. This is the darkness that covers the face of God. Eckhart
even reflects the confusion of the candidate for contemplation whose
expectations are something very paradoxical, that is, to attain the
knowledge of God by means of unknowing: “You might say: ‘Sir,

520
It must be the highest, most intense and sustained attention, so that it may not be
stopped by any thought. In order to explain the level of concentration required,
Eckhart gives this example: “There was once a pagan master who was devoted to
the science of calculation. He had directed all his powers to this and, seated by the
glowing embers of a fire, was calculating and exploring this art. Then someone ap-
proached him and drew a sword, not knowing that it was the master, and said: ‘Tell
me quickly who you are, or I shall kill you!’. The master was so entirely immersed
in his thoughts that he neither saw nor heard his enemy and could not answer him,
not even by saying: ‘My name is such and such’. After the enemy had shouted for
a long time without getting an answer, he struck the master’s head off. Now this
happened as the result of the pursuit of a natural science. How much more should
we remove ourselves from all things, gathering our powers together, in order to see
and to know the sole, immeasurable, uncreated and eternal truth? For this you
should gather all your senses, all your faculties, the whole of your intellect and
memory, drawing it all into the ground in which this treasure lies buried. If this is
to happen, then know that you must strip yourself of all other works and must enter
a state of unknowing, if you are to succeed in finding this” (Sermon Ubi est qui
natus est...). Only with the suitable concentration on God can the inner man walk
on the waters of agitation, corporality and time, since, otherwise, if he lives at-
tached to the external objects and pays attention to the thoughts, he will be swal-
lowed by the turbulences of the world: “While his thoughts were concentrated and
focused on God with simplicity, the sea joined his feet so that he walked on the

510
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you place all our salvation in ignorance’. That sounds like a lack.
God made man to know... But here we must come to a transformed
knowledge, and this unknowing must not come from ignorance, but
rather from knowing we must get to this unknowing. Then we shall
become knowing with divine knowing, and our unknowing will be
ennobled and adorned with supernatural knowing” (Sermon Ubi est
qui natus est...). But this is the only possible path toward the eternal
birth, since, “Call it as you will an ignorance, an unknowing, yet
there is in it more than all knowing and understanding without it, for
this outward ignorance lures and attracts you from all understood
things and from yourself. This is what Christ meant when He said:
‘Whosoever denies not himself and leaves not father and more and is
not estranged from all these, he is not worth of Me’. As though to
say: he who abandons not creaturely externals can neither be con-
ceived nor born in this divine birth” (Treatise On the Eternal Birth).
Ultimately, “God is born in us when all the powers of our soul,
which previously were bound and imprisoned, are set free, and an in-
tentionless silence happens in our innermost heart, and our con-
science does not condemn us anymore; then the Father causes His
Son to be born in us. When this happens, we must keep ourselves
naked and free from all images and forms, just as God is, and we
must accept ourselves as naked and unlike as God is naked and free
in Himself. When the Father causes His Son to be born in us, we
know the Father together with the Son, and, in both them, the Holy
Spirit, and the mirror of the Holy Trinity, and in it all things, as they
are pure nothingness in God... There are no number and no quantity”
(Sermon Iustus in perpetuum vivet). That place where the nullified
and detached soul meets God seems a “desert” (Einöde), a startling
“silence”, a bottomless darkness, but also a “knowing without know-
ing” (wîse âne wîse), “ground without ground” (Grunt âne Grunt)...
and endless accumulation of paradoxes that shows the futility of any
name for this state or mansion. Eckhart really establishes a triple

water (cf. Mt. 14:29 ff.), but, when he focused his thought on what he had below,
he started to sink...” (Sermon Jesus constrained his disciples...).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

consideration of the mystical darkness: firstly, as detachment or

withdrawal from the world; secondly, as a blinding light of God;
and, finally, the ineffable Godhead beyond all attributes, which can
only be described as supra-essential darkness; “What is this dark-
ness? Firstly, we should be attracted to nothing and hold on to this
nothing, we should be blind, and we should know nothing of crea-
tures. I have said before: The one that would see God must be blind.
Secondly, God is a light that shines in darkness. He is a light that
blinds us, and this means He is a light of such nature that is not un-
derstood. And it is endless. In other words, He does not have an end
in sight and much less knows any end. The blinding of the soul
means that it knows nothing and of nothing has knowledge. The
third darkness is the best of all and means that there is no light what-
soever. A master says that in Heaven there is no light, that it is too
lofty for any such thing: it does not shine and it has no hot or cold in
itself. Thus in this darkness the soul lost all sight, having overcome
all that we call warmth and color” (Sermon Videns Iesus turbas...).

The darkness (vinsternisse) symbolizes the state of self-negation

and annihilation of the ego previous to the contemplation of the light
of the face of God (Jn. 1:5-9). This process of purification or ascent
on the steps of virtue, from the point of view of the human “I”, is
seen as a negation of oneself, a “dark night of the senses and the
spirit” in which the soul does not apparently find support in any-
thing. But from the ontological or metaphysical point of view, that
darkness is eloquent and full, because it reveals the nature of the Be-
ing, which is the pure light and Grace. According to Eckhart, the
mystical darkness “is the hidden darkness of the eternal divinity, and
it is unknown, and it was never known, and it will never be known.
God remains there within Himself, unknown, and the light of the
eternal Father has eternally shone in there, and the darkness does not
comprehend the light (cf. Jn. 1:5)” (Sermon Ave Gratia plena...). “So
does the light of God, it eclipses all other lights. Whatever we seek
in creatures, all that is night. I mean this: whatever we seek in any

512
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creature is but a shadow and is night. Even the highest angel’s light,
exalted though it be, does not illumine the soul. Whatever is not the
first light is all darkness and night” (Sermon Surrexit autem Saulus
de terra...).

Eckhart shows to perfectly know the mystical fact described in

the Old Testament regarding Moses’ ecstasy after passing through
the darkness that surrounded the face of God: “‘Moses drew near un-
to the thick darkness’ and, climbing the mountain, ‘there he found
God’, and in darkness he found the true light (cf. Ex. 20:21)” (Ser-
mon Hec dicit Dominus...). And there did Moses die to the earthly
things because there shall no man see God and live. “This is why
Saint Paul521 says: ‘God dwells in a light to which there is no access’
(1 Tim. 6:16)... which is in itself a pure One. That is why man must
be mortified and completely dead, and be nothing in himself, entirely
detached from all likeness, and be equal to nobody; then he truly is
equal to God” (Sermon Convescens praecepit eis...). Until that mo-
ment, he has a name, a personal story, individuality, ego... But, after
passing through the darkness, he understands that the individuality,
the memories of the past and the projects of the future are but eva-
nescent mirages, a mere appearance, because he is one in God:
“Now Paul says: ‘Once you were in darkness, but now a light in the
Lord’ (Eph. 5:8). If we explore the Latin word aliquando fully, then
we see that it means ‘once’ and refers to time, which is what keeps
us from the light. For nothing is as opposed to God as time. Not only
time is opposed to God, but even clinging to time” (Sermon Eratis
enim aliquando tenebrae). This psychological and mental death (that
is, as a separate individual), which implies to pass through the dark-
ness, represents the total detachment from the plurality (the attach-

521
According to Eckhart, the three havens of Saint Paul refer to: 1st the unidentifi-
cation with the body, 2nd emptiness of thoughts and of all plurality of objects, 3rd
no subject-object duality: “Saint Paul was caught up to the third heaven (2 Cor.
12:2). Observe which are the three heavens. The first is detachment from all bodily
things, the second is estrangement from all imagery, and the third is a bare under-
standing in God without intermediary” (Sermon Jesus constrained his disciples...).

513
 JAVIER ALVARADO

ment to the surrounding things), from corporality (the attachment to

one’s body and mind), and from time (the attachment to one’s mem-
ories and expectations to do something or to be someone). In such a
state of forgetfulness of oneself, we can pass through the darkness
because even the darkness cannot see us. The being is identical to it-
self, it is the essential Identity: “There is no process of becoming in
God, but only a present moment, that is a becoming without becom-
ing, a becoming-new without renewal and that this becoming is
God’s being. There is in God something so subtle that no renewal
can enter there. There is something subtle in the soul too that is so
pure and fine that no renewal can enter it either, for all that is in God
is an eternal present time without renewal” (Sermon Eratis enim
aliquando tenebrae). It is in that atemporal, aspatial moment when
the eternal birth, the enlightenment, the awakening to immortality
happens. When the temple of the Soul has been emptied of every-
thing, including the light of our powers, and remains in the dark, it is
filled with the Light and the Grace of God; “When the temple be-
comes free of hindrances, that is from attachment to self and igno-
rance, then it is so radiantly clear and shines so beautifully above all
that God has made and through all that God has made that no one
can match its radiance but the uncreated God alone” (Sermon
Intravit Iesus in Templum...). This way, what was anticipated by Si-
rach 50:6-7 comes true: “Like the morning star among the clouds,
like the full moon at the festal season, like the sun shining on the
temple of the Most High”.

What is experienced when the Soul passes through the cloud of

unknowing and contemplates the face of God? As other mystics,
Eckhart finds it difficult to express his ecstatic experience by means
of language. First of all, it is inexact to describe it as an “experience”
because There is no duality between a subject that experiences and
an object that is experienced; there is no “I” who may appropriate
anything. It is when one returns to the sensible world and rationaliz-
es that “experience” when he shapes it as memories. But the truth is

514
 ECKHART AND CONTEMPLATION

that there is no memory while one is There. And when one realizes
that he is There, that is, when the sense of individual identity ap-
pears, trying to appropriate the experience, that state is automatically
lost. There is consciousness, but what is paradoxical is that there is
no consciousness of being an isolated individual with a name and a
personal story, but there is a full integration of all into all or, said in
other words, of nothing into nothing. Eckhart vividly describes the
rapture of the Soul that accesses the state of supraindividual con-
sciousness: “Now pay attention! What a wondrous involvement both
outwardly and inwardly: understanding and being understood; seeing
and being seen; holding and being held; that is the last stage where
the spirit perseveres in rest, united to beloved eternity”522 (Sermon
Intravit Iesus in quoddam castellum...). There “God shines in the
darkness, where the soul overcomes all light; in its powers can it re-
ceive light, sweetness and grace, but nothing can enter the ground of
the soul other than God alone” (Sermon Videns Iesus turbas...). That
ground of the soul is a so pure, subtle and homogeneous place that it
accepts even neither light nor darkness, because it is beyond duality.
Even that light that is God loses its attributes: “there is a light above
lights where the soul overcomes all the lights ‘on the mountain up
there’, where there was no light anymore” (Sermon Videns Iesus
turbas...). There happens the mystical rapture, which Eckhart calls
eternal birth because, even though for some instants beyond ordi-
nary time, man glimpses his true immortal essence and drinks the
water of the river that flows from Paradise. However, as Eckhart
clearly explains, the matter now is how to stabilize or stay in that vi-
sion of God: “Now a question about this birth arises: Does it take
place uninterruptedly or only here and there, when man is ready and

522
Which is not contradictory to the following statement: “With all certainty, no
one can experience this birth, or even approach it, without a mighty effort. None
can attain this birth unless he can withdraw his mind entirely from things. And it
requires a main force to drive back all the senses and inhibit them. Violence must
be offered to them one and all or this cannot be done! That is why Christ said: ‘The
Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force’ (Treatise
On the Eternal Birth). This kind of warnings is another sign that the mystical rap-

515
 JAVIER ALVARADO

strives to forget all things and to know nothing else? ... The vision
and experience of God is too much of a burden to the soul while it is
in the body, and so God withdraws intermittently, which is what
Christ meant by the saying, ‘A little while and ye shall not see me’”
(Treatise On the Eternal Birth). That is why Jesus Christ says, ‘be-
fore Abraham was, I AM’ (Jn. 8:58), ‘abide in Me!’ (Jn. 15:4), that is,
abide in “I AM”.

Of course, the teachings of the German Meister are much more

extensive than these succinct pages that never intended to replace the
reading of his treatises and sermons. On the contrary, they only as-
pire to be an introduction to his spiritual universe and to his particu-
lar manner to express his spiritual experiences by means of an ex-
traordinary usage of allegories and metaphors applied to the meta-
physical order. Anyway, we must not lose sight of a capital circum-
stance: Eckhart was a “friend of God”, a man who, emptied of him-
self, had been filled by the Grace. He devoted most of his writings to
explain this way, which he calls non-way and which culminates in
the “awakening”, the “enlightenment”, the “spiritual realization”.
That is why Eckhart’s writings are not about temporary morals or
speculations about the world; they are an exteriorization of his mys-
tical “experiences”, that is, of what happens when the detachment
from the own detachment takes place; of what one feels when there
is no “I” who demands or claims that experience; of what is seen
from an unnamed place and time; of what happens when, in sum, as
the German Meister says, to know is to Be.

tures of the German Meister were the consequence of a method or way that, at least
in the first stages, implied a great mental effort.

516
 PRIVY COUNSEL OF AN
UNKNOWN ENGLISH MONK TO
PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

“But since God in His goodness stirreth and

toucheth different people in different ways... Who
dareth to say that He may not be touching thee and
others like thee through the instrumentality of this
book? I do not deserve to be His servant, yet in His
mysterious designs, He may work through me if He
so wisheth, for He is free to do as He liketh. But I
suppose after all that thou wilt nor really under-
stand all this until thy contemplative experience
confirmeth this (The Book of Privy Counsel, 11).

This unknown English monk, author of the works entitled The

Cloud of Unknowing and The Book (or Epistle) of Privy Counsel,
explains, in a masterful and meticulous way, the method of pure
meditation523 followed by certain monastic orders in the 14th century.
His doctrine and technique is connected with the contemplative tra-
dition represented by Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory of Nyssa,
Augustine of Hippo, Cassian, Gregory the Great, Anselm of Canter-
bury, Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Champeaux, Hugh and
Richard of Saint Victor, Saint Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, etc...
In fact, the expression cloud of unknowing was taken from the work
The Mystical Theology by Dionysius the Areopagite (I, 3), whose

523
The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling, edited by W.
Johnston, New York, 1973, reprinted in 2005. The original title, The Cloude of
Unknowyng, was actually translated into Latin as Nubes Ignorandi (“The Cloud of
Ignorance”) at that time, since the word know- matches the Latin gno- of gnosis or
cognoscere, and thus drawing a difference between knowing and witting.
 JAVIER ALVARADO

tradition is explicitly taken by our author524. As it is known, Diony-

sius the Areopagite was inspired by several biblical passages con-
cerning the mystical darkness in order to describe a spiritual state
with a particular nullification. In effect, “Cloud and darkness are
round about Him” (Ps. 97:2); “At the brightness that was before
Him, His thick clouds passed” (Ps. 18:12); or, in the consecration of
Solomon’s Temple described in the Book 1 of the Kings, “The cloud
filled the house of the Lord... for the glory of the Lord had filled the
house of the Lord. Then spoke Solomon: ‘The Lord said that He
would dwell in the thick darkness’” (1 Kings 8:10-12). Whereas the
first of the mentioned treatises is addressed to the beginners, The
Book of Privy Counsel is a short treatise, much more explicitly about
the essential aspects of meditation.

I.- THE ROOT OF MAN’S UNHAPPINESS

The cause of man’s suffering lies in the sense of the own exist-
ence as an individual separate from God and expelled from Paradise,
that is, moved away from His Presence: “All men have matter of sor-
row: but most specially he feeleth matter of sorrow, that wotteth and
feeleth that he is. All other sorrows be unto this in comparison but as
it were game to earnest. For he may make sorrow earnestly, that
wotteth and feeleth not only what he is, but that he is. And whoso
felt never this sorrow, he may make sorrow, for why, he felt yet nev-
er perfect sorrow... And the whiles that a soul is dwelling in this
deadly flesh, it shall evermore see and feel this cumbrous cloud of
unknowing betwixt him and God” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 44 and
28). In Paradise, man was the lord of all creatures, but succumbed to
the suggestion of the created things and then he found himself at the

524
Precisely, out of the six works attributed to this unknown author, we find the
Denis Hid Divinite (a translation of the Areopagite’s The Mystical Theology) and
an adaptation into English of the Benjamin Minor by Richard of Saint Victor. Fi-
nally, the short reflections on the contemplative prayer entitled The Epistle of
Prayer and The Epistle of Discretion in Stirrings must be mentioned as well.

518
 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

mercy of the thought, so that, “in pain of the original sin, we shall
evermore see and feel that some of all the creatures that ever God
made, or some of their works, will evermore press in our remem-
brance betwixt us and God” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 28). But the
paradox of all this is that, though our existence (outside Paradise) is
the cause of our suffering, however, we do not wish to stop existing,
that is, to experience the sense of separation: “And yet in this sorrow
he desireth not to unbe... But him listeth right well to be; and he in-
tendeth full heartily thanking to God, for the worthiness and the gift
of his being, for all that he desire unceasingly for to lack the witting
and the feeling of his being” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 44). At the
same time that there is a consciousness of an “I” that feels joy and
gratitude, there is also a consciousness of an “I” that causes anxiety
because it constantly aspires to attain an eternal, constant happiness
that it never attains. It is then when he finds out that his anxiety is
not caused by the fact of existing, but by the fact of believing in a
separate existence. Or, said in other words, the existence is not the
cause of suffering525, but the belief that man is a limited being des-
tined to extinction. And, in effect, man, as a man, is a finite being, an
incomplete “I” that suffers.

But there is something in his nature that transcends that limita-

tion: it is the imprint of God, who reveals Himself as an “I AM”
without attributes. In order that this “I” may reveal itself, it is neces-
sary to renounce the other “I”, to “flee from self as from poison.
Forget and disregard thy self as ruthlessly as the Lord demandeth.
Yet do not misunderstand my words. I did not say thou mustest de-
sire to un-be, for that is madness and blasphemy against God. I said
that thou mustest desire to lose the knowledge and experience of
self. This is essential if thou art to experience God’s love as fully as
possible in this life. Thou mustest realize and experience for thyself

525
A distinction should here be drawn between pain and suffering: the existence
causes pain as a physical, biological fact, but not necessarily suffering considered
as an emotion added to the biological fact.

519
 JAVIER ALVARADO

that unless thou losest self thou wilt never reach thy goal. For wher-
ever thou art, in whatever thou dost, or howsoever thou triest, that
elemental sense of thine own blind being will remain between thee
and thy God. It is possible, of course, that God may intervene at
times and fill thee with a transient experience of Himself. Yet out-
side these moments, this naked awareness of thy blind being will
continually weigh thee down and be as a barrier between thee and
thy God, just as in the beginning of this work the various details of
thy being were like a barrier to the direct awareness of thyself. It is
then that thou wilt realize how heavy and painful is the burden of
self” (Privy Counsel, 13). Therefore, man must understand that his
true “I” is not something subject to development or knowledge, and
that no experience coming from the senses will ever provide him
with the definitive peace. The true peace is not in the separation from
all, but in the mysterious union with God, since “He is thy being and
in Him thou art what thou art”, “He is thy being, but thou art not
His” (Privy Counsel, 1).

II.- WHAT SHOULD WE DO? THE WAY OF THE MYSTI-

CAL THEOLOGY

Based on the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, our anony-

mous monk explains that, besides the rational knowledge of God,
which is obtained by means of the speculative theology, there is an-
other form of knowledge of God by means of the mystical contem-
plation (mystikon theama), which is infinitely higher than any other
modality of knowledge; it is the mystical theology: “Believe me, if a
contemplative had the tongue and the language to express what he
experienceth, all the scholars in Christendom would be struck dumb
before his wisdom. Yes, for by comparison the entire compendium
of human knowledge would appear as sheer ignorance526. Do not be
surprised, then, if my awkward, human tongue faileth to explain its

526
cf. Saint John of the Cross, 1S, 4, 5; CB, 26, 13.

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value adequately” (Privy Counsel, 11). Thus, contemplation “is the

work of the soul that most pleaseth God” (The Cloud of Unknowing,
3) because it has the potentiality to reform the soul “by grace to the
first state of man’s soul, as it was before sin” (The Cloud of Unknow-
ing, 4). That is, contemplation is the way to return to Paradise and
recover our intimacy with the Creator.

Nonetheless, what is that Cloud of Unknowing after which is

named the work of this anonymous author? Our unknown monk de-
fines it as a liminal meditative state between the vision of God and
the sensible world. In the course of the meditative practice, it comes
a moment when the mind, focusing all its attention on itself and
stopping the mental flow, is internalized or gathered in a state of in-
tense darkness: “And ween not, for I call it a darkness or a cloud,
that it be any cloud congealed of the humours that flee in the air, nor
yet any darkness such as is in thine house on nights when the candle
is out. For such a darkness and such a cloud mayest thou imagine
with curiosity of wit, for to bear before thine eyes in the lightest day
of summer; and also contrariwise in the darkest night of winter, thou
mayest imagine a clear shining light. Let be such falsehood. I mean
not thus. For when I say darkness, I mean a lacking of knowing, as
all that thing that thou knowest not, or else that thou hast forgotten, it
is dark to thee; for thou seest it not with thy ghostly eye. And for this
reason it is not called a cloud of the air, but a cloud of unknowing,
that is betwixt thee and thy God” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 4). In
other passage, he explains that “it is the cloud of unknowing, the se-
cret love planted deep in an undivided heart, the Ark of the Cove-
nant. It is Dionysius’ mystical theology527, what he calleth his wis-
dom and his treasure, his luminous darkness, and his unknown un-
knowing. It is what leadeth thee to a silence beyond thought and
words” (Privy Counsel, 11).

527
cf. Saint John of the Cross, 2S, 14, 4-11.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

But this darkness is not a consequence of a mere sensory priva-

tion that could be experienced by any person who covered his ears
and his eyes, but it implies a void of thoughts and the suspension of
all the senses. It is to be noticed that, even when we close our eyes,
we can still see, literally, the black color. The cloud of unknowing,
therefore, is a specific state of the meditative process, similar to a
deep sleep but with full awareness: “At the first time when thou dost
it, thou findest but a darkness; and as it were a cloud of unknowing,
thou knowest not what, saving that thou feelest in thy will a naked
intent unto God. This darkness and this cloud is, howsoever thou
dost, betwixt thee and thy God, and letteth thee that thou mayest nei-
ther see Him clearly by light of understanding in thy reason, nor feel
Him in sweetness of love in thine affection. And therefore shape thee
to bide in this darkness as long as thou mayest, evermore crying after
Him that thou lovest. For if ever thou shalt feel Him or see Him, as it
may be here, it behoveth always to be in this cloud, in this darkness.
And if thou wilt busily travail as I bid thee, I trust in His mercy that
thou shalt come thereto” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 3).

What happens when we stay in that cloud or darkness, paying at-

tention and not letting the thoughts flow? In such a state, when the
mind stops identifying itself with the external objects and pays atten-
tion to itself, that is, when the mind pays attention to the thinker, it
finds out that a pure awareness is left. This discovery is surprising:
there is awareness without thoughts or, in other terms, there is an “I”
or “that” which does not consist of thoughts, memories or expecta-
tions, but of pure awareness.

The anonymous monk insists that, in order to attain that state of

concentration, “thou shalt loathe and be weary with all that thing that
worketh in thy wit and thy will... for why, surely else, whatsoever
that it be, it is betwixt thee and thy God... And therefore break down
all witting and feeling of all manner of creatures; but most busily of
thyself. For on the witting and the feeling of thyself hangeth witting

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

and feeling of all other creatures; for in regard of it, all other crea-
tures be lightly forgotten” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 43).

III.- THE CONTEMPLATIVE WAY IS AT EVERYONE’S

DISPOSAL

Pure meditation, that is, contemplation, is not an elitist form of

prayer, only accessible by a few. According to the English monk, it
is an easy, simple way to approach God that is at everyone’s dispos-
al: “It is not hard to master this way of thinking. I am certain that
even the most uneducated man or woman, living in a very primitive
way, can easily do it” (Privy Counsel, 2). In any case, the excess of
reading or, rather, the pride that is caused by the bookish knowledge,
can become an obstacle. That is why pure meditation is “a practice
so simple that even the most uneducated peasant may easily find in it
a way to real union with God in the sweet simplicity of perfect love.
Unfortunately, these sophisticated people are no more capable of un-
derstanding this truth in sincerity of heart, than a child at his ABCs is
able to understand the intricacies of erudite theologians. Yet, in their
blindness, they insist on calling such a simple exercise deep and sub-
tle” (Privy Counsel, 2). The contemplative practice is completely
compatible with daily life. Any kind of daily work can be carried out
with no need to renounce the world, withdraw into a monastery or
devote oneself to the fuga mundi. “This simple work is not a rival to
thy daily activities. For with thine attention centered on the blind
awareness of thy naked being united to God’s, thou wilt go about thy
daily rounds, eating and drinking, sleeping and walking, going and
coming, speaking and listening, lying down and rising up, standing
or kneeling, running and riding, working and resting. In the midst of
it all, thou wilt be offering to God continually each day the most pre-
cious gift thou can make” (Privy Counsel, 7).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

What is the right disposition or attitude to carry out the contem-

plative practice? “For as it is said before, that the substance of this
work is nought else but a naked intent directed unto God for Him-
self” (Cloud of Unknowing, 24). And such an intent must be sincere
and selfless. All spiritual merchandise must be removed. It is not
about calculating the efficiency or the benefits that can be obtained
depending on the time dedicated to meditation. Neither is it about
facing meditation as a selfish relationship or a negotiation between
God and me in which I dedicate “my” time to “Him”, up to the ex-
tent that He repays me with His “gifts”; “Lift up thine heart unto
God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of
His goods” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 3). Contemplation is attended
without expecting any prize; one is unconditionally devoted because
of one’s need to find a spiritual room and, in many cases, because of
the desperation caused by unknowing the meaning of life, of “my”
life. This way, if the attitude is suitable, when you put your love in
Him and “forget all the creatures that ever God made and the works
of them... all saints and angels have joy of this work, and hasten
them to help it in all their might” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 3).

IV.- HOW TO DETACH OURSELVES FROM THE

THOUGHT?

The first counsel that is given to us so that we may access con-

templation is this: “When thou withdrawest to be alone for prayer,
remove from thy mind everything thou hast been doing or planning
to do. Reject all thoughts, be they good or be they evil” (Privy Coun-
sel, 1). The ideal of contemplation is that the mind be not distracted
following the thoughts. We must not pay attention to the objects of
the mind, that is, to thoughts, imaginations or reflections. In order to
achieve contemplation, the meditation on shapes, images or
thoughts, no matter how high they may be, is useless; “Imaginative
and speculative meditations, by themselves, will never bring thee to

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contemplative love. Be they ever so unusual, subtle, lovely, or deep;

be they of thy sinful past, the Passion of Christ, the joys of our Lady,
or the saints and angels in Heaven; or of the qualities, subtleties, and
states of thy being, or God’s, they are useless in contemplative pray-
er. For myself, I choose to have nothing except that naked, blind
sense of my self which I spoke of earlier. Notice that I said of my self
and not of my activities” (Privy Counsel, 14). The suspension of the
mental activity implies not to pay attention to the positive thoughts,
no matter how noble or spiritual they may be: “For peradventure He
will bring to thy mind diverse full fair and wonderful points of His
kindness, and say that He is full sweet, and full loving, full gracious,
and full merciful” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 7). But, when our
commitment is to the task of contemplation, “it profiteth little or
nought to think of the kindness or the worthiness of God, nor on our
Lady, nor on the saints or angels in Heaven, nor yet on the joys in
Heaven... as thou wouldest by that beholding feed and increase thy
purpose. I trow that on nowise it should help in this case and in this
work. For although it be good to think upon the kindness of God,
and to love Him and praise Him for it, yet it is far better to think up-
on the naked being of Him, and to love Him and praise Him for
Himself” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 5).

Why is the stimulus of the thoughts useless in the contemplative

practice? Simply because “every particular thought of creatures that
entereth thy mind... draweth thee back to the business of thy subtle,
inquisitive faculties. Then thou art no longer totally present to thyself
or to thy God, and this amounteth to the fragmentation and scattering
of any deep concentration on His being and thine (Privy Counsel, 7).
Thus, “do that in thee is to forget all the creatures that ever God
made and the works of them, so that thy thought nor thy desire be
not directed nor stretched to any of them, neither in general nor in
special, but let them be, and take no heed to them” (The Cloud of
Unknowing, 3). The mind must be fully concentrated on itself, so
that “nought work in thy wit nor in thy will... And try for to fell all

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witting and feeling of aught under God, and tread all down full far
under the cloud of forgetting. And thou shalt understand that thou
shalt not only in this work forget all other creatures than thyself, or
their deeds or thine, but also thou shalt in this work forget both thy-
self and also thy deeds for God” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 43). And
there is nothing in this forgetfulness or unknowing that may be con-
sidered as a form of meditation that sounds to pre-quietism. The
suitable attitude of the meditator and his explicit will to long for the
presence of God and allow the action of His Grace is a constant in all
the works of the English monk: “See that nothing remaineth in thy
conscious mind save a naked intent stretching out toward God.
Leave it stripped of every particular idea about God (what He is like
in Himself or in His works) and keep only the simple awareness that
He is as He is. Let Him be thus, I pray thee, and force Him not to be
otherwise. Search into Him no further, but rest in this faith as on sol-
id ground. This awareness, stripped of ideas and deliberately bound
and anchored in faith, should leave thy thought and affection in emp-
tiness, except for a naked thought and blind feeling of thine own be-
ing. It will feel as if thy whole desire cried out to God and said: that
which I am I offer to Thee, O Lord, without looking to any quality of
Thy being, but only to the fact that Thou art; this, and nothing more”
(Privy Counsel, 1).

It is not about working with the faculties, but about a non-

working work carried out by the will, because it precisely consists in
longing and allowing the action of God. It is an effort that does not
finally require any effort because it amounts “to a rupture and dis-
persion of that wholeness so necessary to a deep union with God.
Therefore, keep thyself recollected and poised in the deep center of
thy spirit and do not wander back to working with thy faculties under
any pretext, no matter how sublime” (Privy Counsel, 3).

Ultimately, if you want to see the pure awareness of your own

being, “be sure that it is naked and not clothed in any ideas about the

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

attributes of thy being. Thou mightest be inclined to clothe it in ideas

about the dignity and goodness of thy being or with endless consid-
erations of the intricate details relating to man’s nature or the nature
of other creatures. But as soon as thou dost this, thou hast given meat
to thy faculties and they will have the strength and opportunity to
lead thee on to all sorts of other things. I warn thee, before thou
knowest it, thine attention will be scattered and thou wilt find thyself
distracted and bewildered. Please be wary of this trap, I pray thee”
(Privy Counsel, 9).

V.- WHY DOES CONTEMPLATION REQUIRE THE SUS-

PENSION OF THE MENTAL ACTIVITY?

The answer is clear: “For why He may well be loved, but not
thought. By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought nev-
er... And thou shalt step above it stalwartly, but mistily, with a de-
vout and a pleasing stirring of love, and try for to pierce that dark-
ness above thee. And smite upon that thick cloud of unknowing with
a sharp dart of longing love, and go not thence for thing that be-
falleth” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 6). “For by thine eyes thou may-
est not conceive of anything, unless it be by the length and the
breadth, the smallness and the greatness, the roundness and the
squareness, the farness and the nearness, and the colour of it. And by
thine ears, nought but noise or some manner of sound. By thy nose,
nought but either stench or savour. And by the taste, nought but ei-
ther sour or sweet, salt or fresh, bitter or liking. And by thy feeling,
nought but either hot or cold, hard or tender, soft or sharp. And truly,
neither hath God nor ghostly things none of these qualities nor quan-
tities. And therefore leave thine outward wits, and work not with
them, neither within nor without; for all those that set them to be
ghostly workers within, and ween that they should either hear, smell,
or see, taste or feel, ghostly things, either within or without, surely
they be deceived, and work wrong against the course of nature” (The

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

Cloud of Unknowing, 70). “Therefore travail fast in this nought, and

this nowhere, and leave thine outward bodily wits and all that they
work in, for I tell thee truly, that this work may not be conceived by
them” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 70). It is to be understood that the
senses can only be used to know objects. We do not actually know
the things as they are in themselves, but we just know what the mind
itself can receive from them once it has converted them into “ob-
jects” by means of the thought.

The Divinity Itself is converted into another “object” or thought

that is suitably classified and thrown into one of the thousands of lit-
tle drawers that human memory uses to interpret the world. But God
is not an “object”. He is nothing separate from man, He is nowhere
and, at the same time, He is everywhere. He is not anything, and thus
He is nothing.

In the contemplative way, the thought and the imagination are

our enemies. The suitable concentration requires us not to pay atten-
tion to the mental flow. Nonetheless, it is true that it is enough to de-
cide to suspend the mental activity so that the mind itself rebels and
myriads of thoughts arise, trampling each other calling our attention.
If you do it, you will be immersed again into the whirlwind of the
mental agitation. Your consciousness will have identified itself with
the thoughts and will wander immersed into its daydreams or per-
sonal vicissitudes. We must face the thought: “And if thou wilt hear
him, he coveteth no better; for at the last he will thus jangle ever
more and more till he bring thee lower... for soon after he will let
thee see thine old wretched living, and peradventure in seeing and
thinking thereof he will bring to thy mind some place that thou hast
dwelt in before this time. So that at the last, or ever thou wit, thou
shalt be scattered thou wottest not where. The cause of this scattering
is that thou heardest him first wilfully, then answeredst him, re-
ceivedst him, and lettest him alone.... And receive none other
thought of God. And yet not all these, but if thou list; for it sufficeth

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

enough a naked intend direct unto God without any other cause than
Himself” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 7)528.

Certainly, the reflective meditation with objects or concepts can

be occasionally useful or even necessary to dissolve the mirages of
the mind but, at the end, it is an obstacle to attaining the intimacy
with God. “For although it be full profitable to think of certain con-
ditions and deeds of some certain special creatures, nevertheless yet
in this work it profiteth little or nought. For why? Memory or think-
ing of any creature that ever God made, or of any of their deeds ei-
ther, it is a manner of ghostly light, for the eye of thy soul is opened
on it and even fixed thereupon, as the eye of a shooter is upon the
prick that he shooteth to. And one thing I tell thee, that all that thou
thinketh upon, it is above thee for the time, and betwixt thee and thy
God: and insomuch thou art the further from God, that aught is in thy
mind but only God” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 5). “My dear friend
in God, go beyond thine intellect’s endless and involved investiga-
tions” (Privy Counsel, 3). Therefore, in order to gently settle in the
Cloud of Unknowing, it is necessary to remove the thoughts, but it is
to be warned that, at the beginning of the meditative practice, there is
a subtle obstacle that the candidate must dodge: he must not confuse
the emptiness of thoughts with the thought of emptiness. That is why
the thought, even though it is about God, must be refused; “Inso-
much, that when thou weenest best to abide in this darkness, and that
nought is in thy mind but only God, and thou look truly, thou shalt
find thy mind not occupied in this darkness, but in a clear beholding
of some thing beneath God. And if it thus be, surely then is that thing
above thee for the time, and betwixt thee and thy God. And therefore
purpose thee to put down such clear beholdings, be they never so ho-
ly nor so likely” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 9). Many spiritual seek-
ers have squandered enormous time and effort because they did not

528
As well, Richard of Saint Victor stated, “To enter the Cloud of Unknowing is to
rise above mind, and by means of the cloud of forgetfulness, to hide from the mind
the awareness of whatever lies at hand” (Benjamin maior, V, 2).

529
 JAVIER ALVARADO

realize this subtle difference: it is not about thinking of the emptiness

or the nothingness, but about gathering the senses and suspending
the thought. Therefore, when trying to pass through the Cloud of
Unknowing in order to see the face of God, the candidate may get
lost in the labyrinths of reason and convert all this into another
thought.

VI.- IT IS NECESSARY TO PASS FROM MEDITATION TO

CONTEMPLATION

It has to be clarified that these reasonings are not criticizing the

mental activity and supporting an irrationalistic spiritualism, but they
are simply pointing out the natural limitations of the thought when
trying to access a reality that transcends and exceeds all mental ac-
tivity; “I say not that such a naked sudden thought of any good and
clean ghostly thing under God pressing against thy will or thy wit-
ting, or else wilfully drawn upon thee with advisement in increasing
of thy devotion, although it be letting to this manner of work, that it
is therefore evil. Nay! God forbid that thou take it so. But I say, alt-
hough it be good and holy, yet in this work it letteth more than it
profiteth. I mean for time. For why? Surely he that seeketh God per-
fectly, he will not rest him finally in the remembrance of an angel or
saint that is in Heaven” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 9). What is being
affirmed here is that contemplation is a higher, most powerful option
than any other form of discursive meditation.

By this, our author expressed his opinion and also anticipated the
fratricidal fights between actives and contemplatives of later centu-
ries: “Thou hast reached a point where thy further growth in perfec-
tion demandeth that thou dost not feed thy mind with meditation on
the multiple aspects of thy being. In the past, these pious meditations
helped thee to understand something of God. They fed thine interior
affection with a sweet and delightful attraction for Him and spiritual

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

things, and filled thy mind with a certain spiritual wisdom. But now
it is important that thou seriously concentratest on the effort to abide
continually in the deep center of thy spirit, offering to God that na-
ked blind awareness of thy being” (Privy Counsel, 5). Thus, “now
thou hast come to a time when thou wilt no longer profit by... gather-
ing into thine awareness of naked being any or all of its particulars,
by which I mean thy fruits, upon which thou hast laboriously medi-
tated for so long... Leave the awareness of thy being unclothed of all
thoughts about its attributes, and thy mind quite empty of all particu-
lar details relating to thy being” (Privy Counsel, 3). Only that way,
as King Solomon said, thy presses shall burst out with new wine529
(Prov. 3:10).

VII.- HOW TO GATHER THE DISPERSED BY MEANS OF

THE MEDITATION ON “I AM”?

The anonymous English monk reveals the essence of the con-

templative method when he tells us that it consists in focusing our at-
tention on the feeling “I am”: “Do not think what thou art but that
thou art” (Privy Counsel, 2). It is to be noticed that this is not a re-
flection about what we are or what we should be, but only about the
naked and elemental awareness of knowing that we exist; “So, now
forget thy misery and sinfulness and, on that simple elemental level,
think only that thou art as thou art” (Privy Counsel, 2), or, said with
the words of the Old Testament, we must focus our attention on “I
AM THAT I AM” (Ex. 3:14), which, small wonder, corresponds to the
sacred Name of God, since, in effect, Yahweh (which is derived
from the third person of the verb to be) literally means “He who Is”.

529
“These presses are thine internal spiritual faculties. Formerly thou forcedst and
constrainedst them in all kinds of meditations and rational inquiry in an effort to
gain some spiritual understanding of God and thyself, of His attributes and thine”.
But now they are full and burst out with new wine, that is, with “that spiritual wis-
dom distilled in the deep contemplation and high savouring of the transcendent
God” (Privy Counsel, 5).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

Even though at the beginning it might seem a complicated or

strange labor, the truth is that every man possesses a natural ability,
coming from his spiritual nature, for contemplation; “Remember that
thou also possesses an innate ability to know that thou art and that
thou canst experience this without any special natural or acquired
genius” (Privy Counsel, 2). Ultimately, the form of meditation pro-
posed by the English monk is so simple that it is “as clear and plain
as the lesson of a beginner. I consider him hopelessly stupid and dull
who cannot think and feel that he is; not how or what he is, but that
he is. Such elemental self-awareness is obviously proper to the
dumbest cow or most unreasonable beast (I am being facetious, of
course)” (Privy Counsel, 2). A sustained, stable state of self-attention
or alertness is to be maintained until it becomes still, calm and effort-
less, that is, natural.

In the first moments of the practice of this traditional form of

pure meditation, the meditator may feel inclined to think, “I am; I
see and feel that I am. And not only do I exist but I possess all sorts
of personal talents and gifts” (Privy Counsel, 2), or that he may even
reflect on his goals in life. But, as all that must be left behind in or-
der to be able to enter the contemplative practice, the anonymous
monk proposes an easy prayer to help the meditator calm and gather
his thoughts: “That which I am and the way that I am, with all my
gifts of nature and grace, thou hast given to me, O Lord, and thou art
all this. I offer it all to thee, principally to praise thee and to help my
fellow Christians and myself” (Privy Counsel, 3). By this, if the
meditator feels inclined to reflect on his gifts, qualities and so on, he
must gather and redirect it all to the first gift that he possesses and
that, in a certain sense, causes the rest of them: “It is the gift of being
itself, the first gift each creature receiveth” (Privy Counsel, 3). In
sum, the gift “I am”.

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

Thus, gathered all the thoughts in one, the though “I am”, and re-
duced this thought to a plain state of self-awareness or self-attention,
the next step is the simple offering or delivery of what you are, that
is, of the awareness “I am”, to God: “That which I am I offer to
Thee, O Lord, for Thou art it entirely”. Because, actually, “He is thy
being and in Him thou art what thou art, not only because He is the
cause and being of all that existeth, but because He is thy cause and
the deep center of thy self... Therefore, in this contemplative work
think of thy self and of Him in the same way: that is, with the simple
awareness that He is as He is, and that thou art as thou art. In this
way, thy thought will not be fragmented or scattered, but unified in
Him who is all” (Privy Counsel, 1). The rest of the task just consists
in remaining attentive to that elemental awareness “I am”; “Go no
further, but rest in this naked, stark, elemental awareness that thou
art as thou art” (Privy Counsel, 1). It is to be emphasized that, strictly
speaking, this is not a discursive or speculative meditation, but, on
the contrary, a simple means to pass from discursive meditation to
contemplation.

The point is to focus our attention on the fact of being so that, af-
terwards, we may pass from feeling “I am” to paying attention to
God. Nonetheless, as God is unconceivable and the existence of
thoughts during the contemplative practice is not desirable, it is
enough to concentrate or focus our attention on only one thought:
God is who He is, with no attributes. He defines Himself this way
when Moses asks for His name: “I AM THAT I AM” (Ex. 3:14). There-
fore, “I want thee to understand clearly that in this work it is not nec-
essary to inquire into minute details of God’s existence any more
than of thine own. For there is no name, no experience, and no in-
sight so akin to the everlastingness of God than what thou canst pos-
sess, perceive, and actually experience in the blind loving awareness
of this word: is. Describe Him as thou wilt: good, fair, Lord, sweet,
merciful, righteous, wise, all-knowing, strong one, almighty; as
knowledge, wisdom, might, strength, love or charity, and thou wilt

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

find them all hidden and contained in this little word: is. God in His
very existence is each and all of these. If thou spokest of Him in
hundred like ways thou wouldest not go beyond or increase the sig-
nificance of that one word: is. And if thou usedst none of them, thou
would have taken nothing from it” (Privy Counsel, 5). Only this way
will you unify your thought and “thus thou wilt bind everything to-
gether, and in a wonderful way, worship God with Himself because
that which thou art thou hast from Him and it is He, Himself. Of
course, thou hadst a beginning, that moment in time when He creat-
ed thee from nothing, yet thy being hath been and shall always be in
Him, from eternity to eternity, for He is eternal” (Privy Counsel, 5).

What is the aim of the meditation on the naked awareness “I am”

without attributes of any kind? Obviously, it is to make it easier for
the meditator to draw into the Cloud of Unknowing and to attain the
final vision of the face of God. It is about leading the contemplative
through Jacob’s ladder: “So I let thee climb toward it by degrees...
And ultimately, in this work, that must be thy single abiding desire:
the longing to experience only God” because ¡“God is thy being”!
(Privy Counsel, 12).

In the course of the practice, there will be moments of crisis,

when everything seems to conspire against us, forcing us to consider
giving up. These ups and downs will accompany us during these first
steps and we must learn to resist them; “Great storms and tempta-
tions shall doubtlessly arise during this journey, leaving thee bewil-
dered and wondering which way to turn for help... Then, for as long
as it remains, thou wilt think thou art healed and that all is well. But
when thou least expectest, it will be gone again, and again thou wilt
feel abandoned in thy ship, blown hither and yon, thou knowest not
where” (Privy Counsel, 20). As every cloud has its silver lining, the
English monk presents such crises as a topic of reflection to the can-
didate, who must learn to overcome such obstacles by interpreting
them as tests that God puts in his spiritual route: “Remember, all He

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

doth, He doth with wise intent; He desireth that thou becomest as

spiritually supple and shaped to His will as a fine roan glove is to thy
hand” (Privy Counsel, 20). His aim is to stimulate the contemplative
in order to make him sensible and receptive to the mystery of the vi-
sion of God. This has, in sum, a therapeutic goal: to pass through the
Cloud of Unknowing: “And so He will sometimes go and sometimes
come, that by both His presence and His absence He may prepare,
educate, and fashion thee in the secret depths of thy spirit for this
work of His. In the absence of all enthusiasm He will have thee learn
the real meaning of patience” (Privy Counsel, 20). This way, “by
pursuing thy meditation to the farthest reaches and ultimate frontiers
of thought, thou wilt find thyself in the end, on the essential ground
of being with the naked perception and blind awareness of thine own
being” (Privy Counsel, 3).

VIII.- THE TECHNIQUE TO DETACH OURSELVES FROM

THE THOUGHT

We come here to a crucial point of the contemplative practice:

How to suspend the thought? How to stop the mental flow or prattle?
How to stop identifying ourselves with the thoughts? The first coun-
sel that our anonymous monk gives us is to reinforce our will or de-
termination not to allow ourselves to be captured by the mental stat-
ic. When beginning to meditate, we must have the strong resolution
not to allow ourselves catch by the thoughts; “And if any thought
rise and will press continually above thee betwixt thee and that dark-
ness, and ask thee saying ‘What sleekest thou, and what wouldest
thou have?’, say thou that it is God that thou wouldest have: ‘Him I
covet, Him I seek, and nought but Him’” (The Cloud of Unknowing,
7). We must disregard them, since they are to be considered as an
imperfect activity of the human being; “Do that in thee is, to let be as
thou wist not that they press so fast upon thee betwixt thee and thy
God. And try to look as it were over their shoulders, seeking another

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

thing: the which thing is God, enclosed in a cloud of unknowing.

And if thou do thus, I trow that within short time thou shalt be eased
of thy travail” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 32).

If the suitable concentration cannot sometimes be attained be-

cause the thoughts are too difficult to resist, “another device there is:
prove thou if thou wilt. When thou feelest that thou mayest on no-
wise put them down, cower thou down under them as a caitiff and a
coward overcome in battle, and think that it is but a folly to thee to
strive any longer with them, and therefore thou yieldest thee to God
in the hands of thine enemies. And feel then thyself as thou wert
foredone for ever. Take good heed of this device I pray thee, for me
think in the proof of this device thou shouldest melt all to water...
And this meekness obtaineth to have God Himself mightily descend-
ing, to venge thee of thine enemies, for to take thee up, and cherish-
ingly dry thine ghostly eyen; as the father doth the child that is in
point to perish under the mouths of wild swine or wode biting bears”
(The Cloud of Unknowing, 32).

There is another technique to facilitate the concentration and the

access to the emptiness of thoughts. It consists in symbolizing in just
one word the firm intention to keep on fighting against the thoughts
until becoming stabilized in the mental stillness. Thus, in order to at-
tain that mental stillness every time we may lose concentration and
realize that we have allowed ourselves to be taken by the torrent of
the thoughts, we must mentally repeat that word until recovering
again the attention on ourselves; “And if thee list have this intent
lapped and folden in one word, for thou shouldest have better hold
thereupon, take thee but a little word of one syllable: for so it is bet-
ter than of two, for ever the shorter it is the better it accordeth with
the work of the Spirit. And such a word is this word GOD or this
word LOVE. Choose thee whether thou wilt, or another; as thee list,

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

which that thee liketh best of one syllable530. And fasten this word to
thine heart, so that it never go thence for thing that befalleth. This
word shall by thy shield and thy spear, whether thou ridest on peace
or on war. With this word, thou shalt beat on this cloud and this
darkness above thee. With this word, thou shalt smite down all man-
ner of thought under the cloud of forgetting. Insomuch, that if any
thought press upon thee to ask thee what thou wouldest have, answer
them with no more words but with this one word” (The Cloud of Un-
knowing, 7).

Many are the psychological, cultural or mental obstacles and bar-

riers that hinder contemplation. The first obstacle that attacks the be-
ginner is the lack of faith in the method: “No doubt, when thou be-
ginnest this practice, thine undisciplined faculties, finding no meat to
feed upon, will angrily taunt thee to abandon it. They will demand
that thou takest up something more worthwhile, which meaneth, of
course, something more suited to them... They think thou art wasting
thy time. But their dissatisfaction, inasmuch it ariseth from this, is
actually a good sign, since it proveth that thou hast gone on to some-
thing of greater value” (Privy Counsel, 3). But the most dangerous
one is the vanity and pride of those who enter meditation pursuing
success and public recognition of his spiritual merits, considering
that the beatific vision might be another medal in his career; “But
then is the use evil, when it is swollen with pride and with curiosity
of much clergy and letterly cunning as in clerks; and maketh them
press for to be holden not meek scholars and masters of divinity or of
devotion, but proud scholars of the devil! and masters of vanity and
of falsehood! And in other men or women whatso they be, religious

530
It is usually pointed out that this technique is similar to the Hindu mantra, but
the truth is that it is not necessary to turn to cultural borrowings in order to explain
it. In any case, it is closer the relation between the monosyllabic prayer and the
magical exclamations of the Celts, the loricae, which were used by Saint Patrick to
introduce mottos such as “Christ with me! Christ before me! Christ behind me!
Christ in me! Christ on my right! Christ on my left! Christ where I lie! Christ
where I sit! Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me! Christ in every eye
that sees me!”.

537
 JAVIER ALVARADO

or seculars, the use and the working of this natural wit is then evil,
when it is swollen with proud and curious skills of worldly things,
and fleshly conceits in coveting of worldly worships and having
riches and vain plesaunce and flatterings of others” (The Cloud of
Unknowing, 8). Our anonymous monk will insist once and once
again that the only way to pass through that Cloud of Unknowing is
to be Nothing, to know Nothing, to accept that one is Nothing and
that only when one is truly empty and detached from everything is
when that empty “room” can be occupied or vivified by Him who Is.

Another terrible mistake or prejudice comes from assuming that

contemplation is a merely intellectual activity by which the human
mind can capture the nature of the Being. Those who think so, deep
down, are dominated by frivolity, since they just want to accumulate
experiences to feed their ego. They try to take a sort of spiritual tour-
istic trip, imagining that contemplation is like to carry a booklet
where to portray God with the only goal of boasting about it! For, af-
ter all, what is the point of achieving anything if you cannot tell oth-
ers about it? However, He cannot be apprehended by our intellect or
by any man’s. “For whoso heareth this work either be read or spoken
of, and weeneth that it may, or should, be come to by travail in their
wits, and therefore they sit and seek in their wits how that it may be,
and in this curiosity they travail their imagination peradventure
against the course of nature, and they feign a manner of working the
which is neither bodily nor ghostly, truly this man, whatsoever he be,
is perilously deceived. Insomuch, that unless God of His great good-
ness shew His merciful miracle, and make him soon to leave work,
and meek him to counsel of proved workers, he shall fall either into
frenzies, or else into other great mischiefs of ghostly sins and devils’
deceits; through the which he may lightly be lost, both life and soul,
without any end. And therefore for God’s love be wary in this work,
and travail not in thy wits nor in thine imagination on nowise, for I
tell thee truly, it may not be come to by travail in them, and therefore
leave them and work not with them” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 4).

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

In sum, if that Cloud of Unknowing is considered as the wall or the

borderline between the human space-time and the aspatial, atemporal
state previous or beyond Creation, the mind can neither recount it
nor get There, because the mind simply was not.

Some candidates imagine that contemplation is a form of under-

standing that provides miraculous powers, trances, and believe that,
for that purpose, it is necessary to submit oneself to fasts and morti-
fications as if they were merits, or even imagine enlightenment as a
fabulous firework spectacle designed for personal pleasure. Such
athletes of the pseudo-spirituality believe that the stronger their ef-
forts the more copious their reward will be; “In this work may a
young disciple that hath not yet been well used and proved in ghostly
working, full lightly be deceived... And as fast as in a curiosity of wit
they conceive these words not ghostly as they be meant, but fleshly
and bodily, and travail their fleshly hearts outrageously in their
breasts. And what for lacking of grace and pride and curiosity in
themselves, they strain their veins and their bodily powers so beastly
and so rudely, that... they merit for ghostly blindness, and for fleshly
chafing of their nature in their bodily breasts in the time of this
feigned beastly and not ghostly working” (The Cloud of Unknowing,
45). They do not know that there is nowhere or non-place beyond
that Cloud, Nothing to enjoy and Nobody to enjoy anything. That is
why any mental representation of what is beyond the Cloud of Un-
knowing is useless and idle, because one imagines oneself here and
not there. And There is no imagination, or thoughts, or anyone who
meditates on anything. This idea is explicitly stated by the anony-
mous monk: “although in the beginning I told thee to forget every-
thing save the blind awareness of thy naked being, I intended all
along to lead thee eventually to the point where thou wouldst forget
even this, so as to experience only the being of God” (Privy Counsel,
12). Even the mere assumption that there is “someone” meditating or
trying to collect his thoughts is already an obstacle in itself.

539
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Another common mistake is to assume that the gifts of contem-

plation are the exclusive consequence of the effort of him who prays.
This attitude implies to consider spirituality as a merely psychophys-
ical fact, assuming that the results are achieved just dedicating cer-
tain hours to the method. Those who think so just deceive them-
selves, because the human effort can certainly be valuable during the
first stages of contemplation, but it is useless for the final goal. In
order to go through the veil of the tabernacle, in order to pass
through the Mist of Unknowing, we must be invited and, so to speak,
led. That is why we must “refute the ignorant presumption of certain
people who insist that man is the principal worker in everything,
even in contemplation... God alone is the chief worker here, and He
will act in no one who hath not laid aside all exercise of his natural
intellect” (Privy Counsel, 17). The anonymous spiritual director in-
vokes the convincing, unequivocal biblical quotation “without Me ye
can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5) in order to remind the meditator to bear
always and everywhere in mind that “without Him, it is all so much
wasted effort” (Privy Counsel, 16). Nevertheless, if everything de-
pends on God, what can man do? Since the anonymous monk insists
that God is the principal worker, implying that man’s work is non-
principal, we may wonder, what does that secondary role consist in?
“Almighty God Himself, independently of all techniques, must al-
ways be the chief worker in contemplation. It is He who must always
awaken this gift in thee by His grace, and what thou (and others like
thee) must do is make yourselves completely receptive, consenting
and suffering His divine action in the depths of your spirit. Yet the
passive consent and endurance ye bring to this work is really a dis-
tinctively active attitude” (Privy Counsel, 11). Ultimately, since
“God alone is the chief worker and He alone taketh the initiative,
while man consenteth and suffereth His divine action” (Privy Coun-
sel, 17), the most suitable attitude is the total and absolute absence of
any attitude, which can be translated with one word: acceptance of
that which Is.

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

The ideal of meditation is that the meditator does not realize that
he is meditating. True contemplation is carried out effortless; “And
on the same manner, where another man would bid thee gather thy
powers and thy wits wholly within thyself, and worship God there –
although he say full well and full truly, yea! and no man trulier, an
he be well conceived– yet for fear of deceit and bodily conceiving of
his words, me list not bid thee do so. But thus will I bid thee. Look
on nowise that thou be within thyself. And shortly, without thyself
will I not that thou be, nor yet above, nor behind, nor on one side,
nor on other. ‘Where then’, sayest thou, ‘shall I be? Nowhere, by thy
tale!’ Now truly thou sayest well; for there would I have thee. For
why, nowhere bodily, is everywhere ghostly. Look then busily that
thy ghostly work be nowhere bodily; and then wheresoever that that
thing is, on the which thou wilfully workest in thy mind in sub-
stance, surely there art thou in spirit, as verily as thy body is in that
place that thou art bodily. And although thy bodily wits can find
there nothing to feed them on, for them think it nought that thou
dost, yea! do on then this nought, and do it for God’s love” (The
Cloud of Unknowing, 68).

IX.- HOW TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UN-

KNOWING?

That Nought means detachment or forgetfulness of oneself. But

that forgetfulness also affects the own awareness of believing oneself
a separate, individual entity. This way, the monk shows us a para-
doxical fact: in order to pass through the Cloud of Unknowing, that
naked awareness, that feeling of oneself must be transcended. God
cannot be reached with a specific name. It is written that no man has
ever seen God and lived (as a man). The sense of individuality is the
last obstacle: “when thou hast forgotten all other creatures and all
their works –yea, and thereto all thine own works– that there shall
live yet after, betwixt thee and thy God, a naked witting and a feeling

541
 JAVIER ALVARADO

of thine own being: the which witting and feeling behoveth always
be destroyed, ere the time be that thou feel soothfastly the perfection
of this work” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 43). How to destroy the
identification with a separate being? How to transcend that last
stronghold of individuality that consists in believing oneself as an
individual awareness?

According to the anonymous monk, the answer is clear: the ac-

cess to the supraindividual state of the Being is a work of the Grace:
“But now thou askest me, how thou mayest destroy this naked wit-
ting and feeling of thine own being. For peradventure thou thinkest
that an it were destroyed, all other lettings were destroyed: and if
thou thinkest thus, thou thinkest right truly. But to this I answer thee
and I say, that without a full special grace full freely given of God,
and thereto a full according ableness to receive this grace on thy part,
this naked witting and feeling of thy being may on nowise be de-
stroyed” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 44). The individual, as such, can
do nothing; even any effort in that direction would be an obstacle or
resistance. The suitable attitude is to consent to the absolute devotion
of oneself and to refuse any vision, feeling or emotion, no matter
how excellent it may seem; “Wonderfully is a man’s affection varied
in ghostly feeling of this nought when it is nowhere wrought...
Sometime him think that it is paradise or heaven, for diverse won-
derful sweetness and comforts, joys and blessed virtues that he
findeth therein. Sometime him think it God, for peace and rest that
he findeth therein. Yea! Think what he think will; for evermore he
shall find it a Cloud of Unknowing, that is betwixt him and his God”
(The Cloud of Unknowing, 69).

Ultimately, how to open the door of the Sanctum Sanctorum?

How to pass through the thick cloud that surrounds the tabernacle?
“Here the Lord Himself is not only the porter but the door. As God,
He is the porter; as man, He is the door” (Privy Counsel, 15). That is
why the Gospel says: “I am the door of the sheep... by Me if any

542
 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pas-
ture... He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but
climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber”531.
Some “will try to get past the door with all sorts of clever specula-
tions, indulging their unbridled and undisciplined faculties in
strange, exotic fantasies, scorning the common, open entry I spoke of
before”. There will be those who, “full of presumption, he trusteth
his own personal insights and whims more than the sound advice of
the security of that common, clear path I described”. (Privy Counsel,
15). But they all are wrong. The truth is that, “if Christ is the door,
what should a man do once he hath found it? Should he stand there
waiting and not go in? Answering in thy place, I say: yes, this is ex-
actly what he should do... until the Spirit himself stirreth and beck-
oneth him within. This secret invitation from God’s Spirit is the most
immediate and certain sign that God is calling and drawing a person
to a higher life of Grace in contemplation” (Privy Counsel, 16). But
we can only pass through the Cloud of Unknowing that is between
God and man by renouncing being “someone”, that is, being nobody
and nothing; because only the nothing can be everywhere and no-
where at the same time. Only a soul that is “gentle and sincere in its
effort to make self as nothing” (Privy Counsel, 8) reaches the goal.
Only renouncing the thought can the intellective vision of God be at-
tained. God embraces you in intimacy if you have previously ex-
pelled, from your inner temple, the merchants and thieves (that is,
the thoughts) that were keeping it far from its true aim. “Let be this
everything and this ought, in comparison on this nowhere and this
nought. Reck thee never if thy wits cannot reason of this nought; for
surely, I love it much the better. It is so worthy a thing in itself, that
they cannot reason thereupon. This nought may better be felt than
seen: for it is full blind and full dark to them that have but little while
looked thereupon. Nevertheless, if I shall soothlier say, a soul is
more blinded in feeling of it for abundance of ghostly light, than for
any darkness or wanting of bodily light. What is he that calleth it

531
Jn. 10:1.

543
 JAVIER ALVARADO

nought? Surely it is our outer man, and not our inner. Our inner man
calleth it All; for of it he is well learned to know the reason of all
things bodily or ghostly, without any special beholding to any one
thing by itself” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 68). The devout, patient
meditator manages to understand that that darkness and that Nothing
is eloquent because it teaches the value of humility, patience, perse-
verance and love for knowing oneself and knowing Him.

The Cloud softens the iron yoke of the passions and the arro-
gance of the ego, it imperceptibly shapes the true original face of
man, it polishes the stone, removing the superfluous attachments un-
til converting it into a suitable stone for the construction of the tem-
ple. The best recommendation that can be made to the meditator is
that he learn to “taste” that nothing as if it were his own house or,
even more, as if it were the closest to our true nature; because the
still and unselfish stay in that darkness provides peace of spirit,
purges and cleanses the soul and regenerates the nervous system.
Those who consider this state as another stage to be passed as soon
as possible make a serious mistake, since it cannot be passed by
means of any intervention or action of the personal will. On the con-
trary, you are invited to pass the threshold when that Nothing has
finished its purification task within you. That Nothing is the most
powerful universal solvent. “And let not therefore, but travail busily
in that nought with a waking desire to will to have God that no man
may know. For I tell thee truly, that I had rather be so nowhere bodi-
ly, wrestling with that blind nought, than to be so great a lord that I
might when I would be everywhere bodily, merrily playing with all
this ought as a lord with his own (Cloud of Unknowing, 68). There is
perceived “the unity of His essential presence in all things and the
oneness of all things in Him” (Privy Counsel, 8). There is intuitively
understood that “just as God is one with His being because they are
one in nature, so the spirit, which seeth and experienceth Him, is one
with Him whom it seeth and experienceth, because they have be-
come one in Grace” (Privy Counsel, 21).

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

How long does it take to finish the Way? The anonymous master
clarifies that “This work asketh no long time or it be once truly done,
as some men ween; for it is the shortest work of all that man may
imagine” (The Cloud of Unknowing, 4). It is enough to realize...

545
 TO SEE HIM IS TO SEE YOU; THE VISION OF GOD
ACCORDING TO NICHOLAS OF CUSA

“In beholding me, Thou givest Thyself to be

seen of me, Thou who art a hidden God. None can
see Thee save in so far as Thou grantest a sight of
Thyself, nor is that sight aught else than Thy seeing
him that seeth Thee” (Nicholas of Cusa, On the Vi-
sion of God, V).

Nicolaus Chrypffs (1401-1464) was born in Cusa (Kues, Germa-

ny). His first few years studying with the Brethren of the Common
Life inspired in him that Platonizing mysticism with a Plotinian sig-
nature that he would never abandon. Later, he studied in Heidelberg,
Padua and Cologne, where he had access to the works of the Neopla-
tonists, particularly Proclus and Dionysius the Areopagite. He also
became familiar with the work of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Scotus
Eriugena, the Augustinian and Franciscan mystics, etc. After being
ordained a priest in 1430, his decisive role in the Council of Basel in
favor of the Pope and against Conciliarism earned him the fame as a
good mediator. For this reason, in 1437, he was sent to Constantino-
ple by the Pope with the purpose of unifying the Western and East-
ern Churches; even though his mission did not achieve the desired
result, his long stay there allowed him to come in contact with the
forms and methods of the Eastern spirituality. In 1448, he was ap-
pointed as a Cardinal, and two years later as a Bishop.

He wrote several treatises532, out of which De Docta Ignorantia,

On Seeking God and On the Vision of God (VD) are to be highlight-

532
It is to be mentioned: Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Writings, Classics of Western
Spirituality, tr. by Bond, H. Lawrence, New York, 1997; De concordantia
 JAVIER ALVARADO

ed. I will use especially the latter in order to summarize Cusanus’

theory and method.

I.- THE INABILITY OF KNOWLEDGE

According to Nicholas of Cusa, it is useless to approach God in a

rational way because He is before reason; He is beyond or above it.
For instance, if we conceive God as an end without and end or an
end of itself, that is, as an infinite end, “this eludeth all reason, be-
cause it implieth a contradiction. Thus, when I assert the existence of
an end without an end, I admit darkness to be light, ignorance to be
knowledge, and the impossible to be a necessity”, which forces us to
accept the coincidence of contradictions.

But, according to Cusanus, God is beyond all dualities and con-

tradictions. Should it be stated that God is everything, and thus He is
neither “nothing” nor “something”, it is meant that “God is beyond
nothing and beyond something... for nothing obeyeth God in order
that something may come into being”. It is also meant that He cannot
be named, but that He is not ineffable for that reason, since then He
would stop being “effable” or expressible in a higher degree than all
things. That is why God is not “effable” and “ineffable” at the same
time, “for God is not the root of contradiction, but rather He is the
simplicity itself prior to every root” (Dialogue on the Hidden God).
Precisely, the only way the Absolute is not opposed to anything (be-
ing all in all) is through the overcoming of the opposites; “Hence I

catholica (The Catholic Concordance), tr. by P. Sigmund, Cambridge, 1991; Met-

aphysical Speculations, vol. 2, tr. J. Hopkins, Minneapolis (MN), 2000; Sobre la
paz de la fe (De pace fidei), translation and notes by Lucio A. Burucúa, with an
introductory study by Lucio A. and José E. Burucúa, Cuadernos del Alarife series,
Buenos Aires, 2000; On Learned Ignorance, tr. by J. Hopkins, Minneapolis (MN),
1985; Nicholas of Cusa: The Layman on Wisdom and the Mind, Centre for Refor-
mation and Renaissance Studies Translation Series, 4; tr. by M. L. Fuhrer; Pegasus
Press, 1989. His sermons and brief treatises have also been published in several
volumes. The critical edition of Cusanus’ work published in Leipzig by F. Meiner
in 1932 is very notable.

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

observe how needful it is for me to enter into the darkness, and to

admit the coincidence of opposites, beyond all the grasp of reason,
and there to seek the truth where impossibility meeteth me. And be-
yond that, beyond even the highest ascent of intellect, when I shall
have attained unto that which is unknown to every intellect, and
which every intellect judgeth to be most far removed from truth,
there, my God, art Thou... Thou makest plain to me that there is none
other way of approaching Thee than that which to all men, even the
most learned philosophers, seemeth utterly inaccessible and impos-
sible. For Thou hast shown me that Thou canst not be seen else-
where than where impossibility meeteth and faceth me... I have
learnt that the place wherein Thou art found unveiled is girt round
with the coincidence of contradictories, and this is the wall of Para-
dise wherein Thou dost abide” (VD, IX).

Turning to one of his favorite metaphors, Nicholas of Cusa de-

fines God as an Absolute Sight. From this sight come all sights of
those who see, since it is a sight that exceeds any individualized per-
spective, no matter how perfect it might be. That is why only the
Absolute Sight, that is, ab-solved or untied “from all limitation, em-
braceth at one and the same time each and every mode of seeing”
and points of view. The visio absoluta is “the most adequate measure
of all sights, and their truest pattern... for all limited modes of seeing
exist without limitation in Absolute Sight... and thus Absolute Sight
existeth in all sight, because through it all limited sight existeth, and
without it is utterly unable to exist” (VD, II). Consequently, God or
the Absolute can be defined as seeing itself, as seeing the seeing,
whereas man would then be a seeing that sees not the seeing, which
is already seeing the non-seeing, that is, the darkness. And, as to see
is to know, then to know that one does not know is already some-
thing more than ignorance, that is, a learned ignorance.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

II.- THE MIND CANNOT SEE

Man can see everything, except the seeing. The Absolute Sight
would be equivalent to infinity, which encompasses or is above all
the possible modes of seeing. Whereas the Absolute is seeing itself,
without subject or objects, the ordinary sight through the mens is not
a pure seeing itself, but a contingent seeing that happens through
partial, successive sights of objects. The mens is an originated seeing
and not the pure and simple origin, because, strictly speaking, all
face or look comes from or is an image of the unlimited, original
face of God. Only in God does it happen that, when looking upon the
absolute face, He beholds nothing other or differing from Himself
(VD, VI). This statement leads to a subtle question: is the face that
wants to look at the absolute face a true face? In effect, it is just an
image, “because it is not the truth itself but an image of absolute
truth”, but, in that image, the face of God is also found, to the extent
that, “in my face the image coincideth with facial truth so that inso-
much as my face is image it is true” (VD, XV).

On the other hand, as God is infinite, He is unattainable to the

human understanding. Therefore, as infinity cannot be captured, the
first step to let the intellect try to see the infinity is that it be aware of
its ignorance: “How can the intellect grasp Thee, who art infinity?”.
That is why all attempt to contemplate the divine infinity in a human
way implies that all that is contemplated is the invisibility, that is, “I
know not what I see, for I see naught visible. This alone I know, that
I know not what I see, and never can know”. Anyway, as the infinity
is unconceptualizable, “I behold Thee as infinity. By reason of this,
Thou mayest not be attained, or comprehended, or named, or multi-
plied, or beheld” (VD, XIII). This way, when the intellect (intuition)
knows and accepts that it is ignorant and that it cannot capture God
due to His infinity, it takes the first step in order to know what is un-
knowable by means of the ordinary mind. Ultimately, since God is
incomprehensible, man can only comprehend the incomprehension

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

itself, fact that implies that the true knowledge of the Absolute is the
unknowing, that is, the Socratic or Platonic “I only know that I know
nothing”, a knowing unknowing. It is not an absence of knowledge,
but it is rather to know that that one does not know and, therefore, a
learned ignorance. This attitude is the only way to try to approach
God.

The learned ignorance is not skepticism, because it knows that it

does not know with a total certainty, as a kind of “I only know that I
know nothing”. The learned ignorance accepts its inability to know
the essence of the Being in a human way but, concurrently, it is stat-
ed that the overcoming or transcending of those limitations is found
in God as a coincidence. Therefore, the docta ignorantia itself is a
means to leave the sensible world and attain the vision of God.

III.- BUT GOD WANTS TO BE KNOWN

Turning to Plotinus’ discourse, Nicholas of Cusa affirms that it is

impossible that God had sent man to this world so that he could seek
Him if He had not given him at the same time any way to find Him.
The apparent paradox of the mystical way lies in that, on one hand,
God wants to be found; but, on the other, since He transcends all the
intellectual capacities of man, this can only achieve his goal by find-
ing the divine part that man has.

The etymology of the word “God” gives cause for a suggestive

explanation: “Theos” is a word that comes from “theōrō”, to see and
to run. According to an etymological interpretation already em-
ployed by Aristotle (On the soul, II, 7, 418 b 26), the Pseudo-
Dionysius the Areopagite (On the divine names, XII, 2-3) and some
Church Fathers, and taken up again by Cusanus, the root Theos orig-
inates two different verbs: to see and to run. This indicates that those
who seek God “must run by means of vision, in order to be able to

551
 JAVIER ALVARADO

advance to the all-seeing theos” (On Seeking God, I). God is the so-
called Theos because He sees everything. God would be to all things
what the sight is to the visible things; God is what vision is in the
domain of color: “God is in our domain as vision is in the domain of
colour. Colour can only be attained through vision, and so that any
colour whatsoever could be attained, the centre of vision is without
colour. In the domain of colour, therefore, vision is not found that is
without colour. Hence, in regard to the domain of colour, vision is
nothing rather than something. For the domain of colour doth not at-
tain being outside its domain, but rather asserteth that everything,
which is, is inside its domain. And there it doth not find vision. Vi-
sion, which existeth without colour, is therefore unnameable in the
domain of colour, since the name of no colour correspondeth to it.
But vision giveth every colour its name through distinction. Hence
all denomination in the domain of colour dependeth on vision, and
yet we have discovered, that the name of Him, from whom all names
exist, is nothing rather than something. Therefore, God is to every-
thing as sight is to the visible” (Dialogue on the Hidden God). Ac-
cording to this example, the created, the creature, merely consists in
a being seen by God. Even more, in a pure vision in which there is
no difference between a subject who sees and the seen objects. There
is just a unitive, homogeneous vision because there is nothing be-
tween the action of seeing and the seen object. There is no difference
between to see, to speak, to like, etc. because there is no plurality of
actions; it cannot even be said that there may be a subject and an ob-
ject of any action. It could only be said that there is an impersonal
acting; “I stand before this image of Thy face, my Lord... and it
seemeth to me, Lord, that Thy glance speaketh. For with Thee
speech and sight are one” (VD, X), because, in the absolute simplici-
ty, which God is, speech and sight are not different. The Absolute
speaks, seeing him to whom he speaks, and with that sight and
speech does He call all things into existence (VD, X). The absolute
seeing is to create. That is why the identification between to see and
to create implies the identification between to be seen and to be cre-

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

ated; to say that God sees everything equals to point out that the Ab-
solute creates everything in the same way that to name things equals
to bring them into existence, as the Genesis explains.

IV.- THE VISION OF GOD. IF HE SEES ME, I SEE HIM TOO

The Absolute does not have two forms of vision: one to see Him-
self and other to see the created things, because God is an Absolute
Identity that admits no otherness. This way, by seeing the Creation,
He sees Himself; and seeing Himself, He sees the created things. In
God, sight is creation, since in the action of seeing is it implicit the
action of going across the space (to measure is to establish propor-
tions). And that seeing and measuring are identical, since the Abso-
lute is the measure of Himself, the same way that such a vision is at
the same time vision of Himself and of all things. “If Thy sight is
Thy creation, and Thou seest nothing different from Thee, but Thou
art the object of Thyself... how then dost Thou create things different
from Thee? It seemeth, therefore, that Thou createst Thyself, the
same way Thou seest Thyself” (VD, XII), since God simultaneously
possesses “both” visions: the vision as a Creator and the vision of the
man who aspires to see God. Said in other terms, I am insofar as God
looks at me: “If Thou didst turn Thy glance from me, I should cease
to be” (VD, IV), but does is mean that God is God insofar as Crea-
tion looks at Him as well? Is there maybe God without Creation?

The most significant point of all this is: “in that Thou seest all,
Thou art seen of all; for otherwise creatures could not exist, since
they exist by Thy seeing. If they saw not Thee who seest them, they
would not receive from Thee being” (VD, X). Therefore, “in behold-
ing me, Thou givest Thyself to be seen of me, Thou who art a hidden
God. None can see Thee save in so far as Thou grantest a sight of
Thyself, nor is that sight aught else than Thy seeing him that seeth
Thee” (VD, V).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

V.- HOW TO SEE THE FACE OF GOD? THE LEARNED IG-

NORANCE

Due to every man being created or seen by God, he can also see
the face of God insofar as he transforms his individual vision in a
unitive vision. But, how is it possible to attain the vision of God,
who is the Absolute Sight? In order to see the look of God or the
face that transcends all faces, man needs to transcend his condition
of subject who sees objects and to join the absolute, unitive vision.
Certainly, the intellect that understands senses itself to understand,
“intellectus intelligens se sentit intelligere” (Sermon CCLXIII, 13)
because man is only allowed to be aware that he is aware. But that
step itself already implies a knowledge of oneself in which subject
and object overlap, originating another form of vision, witnessing or
knowledge. From there, one takes the first step to approach the in-
comprehensible Absolute, and such a step is a non-step, because it is
taken incomprehensibly. That is why the more man accepts he can-
not comprehend God, the closer he will be to the vision of His face
(On the Pursuit of Wisdom, 12). This implies to renounce the discur-
sive faculty in order to extend the intellective vision as if, from it, we
were making an ascending ladder toward the “suprarational”, “su-
praindividual” knowledge beyond the Coincidentia Oppositorum,
towards the original oneness. By ascending on this intellective or
unitive ladder, step by step, is God found.

According to Nicholas of Cusa, the face of God, which is the

face of faces, “howbeit unveiled, it is not seen, until above all faces a
man enter into a certain secret and mystic silence where there is no
knowledge or concept of a face. This mist, cloud, darkness or igno-
rance into which he that seeketh Thy face entereth when he goeth
beyond all knowledge or concept, is the state below which Thy face
cannot be found except veiled” (VD, VI).

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 COUNSEL TO PASS THROUGH THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

Only the learn ignorance or darkness is the way to access the in-
visible, absolute face of God; “For him, then, who must go beyond
all light, the place he entereth must needs lack visible light, and is
thus, so to speak, darkness to the eye. And while he is in that dark-
ness which is a mist, if he then know himself to be in a mist, he
knoweth that he hath drawn nigh the face of the sun; for that mist in
his eye proceedeth from the exceeding bright shining of the sun.
Wherefore, the denser he knoweth the mist to be, by so much the
more truly doth he attain in the mist unto the light invisible. I per-
ceive that ‘tis thus and not otherwise, Lord, that the light inaccessi-
ble, the beauty and radiance of Thy face, may, unveiled, be ap-
proached” (VD, VI). And, since God is beyond all concepts and be-
yond (individual) consciousness, the only way to pass through the
darkness of unknowing is to transcend every visible light, every aspi-
ration and every creature, for while something is sought, even if it is
a light, its visibility is sought as well, and all this is about attaining a
Light that is not visible. In sum, to see the non-seeing is like to see
Nothing, to want Nothing... Nothing... with absolute acceptance and
devotion.

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 SAINT TERESA OF JESUS AND THE REVELATION
“I AM, BE NOT AFRAID”

“A soul finds itself in the midst of all the tribulation

and disturbance... darkened and dry; but it is set at
peace, freed from all fear and filled with light merely
by hearing the words: ‘I am, be not afraid’” (Teresa of
Jesus, Mansions VI, 3, 7).
“She was frightened by this vision... but she found
it impossible to disbelieve in it, especially when she
heard the words: ‘I am; be not afraid’. These words
were so powerful that for the time being she could not
doubt their truth. She felt much encouraged and re-
joiced at being in such good company” (Teresa of Je-
sus, Mansions VI, 8, 3-4).

The founder of the discalced Carmelites, Teresa Sánchez de

Cepeda Dávila y Ahumada, better known as Teresa of Jesus (Ávila,
Spain, March the 28th, 1515 – Alba de Tormes, Salamanca, Spain,
October the 4th, 1582), was one of the deepest, clearest writers who
have written about the mystical path. The mystical writings by Saint
Teresa of Jesus unequivocally have a testimonial value. She not only
reflects on it the contemplative experience of others (she invokes the
authority of the Holy Scriptures, the Carmelite Rule and Constitu-
tions, Cassian’s Conferences and books of other authors such as
Saint John of Ávila, Louis of Granada, Francisco de Osuna, Bernar-
dino de Laredo, Bernabé de Palma or Francisco de Evia), but above
all her own experience in the paths of the spirit; “A feeling of the
presence of God would come over me unexpectedly, so that I could
in no wise doubt either that He was within me, or that I was wholly
absorbed in Him. It was not by way of vision; I believe it was what
 JAVIER ALVARADO

is called mystical theology” (Teresa of Jesus, Life, X, 1). Despite the

difficulties implied in the description of the ecstatic experiences, the
Saint uses a simple language and with abundant examples.

During her youth, Teresa of Jesus read and consulted the masters
of recollection. Therefore, “on the way there [to Becedas, Ávila],
that uncle of mine [from Hortigosa, 1537-1538] gave me a book
called Third Alphabet, which treats of the prayer of recollection... I
was therefore much pleased with the book, and resolved to follow the
way of prayer it described with all my might”533. A certain time later,
she would try to confirm her mystical experiences with other read-
ings: “Looking into books to see if I could find anything there by
which I might recognize the prayer I practiced, I found in one of
them, called the ‘Ascent of the Mount’ [Ascent to Mount Zion, by
Friar Bernardino de Laredo], and in that part of it which relates to
the union of the soul with God, all those marks which I had in my-
self, in that I could not think of anything”534.

Regarding her written works535, besides her memories or Life

(1562-1565), the most important one is the Interior Castle or treatise
of the Mansions (M), which was first published in 1588. For their

533
Teresa of Jesus, Life, IV, 6
534
Teresa of Jesus, Life, XXIII, 12.
535
Her work can be consulted in Complete works and bibliography, Madrid, 1951,
BAC, vol. 74. Her Complete works have also been published by Tomás Álvarez in
the Monte Carmelo Editorial, Burgos, 2004. In order to get into the huge bibliog-
raphy about the Saint, it can be consulted M. Jiménez Salas, Santa Teresa de Jesús,
Bibliografía fundamental, Madrid, 1962. As already classic studies, we count Fa-
ther Silverio de Santa Teresa, Preliminares, in Obras de Santa Teresa de Jesús, ty-
pography of “El Monte Carmelo”, Burgos, 1915-1926, vol. I, pp. XI-CXIV; Efrén
de la Madre de Dios-O. Steggink, Tiempo y vida de Santa Teresa, Madrid, BAC,
1968. Tomás de la Cruz, Santa Teresa de Jesús contemplativa, Ephemerides
Carmeliticae 13 (1962) 9-62. VV. AA., Sancta Theresia, doctor Ecclesiae:
historia, doctrina, documenta, Rome, 1970. Patricio Peñalver, La mística de Santa
Teresa en La mística española (siglos XVI y XVII), Madrid, 1997, pp. 59-76. Sal-
vador Ros García (coordinator), La recepción de los místicos. Teresa de Jesús y
Juan de la Cruz, Salamanca, 1997. Daniel de Pablo Maroto, Dinámica de la ora-
ción. Acercamiento del orante moderno a Santa Teresa de Jesús, Madrid, 1973.
Otger Steggink, Experiencia y realismo en Santa Teresa y San Juan de la Cruz,
Madrid, 1974.

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 SAINT TERESA OF JESUS AND THE REVELATION “I AM, BE NOT AFRAID”

part, the Accounts of Conscience are unconnected fragments of the

text of the book of her Life where she explains some spiritual phe-
nomena she experienced in first person. In Meditations on the Song
of Songs (MC), also entitled Concepts of the Love of God, Teresa de-
scribes the feelings or, rather, meditations that the reading of the
Song of Songs suggested her. She wrote as well the Way of Perfec-
tion (1562-1564), the Book of the Relations, the Book of the Founda-
tions (1573-1582), the Book of Constitutions (1563) and Advices
among others. Because of her writings, at the end of 1574, she was
denounced before the Holy Office and investigated in Seville; for
this reason, in 1575-1576, she was forced to write her works again,
among them, Way. That is why I will cite as CE in order to refer to
the first composition of the Way (Codex of El Escorial) and CV to
the second one (Codex of Valladolid). In all of her works, she devel-
ops many aspects that are especially important to exercise and go
deeper into the prayer of quiet and union.

I.- VOCAL AND MENTAL PRAYER. PRAYER OF QUIET

Teresa lived in a time of deep religious changes, as well as of ex-

treme mistrust of recollection. There was also the persecution of the
Alumbrados536 and the Dejados, cultivators of different forms of
mental prayer who were victims of the monopoly of the faith in the
hands of supposedly orthodox tendencies, characterized by their an-
ti-prayer or their anti-mysticism. We are witnessing the polemic be-
tween mental prayer and vocal prayer, similar to the polemic about
the superiority or supremacy between meditation and contemplation.
It is to be reminded that the disdain for empty rituals and mechanical
vocal prayers had driven the Erasmism to defend “inner Christiani-
ty” and mental prayer, with the subsequent polemic. Bartolomé Car-
ranza, following Saint Thomas, admitted a certain hierarchy of

536
Antonio Márquez, Los alumbrados, Madrid, 1972. Melquiades Andrés, Nueva
visión de los alumbrados, Madrid, 1973.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

“three forms of attention in vocal prayer”. One based on “the words

that are said during prayer”, which is “good”; another one, more re-
flective, which pays attention “to the meaning of the words”, and
which is “better”; finally, there is a third one that pays attention “to
the goal of prayer, which is God”, and which is “better than the other
two”. Even one of the official theologians of the Inquisition, the
Dominican Domingo de Baltanás, published in 1556 an Apology of
mental prayer, in which he stated: “... And I say that to say that there
is no mental prayer is a mistake against the divine history, which in
many parts teaches that there is mental prayer”537. However, in the
Index of Valdés, many books about prayer are condemned, such as
the ones written by Louis of Granada, Bartolomé Carranza, Saint
Francisco de Borja, Saint John of Ávila and Saint Peter of Alcántara.
Likewise, Melchor Cano criticized Bartolomé Carranza and Louis of
Granada for having universalized mental prayer among the people,
who, due to their socioeconomic role, should not practice the con-
templative life. As well, Saint John of the Cross wrote a book in de-
fense of vocal prayer538.

Saint Teresa moves in the domain of good sense and moderation

when asserting the value of vocal prayer (considering it as worthy as
the mental one) for those souls that are distracted during pure mental
prayer, “since it is a way that God may use to lead them to contem-
plation”. Of course, she does not want the people to be taught only
the vocal prayer. On the contrary, as a strong supporter of mental or
contemplative prayer, she will criticize the official opinion of the
“learned men” and the “Inquisitors”, about whom she states: “there
are a great many people who seem terrified at the very name of con-
templation or mental prayer” (CV, 24, 1), which is even more sur-
prising if it is taken into account that such censors did not know what
it was really about, since “you do not understand... you cannot know

537
It has been published by A. Huerga in the collection of Espirituales Españoles,
A-series, no. 12, Barcelona, 1963, p. 137.
538
Diálogo sobre la necesidad y obligación y provecho de la oración y divinos
loores vocales…, Salamanca, 1555.

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 SAINT TERESA OF JESUS AND THE REVELATION “I AM, BE NOT AFRAID”

what mental prayer is, or how vocal prayers should be said, or what
is meant by contemplation” (CV, 22, 2). The truth is that, when she
wrote “If you were told that it is not good to have any prayer other
than the vocal one, do not despair... for vocal prayer can never be
taken away from you” (CE, 73, 1, suppressed in CV), the censor
wrote down on the margin of the manuscript: “she seems to repri-
mand the Inquisitors who forbid books of [mental] prayer”. And, in
effect, the sentence was censored and did not pass to CV. Likewise,
this sentence was also censored: “And even though they take books
away from us, they cannot take this book away from us, for it is said
by the Truth itself, and thus it cannot err” (CE, 73, 4, suppressed in
CV). Her strong belief in the efficacy of mental prayer drives her to
advise not paying attention to those who affirm the contrary, even if
they are theologians: “pay no heed, then, to anyone who tries to
frighten you or depicts to you the perils of the way” (CV, 21, 5), “if
anyone tells you it is dangerous, look upon that person himself as
your principal danger and flee from his company. Do not forget this,
for it is advice that you may possibly need” (CV, 21, 7).

Therefore, in this matter, Teresa of Jesus was speaking based on

her own experience: “for my own part I must confess that, until the
Lord taught me this method, I never knew what it was to get satisfac-
tion and comfort out of prayer” (CV, 29, 7), because it is a mode of
prayer that helps “the soul not wander lost and the powers not be agi-
tated, as time will tell you” (CE, 50, 2, suppressed in CV). In sum,
the common forms of prayer such as the vocal or the discursive ones,
which involve thinking, considering or reflecting, have their certain
value, but are not so pure and suitable to achieve contemplation.
Nonetheless, true mental prayer does not consist just in praying men-
tally; “You must know, daughters, that whether or no you are prac-
ticing mental prayer has nothing to do with keeping the lips closed”
(CV, 22, 1). On the contrary, mental prayer, understood as the sus-
pension of the thoughts and the understanding, is a more effective
means to enjoy the “living water of contemplation”: “Men may at-

561
 JAVIER ALVARADO

tain more quickly to the state of contemplation if they persevere by

this way of inability to exert the intellect”539. What is more: to attain
that state of temporary detachment from the thoughts is an unequiv-
ocal sign that we are in the right way, since “the understanding ceas-
es from its acts, because God suspends it” (Life, XII, 8). In addition,
the practice of contemplation is not necessarily more difficult than
other forms of prayer, but, on the contrary, it is accessible to anyone,
no matter his cultural education. In fact, there are religious devotees
who have dedicated their lives to contemplation with no result, so
“what the poor soul, with the labor, perhaps, of twenty years in fa-
tiguing the understanding, could not bring about, that the gardener
accomplishes in an instant”540. Therefore, in order to contemplate,
we do not need intellectual knowledge, but a longing for God541.

This is an important point: whereas the forms of prayer or medi-

tation based on reflection require a certain intellectual talent or imply
a mental effort that, as time passes, causes even spiritual boredom or
unease, thoughtless prayer becomes restful, relaxing and deeply
transforming. The Saint confesses that, while she was practicing
these reflective forms of prayer, she had “been troubled by this tur-
moil of thoughts... It puzzled me... We think everything is lost, and
that the time spent in God’s presence is wasted”542.

In sum, Teresa of Jesus, adopting the mystical tradition, consid-

ers that mental and vocal prayer are “two parts or differences of the
same prayer”. The mental one is “convenient and necessary” as the
culmination of the spiritual way, but, on the other hand, also “the
words in prayer are convenient and reasonable in order to stir and
stoke the fire of the spirit and to hold God to both natures”. On some
occasion, she admits that vocal prayer is more appropriate for begin-

539
Teresa of Jesus, Life, IV, 8.
540
Teresa of Jesus, Life, XVII, 2.
541
“The whole soul is occupied in loving Him whom the understanding has toiled
to know” (Teresa of Jesus, Life, XXII, 9).
542
Teresa of Jesus, M, VI, 1, 8-9.

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 SAINT TERESA OF JESUS AND THE REVELATION “I AM, BE NOT AFRAID”

ners, whereas mental prayer is more suitable for the resourceful and
perfect ones. But these distinctions are dangerous because they cause
frustration among those who are not capable of passing from one
form of prayer to another. That is why the soul has to humbly accept
that God is the one who grants it “the living water of contemplation”
or makes it remain at the first few steps. In order to explain this dif-
ference, the Saint turns to the example of the basin of water (M., IV,
2, 3 ff.). Those who practice the prayer based on the thought are
those “who obtain consolation by meditation, since we gain it by our
thoughts, by meditating on created things, and by the labor of our
minds”, which she symbolizes by means of a basin that is filled by
water “from a distance flowing into it through man pipes and water-
works”. But there is another basin, placed at the same fountain,
which is God, which is filled quite noiselessly, with “the greatest
peace, calm and sweetness in the inmost depths of our being”, that is,
of the center of the soul.

II.- A DETERMINED DETERMINATION; THE WILL GUIDED

BY HUMILITY

Teresa explains that the contemplative prayer “is called recollec-

tion because the soul collects together all the faculties and enters
within itself to be with its God. Its Divine Master comes more speed-
ily to teach it, and to grant it the prayer of quiet, than in any other
way”543. The key word to access recollection is only one: detach-
ment. It is “self-detachment, both interior and exterior, from all
things created” (C, 8) or, what is the same, “let him deny himself”
(cf. Mt. 16:24).

How is detachment caused? How is it possible to deny oneself

without reaching a point of such refusal that may drive us to the
deepest despair and anxiety? The weapon is modesty, modus-stare,

543
Teresa of Jesus, Way of Perfection, 28, 4.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

the “know how to be”, described in the spiritual Way as “humility”;

“Once, while I was wondering why our Lord so dearly loves the vir-
tue of humility, the thought suddenly struck me... that it is because
God is the supreme Truth and humility is the truth, for it is most true
that we have nothing good of ourselves but only misery and noth-
ingness: whoever ignores this, lives a life of falsehood. They that re-
alize this fact most deeply are the most pleasing to God, the supreme
Truth, for they walk in the truth” (M, VI, 10, 7). It is the best weapon
to gradually weaken the pride of willful actions that unlimitedly rely
on the success of the own actions without realizing that nothing can
be without Him. But that humility is not that of him who feels proud
of being “humble” and constantly needs to demonstrate his humility
and boast about it. The true humble person is glad of being set at
nought; he “will have a genuine desire to be thought little of” (C, 15,
2). The mystic’s excessive trust in his own faculties to practice con-
templation can lead him to the mistake of trying to force things.

Such an attitude is not only useless, but also counterproductive

and a sign of arrogance, for “it is a want of humility to desire what
you have never deserved”. Against this, the Saint warns: “it would
be very presumptuous of me to choose a way for myself without
knowing what is good for me” and says that it is right to “leave our
Lord, who knows my soul, to guide me as is best for me” (M, VI, 9,
15). But, on the other hand, there is another aspect of man’s will that
constitutes his highest power: “Do not suppose that [God] has need
of any works of ours; He only expects the determination of our
goodwill”544. Such a resolute attitude of devotion to the contempla-
tive prayer is defined by Teresa as a “determined determination”.
When it is explained that, in recollection, “the understanding stops
talking and the will works”, it is referring to the determination to re-
main recollected without any aspiration or desire other than accept-
ing God’s will. There, “it leaves the will so inebriated and the mind
so transported out of itself that... such a person is incapable of at-

544
Teresa of Jesus, Mansions, III, 1, 7.

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tending anything but what excites the will to love”545. This way,
“The soul which begins to walk in the way of mental prayer with
resolution... has already traveled a great part of the road” (Life, XI,
13).

III.- STEPS TO ATTAIN RECOLLECTION AND THE HELP

OF “I AM”

Continuing the Christian contemplative tradition, Saint Teresa of

Jesus establishes three steps to attain the perfect contemplation:

In the first degree, we must learn to take away the attention paid
to the senses, especially sight and hearing: “Of those who are begin-
ners in prayer, we may say, that they are those who draw the water
up out of the well... for they must be wearied in keeping the senses
recollected... It is necessary for beginners to accustom themselves to
disregard what they hear or see... they must be alone, and in retire-
ment think over their past life... abandon the amusements of the
world... and the understanding is wearied thereby”546. Once the at-
tention has been withdrawn from the external objects, it must be
turned within: “This is a gathering together of the faculties of the
soul within itself, in order that it may have the fruition of that con-
tentment in greater sweetness”547.

In the second degree, thus, it starts the fight or game to remain

concentrated and detached from the senses with no tie but the will to
stay in prayer. The main obstacle to continuing prayer is the flow of
thoughts or, as the Christian contemplative tradition says, the activi-
ties of the two superior powers: the understanding and the memory.
Memories and thoughts assail us with no chance to avoid it. Only

545
Teresa of Jesus, Mansions, VI, 4, 14.
546
Teresa of Jesus, Life, XI, 9.
547
Teresa of Jesus, Life, XIV, 2.

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our determination to continue meditation ends up making them lose

their strength until they finally give up. Since, “as the will abides in
union with God, so its peace and quiet are not disturbed; on the con-
trary, the will by degrees brings the understanding and the memory
back again”548. When the memories and the rest of the thoughts hin-
der us or expel us from meditation, the Saint advises adopting a sen-
tence or motto that may help us resume the attention and dispel the
thoughts: “A soul finds itself in the midst of all the tribulation and
disturbance I have described... darkened and dry; but it is set at
peace, freed from all fear and filled with light merely by hearing the
words: ‘I am, be not afraid’” (M, VI, 3, 7).

Who is “I am”? It is clear that Saint Teresa refers to the Sacred

Name of God that was revealed to Moses in the episode of the burn-
ing bush: “I AM THAT I AM”, that is, the Being, conditioned by no at-
tribute at all. The importance and strength attributed to the Sacred
Name explains that it be used as a supporting formula to remain con-
centrated and, in addition, that such a Name, as Saint Teresa herself
confesses, were revealed to her during one of her mystical ecstasies.
This way, by means of the contemplative practice, after weeks or
months, the understanding and the memory gradually follow the
will, remaining almost still, so that, resigned or united, “the faculties
of the soul now retain only the power of occupying themselves
wholly with God”549.

Every attempt to consider meditation as an effort that has to be

rewarded and to have a result is heading for disaster. No spiritual
process is achieved by personal effort. Could not a simple and sin-
cere prayer, product of man’s despair, have more echo than a life-
time of ascetic efforts? “It is not by dint of labor on our part that we
can converse to any good purpose with God”550, under penalty of

548
Teresa of Jesus, Life, XV, 1.
549
Teresa of Jesus, Life, XVI, 3.
550
Teresa of Jesus, Life, XV, 6.

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losing our health. It is necessary to have a loving “preparation for

hearing, as advised by some books, [that] we should keep our minds
at rest, waiting to see what the Lord will work in our souls. But un-
less His Majesty has begun to suspend our faculties, I cannot under-
stand how we are to stop thinking, without doing ourselves more
harm than good” (M, IV, 3, 4). Thus, a day comes when we learn to
resign the senses and the powers of the soul. Then, the mysterious
contemplative life begins, since “this might seem impossible: if the
powers and senses were so absorbed that we might call them dead,
how does the soul understand this mystery? I cannot tell; perhaps no
one but the Creator Himself” (Mansions, VI, 4, 4).

Finally, the third degree of contemplation or maximum passive

purification is attained “when the rapture is at the highest... when the
faculties are lost... for then it neither sees, nor hears, nor perceives...
for the faculties, though not completely suspended, are so disposed
that they are scarcely active, being, as it were, absorbed, and incapa-
ble of making any reflections”. Even, “if the rapture has been deep,
for a day or two, and even for three days, the faculties may remain so
absorbed... as to be in appearance no longer themselves”551. By per-
severing in that state of contemplative detachment, it may happen
what some define as “ecstasy” (“to go out of oneself”), perhaps im-
properly, since it involves no otherness at all, but rather an inward-
ness or intimate contact with our true nature or essence. Saint Teresa,
who experienced many ecstatic trances by herself, explains them in a
very clear way: “Once, I understood how the Lord was in all things
and also in my soul, and I thought of the comparison with a sponge
that soaks up the water within it” (Relations, 45). On other occa-
sions, she explains the mystical union as a form of direct knowledge
in which the sense of individuality is momentarily abolished by an
all-encompassing totality: the subject is dissolved and transcends its
relationship with the objects because there is nothing or nobody
knowing; everything is an impersonal knowing: “Once, when in

551
Teresa of Jesus, Life, XX, 21; XXV, 4; XX, 15.

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prayer, I had a vision, for a moment... how all things are seen in God
and how all things are comprehended in Him” (Life, 40, 9). Once
broken the barriers of the corrosive individuality, the Being flows in
a natural way in loving peace; “Once, when I was with the whole
community reciting the Office, my soul became suddenly recollect-
ed, and seemed to me all bright as a mirror, clear behind, sideways,
upwards, and downwards; and in the center of it I saw Christ our
Lord, as I usually see Him. It seemed to me that I saw Him distinctly
in every part of my soul, as in a mirror, and at the same time the mir-
ror was all sculptured... in our Lord Himself by a most loving com-
munication which I can never describe” (Life, 40, 5).

IV.- THE SEVEN MANSIONS OF THE INTERIOR CASTLE

Saint Teresa turns to the metaphor of the interior castle or palace

in order to explain the spiritual pilgrim’s route towards the center of
the soul: “I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a
single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many
rooms, just as in heaven there are many mansions” (M, I, 1, 1). Let
us remind the passage of the Gospel according to which in my Fa-
ther’s house are many mansions (Jn. 14:2). Therefore, “let us com-
pare God to a very spacious and magnificent mansion or palace and
remember that this edifice is, as I say, God Himself” (M, VI, 10, 3).
This interior castle “is only about what He is” and thus about God’s
call to man. He calls him by means of a thousand “communications
and inspirations” (M, II, 1, 3) and with His personal whistle, as the
Good Shepherd, He summons those who are willing to be reinstated
in His interior palace or castle, to return “to His mansion” (M, IV, 3,
2). The mansions552 are passed not thanks to intellectual knowledge

552
Where did Teresa of Jesus take the model of the interior castle divided into sev-
en mansions? Diego de Yepes, confessor and biographer of the Saint, during the
process of Madrid of 1595, declared: “among the things she told him was a vision
that she had had, desirous of obtaining some insight into the beauty of a soul in
grace. Just at that time, she was commanded to write a treatise on prayer, about

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or good deeds, but by means of love. Said in other words, the differ-
ent interior mansions correspond with the degree of intensity of the
love of the soul, that is, to its longing to know Him, since, “to reach
the mansions we wish to enter, it is not so essential to think much as
to love much” (M, IV, 1, 7). As a commentary to the way to ascend
on the mansions of the interior castle of Saint Teresa, Saint John of
the Cross explains that “love is the inclination, strength, and power
for the soul in making its way to God, for love unites it with God.
The more degrees of love it has, the more deeply it enters into God
and centers itself in Him. We can say that there are as many centers
in God possible to the soul, each one deeper than the other, as there
are degrees of love of God possible to it. A stronger love is a more
unitive love, and we can understand in this manner the many man-
sions the Son of God declared were in his Father’s house (Jn. 14:2)”
(Saint John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, 1, 13).

In sum, the metaphor of the interior castle is used by the Saint to

make the pilgrim consider his “soul as resembling a castle, formed of
a single diamond or a very transparent crystal” that cannot be
reached by means of the understanding (M, I, 1, 1). The “boundaries
of the castle” of the soul are “these bodies” of ours (M, I, 1, 3). Just
like there are many mansions in heaven, “there are many mansions

which she knew a great deal from experience. On the eve of the festival of the
Most Holy Trinity, she was thinking what subject she should choose for this trea-
tise, when God... granted this desire of hers, and gave her a subject: He showed her
a most beautiful crystal globe, made in the shape of a castle, and containing seven
mansions, in the seventh and innermost of which was the King of Glory, in the
greatest splendor, illumining and beautifying them all. The nearer one got to the
center, the stronger was the light; outside the palace limits, everything was foul,
dark and infested with toads, vipers and other venomous creatures. While she was
wondering at this beauty, which by God’s grace can dwell in the human soul, the
light suddenly vanished. Although the King of Grace did not leave the mansions,
the crystal globe was plunged into darkness, became as black as coal and emitted
an insufferable odor, and the venomous creatures outside the palace boundaries
were permitted to enter the castle, and in that state remained the soul that is in sin.
From this vision, she said, did she learn four things of capital importance... The
fourth thing Mother Teresa learned from this vision was the subject of the treatise
she was commanded to write, which she entitled Mansions” (Vida, virtudes y mila-
gros de la bienaventurada virgen Teresa de Jesús, Zaragoza, 1606).

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in this castle, of which some are above, some below, others at the
side, in the center; in the very midst of them all, is the principal
chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret inter-
course” (M, I, 1, 3). And, “although I have only mentioned seven
mansions, yet each one contains many more rooms” (M, Epilogue,
3). However, most people do not feel the need to enter the interior
palace or castle. They do not even know what there is “in that most
delightful place” (M, I, 1, 5). Some, at the most, prowl about the out-
er battlements by mere curiosity. This is due to them preferring “to
think of nothing but external matters, that there seems no cure for
them; it appears impossible for them to retire into their own hearts”,
because of which they will end up becoming “pillars of salt for not
looking inwards, just as Lot’s wife did for looking backwards” (M, I,
1, 6).

How can I enter within myself? First of all, the question itself
contains a paradox, since, what distance is there between I and my-
self? How is it possible to suggest the quest for what has not been
lost because it has always been here? That is why the Doctor of the
Church clarifies: “this castle is the soul, clearly no one can have to
enter it, for it is the person himself: it would make no sense, just like
one might as well tell someone to go into a room he is already in”
(M, I, 1, 5). But the truth is that, even though one may be in a man-
sion, the noises and external objects prevent us from realizing it, and
thus it seems that we are outside. That is why “there are, however,
very different ways of being in this castle; many souls live in the
courtyard of the building where the sentinels stand, neither caring to
enter farther, nor to know who dwells in that most delightful place,
what is in it and what rooms it contains. Certain books on prayer that
you have read [she refers to the Third Alphabet by Osuna and to the
Ascent to Mount Zion by Bernardino de Laredo] advise the soul to
enter into itself, and this is what I mean” (M, I, 1, 5). In order to ex-
plain this process, Teresa of Jesus goes on with the simile of the cas-
tle: the senses and powers of the soul are the inhabitants of the castle,

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who have been for years dealing with odd people, even with enemies
of the castle.

Faced with the hostility of the exterior of the castle, its inhabit-
ants wish to come back inside, but, as they do not finally manage to
do it because they are hindered by the force of the habit of being out-
side, they end up prowling around. Then, the King-Lord-Shepherd
“whistles so sweetly that, although scarcely hearing it, they recog-
nize His call and no longer wander, but return... to His mansion. So
strong is this Pastor’s power over His flock that they abandon the
worldly cares which misled them and re-enter the castle” (M, IV, 3,
2).

The Saint warns against certain deviations in the practice of con-

templation, such as “that the very effort to think of nothing excites
our thought to think more”, as we lose ourselves in the benefit we
expect to obtain from the practice. She also warns the “glutton” con-
templatives: “I wish to warn you here of a special danger... they al-
low themselves to be fascinated. The more they lose self-control, the
more they get fascinated... and in their brains it seems to them a rap-
ture; but I call it daze, which does nothing but waste their time and
injure their health (this state lasted with a certain person for eight
hours)” (M, IV, 3, 8). That is why she recommends the Superior to
“prevent such a nun from spending more than a very few hours in
prayer... God only calls her to the active life. There must be such
people in monasteries: employ her in the various offices and be care-
ful that she is never left very long alone, otherwise she will entirely
lose her health” (M, IV, 3, 13). She herself confesses to have fallen
for “the deception... in that fascination, awaiting for that gift. I rec-
ognized clearly that I was going wrong, for as I could not always
keep in this state, my thoughts wandered hither and thither and my
soul seemed like a bird, ever flying about and finding no place to
rest. Thus I lost much time” (M, VI, 7, 15) until she was advised by
Saint Francisco de Borja or Diego de Cetina. In sum, not only the

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contemplative life is not incompatible with the active life, but it is

even necessary to find a certain balance in order that “your founda-
tion must not consist of prayer and contemplation alone: unless you
acquire the virtues and praise them, you will always be dwarfs” (M,
VII, 4, 9).

V.- THE FIRST THREE MANSIONS

This way, those who seek the gate of the castle in order to enter
themselves use the key of prayer (M, I, 1, 7; II, 1, 11), so that, with a
bit of perseverance, they manage to enter the first mansions. What
are these first mansions like? The Saint explains: “The light which
comes from the King’s palace hardly shines at all in these first man-
sions... because the number of snakes, vipers, and venomous reptiles
from outside the castle prevent souls entering them from seeing the
light” (M, I, 2, 14) or the beauty of the castle, and from having peace
and calm (M, 1, 1, 8). They are people who are still “very worldly,
yet... at times... commend themselves to God’s care”. “Although full
of a thousand businesses, they pray a few times a month” because
they are clung and attached to the thoughts in such a way that their
heart goes wherever their treasure may be.

Therefore, in this first stage, the senses and the mind must be
calmed down in order to predispose them to quiet. We must be like a
dumb who cannot hear. All kinds of thoughts, desires and day-
dreams, the same as vermin, are the main obstacle to concentration.
As soon as the senses and the powers quiet, the mansions are passed,
since the soul approaches the origin of the light that is emitted by the
center, where the King is.

Those who persevere in the art of contemplation by means of the

detachment from the thoughts and the disregard of the external sens-
es go into the second mansions. Due to practice, the powers are more

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“skillful” to see and hear the King of the castle; the understanding
“hastens to this Lord’s presence” (M, III, 2, 8). In sum, these are the
mansions of those “who have begun to practice prayer” but do not
yet have enough determination as to pass to other mansions (M, II, 1,
2). In the second mansions begins a process of inner purification be-
cause, during meditation, once a certain distance from the thought is
gotten, old traumas and psycho-mental knots arise. As long as we do
not solve them, they will be presented to us during meditation to-
gether with all kind of inclinations, personal problems, internal con-
tradictions, etc. It is about opening our inner drain in order to clean
it, that is, about apologizing for our trespasses and forgive those who
trespassed against us. Without this previous, sincere reconciliation of
the soul, we cannot advance towards inside the castle.

Our perseverance in the contemplative art makes it easier to enter

the third mansions. The prayer still needs here the help of the
thought, so that the souls “are nearly always using their understand-
ing and reason in making meditations. This is good for them, for
they have not been given grace for more” (M, IV, 1, 6). In these
mansions, the soul must learn the value of humility. Some of those
who dwell here are characterized by the desire not to offend God, the
dedication to recollection, the practice of religious duties and, in ad-
dition, “they exercise themselves in works of charity to their neigh-
bors” (M, III, 1, 5). This is good, except if, by doing it, they are hid-
ing a certain form of spiritual voluntarism that places their expecta-
tions on external acts, establishing a causal, quasi-commercial rela-
tionship between their own effort and the result they expect to ob-
tain. Every moment of recollection is considered and analyzed as an
investment, so that a meditation session without any perceptible fruit
is seen as an unfair, useless annoyance. This is no more than a bad-
dissimulated lack of humility; “Oh, humility, humility! ... Do not
pursue so much as to catch nothing. Think of the saints, who have
entered the chamber of this King, and you will see the difference be-

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tween them and ourselves. Do not ask for what you do not deserve”
(M, III, 1, 6). Here begins the period of dryness of prayer.

The Saint dedicates several pages to the core topic of the dryness
in prayer that is suffered even by “well-ordered” souls (M, III, 1, 7).
After months or years of meditation, they cannot manage to find the
“clean waters”, and thus their impotence becomes constant re-
proaches to God, whom they condemn for not having awarded them
with the vision of the Light. They do not notice that this aridity they
believe to see outside is only inside of them, and, as they consider
them as good, living in a deception, they approve their faults, canon-
izing them as saint conducts, and want “others to canonize them” as
well (M, III, 2, 3). In many cases, they are even blind to any kind of
help, since all “advice is useless; having practiced virtue for so long,
they think themselves capable of teaching it, and believe that they
have abundant reason to feel those things” (M, III, 2, 1). But what
they lack is humility.

VI.- THE FOURTH MANSIONS: THE BEGINNING OF

RECOLLECTION OR PRAYER OF QUIET

Although, in the fourth mansions, “these matters begin to be su-

pernatural and it will be most difficult to speak clearly about them”,
one of its characteristics is that “the poisonous reptiles rarely come
into these rooms, and, if they enter, do more good than harm” (M,
IV, 1, 3). The “I” is deactivated, as a cartridge without dynamite; it is
an “I” without me. The thought stops harassing with its chaotic and
unceasing requests because the soul has established the necessary
distance between them; it is already a neutral observer of the
thoughts. It is in these mansions where it properly begins the art of
resigning the senses and the powers, especially the thought, that is,
where the contemplative practice really begins. In these rooms, “it is
not so essential to think much as to love much” (M, IV, 1, 7). Saint

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Teresa herself confesses how much it took for her not only to under-
stand what the thoughtless prayer was in a theoretical way, but also
to attain that state of emptiness: “I myself have sometimes been
troubled by this turmoil of thoughts. I learned by experience, but lit-
tle more than four years ago, that our thoughts (or it is clearer to call
it our imagination), are not the same thing as the understanding. I
questioned a theologian on the subject and he told me it was the fact,
which consoled me not a little. As the understanding is one of the
powers of the soul, it puzzled me to see it so sluggish at times, while,
as a rule, the thought takes flight at once, so that God alone can con-
trol it by so uniting us to Himself that we seem, in a manner, de-
tached from our bodies. It puzzled me to see that while to all appear-
ance the powers of the soul were occupied with God and recollected
in Him, the thought was wandering elsewhere” (M, IV, 1, 8). Pre-
cisely, one of the most wonderful moments of the beginnings of the
contemplative practice takes place when one experiences pure
awareness, free from thoughts, for the first time. Such an experience
is a powerful incentive to go on with the daily practice, since “[it]
disturbs my prayer when unaccompanied with ecstasy, but when it is
ecstatic, I do not feel any pain, however great” (M, IV, 1, 11). The
Saint draws a distinction between the state of “learned” recollection
and the quiet, being the former a prelude and “beginning to come” to
the latter (M, IV, 3, 1). The “supernatural” quiet or recollection hap-
pens after the resignation or suspension of all the senses and “the
powers within themselves”.

How to achieve the prayer of quiet? In order to attain that recol-

lection, it is useful to begin by imagining that God is within the soul
as a king is in his palace, so that, to access his privacy, one must dis-
regard all external things. The password is simply this one: “Humili-
ty, humility!”. And how is it known whether we possess the required
humility? Quite easy: the proof “is that you neither think you now
deserve these graces and consolations from God, nor that you ever
will as long as you live... The water does not flow through aque-

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ducts... if the spring [(God)] does not afford it, in vain shall we toil to
obtain it. I mean, that though we may meditate and try our hardest,
and though we shed tears to gain it, we cannot make this water flow.
God alone gives it to whom He chooses, and often when the soul is
least thinking of it” (M, IV, 2, 9). But this imagining God is medita-
tion with consideration, not contemplation. Certainly, such medita-
tion can be suitable for those who do not know how or cannot access
contemplation. But it can also be effective to facilitate contempla-
tion. This does not consist in “thinking of God dwelling within you,
or by imagining Him as present in your soul: this is good practice
and an excellent kind of meditation, for it is founded on the fact that
God resides within us; it is not, however”, but, strictly speaking,
“trying not to work with the understanding” (M, IV, 3, 3-5). The de-
votional path seems to be her preferred way to enter recollection.
First of all, we must choose a meditation subject based on Jesus
Christ so that we may be inspired by it, mainly Jesus Christ’s love
when he redeemed man in His crucifixion. This way, once the mind
is quieted by means of love feelings, the momentary drowsiness or
suspension of the senses takes place little by little and the soul (con-
sciousness) go deeper into the spirit. He who has tasted the delights
of contemplation “sees that those of the world are garbage” (M, IV,
3, 9), which is an even bigger incentive to detach himself from them.

The purification of the character entails the acceptance of suffer-

ings and problems, which is not an invitation to a lazy resignation.
He must fight to overcome them, but accepting that, ultimately, such
a fight and its eventual result do not depend on him, but on God.
That is why, insofar as he knows the mysterious greatness of God, he
considers himself more insignificant (M, IV, 3, 13). Ultimately, it is
in these fourth mansions where the soul finds out the transforming
power of humility.

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VII.- THE FIFTH MANSIONS: THE SIMPLE UNION

In the fifth mansions, it is explained by which means the soul

achieves the prayer of union with God, its symptoms and the way to
distinguish it from other deceptive states. In these rooms, there are
“riches, treasures and joys” hard to explain, though here, the Saint,
using one of the constant paradoxes of the mystical route, seems to
make a pedagogical excess when she explains that such gifts can on-
ly be achieved when our devotion is absolute and the soul keeps
nothing to itself, since God “will have it all” (M, V, 1, 4). That is, if
you want to be rich, then renounce everything; if you want to live,
renounce your life; if you want (to contemplate) God, renounce
yourself. Actually, the Saint recalls one of the revelations received
during a mystical trance: “Do not labor to hold Me within yourself
enclosed, but enclose yourself within Me” (Relations, 18).

Invoking the well-known verse of the New Testament, multi

vocati, pauci electi, “many are called, but few are chosen” (Mt.
20:16), the Saint uses one of her splendid metaphors to explain the
spiritual transformation that takes place in these mansions. Thus, she
explains that the soul is similar to a silkworm that lives attached to
the branches of the tree until it turns into a butterfly; “when the silk-
worm is full-grown... it begins to spin silk and to build the house
wherein it must die... I mean Christ”, so that “this large and ugly
worm leaves the cocoon as a lovely little white butterfly” (M, V, 2,
2-3). The Saint insists: “in any case the silkworm must die and it will
cost you more in this way. In the former manner, this death is facili-
tated by finding ourselves introduced into a new life; here, on the
contrary, we must give ourselves the death-blow” (M, V, 3, 5), that is
to say, that you must kill (the I) if you want to live (in Christ). Oth-
erwise, we will just extend the agony of him who aspires to become
a butterfly not willing to stop being a caterpillar, and this way, “I die
because I do not die”. It is clear that such a death is rather a trans-
formation, since, in order that the butterfly can arise, strictly speak-

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ing, it is not necessary for the worm to die, because the worm is... the
butterfly! Devoted to the transforming emptiness of contemplation,
the soul accesses the inner cellar where it gets drunk with the pres-
ence God. That is why there is another “I die because I do not die”
even more supreme: the one of the nostalgia and longing to be al-
ways a butterfly and definitely leave the stage of worm.

In these mansions, she explains the delightful union by means of

which “God spiritually espouses souls” (M, V, 4, 3). Also the active
union or union of conformity, in which the will is aimed to have no
will: a new spiritual paradox that is solved by the Saint by explaining
that it consists in willing what God wills, “With the help of God’s
Grace, true union can always be attained by forcing ourselves to re-
nounce our own will and by following the will of God in all things”
(M, V, 3, 3). As the suspension of the powers and the acceptance are
total, that disposition or receptivity “allows” God to work within the
soul (M, V, 2, 2). This acceptance consists in handing over our will
to God’s: “its chief value lies in the resignation of our will to that of
God without which it could not be reached” (M, V, 3, 3). The most
important consequence of the paradox “I want not to want” or “I
want Your will to be done in me” is that the prayer of union is unat-
tainable, no matter how much effort the mystic may make. Regard-
ing the matter of the prayer of union, “the habit of recollection is not
to be gained by force of arms, but with calmness” (M, II, 1, 11), for
there it is God who introduces us into the center of the soul or “inner
cellar” (of wine, from the Song of Songs 2:4) there; “The happy soul
which has attained it will live in this world and in the next without
care of any sort. No earthly events can trouble it... neither sickness,
poverty, nor the loss of any one by death affect it” (M, V, 3, 3). How
is this possible? Certainly, being all these earthly events just mere
thoughts processed by the mind, the detachment from them, during
the wakefulness, make them be observed with pure neutrality.

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Once the soul has settled in these mansions, “although there is

little chance of the poisonous reptiles entering here, yet agile little
lizards will try to slip in, though they can do no harm, especially if
they remain unnoticed. These, as I said, are trivial fancies of the im-
agination” (M, V, 1, 5) and remain outside making no impression on
the soul; “[these feelings of sorrow] soon pass away, for... they do
not affect the depths of the soul but only its senses and powers” (M,
V, 3, 4).

And, during the prayer of simple union (term used to distinguish

it from the full union of the sixth mansions), insofar as it happens
because of the resignation of the senses and the thought, there will be
no room for them, since “neither the imagination, the understanding,
nor the memory has power to hinder the graces bestowed on it... for
His Majesty is so joined and united with the essence of the soul, that
the devil dare not approach, nor can he even understand this mystery.
This is certain, for it is said that he does not know our thoughts,
much less can he penetrate a secret so profound that God does reveal
it even to us” (M, V, 1, 5). This nothingness of the powers and the
thought is like to be dead to the world, since it implies that “the soul
can love it knows not how, nor whom it loves, nor what it desires”
(M, V, 1, 4). That is why it is a delightful, delicious death, “for the
soul is deprived of the faculties it exercised while in the body” (M,
V, 1, 4). This death facilitates the access to the heavenly regions.
The mystical rapture seems a physical death because, “as it is be-
yond its powers, it is so astounded that, if consciousness is not com-
pletely lost, at least no movement is possible: the person may be
compared to one who falls into a dead faint with dismay” (M, V, 1,
4). The ecstatic experience of those who settle in these fifth man-
sions is so supernatural that “it doubts what really happened to it,
whether it was nothing but fancy, or it was a sleep” (M, V, 1, 5). But
there is an unequivocal sign for the momentary union, and it is the
strong certainty of the authenticity of that unitive experience, no
matter if it is inexpressible and intransmissible. Thus, “God visits the

579
 JAVIER ALVARADO

soul in a manner which prevents its doubting, on returning to itself,

that it dwelt in Him and that He was within it, and so firmly is it
convinced of this truth that, although years may pass before this fa-
vor recurs, the soul can never forget it nor doubt the fact” (M, V, 1,
9). On the contrary, “a soul which does not feel this assurance has
not been united to God entirely, but only by one of its powers, or has
received one of the many other favors God is accustomed to bestow
on men” (M, V, 1, 11). In the simple union, the rapture has a short
duration, since “it is never as long as half an hour” (M, V, 2, 7; Life,
18). There, God is “united with the essence of the soul” (M, V, 1, 5),
once the powers are temporarily suspended (Life, 18) and the soul is
freed and purified from all the bodily activities, apprehensions, af-
fections and passions. It is the “not to understand by understanding”
that “deprives the soul of all its senses in order to better imprint in it
true wisdom” (M, V, 1, 9).

The Saint concludes by warning that, even though the delights of

contemplation favor the mystic’s inwardness and captivation, such
an attitude is counter-producing, since it is selfish and egoist. The
contemplative life is not opposed to the active life. Indeed, they
counterbalance each other553.

VIII.- THE SIXTH MANSIONS: THE FULL UNION

In the sixth mansions, the soul, touched by the divine love, is

taken “to supernatural things and perfect contemplation” (M, VI, 7,

553
“When I see souls very anxious to know what sort of prayer they practice, cov-
ering their faces and afraid to move or think lest they should lose any slight tender-
ness and devotion they feel, I know how little they understand how to attain union
with God since they think it consists in such things as these. No, sisters, no; our
Lord expects works from us. If you see a sick sister whom you can relieve, never
fear losing your devotion; compassionate her; if she is in pain, feel for it as if it
were your own and, when there is need, fast so that she may eat, not so much for
her sake as because you know your Lord asks it of you. This is the true union of
our will with the will of God. If some one else is well spoken of, be more pleased
than if it were yourself” (M, V, 3, 11).

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 SAINT TERESA OF JESUS AND THE REVELATION “I AM, BE NOT AFRAID”

11). More specifically, the Saint refers to the prayer of quiet. And,
although, in order to attain the state of quiet, “there are some princi-
ples, and even means, which some souls have” (M, VI, 7, 13), the
truth is that, in these last mansions, there is no means or method that
can be explained; “I am at my wit’s end, sisters, as to how to make
you understand this operation of love: I know not how to do so... The
inhabitants of the other mansions, the senses, the imagination and the
powers, dare not stir” (M, VI, 2, 3), but, “even by the imagination,
nothing is seen in this prayer that can be called sight. I speak of it as
‘sight’ because of the comparison I used” (M, VI, 1, 1), because, in
this mansion, as well as in the seventh one, God commands to close
not only the doors of the mansions, save the one He dwells in, but al-
so “those of the keep and the whole castle”, that is, the body senses.
Nonetheless, as nothing is seen or understood or felt, how can there
be a memory of that experience that may later be transmitted to other
people? “This might seem impossible; if the powers and senses were
so absorbed that we might call them dead, how does the soul under-
stand this mystery? I cannot tell; perhaps no one but the Creator
Himself can say what passes in these places” (M, VI, 4, 4).

The Saint distinguishes between the imaginary vision and the in-
tellectual vision. In the former, as the thought works in it, the medi-
tative experience runs the risk of being conditioned by our lower
tendencies. The Saint, according to the Catholic doctrine, points out
the danger of suffering autosuggestion or, above all, the devil’s de-
ception (M, VI, 9, 15). And, since “it is safer to wish only what God
wishes, who knows us better than we know ourselves and who loves
us” (M, VI, 9, 16), she recommends us “never to pray nor desire to
be led by this way yourselves” (M, VI, 9, 14). But, unlike the imagi-
nary vision, which does not last any long, the intellectual vision
“lasts for several days and even sometimes for more than a year” (M,
VI, 8, 3). This vision, which “is called an intellectual vision, I cannot
tell why” (M, VI, 8, 2), consists in a unitary vision “without the sight
of the bodily eyes... I cannot tell whether the soul dwells in the body

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

meanwhile or not; I would neither affirm that it does nor that the
body is deprived of it” (M, VI, 6, 8). It happens when it suddenly
takes place “a suspension, during which the Lord makes [the soul]
discover so sublime mysteries, that it appears to see within God
Himself... I cannot rightly say the soul ‘sees’, for it sees nothing; this
is no imaginary vision but a highly intellectual one, wherein is mani-
fested how all things are beheld in God and how He contains them
within Himself” (M, VI, 10, 2). This non-dual experience of the vi-
sion of God in all, or of all in God, is called rapture because God
kidnaps the spirit once He has closed the doors of the senses, for “He
will allow of no obstacle from the powers or the senses but bids that
the doors of all the mansions” (M, VI, 4, 9). In this sudden rapture of
the spirit, the soul really appears to have quit the body, though, on
the other hand, the person is certainly not dead... [The soul] feels that
it has been wholly transported into another and a very different re-
gion” (M, VI, 5, 7) and, after that, “no word can be uttered; some-
times, however, the person is at once deprived of all the senses, the
hands and body becoming as cold as if the soul had fled... When this
suspension diminishes, the body seems to come to itself” (M, VI, 4,
13), leaving us without strength and “the limbs all disjointed... so
that, for two or three days afterwards, the suffering is too severe for
the person to have even the strength to hold a pen” (M, VI, 11, 4).
Nevertheless, despite these dramatic descriptions, the Saint adds that
this is a “delicious pain”, for it announces the presence of God and,
therefore, it “is not really pain”, so that, with the aim of enjoying His
presence again, the soul “remains longing to suffer anew its loving
pangs” (M, VI, 2, 4) and with a passionate desire “of serving God in
any way He asks of it” (M, VI, 4, 15). The joy caused by the mysti-
cal rapture is so sublime, “lovely and delightful” that no one could
imagine it “even though he lived a thousand years and spent all that
time in trying to picture it” (M, VI, 9, 5).

In the full union, God descends and draws up the soul “as the
clouds, so to speak, gather the mists from the face of the earth... and,

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 SAINT TERESA OF JESUS AND THE REVELATION “I AM, BE NOT AFRAID”

as a cloud, rising up to heaven, takes the soul with Him, and begins
to show it the treasures of the kingdom which He has prepared for it”
(Life, XX, 2), because the powers and the inner senses are complete-
ly fascinated and symbolically dead to themselves but alive in and to
God (Life, XX; Mansions, VI, 2). This betrothal, previous to the
marriage, is another form of ecstatic union, going out of oneself or
“rapture” of the soul that is attained when God, “touched with pity
by what He has seen it suffer for so long past in its longing for
Him... entirely inflamed like a Phoenix..., unites it to Himself in a
way known only to them both” (M, VI, 4, 3). There, the soul does
not understand, but it is “awake” to all divine things and “more care-
ful than before to avoid offending Him in any way” (M, VII, 1, 8).
This grace or gift is explained by the Saint with the example of the
opening and closing of the window shutters in a room; it is “as if a
person were in a very well lighted room and some one were to dark-
en it by closing the shutters; we should feel certain that the others
were still there, though we were unable to see them. You may ask:
‘Could we not bring back the light and see them again?’ This is not
in our power; when our Lord chooses, He will open the shutters of
the understanding” (M, VII, 1, 9).

The Saint explains the different forms and intensities of these

mystical raptures, especially the flight of the spirit, because it causes
a “big fear” due to the trepidation of seeing his “soul being raptured”
(M, VI, 5, 1). She compares this trance with “a lightning... because
its splendor resembles an infused light like that of the sun covered”
(M, VI, 9, 3), or with the vigor of a so powerful wave that sweeps
along “the little vessel of our soul”, leaving her without a pilot (M,
VI, 5, 3). The Saint relates that, in order to endure such attacks, she
said to herself, “be not afraid, I am”, name of God revealed to Moses
before the burning bush with which the Saint confesses to have been
entrusted by an inner voice in one of her mystical ecstasies: “These
words were so powerful that for the time being she could not doubt
their truth. She felt much encouraged and rejoiced at being in such

583
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good company” (M, VI, 8, 3). On several occasions, the Saint re-
minds that all this sublime and mysterious process is carried out kin-
dled by the Holy Spirit as a mediator between the soul and God: “It
seems to me the Holy Spirit must be a mediator between the soul and
God, the One who moves it with such ardent desires, for He enkin-
dles it in a supreme fire, which is so near” (MC, 5, 5).

Those who settle in these sixth mansions and have experienced

the vigor of the waves, the dart, the lightning of ecstasy, feel “a
strange loneliness, finding no companionship in any earthly crea-
ture”, since they see themselves “like one suspended in mid-air, who
can neither touch the earth nor mount to heaven” (M, VI, 11, 5).
They are then called up for the last mansion.

IX.- SEVENTH MANSIONS: THE STABLE AND INDIS-

SOLUBLE UNION

“Thoroughly detached from all things” (M, VII, 3, 8), the soul is
introduced into the seventh mansion, “for its will and appetite are so
united with God that it considers the fulfillment of God’s will to be
its glory” (Saint John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, 2, 28),
since it is written that “he who is joined unto the Lord is one spirit
with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17). The Saint compares this state or mansion
with the state of Adam in the earthly Paradise, because “Adam in the
state of innocence... does not understand evil, nor does he judge any-
thing in a bad light” (Saint John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, 26,
14) and also with the state of the soul in Heaven, because “God plac-
es the soul in His own mansion, which is in the very center of the
soul itself. They say the empyreal heavens, in which our Lord
dwells”. Innocence, detachment, peace... are some of the words that
describe this supreme or unconditioned state of the soul. And, even
though the powers and the senses are not always at peace and “there
are still times of struggle, suffering and fatigue..., peace is not lost by

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them... Though tumults and wild beasts rage with great uproar in the
other mansions, yet nothing of this enters the seventh mansions, nor
drives the soul from it. Although the mind regrets these troubles,
they do not disturb it nor rob it of its peace, for the passions are too
subdued to dare to enter here where they would only suffer still fur-
ther defeat” (M, VII, 2, 9-11). In effect, this absence of “aridity” and
“interior troubles” (M, VII, 3, 8) causes the deep peace “of the in-
nermost part of the soul” because “neither the world nor the flesh nor
the devil will dare attack it, for... [the soul] enjoys now in this state
habitual sweetness and tranquility that is never lost or lacking of it”
(Saint John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, 24, 5). The worm dies
and is transformed into a butterfly, but now, “the little butterfly of
which I spoke dies with supreme joy, for Christ is its life” (M, VII, 2,
5).

It takes place here a clearer vision than in the sixth mansion,

since “our pitiful God removes the scales from its eyes” (M, VII, 1,
6) in order to grant it an intellectual vision, “like a most dazzling
cloud of light”. But the raptures also gradually cease; “when the soul
arrives at this state, it does not go into ecstasies; even then they are
not like the former trances and the flight of the spirit” (M, VII, 3,
12). On the contrary, the rapture “passes by with such a stillness and
so quiet, that it seems to me that it is like the building of Solomon’s
Temple, where no sound was heard. It is thus with this temple of
God, this mansion of His, where He and the soul rejoice in each oth-
er in profound silence. The understanding need not act nor search for
anything” (M, VII, 3, 11). What is more, “the powers are not here
lost but only cease to work, being, as it were, dazed with astonish-
ment” (M, VII, 3, 11), that is, they do not remain suspended or re-
signed, but awake and in the state of witnessing. It is a very peculiar
state of pure awareness or attention that does not have a human
origin, but “it comes from the center of the soul, whose powers it ex-
cites”, widening them (M, VII, 3, 8).

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After the simple union of the fifth mansions and the full union or
betrothal of the sixth mansions, finally, in the seventh mansions, the
spiritual marriage is achieved, that is, the transforming, definitive
and indissoluble union, because, unlike the betrothal, which is transi-
tory, the transforming union leads to an invariable stability, since “he
that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit with Him” (1 Cor. 6:17).
“This secret union takes place in the innermost center of the soul,
where God Himself must dwell”. Even though every mystic union is
“to make two things one”, in the full union or betrothal, “separation
is still possible and each part then remains a thing by itself”, so that,
“the soul remains without that company”. It is as if “two wax can-
dles, the tips of which touch each other so closely that there is but
one light... But one candle can again be separated from the other and
the two candles remain distinct”. On the contrary, “this is not so in
the spiritual marriage... where the soul always remains in its center
with its God”. It is “like rain falling from heaven into a river or
stream, becoming one and the same liquid, so that the river and rain
water cannot be divided” (M, VII, 3-4). In this moment, the Saint
stops referring to the experiences of the soul and introduces a subtle
distinction between them and the experiences of the spirit554. Specif-
ically, she explains that, in the spiritual marriage, “the soul, I mean,
the spirit of this soul, is made one with God... for He has thus
deigned to unite Himself to His creature, and has bound Himself to it
as firmly as those who cannot separate anymore” (M, VII, 2, 3). In
this stable union, the spirit of the soul is delighted at the tabernacle
of God (Rev. 21:3; 7:15-17; Ez. 37:27-28) and is burned and re-
newed like a Phoenix.

Among the most significant effects of the spiritual marriage,

Saint Teresa highlights the imperturbability of the inner peace or

554
“... for certain, there is a positive difference between the soul and the spirit, alt-
hough they are one with each other. There is an extremely subtle distinction be-
tween them, so that sometimes they seem to act in a different manner from one an-
other, as does the flavor given to them by God. It also appears to me that the soul
and its powers are not identical and just one thing” (M, VII, 1, 11).

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 SAINT TERESA OF JESUS AND THE REVELATION “I AM, BE NOT AFRAID”

calm of the souls, since “peace is not lost by them” (M, VII, 2, 10)
and “the soul itself... never moves from this center, nor loses the
peace” (M, VII, 2, 6). The Saint clarifies that, even though there
might be disturbances, pain, diseases, etc., the soul is still at peace
because “the dryness and disturbance felt in all the rest at times hard-
ly ever enter here, where the soul is nearly always calm” (M, VII, 3,
10).

Finally, the result of this transforming union is the forgetfulness

of oneself, because the soul “no longer recognizes itself, nor does it
remember that heaven, or life, or glory are to be its, but seems entire-
ly occupied in seeking God’s interests”. The soul “seems no longer
to exist, nor does it wish to be of any account of anything... [but] the
honor and glory of God” (M, VII, 3, 2). And it is in that absolute for-
getfulness of oneself, the total detachment, including the detachment
from the longing for detachment, when it comes true that “I live, yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20), the final paradox of the
mystical route that summarizes the emptiness of the world in com-
parison with the fullness of what is Beyond, since “I came forth from
the Father, and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and
go to the Father” (Jn. 16:28).

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO
SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS

“However elevated God’s communications and

the experiences of His presence are, and however
sublime a person’s knowledge of Him may be,
these are not God essentially, nor are they compa-
rable to Him” (Saint John of the Cross, Spiritual
Canticle, 1, 3).

The work by Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591) owes much to

that patristic tradition represented by Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus
or Gregory of Nyssa, who, as well as Dionysius the Areopagite,
adopted a positive attitude towards Neoplatonism with a Plotinian
footprint. Precisely because of that, they showed their reservations
about the possibilities of knowledge and of merely intellectual ac-
tions to reach God, given that true knowledge just happens in the
“darkness” of “forgetfulness” or “unknowing”. He could have ac-
cessed the works written by the spiritual men of his order, such as
John Baconthorpe and Miguel de Bolonia, but also the ones written
by Saint Bonaventure, Saint Bernard, the Victorine Hugh and Rich-
ard, as well as Gerson, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler and John
Ruysbroeck, Diego de Estella, Louis of Granada, etc. From Saint
Alonso de Orozco (1500-1591), author of Vergel de Oración and
Monte de Contemplación, did he take the emblematic Carmel as the
topmost place of the Ascent. Likewise, it is clear the influence of
works such as Third Spiritual Alphabet by Osuna (1527), Ascent to
Mount Zion by Laredo (1535) or Meditaciones devotíssimas del
amor de Dios by Estella (1576).
 JAVIER ALVARADO

But it is not to be forgotten that, regardless of these and other

more or less formal or substantive influences, the very core of Saint
John’s work is his own contemplative experience. In this sense, the
work of the Saint constitutes a methodic and systematic exposition
(should it be possible to talk about a “system” regarding mystical
matters) to initiate the candidate into the metaphysical way and lead
him to the mystical union in a soft, organized way.

On several occasions, Saint John of the Cross warns that his

teachings are not about the meditation and the stage of beginners.
Regarding this, he refers to the books and authors that deal with it,
“because there are many writings for beginners”. He prefers to ex-
plain the superior aspects and places of the spiritual quest that have
been less treated, so that, “passing over the more common effects, I
will briefly deal with the more extraordinary ones that take place in
those who with God’s help have passed beyond the state of begin-
ners” (Spiritual Canticle, Prologue, 3).

This process must be carried out in an organized, soft, “soulish”

way, because the Wisdom of God “orders all things softly” (Wis.
8:1). Saint John will remember this objective in all his works; thus,
in 2S, 28, 1, he will insist that “the discreet reader has ever need to
bear in mind the intent and end which I have in this book, which is
the direction of the soul... to divine union with God”555.

555
The texts by Saint John of the Cross are quoted from his Complete Works, ed.
by Lucinio Ruano de la Iglesia (11th ed.), Madrid, BAC, 1992 [there are several
English editions of his works, for instance The Collected Works of St. John of the
Cross, by the Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington, 1991 or The Complete
Works of Saint John of the Cross, tr. by Edgar Allison Peers, 1953]. The common-
ly accepted abbreviations are: S = Ascent to Mount Carmel (1S, 2S, 3S), N = Dark
Night of the Soul, CA = Spiritual Canticle (1st composition), CB = Spiritual Canti-
cle (2nd composition), LA = The Living Flame of Love (1st composition), LB = The
Living... (2nd composition), D = Advices or Sayings of Light and Love. I will quote
the “minor works” with the first verse of the poem.

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS

I.- THERE IS A PATH BECAUSE GOD IS WITHIN US

As man is made in the image and likeness of God, he possesses,

inside of him, an indelible, subtle footprint left by the Creator as a
sort of “road map” that indicates the correct spiritual route; “God
dwells secretly in all souls and is hidden in their substance” (LB, 4,
14). This “footprint” pulls man inside and constantly drives him to
inquire into the cause of his existence and the purpose of life. Man
guesses that he may naturally “be equal to God for love” (CB, 38, 3)
and give an end to the anxious feeling of loneliness and separation
from his spiritual origin. Man knows that he is “divine”, but finds
himself expelled from Paradise and exiled in the realm of unlikeness,
so he strives to return to the original oneness and union; “until attain-
ing this..., the soul is dissatisfied” (CB, 38, 4). Because of ignorance,
the soul tends to seek God outwards, without realizing that, by na-
ture, God dwells within oneself. For that purpose, “we may proceed
from the lesser to the greater, and from the more exterior to the more
interior, until we reach the most interior recollection wherein the
soul is united with God” (2S, 12, 1). That is why the mystical way
consists in the detachment and loss of interest in the external things,
and in the progressive penetration until reaching the “deepest center”
of the soul, where, once achieved the union by likeness or participa-
tion, is God known and enjoyed. “The soul’s center is God. When it
has reached God with all the capacity of its being and the strength of
its operation and inclination, it will have attained its final and deep-
est center in God, it will know, love, and enjoy God” (LB, 1, 12).
That center where God was like asleep, that place where He “secret-
ly dwells”, that “ground” refers to the most spiritual and innermost
part of the soul, where the union with the divinity takes place, even
though Saint John himself warns that it is but a metaphor, since,
strictly speaking, the soul has no parts. In sum, the first step of the
soul is to know itself.

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II.- IT IS NOT THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE, BUT THE SE-

CRET SCIENCE OF LOVE

That way or path introduces us into the Wisdom of God until

contemplating Him. That is why, starting with the terminology
coined by Dionysius the Areopagite, he defines it as “science of
God”, because it is an “admirable”, “perfect”, “true science”, “su-
pernatural learned science” or “science of Light”... it “is the mystical
theology, the secret science of God that spiritual persons call con-
templation. This science is very delightful because it is a science
through love. Love is the master of this science and what makes it
wholly agreeable. Since God communicates this science and intelli-
gence in the love with which He communicates Himself to the soul,
it is very delightful to the understanding since it is a science belong-
ing to it, and it is delightful to the will since it is communicated in
love, which pertains to the will” (CB, 27, 5). In his Advices, Saint
John of the Cross insists that “the language that God hears the most
is only the silent love”, because just love makes it possible that such
a union with the Wisdom of God, beyond human knowledge and be-
yond the logic of the causal events and links, can take place within
the soul. It is not the path of human knowledge: “any soul that makes
account of all its knowledge and ability in order to come to union
with the wisdom of God is supremely ignorant in the eyes of God
and will remain far removed from that wisdom”, “in order to come
to union with the wisdom of God, the soul has to proceed rather by
unknowing than by knowing”. We must become ignorant in order to
be wise (1S, 4, 5). It is the path of the emptiness that the Kabbalists
called sheket and the Sufis sukūt556, the void, abyss or cloud of un-

556
It is not my aim to enter the matter of some possible Sufi influences on Saint
John’s works. Let it be enough to refer the interested reader to Miguel Asín Pala-
cios, “Un precursor hispanomusulmán de San Juan de la Cruz” in Al-Andalus I
(1933), pp. 7-79; “El símil de los castillos y moradas del alma en la mística islámi-
ca y en Santa Teresa” in Al-Andalus XI (1946), pp. 263-274 and “Šāḏīlíes y alum-
brados” in Al-Andalus IX-XVI (1944-1951). These two last ones have been joined
together under the title of Šāḏīlíes y alumbrados, Madrid, 1990. By the same au-
thor, vid. El Islam cristianizado. Estudios del “sufismo” a través de las obras de

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knowing from which the words and letters come. That is why, strict-
ly speaking, the method of this science, whose only logic is love, has
no method. It is a method without method: “The Wisdom of God,
wherewith the understanding is to be united, has no mode or manner,
neither is it contained within any particular or distinct kind of intelli-
gence or limit, because it is wholly pure and simple. And as, in order
that these two extremes may be united... it will be necessary for them
to attain to agreement, by means of a certain mutual resemblance,
hence it follows that the soul must be pure and simple, neither
bounded by, nor attached to, any particular kind of intelligence, nor
modified by any limitation of form, species and image” (2S, 16, 7).
In effect, the knowledge that the creatures have (that is, by means of
objects of thought) is useless to the soul to reach God. On the contra-
ry, “the soul knows creatures through God, and not God through
creatures. This amounts to knowing the effects through their cause
and not the cause through its effects. The latter is knowledge a poste-
riori, and the former is essential knowledge” (LB, 4, 5).

III.- THE PATH IS BEYOND THE UNKNOWING

There is only one path; the path of renouncing everything for

love to God, that is, for the longing to know Him. And that renuncia-
tion necessarily implies “that man may know himself” and convert
himself into an essential Nothing that provides the suitable room so
that God may reveal Himself. Nonetheless, God is not comparable to
anything else, whereas “all the being of creation, then, compared
with the infinite Being of God, is nothing. And therefore the soul
that sets its affection upon the being of creation is likewise nothing

Abenarabi de Murcia, Madrid, 1931, in which the author exaggerates the influence
of Christianity on the Islamic mystics (which he would later rectify). As well, in La
espiritualidad de Algacel y su sentido cristiano, 4 vols., Madrid-Granada, 1935 and
Huellas del Islam. Santo Tomás de Aquino, Turmeda, Pascal, San Juan de la Cruz,
Madrid, 1941. From another viewpoint, vid, Luce López Baralt, Huellas del Islam
en la literatura española, Madrid, 1989 and also San Juan de la Cruz y el Islam,
Madrid, 1990.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

in the eyes of God, and less than nothing” (1S, 4, 4). This way, in or-
der to go forth on the path and attain the contemplation of God, the
soul must give it all up. Before God, “all things are nothing to it, and
it is nothing in its own eyes; God alone is its all” (LA, 1, 32). That is
why the spiritual path is “interior detachment, which is spiritual
poverty and renunciation of all things that you may possess” (3S, 40,
1), including the knowledge that comes from the senses and the
powers. This is the abyss of “unknowing” that, paradoxically, en-
compasses the “supreme knowledge”, the “supreme science” that
consists in an “elevated feeling of the divine Essence”. Only this
path of “unknowing” will allow the soul to transform and see itself
full of God, “since these souls exercise themselves in knowing and
apprehending nothing with the powers, they come in general... to
know everything” (3S, 2, 12). The deepest it goes into the darkness,
the more it approaches the light: “the more the soul is darkened, the
greater is the light that comes to it, for it is by blinding that it gives
light” (2S, 3, 4). Given that God is the final destination of the soul
(2N, 9, 5), He is also the end of all knowledge, that is, “Wisdom”.
This is the path of “unknowing” that leads to true knowledge or wis-
dom of God: the mystical theology.

The soul may turn either to God or to the sensible things. And
even once turned to the sensible, the structure of the soul presents
two parts: the “lower” or “sensual” one, which is “more exterior”,
and the “higher part..., more interior and more obscure” (2S, 2, 2). In
the lower part are found the external senses (sight, smell, hearing,
taste and touch), in charge of receiving impressions from the sur-
rounding material world. But, together with them, there are the inner
senses (imagination and fantasy), which, when they receive the ex-
perience from the external sense, store that information under the
shape of memories, or project it towards an imagined future under
the shape of expectations. In any case, as the sense is the “lower part
of man”, it is to be understood that it “is not, neither can be, capable
of knowing or understanding God as God is” (3S, 24, 2). That is

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why, in the contemplative way, the soul needs to reach the “height of
the spirit, that cannot be attained unless the bodily sense remains
outside” (LA, 2, 14), that is, detached from the apprehensions557 and
from the outer and inner senses.

Likewise, the soul also possesses a higher part or “spirit”, which

is the dwelling of the spiritual powers (memory, understanding and
will) whose function consists in “reflecting and acting... upon some
form, figure and image” (3S, 13, 4) apprehended by those other outer
and inner senses. However, they are also useless to the contempla-
tive practice because, in order to realize them correctly, it is neces-
sary that “in all the spiritual powers, namely the understanding, the
memory and the will, let there be no other consideration or affection
or digression; and in all the senses and faculties of the body, such as
the imagination and the fancy, and the five external senses, let there
be no other forms, images or figures of any natural objects or opera-
tions” (CA, 25, 6).

Once the senses and the powers have been tamed, the soul can
more gently turn towards God. This is the second structure of the

557
According to Saint John, the apprehensions are the information processed by
the senses and powers. They are “the first knowledge that the intelligence receives
from the things” and also “what the understanding or the memory receive from the
objects”. Such apprehensions can be natural, supernatural and spiritual. The natu-
ral apprehensions (which come from the natural function of the five external sens-
es) can only serve “as remote means to beginners in order to dispose and habituate
the spirit to spirituality by means of sense” (2S, 13, 1). But, as “no thing, created or
imagined, can serve the understanding as a proper means of union with God” (2S,
8, 1), it is preferable to leave them aside and not to appropriate them. Regarding
the supernatural apprehensions (which are passively received by the inner senses),
the contemplative experience demonstrates that the soul, in order to attain the mys-
tical union, must be “detached, free, pure and simple, without any mode or man-
ner”. For this purpose, “the understanding must not be embarrassed by... or feed
upon” any kind of apprehensions that may “present themselves beneath some par-
ticular kind of knowledge or image or form” (2S, 16, 6). The same mistrust is
shown by Saint John concerning the spiritual apprehensions, since, even though
they serve as a stimulus and sign that one is on the right path, the candidate must
not allow himself to be entertained or caught by anything other than the final goal
of contemplation.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

spirit, “detached from its intentional activity and completely turned

towards God”.

IV.- OLD MAN’S DEATH (THE DETACHMENT FROM THE

MEMORY AND THE UNDERSTANDING)

The fundamental postulate of the contemplative practice, accord-

ing to Saint John of the Cross, is that, if God decides to communicate
with the soul, He will not through the senses or powers, “but through
the pure spirit”. Therefore, regarding the goals of the contemplative,
the knowledge received from them must be refused as inadequate.

Saint John of the Cross connects the process of detachment or

death to the world with the biblical image of the “old man” and the
“new man”. The old man is the one who only uses his natural facul-
ties and lives on “the use of the powers, memory, understanding and
will, engaged in the things of the world”. The contemplative way
implies the death of the old man: “What the soul calls death is all
that goes to make up the old man, that is, the use of the powers,
memory, understanding and will” (LA, 2, 33).

To pass from the old man to the new man implies to refuse the
knowledge that comes from the natural senses and powers and give
way to what comes from the supernatural source. At the beginning of
the third book of the Ascent, Saint John writes: “it is necessary to
proceed by this method of disencumbering and emptying the soul,
and causing it to reject the natural jurisdiction and operations of the
powers, so that they may become capable of infusion and illumina-
tion from supernatural sources, for their capacity cannot attain to so
lofty an experience, but will rather hinder it, if it be not disregarded”
(3S, 2, 2). The goal of this purgation is to “calm down” the powers,
to attain the “quiet recollection that every spiritual man pursues, in
which the activity of the powers ceases, keeping silence, to receive

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the voice of God” (LB, 3, 44). The new man rises after “making the
natural acts of the powers fail... without activity of the senses” (LB,
3, 54), because the supernatural source is “foreign to every human
way” (2N, 9, 5).

For its part, the understanding is the power that serves the soul in
interpreting the information provided by the senses. However, as
God cannot be perceived by the natural understanding, “the under-
standing must be blind to all paths” (2S, 6, 8). Only the path of pur-
gation can lead to true knowledge: “emptiness and darkness with re-
spect to understanding” (2S, 6, 2). The path of emptiness, of noth-
ingness, of the “thick darkness”, can only be reached through that
“understanding while not understanding, transcending all science” (I
entered in, not knowing where).

Concerning memory, in order to enter contemplation, all infor-

mation must be refused because it just consists in memories of forms
and names, and “no supernatural forms or kinds of knowledge which
can be apprehended by the memory are God, and, in order to reach
God, the soul must void itself of all that is not God”. But “the
memory must also strip itself of all these forms and kinds of
knowledge, that it may unite itself with God in hope, for all posses-
sion is contrary to hope” (3S, 7, 2). With this statement, the Saint in-
troduces us into a crucial subject: the memory, the idea of the past, is
but an appropriation of experiences. The memory is the faculty by
means of which man is attached to time and takes possession of all
what enters through the windows of the external senses, that is, it is
an instrument of identification that he uses to claim the actions as
their subject. With it, he gradually builds an image of himself. These
two dimensions of the memory: temporality and appropriation, are,
according to Saint John, the two elements that constrain the soul to
its human condition and block the way that leads to the new man. “In
order that the soul may come to union with God in hope, it must re-
nounce every possession of the memory, for, in order that its hope in

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God may be perfect, it must have naught in the memory that is not
God” (3S, 11, 1). The ego can only survive while the feeling of past
and future, that is, the useful time, remains. The ego cannot survive
if that timeline is shortened and then it is forced to live in the pre-
sent. Or, in other words, as the present disappears or the sense of “I”
is weakened, there is no longer an appropriation of experiences, that
is, there is almost nobody who is identified with memories. That is
why it is stated that the soul that wants to advance on the spiritual
path must be annihilated in its oblivion to all memories or past that
identifies it with a body with a personal story (3S, 4, 1). At the most,
it might remember the spiritual knowledge, but of course “not that it
may be dwelt upon, but that it may quicken the soul’s love and
knowledge of God. But, unless the recollection of it produces good
effects, let the memory never give it even passing attention” (3S, 14,
2). In sum, the detachment from the memory means the destruction
of man as a temporal individual because his union with God trans-
cends all individuality and precisely because of that does it take
place outside time, that is, once the sense of appropriation of the
memories has been transcended and the habit of projecting expecta-
tions on the future has ceased.

V.- THE SUITABLE ATTITUDE TO CONTEMPLATE

What is the suitable attitude to recollect in prayer? During the

first few stages of the contemplative practice, the beginner makes an
effort to take a sensible advantage of prayer. Thus, he seeks pleasing
feelings that may satisfy his eagerness to hoard experiences. Saint
John of the Cross will criticize those who pray seeking their pleasure
in God until ending up equaling “gratifying and satisfying them-
selves” and “serving and satisfying God” (1N, 6, 3), because “to seek
oneself in God is clean contrary to love” (1S, 7, 5). It is not about
condemning pleasure and happiness themselves, but the possessive
mood with which the meditator applies himself to prayer as if it were

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a cow that gives milk or even a sort of honeycomb; “It is a great evil
to have one’s eye more on God’s goods than on God Himself” (D,
137). The mistake is to be absorbed by the means, moving away
from the goal, thinking that it must always be like that (2S, 12, 5-6;
17, 6; LB 2, 14). “There are many persons who rejoice rather in the
[means]... than in what they represent” (3S, 35, 2). This way, they
“are prompted to act not by reason but by pleasure” (1N, 6, 6). “And,
as they have come under the influence of that sensible pleasure, it
follows that they soon seek something new, for sensible pleasure is
not constant, but very quickly fails” (3S, 41, 2). One of the problems
of believing that “the whole matter of prayer consists in looking for
sensory satisfaction and devotion... when they do not get this sensi-
ble comfort, they become very disconsolate and think they have
done nothing” (1N, 6, 6). This attitude is unreservedly condemned;
“What I condemn in this is possessiveness of heart and attachment to
the number, workmanship, and over-decoration of these objects”
(1N, 3, 1). As long as the meditator may apply himself to prayer
seeking experiences to appropriate, he will just feed his own egoism
and sense of individuality. The own quest for God is converted into a
process that must be experienced and delighted by the individual,
without realizing that true happiness is in the fact that the individual-
ity be nullified, overflowed and transcended. Only the detachment
from the desire of appropriation of experiences brings true peace, but
it needs to be cultivated among certain virtues such as constancy, pa-
tience and humility; “True devotion and spirit lie in distrust of self
and in humble and patient perseverance so as to please God” (1N, 6,
6). But the most important of all virtues is, in the opinion of Saint
John of the Cross, Faith. Faith is an special attitude or disposition of
the soul, which is willing to renounce everything in order to know
God. It is the longing to know oneself by knowing the Creator.

When the discursive meditation has fulfilled its task and the can-
didate is initiated into the contemplative practice, the Faith plays a
decisive role in the following stages of the spiritual route. The fact

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that the individual accepts that, in order to reach God, the soul can
only walk the path of the darkness of unknowing, can only happen
when the soul puts its con-fidence on God. That faith is the attitude
that drives us to renounce all the natural ways of knowledge, be-
cause we are confident that we may access the true knowledge of
God. Paradoxically, it is the anxiety to know what makes the soul
head for plunging into the cloud of unknowing. In Saint John’s lan-
guage, that walking on the emptiness of darkness takes place during
“the night of faith”. And contemplation is dark because it implies go-
ing forth with a special disposition of renunciation and devotion (2N,
17), so that we may finally attain the vision of God, symbolized by
the full light. But the moment comes when the soul must plunge into
the thick darkness of unknowing and accept the eventuality of the
death of the ego. That step is only taken in the faith that the lover has
in the Beloved. “Faith” is, therefore, synonymous with “love”,
“longing” or “will” to see God. That is why, “the greater is the faith
of the soul, the more closely is it united with God” (2S, 9, 1).

Saint John of the Cross also tackles the issue of the usefulness or
not of the senses and powers. As they are an obstacle to contempla-
tion, once they have been subdued, what happens with them after
achieving the vision of God? The powers of the soul pass through a
certain death (the darkness or void of unknowing), but are not anni-
hilated, but transformed after being filled with the infinity that is
God558. Nonetheless, if it has been affirmed that the memory, as a

558
“These caverns are the soul’s powers: memory, understanding and will. They
are as deep as the boundless goods of which they are capable since anything less
than the infinite fails to fill them” (LB, 3, 18). “All the inclinations and activity of
the appetites and powers... become divine” (LA, 2, 33). This way, the soul that is
united with God “lives life of God” because it has “its activities in God”. More
specifically, “The understanding... is now moved and informed by another higher
principle of supernatural divine light, and the senses are bypassed. Accordingly,
the understanding becomes divine, because through its union with God’s under-
standing both become one. And the will... is now changed into the life of divine
love, for it loves in a lofty way with divine affection, moved by the strength of the
Holy Spirit... By means of this union, God’s will and the soul’s will are now one.
And the memory, which by itself perceived only the figures and phantasms of crea-
tures, is changed through this union so as to have in its mind the eternal years men-

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS

power of the soul, given that man is limited by time and bound to
past, must be disregarded and purified by means of the forgetfulness
of all things, how is it possible that, after the mystical union, a power
whose main function is to remember may remain? Why does the
soul need to remember when it is united with God, in whom all
things are at the same time? Accurately, Saint John of the Cross clar-
ifies that it is not about having or not having memories. In fact, it is
impossible not to have memories. One thing is to have memories and
another different thing is to amass them as our own and allow them
to feed our sense of individual identity separated from God; “in order
that the soul may come to union with God in hope, it must renounce
every possession of the memory, for, in order that its hope in God
may be perfect, it must have naught in the memory that is not God”
(3S, 11, 1). Regarding the understanding, in perfect contemplation,
God is the light of true knowledge. That implies that the understand-
ing does not have to use the “doors” of the senses to receive the
forms and images because now it is God who teaches in another
way: “this knowledge is not produced by the understanding that the
philosophers call the agent understanding, which works on the
forms, fantasies and apprehensions of the corporal faculties; rather, it
is produced in the possible or passive understanding, which, without
the reception of these forms, and so on, receives passively only sub-
stantial knowledge, which is divested of images and given without
any work of active function of the understanding” (CB, 39, 12).

VI.- THE THREE STAGES: SENSITIVE, PURGATIVE, UNI-

TIVE

In general lines, Saint John assumes the three successive stages

with which the Christian monastic tradition describes the spiritual
way and which match the three modes of knowledge: discursive

tioned by David [Ps. 77:5]... The understanding of this soul is God’s understand-
ing; its will is God’s will; its memory is the eternal memory of God” (LB, 2, 34).

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

(meditation), passive (purgative meditation) and unitive (perfect or

unitive contemplation).

The sensitive stage, or human or natural phase, defines the soul

that, longing to know itself and God, begins its quest even though it
is still bound to the external and sensible things. The second stage
corresponds with an “intermediate phase of purgation”, characterized
by the soul’s effort to detach itself from all what hinders it from con-
templating God. Finally, the unitive stage is the one of the soul that
is “completely turned towards God” after having passed through the
emptiness and the darkness of the successive purifications.

These three stages of the spiritual process are linked to three dif-
ferent modes of knowledge. The first one, meditation, is an active or
discursive knowledge, based on the reflection through the apprehen-
sion of images, forms or species of the objects. But, as there is no in-
formation or “species”, even the ones that come through the super-
natural way, that is, without the intervention of the external senses,
can be employed to contemplate God, any knowledge coming from
them must be disregarded. The second mode of knowledge, the con-
templative one, is considered as “passive” because it is received
without the activity of the senses and powers, and as “substantial”
because it is produced without the mediation of any form or figure.
The natural activity of the discursive or meditative knowledge is fol-
lowed by the passivity of the soul that does not have to concern, ex-
cept about receiving what God may communicate it. That is why it is
also talked about learned science or knowledge.

Finally, there is a unitive knowledge that happens in an extreme

stage of contemplation that Saint John calls perfect contemplation or
supreme contemplation.

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS

VII.- MEDITATION (WAY OF THE SENSE) AND CON-

TEMPLATION (WAY OF THE SPIRIT)

Saint John of the Cross follows the Christian mystical tradition

that distinguishes two general categories of prayer: meditation,
“which is a discursive action wrought by means of images, forms
and figures that are fashioned and imagined by the said senses” (2S,
12, 3), and contemplation, which “is communicated and infused into
the soul through love. This communication is secret and dark to the
work of the understanding and the other powers” (2N, 17, 2).

Meditation is the way of the sense, since it involves a form of

cognition through the senses and powers. It is part of the first stage
of the spiritual route of the candidates, probationers or novices,
whom Saint John calls beginners. This stage ends when they over-
come a crisis that is described as “passive night of the sense” (1N).

The step from meditation to contemplation introduces us into the

way of the Spirit or illuminative way; it is “the way of the spirit,
which is contemplation”. In the contemplative way, there are, in
turn, two successive stages: a stage of initial or purgative contempla-
tion, characteristic of the so-called proficient ones, and a final stage
of perfect or unitive contemplation, characteristic of the so-called
profited ones. “The soul went out in order to begin its journey along
the way of the spirit, which is that of the proficient and profited ones
and which by another terminology is referred to as the illuminative
way or the way of infused contemplation” (1N, 14, 1). The transition
from the purgative contemplation to the supreme or perfect contem-
plation is marked by a major crisis, characterized by the acceptance
of the own nothingness; it is the “passive night of the spirit” (2N)
that opens the doors to the unitive way of the “supreme recollection”
or “supreme contemplation” that leads to the transforming union.
The Saint mentions another higher form of contemplation, the beatif-
ic vision, but it only takes place in the afterlife.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

What is meditation? According to a classic definition559, it is the

intellectual consideration or discourse about some mystery, or about
some moral matter, with the purpose of obtaining some fruit for the
soul. According to Saint John of the Cross, it implies that “the soul
makes use of its sensible powers” (2S, 14, 6). Therefore, the medita-
tion is connected with the “two interior bodily senses, which are
called imagination and fantasy”, or “powers”. “To these two powers
belongs meditation, which is a discursive action wrought by means
of images, forms and figures that are fashioned and imagined by the
said senses” (2S, 12, 3). Meditation is, therefore, the first way begin-
ners have to deal with God (1N, 1, 1). In effect, “the practice of be-
ginners is to meditate and make acts and discursive reflection with
the imagination” (LB, 3, 32). At the beginning of the spiritual route,
the discursive meditation is necessary for the beginner “in order that
they may gradually feed and enkindle their souls with love by means
of sense” (2S, 12, 5), so that they may detach themselves from other
worldly “delights”. Thus, the soul “becomes detached from worldly
things and gains some spiritual strength in God” (1N, 8, 3). That is
why meditation serves to “dispose and habituate the spirit to spiritu-
ality by means of sense, and in order to void the sense, in the mean-
time, of all the other low forms and images, temporal worldly and
natural” (2S, 13, 1). It is to be understood that Saint John of the
Cross neither refuses nor criticizes meditation; he just confines him-
self to following the doctrinal line that affirms that meditation is a
necessary stage that must give way to contemplation.

Meditations are useful for the beginners, because they “may

profit by them, and indeed should so profit...; for there are souls that
are greatly moved by objects of sense to seek God” (3S, 24, 4). That
is why, “in this state, the souls should be given matter for meditation
and discursive reflection” (LB, 3, 32). “It is certainly lawful, and
even convenient, for beginners to find some sensible sweetness and
pleasure in images... since they have not yet weaned or detached

559
Diccionario de Autoridades, RAE, 1734.

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS

their desire from things of the world, so that they can leave the one
pleasure for the other” (3S, 39, 1). That is why the beginners must be
treated “like a child holding something in one of his hands; to make
him loosen his hold upon it, we give him something else to hold in
the other hand lest he should cry because both his hands are empty”
(3S, 39, 1). To that effect, meditation is like a thorn that is used for
removing another thorn stuck under the skin; it is scrapped once ful-
filled its task.

In sum, the Saint advises that, “as long as they find sweetness in
meditation, and are able to reason, they should not abandon this”
(2S, 13, 2) because, although “the things of sense, and the
knowledge that spirit can derive from them, are the business of a
child” (2S, 17, 6), the truth is that God leads the soul as well, and He
communicates it His spirit through “forms, figures and particular in-
telligences” through meditation. The “sweetness” can be used, this
way, as a stimulus and incentive to advance on the spiritual way.

Although “the discursive meditation as carried on through the

imaginations and forms and figures” (2S, 13, 1) is the only way to
understand and work with the understanding in a natural way and,
certainly, through meditation can one obtain “some knowledge and
love of God” (2S, 14, 2), it is wrong to “think that the whole business
consists in a continual reasoning and learning to understand particu-
lar things by means of images and forms” (2S, 14, 4). “One who
would go to God relying on natural ability and reasoning will not be
very spiritual. There are some who think that by pure force and the
activity of the senses, which of itself is lowly and no more than natu-
ral, they can reach the strength and height of the supernatural spirit.
One does not attain to this peak without surpassing and leaving aside
the activity of the senses” (LA, 2, 14). In effect, through meditation,
“the soul cannot make much progress” (LA, 3, 31) because “the
sense of the lower part of man... is not, neither can be, capable of
knowing or understanding God as God is” (3S, 24, 2). The reason is

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quite simple: “neither the sense nor its function is capable of sprit”
(LA, 3, 54); “God cannot be grasped by the senses” (LA, 3, 73), “God
is unintelligible” (LA, 3, 49), “God comes beneath no definite form
or kind of knowledge whatsoever” (3S, 2, 4). And, since God has no
“image that can be comprehended by the memory” (3S, 2, 4), these
are useful to reach God.

No “thought” thing can be used by man as a means to unite with

God (2S, 8, 1) because, at the moment when God is thought, He is
changed into an object outside ourselves. Thus, our soul will remain
blind “insofar as it is enjoying something else” other than God (LA,
3, 72). That is why “God transcends the understanding and is incom-
prehensible and inaccessible to it. Hence, while the understanding is
understanding, it is not approaching God but withdrawing from
Him” (LA, 3, 48). Consequently, as God scarcely listens to the pray-
er of those whose “desire and pleasure are bound” to the sensible ob-
jects (3S, 40, 1), we can just follow the path of “renunciation and
self-emptying of forms”, the refusal of all possession of sensory ex-
periences, in order to be given “the possession of the union” (3S, 2,
13). We must renounce the merely natural or human knowledge,
since “all the wisdom of the world and all human ability, compared
with the infinite wisdom of God, are pure and supreme ignorance”
(1S, 4, 5); “all things are nothing to [the soul], and it is nothing in its
own eyes; God alone is its all” (LA, 1, 32).

VIII.- THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SENSES; THE TRANSI-

TION FROM MEDITATION TO CONTEMPLATION

If meditation is what it must be, it will help the beginner realize

his own faults, especially the triviality and pride of his worldly life
and the selfish, mercantilist nature of his relationship with God, with
whom he only speaks in order to ask Him for favors in return for

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prayers and good deeds. Then, meditation must become an act of

pure, unselfish devotion used to strip the soul of pride and vanity.

However, a moments comes when the meditator “can no longer

meditate... neither can take pleasure therein as he was wont to do
aforetime” (2S, 13, 2). It seems that meditation has run out of possi-
bilities, because, even though “it is necessary that at this season the
soul must not take pleasure in other and different objects of the im-
agination, which are of the world” (2S, 14, 5), the truth is that the
soul is filled up with thoughts, images and forms. Perhaps, in some
way, it senses that, in order to receive this “general loving
knowledge”, it needs to have the spirit “silent and detached from
discursive knowledge and gratification” (LB, 3, 37).

It is then when the stage of beginner is finished. The mystic has

been spiritually strengthened by the meditative practice when he has
come to understand that the desires of the senses and the knowledge
that comes from the external objects are pure nothing in comparison
with the knowledge of God, and that “the perfection and value of
their works do not depend on quantity or the satisfaction found in
them but on knowing how to practice self-denial in them. These be-
ginners ought to do their part in striving after this self-denial until
God in fact brings them into the dark night” (1N, 6, 8).

What is the dark night of the sense? When the nothingness of

man has been understood, then a deep apathy or disinterest in the
things of the world occurs; “we here describe as ‘night’ the privation
of every kind of pleasure which belongs to the desire”, including the
spiritual ones (1S, 3, 1). “For that reason we call this detachment
‘night’ to the soul, for we are not treating here of the lack of things,
since this implies no detachment on the part of the soul if it has a de-
sire for them, but we are treating of the detachment from them of the
taste and desire” (1S, 3, 4). The nuance is to be noticed: it is not

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about renouncing things, but about understanding that all of them are
pure nothing. It is not a denial of the world, but a way to approach it.

Deprived the spiritualist of such external objects, the same de-

tachment that has led him to accept his nothingness forces him to
dwell and face the nothing itself. As the world is not interesting for
him anymore, but he does not perceive the honey of the spirit, he
will feel the horror vacui. Believing himself abandoned by God, he
will find himself between heaven and earth, prey to despair. But it is
God Himself who causes the crisis in order to strengthen the medita-
tors and prepare them so that, “more abundant and free of imperfec-
tions, they become capable of a communion with God” (1N, 8, 3).
Ultimately, He prepares them to enter the practice of contemplation:
“Souls begin to enter this dark night when God, gradually drawing
them out of the state of beginners –those who practice meditation on
the spiritual path–, begins to place them in the state of proficients –
those who are already contemplatives–” (1N, 1, 1). However, the
mystical lives this experience as something negative and believes
that “everything has turned upside down” because, where he used to
find “satisfaction and pleasure” before, now he just finds confusion,
“distaste and bitterness”.

Saint John of the Cross explains that the dark night of the senses
has a specific goal in the spiritual route: “God wants to lead them
ahead”, He “darkens all this light and closes the door and the spring
of sweet spiritual water... and leaves them in such darkness... that
they not only fail to receive satisfaction and pleasure from their spir-
itual exercises and works, as they formerly did, but also find these
exercises distasteful and bitter, because... when God sees that they
have grown a little, He weans them from the sweet breast so that
they might be strengthened, lays aside their swaddling bands, and
puts them down from His arms that they may grow accustomed to
walking by themselves. This change is a surprise to them because
everything has turned upside down for them” (1N, 8, 3). After over-

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coming this obstacle, man reaffirms his certainty about the nothing-
ness of the world and “he will acquire liberty of soul, clarity of rea-
son... He will find greater joy and recreation in the creatures through
his detachment from them, for he cannot rejoice in them if he looks
upon them with attachment to them as to his own, because this at-
tachment... ties the spirit down to the earth and allows it no enlarge-
ment of heart” (3S, 20, 2). Of course, not all people pass through the
dark night of the sense with the same intensity or suffer the same
symptoms. That is why Saint John of the Cross enumerates some of
the most significant signs to identify the moment when the meditator
must start the practice of contemplation: Impossibility to meditate,
general affective apathy that finds no consolation in godly things,
desire to be alone with God, etc. (2S, 13, 15 and 1N, 9).

It is then when the beginner must give up meditation and devote

himself to contemplation, since here “begins God to communicate
Himself... not through the senses as He did before, by means of the
discursive analysis and synthesis of ideas, but through pure spirit”
(1N, 9, 8). It is then started the way of the spirit, the science of con-
templation, characteristic of the proficient and the profited ones.

IX.- THE SWEET SCIENCE OF CONTEMPLATION

Saint John of the Cross describes contemplation as a “sweet sci-

ence” (CA, 18), “highest wisdom and language of God” (LB, 3, 37),
“science of love” (CA, Prologue, 4). Employing a very descriptive
term that has not been as lucky as it would have deserved of being
preserved, he defines it as “prayer of detachment” (D, 137), because
its goal is the denial and detachment from all that is not God; “He
alone is our company”; “If you want to come to the holy recollec-
tion, you shall not come admitting, but denying” (D, 52). It is also
defined as prayer of recollection because it “consists in the fixing of
the whole soul, according to its powers, upon the one incomprehen-

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sible good, and in withdrawing it from all things that can be appre-
hended” (3S, 4, 2). The contemplative or proficient is the one who
“has come to the way of the spirit, which is contemplation, where the
activity of the senses and of discursive reflections terminates, and
God alone is the agent who then speaks secretly to the solitary and
silent soul” (LB, 3, 44). That is why, in order to achieve contempla-
tion, “it is sufficient that the understanding should be withdrawn
from all particular knowledge... and that the will should not desire to
think with respect to either..., for this is a sign that the soul is occu-
pied” (2S, 14, 12).

Whereas meditation provides a mediate knowledge of God, con-

templation provides an immediate knowledge, that is, without me-
diation, of the Divinity. Human or natural knowledge is mediate be-
cause it needs external objects. In order to interact with the world, it
needs to convert it all into objects of knowledge; that is why it only
conceives God and the spirit as mental concepts, that is, as objects
that are different and separate from itself. But, as God and the spirit
are not objects, how can it get to know them? Man must understand
that, by his own natural means, he is unable to access the true
knowledge of God, which is unitive and immediate because it trans-
cends the subject-object duality. “The faculties of the soul cannot, of
their own power, reflect and act, save upon some form, figure and
image, and this is the rind and accident of the substance and spirit”
(3S, 13, 4). Concepts, ideas and feelings, which are products of our
natural ability, cannot help us unite with God “immediately” (2S, 8,
5; 9, 4). For this reason, between the soul’s work “in a human (natu-
ral) way” and God’s work in contemplation, “there is as much dif-
ference... as there is between a human work and a divine work, be-
tween the natural and the supernatural” (LB, 3, 45).

Assuming that the outline of natural knowledge is not useful to

understand the so-called unitive knowledge, how is the mode of
knowledge that allows the spirit to penetrate the divine truth? Surely,

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the most comprehensive definition of mystical knowledge is that to

know is to be. It is a unitive knowing because it does not imply do-
ing, thinking or anything that can be conceptualized. It is unitive be-
cause, by means of contemplation, with the purpose of establishing a
direct communication without intermediaries, God ends up cleansing
the soul of all what is unlike Him. God takes man out from the realm
of unlikeness, from the world, and leads him to the paradise of per-
fect contemplation, where the “language of God to the soul, of pure
spirit to pure spirit” emanates (2N, 17, 4). God is all to the soul,
which, “since it has God’s view of things, it regards them as God
sees” (LB, 1, 32). Inside God and united with Him, the soul can per-
ceive the essence of Creation; “and here lies the remarkable delight
of this awakening: the soul knows creatures through God and not
God through creatures. This amounts to knowing the effects through
their cause and not the cause through its effects. The latter is
knowledge a posteriori, and the former is essential knowledge” (LB,
4, 5). Saint John of the Cross is generous when describing the su-
preme contemplation or mystical ecstasy. In that contemplative state,
the time coordinates are transcended so that one thousand human
years could be like a single day to the soul (we should now remem-
ber the legends that tell us about mystics and anchorites who found
themselves in a much later time after leaving meditation). The natu-
ral or ordinary process of cognition based on the sequential and suc-
cessive access to the objects is replaced by simultaneity and instan-
taneity: the things are known at the same time and in an immediate,
direct way; “O abyss of delights! ... where one attribute is so known
and enjoyed as not to hinder the perfect knowledge and enjoyment of
the other” (LB, 3, 17). Through that intuitive knowledge does the
soul see “what God is in His creatures in only one view” (LB, 4, 7);
“the soul tastes here all the things of God... because God is all these
things, the soul enjoys them in only one touch of God” (LB, 2, 21).

Nevertheless, the Saint warns that supreme contemplation, even

though it may be the most perfect knowledge possible in this life, is

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not a final vision. This supreme or beatific vision can only be possi-
ble after death, in the afterlife. By means of the mystical union in
this life, “the soul sees that God is indeed its own and that it possess-
es Him”; “the soul is somehow God through participation, although
it is not God as perfectly as it will be in the next life, it is like the
shadow of God” (LB, 3, 78). But, despite all that, the perfect vision
in this life is hindered by a sort of veil that will only be removed in
the afterlife.

The “touch” is a form of knowledge that expresses the action of

God on the soul. The contemplative tradition takes this expression
from the Pseudo-Dionysius, but only Saint John of the Cross articu-
lates a whole explanation of his concept, nature, goal, opportunity,
etc. The “touches” are the manifestation of the “intimate and secret
communications there between the soul and God”. They are also
called “substantial touches of divine union between God and the
soul” (2N, 23, 11). Even though God seems an active agent, the un-
ion of natures is so deep that the soul moves within God as well,
“because it is equivalent to a certain touch with the Divinity which
the soul experiences, and thus it is God Himself who is perceived
and tasted therein. And, although He cannot be experienced mani-
festly and clearly, as in glory, this touch of knowledge and delight is
nevertheless so sublime and profound that it penetrates the substance
of the soul... for such kinds of knowledge savor of the divine essence
and of eternal life” (2S, 26, 5). On the other hand, although that
“most subtle touch that the Beloved gives to the soul... makes its
heart burn in a fire of love” (CA, 15, 5) and may seem “strong and
impetuous”, it is, at the same time, a “delicate touch; the more deli-
cate, the stronger and more powerful it is”. Given the high spiritual
nature of these touches, their knowledge cannot reach the soul
through the senses or by means of the natural knowledge; it “is a
touch only of Divinity in the soul, without any intellectual or imagi-
native form or figure”, since it is the highest way in which God
works on the soul (LB, 2, 8). Saint John calls it substantial touch

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precisely because it can only happen in the substance of the soul, that
is, in its most spiritual part, which is “stripped of accidents and
phantasms” (CB, 14-15, 14). “This is a touch of substances, that is,
of the substance of God in the substance of the soul”. It is an inti-
mate, direct and most subtle communication beyond all modes,
forms, figures and accidents. “This divine touch has the less volume,
because the Word that grants it is alien to every mode and manner,
and free from all the volume of form, figure, and accident that usual-
ly encircles and imposes boundaries or limits to the substance” (LB,
2, 20-21). Thus, how can man achieve the knowledge of it if his
powers are suspended? Saint John explains that such knowledge
reach the contemplative through the passive understanding: they are
touches “of intelligence” received in the “receptive passion of the
understanding” (2N, 13, 3) because they do not reach him by ordi-
nary or natural means, but by supernatural ones; “since the soul de-
sires the highest and most excellent communications from God, and
is unable to receive them in the company of the sensory part, it de-
sires God to bestow them apart from it” (CB, 19, 1)560.

When do these signs happen? The Saint explains that, “at certain
times, when the soul is least thinking of it and least desiring it, God
is wont to give it these divine touches, by causing it certain remem-
brance of Himself” (2S, 26, 8). More specifically, as such communi-
cations are “very strong, intense and spiritual”, they just occur in a
soul that has already passed through the passive night of the sense
and through the night of the spirit. Otherwise, as it is not sufficiently
purified, it runs the risk of having to face “raptures and transports
and the dislocation of bones, which always occur when the commu-

560
Nonetheless, taking into account Saint John’s mistrust of all kinds of infor-
mation, including that which is received through the supernatural way, why should
not those touches be refused as well? He establishes here an exception concerning
the spiritual supernatural information, that is, that which lack any form or image,
and come from God; “as we said above, it produces touches and impressions of un-
ion with God, which is the aim towards which we are directing the soul. And by no
form, image or figure which can be impressed upon the soul does the memory re-

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nications are not purely spiritual, that is, communicated to the spirit
alone” (2N, 1, 2).

What is the goal of these divine communications? During con-

templation, they strive to complete the purification of the soul;
“communications that are truly from God have this trait: they simul-
taneously exalt and humble the soul” (2N, 18, 2). They humble or
empty it of all worldly things in order to exalt it to the divine. This
way, “these bear such an effect on the soul that it ardently longs and
faints with desire for what it feels hidden there in that presence” (CA,
11, 4), and God “makes them more fervently and further prepare
them for the favors He wishes to grant them later” (CA, 11, 1), that
is, not only in this life, but above all in the afterlife. After all, this life
is just a temporary place, a transitory stage in which the pilgrim can-
not detach himself completely from the dust of the road, no matter
how much effort he may make.

X.- STAGES OF CONTEMPLATION

Once the stage of beginners has been finished and the meditative
life has been practically exhausted, “God takes from this soul its
swaddling clothes” (1N, 12, 1). The soul manages to overcome the
crisis or night of the sense because it has understood not only that the
senses are not the suitable means to know God, but also that they
must be darkened in order not to block the spiritual path. Thus, the
dark night of the senses marks the beginning of the access to the con-
templative knowledge and is the prelude or advance of the major cri-
sis, which is called dark night of the spirit; “Hence, the dark night...
is the means to the knowledge of both God and self. However, the
knowledge given in this night is not as plenteous and abundant as

call these, for these touches and impressions of union with the Creator have no
form, but only by the effects which they have produced upon it” (3S, 14, 2).

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that of the other night of the spirit, for the knowledge of this night is
as it were the foundation of the other” (1N, 12, 6).

There are two different stages or moments in the contemplative

practice: the initial contemplation, which is imperfect or purgative,
and the perfect contemplation. The first one is “the beginning of a
dark and dry contemplation” (1N, 9, 6); the second one is luminous
and fruitive. Through the first stage, the proficients “who are begin-
ning to enter upon this general knowledge” (2S, 15, title) must walk
toward God, in a progressive distancing, from the external things
(the senses) to the most spiritual things, given that, even though the
whole contemplative path is in the hands of God (“Without Me ye
can do nothing”, Jn. 15:5), in its first few moments, the divine action
will predominantly purify the soul’s miseries. It is only later, after
overcoming a new crisis (the night of the spirit), when perfect con-
templation takes place, leading the soul to the intellective-affective
union with God.

The initial or purgative contemplation “suspends in the soul the

exercise of all its powers, both natural and spiritual”, and “it is suffi-
cient that the understanding should be withdrawn from all particular
knowledge” (2S, 14, 12). For that reason, this void of sensory infor-
mation is perceived as negative by the contemplative, who considers
it a “dry and dark night” (1N, 13, 3), “dark and secret contemplation”
(1N, 10, 6), “purgative contemplation” (N, declaration), etc. And,
certainly, contemplation is initially night and nothingness. But that
“night” is eloquent, because it is the suitable means by which God
may teach the soul and show it His most mystical and hidden wis-
dom: “Contemplation is dark, and for that reason is also called with
the name of mystical theology, meaning the secret or hidden wisdom
of God, in which, without the sound of words, and without the help
of any bodily or spiritual faculty... God teaches the soul very quietly
and secretly, without its knowing how” (CB, 39, 12). That is why
this initial contemplation, “beginning of a dark and dry contempla-

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tion” (1N, 9, 6), is also described by Saint John of the Cross as in-
fused or passive, “for here the powers are at rest, are working not ac-
tively, but passively, by receiving that which God works in them”
(2S, 12, 8). It is called purgative because it has the goal of “releasing
the subjection” of the senses by depriving the ego of food. When that
emptiness or night of the sense is intense enough, it drives the soul to
reflect and know its own miseries and faults, such as pride, vanity,
arrogance... After that, during the passive night of the spirit, the soul
goes deeper into the knowledge of its imperfections, until “the soul
feels so unclean and wretched that it seems God is against it and it is
against God” (2N, 5, 5). The important point is that the discovery of
that truth ends up uprooting pride and vanity, and generating sincere
humility. And with humility do the rest of the virtues emanate (3S,
23, 1); thus, “it is no longer moved to act by the delight and satisfac-
tion it finds in a work... but only by the desire of pleasing God... it-
self and its neighbor” (1N, 13, 7-12).

One of the problems of this initial state, which even drives many
to give up the contemplative practice, is that they think that nothing
useful can be obtained from the inactivity of the powers, so that, as
“they do not work with the powers of their soul” (LB, 3, 67) and
“they see that it is doing nothing” (1N, 10, 4), they believe they are
wasting their time or, even worse, “destroying the path of spiritual
practice” (3S, 2, 1). Others will be dazzled when they see themselves
in the middle of the darkness of unknowing and realize their impos-
sibility to access it in a rational and discursive way; “You will say,
‘it does not understand anything in particular, and thus will be una-
ble to make progress”. And, certainly, “if it would have particular
knowledge, it would not advance”, for the simple reason that God is
incomprehensible. It is only possible to go to Him “not by under-
standing... but by believing”, “guided by faith” (LB, 3, 48). That is
why confidence is so important; “in order to be effectively guided by
faith to supreme contemplation”, the soul “must be in darkness” (2S,
4, title), that is, it must remain passive, with the senses suspended

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and doing nothing and understanding nothing, with the certainty that
God is hidden in that darkness and manifests Himself by purging and
enlightening the soul. That is why one must not be alarmed right at
the first hesitation of the contemplative practice; instead, one must
persevere, accept and understand that, in order to attain “supernatural
transformation, it is clear that he must be plunged into darkness and
carried far away from all contained in his nature” (2S, 4, 2), because,
“to the end that God may of His own accord work divine union in
the soul, it is necessary to proceed by this method of disencumbering
and emptying the soul, and causing it to reject the natural jurisdiction
and operations of the powers, so that they may become capable of
infusion and illumination from supernatural sources, for their capaci-
ty cannot attain to so lofty an experience, but will rather hinder it, if
it be not disregarded” (3S, 2, 2). In sum, as the soul “only knows
how to act by means of the senses and discursive reflection, it thinks
it is doing nothing when God introduces it into that emptiness and
solitude where it is unable to use the powers and make acts” (LB, 3,
66) and, in effect, “the activity of the senses and of the discursive re-
flection of the soul terminates” (LB, 3, 44), as well as the “working
actively”; only then it is when the soul gets closest to God. Said with
the Saint’s words: “the farther the soul progresses in spirituality, the
more it ceases from the operation of the powers in particular acts,
since it becomes more and more occupied in one act that is general
and pure” (2S, 12, 6).

Therefore, if the mystic persists with his effort, he will sooner or

later achieve perfect contemplation. There, he will access a “super-
natural” knowledge, that is, “all that is given to the understanding
over and above its natural ability and capacity” (2S, 10, 2). That is
the true “secret or hidden wisdom of God, in which, without the
sound of words, and without the help of any bodily or spiritual facul-
ty... God teaches the soul... in darkness to all sensory and natural
things” (CB, 39, 12).

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1.- The Night of the Spirit.

The transition from purgative contemplation to perfect contem-

plation is marked by a deep crisis that Saint John of the Cross calls
night of the spirit. “This dark night is an inflow of God into the soul,
which purges it of its habitual ignorance and imperfection... and
which the contemplatives call infused contemplation or mystical
theology. Through this contemplation, God teaches the soul secretly
and instructs it in the perfection of love without its doing anything or
understanding how this happens” (2N, 5, 1). Although this passive
night of the spirit is the prelude to the entry of the profited ones into
the state of union (1S, 1, 3), the truth is that it is experienced as a
stage of crisis that “commonly occurs toward the end of the illumina-
tion and purification of the soul, just before the attainment of union”
(LB, 3, 18) and takes place when the powers of the soul are purified
and the understanding, empty and detached, interprets its separation
and bearing from God as an abandonment. The soul recalls then the
trauma of the night of the sense and the purgation because it now
feels pain for it believes that God “has changed to be cruel toward it”
(LB, 1, 20; cf. Job 30:21). In other passage, the Saint writes: “the
soul feels so unclean and wretched” (2N, 5, 5), “clearly beholding its
impurity”, because “this divine purge stirs up all the foul and vicious
humors of which the soul was never aware; never did it realize there
was so much evil in itself, since these humors were so deeply root-
ed”, and now they are “seen clearly through the illumination of this
dark light of divine contemplation, although the soul is no worse
than before, either in itself or in its relationship with God, for it sees
in itself what it did not see before” (2N, 10, 2).

However, the goal of this night of the spirit is thaumaturgic, like

a symbolic death, because “it is fitting that the soul be in this sepul-
cher of dark death in order that it attain the spiritual resurrection for
which it hopes” (2N, 6, 1), so that the soul may definitively remain
“empty” and “detached” from all “affection for creatures”, that is,

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from all that is not God (LB, 3, 18-23); “If a man is to enter this di-
vine union, all that lives in his soul must die, both little and much,
small and great, and that the soul must be without desire for all this,
and detached from it, even as though it existed not for the soul, nei-
ther the soul for it” (1S, 11, 8). And, even though it is a definitive
stage of union or marriage with God, the truth is that it is inevitable,
since “no soul can reach this high state and kingdom of espousal
without first undergoing many tribulations and trials” (LB, 2, 24).
The light of wisdom is cleansing the last few impurities and
strengthening “the spiritual eye with the divine light” (LB, 1, 22).
This way, “because of their weakness, the soul feels thick darkness
and more profound obscurity the closer it comes to God, just as it
would feel greater darkness and pain, because of the weakness and
impurity of its eyes, the closer it approached the immense brilliance
of the sun. The spiritual light is so bright and so transcendent that it
blinds and darkens the natural understanding as this latter ap-
proached it. Accordingly, David says [in Ps. 18:11] that God made
darkness his hiding place and covert” (2N, 16, 10).

Darkness will weaken, giving way to “the rising dawn”, a peculi-

ar liminal spiritual state in which “it is not entirely night or entirely
day, but is, as they say, at the break of day”, because, “just as the rise
of morning dispels the darkness of night and unveils the light of day,
so this spirit, quieted and put to rest in God, is elevated from the
darkness of natural knowledge to the morning light of the supernatu-
ral knowledge of God. This morning is not clear, as was said, but
dark as night at the time of the rising dawn” (CB, 14-15, 23). Saint
John of the Cross turns to the metaphor of the lightning in order to
explain this sudden meeting with the divine Grace: “And it is at
times as though a door were opened before it into a great brightness,
through which the soul sees a light, after the manner of lightning
flash, which, on a dark night, reveals things suddenly, and causes
them to be clearly and distinctly seen” (2S, 24, 5). That is the “ray of
darkness” Dionysius the Areopagite talked about: it is a “dark light”,

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from the limited perspective of the soul, full of miseries; but, in reali-
ty, it is “very clear and pure” because it is divine light. It is an elo-
quent light that guides, teaches and transforms the soul. It is that very
light that “strikes the soul” and is initially perceived as a “spiritual
darkness”, but that, little by little, transforms the soul lovingly (2N,
10, 3) in order to prepare the “unitive contemplation” (2N, 23, 14) or
perfect contemplation. In effect, after betrothal comes marriage, the
“union and transformation of the soul with God that comes from
love” (2S, 5, 3). That union is not the “substantial union” that charac-
terizes the relationship between the Creator and His creatures, but a
union that Saint John of the Cross calls “union of likeness” because
it takes place when there is nothing in the soul that disgusts God. It is
a loving passive union, infused by likeness, because, “when the soul
reaches a certain degree of interior union of love, the powers are no
longer active” (CB, 16, 11).

2.- Perfect or luminous contemplation.

By means of the initial or purgative contemplation, the initiate

had to learn how to “remain quiet, without care or solitude about any
interior or exterior work” until God produces “an inclination to re-
main alone and in quietude, unable to dwell on any particular
thought and unwilling to do so” (1N, 9, 6), “not by understanding...
but by believing” (LB, 3, 48). “Thus, the soul also should proceed
only with a loving attention to God, without making specific acts. It
should conduct itself passively, without efforts of their own but with
the simple, loving awareness, as when opening one’s eyes with lov-
ing attention” (LB, 3, 33). Once stripped the soul and dissolved all its
imperfections into the dark nothing, it feels to be between heaven
and earth; on one hand, it perceives the emptiness of the previous life
that it has left behind and, on the other hand, the worrying, unknown
abyss that opens at its feet and threatens to plunge it into despair and
even madness. It is then when God takes charge of the process.

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS

The powers or the spirit are not moved according to the ordinary,
natural process, that is, “by way of the outward bodily senses” and
through the multiplicity of particular acts, but by loving, supernatural
goods or knowledge; “this loving knowledge is received passively in
the soul according to the supernatural mode of God, and not accord-
ing to the natural mode of the soul”, because “the goods that God
communicates supernaturally” “are no longer accorded through the
senses as before”, but “in the spirit” (LB, 3, 33-34). And, since such
knowledge is “no longer accorded through the senses”, contempla-
tion is “stripped of accidents”, like a “silent music”: “It is silent to
the natural senses and powers, it is sounding solitude for the spiritual
powers. When these spiritual powers are alone and empty of all natu-
ral forms and apprehensions, they can receive” the highest wisdom
of God (CB, 14-15, 26). In effect, perfect contemplation, once the ra-
tional, “discursive” or sensory mode of communication, by means of
the natural way of knowing, has been abandoned, God manifests
Himself “through pure spirit” (1N, 9, 8), “without specified acts”
(LB, 3, 33) or, at the most, through an “general loving knowledge”
that, precisely for this reason, is “supernatural”. In contemplation,
“God works supernaturally in the soul” (LB, 3, 45), “At this time,
God begins to communicate Himself... by an act of simple contem-
plation” (1N, 9, 8). “Pure contemplation lies in receiving” (LB, 3,
36), but this has only been possible when the soul had already be-
come similar to Him.

As there is no cause-effect connection between personal effort

and access to pure contemplation, Saint John of the Cross follows
the doctrinal line that considers that the vision of God or contempla-
tion is always a Grace and not a personal achievement. “No matter
how much the soul does through its own efforts, it cannot actively
purify itself enough to be disposed in the least degree for the divine
union of the perfection of love. God must take over and purge it in
that dark fire” (1N, 3, 3). Certainly, it is necessary to make an effort
and cultivate virtues, but that guarantees nothing, because contem-

621
 JAVIER ALVARADO

plation is out of the causal ties and the space-time relationships.

Once assumed this, the contemplative can only consent to the action
of God. Saint John of the Cross considers that the soul keeps its
freedom to consent even though, strictly speaking, that ultimate free
will on its actions is but a form of devotion to God: “Thus all the
movements of this soul are divine. Although they belong to it, they
belong to it because God works them in it and with it, for it wills and
consents to them” (LB, 1, 9). Nonetheless, ultimately, “let it be
known that these motions are motions of the soul more than of God,
for God does not move... although here below God seemingly moved
within it, He does not in Himself move” (LB, 3, 11).

Ultimately, whereas in the purgative or imperfect contemplation,

the object of knowledge was the soul itself and its miseries, the goal
of perfect contemplation is the direct, immediate knowledge of God
in the union with Him, “for in the transformation of the soul in God,
it is God who communicates Himself with admirable glory, the two
become one” (CB, 26, 4). Strictly speaking, God has always been the
goal of the soul since the initial stages of the spiritual quest; howev-
er, in order to reach Him, it was necessary to pass a previous stage of
purification of the veils that hindered the pure vision of the soul.

In perfect contemplation, God appears as an agent and, at the

same time, as an object of knowledge. God is the agent or true guide
that shows the way and also impels the contemplative above soul’s
possibilities: “the breeze of the Holy Spirit moves and arouses the
strong love to make its flight to God. Without this divine breeze to
stir the powers to the exercise of divine love, the virtues do not pro-
duce their effects, even though they are present in the soul” (CB, 31,
4). God is the one agent and doer of contemplation: “God alone is
the agent”, “He is the supernatural artificer”. In contemplation, “He
will construct supernaturally in each soul the edifice He desires” be-
cause man, with his natural operations, “has neither ability nor
strength to build the supernatural edifice” (LB, 3, 44-47). Only God

622
 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS

is the “agent” who communicates with the soul, as “patient”, through

the passive understanding.

Nevertheless, no matter how clear and spiritual the vision or con-

templation of God may be in this life, the perfect or unitive contem-
plation is still a “dark contemplation” in comparison with the “clear
contemplation” of the beatific vision that happens in the afterlife
(CB, 39, 13). The most intimate closeness or union with God, which
the Saint calls beatific contemplation, “light of glory” (2S, 24, 4) or
“essential vision of God” (CB, 39, 13), can only take place in the af-
terlife, when the soul leaves the body (2N, 20, 5). Unlike this most
ultimate vision, the mystic vision attained in this life is still “night” if
compared with the vision of God in the Beyond. But this colossal is-
sue is out of the field in which Saint John of the Cross offers his spir-
itual guidance.

623
 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION
ACCORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS

“It was while he was living at that hospital that

the following strange event took place. Very fre-
quently on a clear moonlight night there appeared
in the courtyard before him an indistinct shape
which he could not see clearly enough to tell what
it was. Yet it appeared so symmetrical and beautiful
that his soul was filled with pleasure and joy as he
gazed at it. It had something of the form of a ser-
pent with glittering eyes, and yet they were not
eyes. He felt an indescribable joy steal over him at
the sight of this object. The oftener he saw it, the
greater was the consolation he derived from it”
(Saint Ignatius of Loyola, The Autobiography of St.
Ignatius, New York, 1900, pp. 40-41).

Miguel de Molinos was born in Muniesa (Teruel, Spain), in

1628561. He studied with the Jesuits and was ordained in 1652. In
1663, he traveled to Rome562, where, a few years later, he would be
considered an “authority” due to his labor as a preacher, confessor
and counselor, and thus having the confidence of important personal-

561
The main biographic sources about Miguel de Molinos are the bundles of pa-
pers of the Inquisition and a manuscript found at the Embassy of Spain in Rome
entitled Vida del Doctor D. Miguel de Molinos, aragonés condenado en Roma por
el Sacrosanto y Tremendo Tribunal de la Inquisición. It has been published by J.
Fernández Alonso, “Una bibliografía [sic. ‘biografía’] inédita de Miguel Molinos”,
in Antologica Annua, 12 (1964), pp. 293-321.
562
cf. R. Lluch, “En torno a Miguel de Molinos y los orígenes de su doctrina. As-
pectos de la piedad barroca en Valencia”, Antologica Annua, 18 (1971), pp. 420-
422. Pilar Moreno Rodríguez, El pensamiento de Miguel de Molinos, Madrid,
1992. For a general vision about Molinos, vid. J. I. Tellechea, Molinosiana (Inves-
 JAVIER ALVARADO

ities of the Roman court and curia, such as the former Queen Chris-
tina of Sweden, Cardinal Petrucci, Archbishop Jaime de Palafox y
Cardona, Cardinal D’Estrées and even the Pontiff Innocent XI. As a
fruit of his contemplative experience, he published Guía espiritual
que desembaraza el alma y la conduce por el interior camino para
alcanzar la perfecta contemplación y el rico tesoro de la interior
paz563 (The Spiritual Guide that frees the soul and leads it along the
interior path to reach perfect contemplation and the rich treasure of
interior peace), with the aim of explaining some of the most empiric
aspects of meditation and contemplation, since “this is a (mystical)
science of practice, not theory”.
For decades, the Church had been facing numerous visionaries,
mystics and quietist movements, relaxed ones, illuminated ones, etc.
that defended forms of contemplation that were close to heresy. For
this reason, everyone who supported any contemplative method im-
mediately attracted suspicion against him. It did not matter at all that
the Church already had saints and beatified (Saint Teresa of Jesus,
Saint John of the Cross, etc.) who had written the theoretical and
practical foundations of an orthodox way towards contemplation.

I.- THE FIGHT BETWEEN MEDITATORS AND CONTEM-

PLATIVES

Molinos was one of the victims of the conflict that, in the bosom
of Catholicism, set the followers of the meditative method against
the contemplatives and other individual or “subjective” forms of
spiritual practice that could not be suitably corroborated and con-
trolled by the orthodoxy of the faith. Already in the 25th session of
the Council of Trent, the Pope was requested to publish a Breviary
and a Missal that were standardized, which was done in 1568 and

tigaciones históricas sobre Miguel de Molinos), Madrid, 1987 and P. Moreno Ro-
dríguez, El pensamiento de Miguel de Molinos, Madrid, 1992.
563
The Spiritual Guide, tr. and ed. by Robert P. Baird, New Jersey, 2010 (from
now on, GE).

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS

1570 respectively, as a necessary step to establish the predominance

of the liturgy based on external prayer and the imposition of a
“common” liturgical language (Latin) that was actually incompre-
hensible for most believers and that seemed to imply a certain dis-
dain or even refusal of any individual mystical option. The most sig-
nificant defender of this reform was the Society of Jesus, which took
the Ignatian meditation as a model, against the forms of contempla-
tive prayer.

In effect, in the 16th century, the tensions between the diverse

ways to live the religious experience are prolonged. We are basically
witnessing an underground fight between the passivity of the con-
templative method and the active method of meditation (taking the
Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola as a model), respec-
tively defended by Carmelites and Jesuits564. Nevertheless, despite
the canonization of Saint Teresa (1622) and the beatification of John
of the Cross (1675), the indiscriminate attacks of the Society of Jesus
against contemplative prayer continued. Alonso Rodríguez already
pointed out that contemplation should neither be taught, because “it
is one of His most liberal graces and thus He communicates it to
whom He wills”, nor be talked or written about, and the books that
deal with it must be prohibited565. But recollection and contempla-
tive mystic was still winning followers such as Falconi, Malaval566,
the first few works by Petrucci, and even among the Jesuits them-
selves (such as Cordeses, Baltasar Álvarez and Miguel de Molinos
himself). The generals of the Order, like Fathers Oliva and Mercuri-
ano, provided precise instructions to fight against the forms of medi-
tation or prayer that did not comply with the Ignatian standard. Mer-
curiano prohibited even the reading of Tauler, Ruysbroeck, Suso,
Herp, etc. Faced with this panorama, The Spiritual Guide of the

564
Ignacio Iparraguirre, Historia de los Ejercicios de San Ignacio (Evolución en
Europa durante el siglo XVII), vol. III, Rome, 1973.
565
Ejercicio de perfección y virtudes cristianas, Seville, 1614, I, Treatise V, 4.
566
F. Malaval, Pratique facile pour élever l’âme à la contemplation, Paris, 1664
and 1670.

627
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Jesuit Molinos can be considered to be in the vanguard of the Tri-

dentine resolutions, for it proposes the most radical alternative to
“mental” prayer ever formulated within the spirit of the Counter-
Reformation. However, the persecution of quietism and the process
against Molinos reflected a contrast of tendencies and influences that
was inserted into the fight between France and Spain, being the Holy
See one of its scenes567. In relation to the moves on the chessboard
of international politics, “Molinosism was the house of Austria”568,
the enemy to defeat. After he was captured on July the 18th, 1685,
Innocent XI, in 1687, published the encyclical Coelestis Pastor,
condemning sixty-eight Molinosist propositions for being heretic569.

Nonetheless, the fact that Molinos was not a quietist was proven
by his own Spiritual Guide and, above all, by his later Defense of
contemplation570, in which he denied the accusations that had been
leveled against him. Whereas the doctrine of absolute passiveness571
and quietism, whose immediate precedent was the Central European
movements of Free Spirit or the Spanish illuminated, denied the ex-
istence of human will, Molinos affirmed that the taming of the ego
depended on a voluntary act that, far from being based on passive-
ness and quietism, required full activity: “You will never get up the
mountain of perfection, nor to any high throne of peace internal, if
you are only governed by your own will. This cruel and fierce ene-
my of God, and of your soul, must be conquered”572. And even more
clearly: “All you have to do is to do nothing by your own choice

567
G. Bandini, “Cristina di Svezia e Molinos”, in Nuova Antologia, 442 (1948), p.
61.
568
R. Urbano, Miguel de Molinos, foreword to his edition of the Guía espiritual
(Barcelona, 1911), p. 22.
569
The complete text of the Sentence can ve read in Paul Dudon, Le quiétiste es-
pagnol; Michel Molinos (1628-1696), Paris, 1921, pp. 274-292. Paradoxically, due
to a political-judicial juggling, Molinos’ Guide was never condemned.
570
Defensa de la contemplación, published by Francisco Trinidad Solano, Madrid,
1983 (from now on, DC).
571
D. T. Suzuki, “Pasividad absoluta y libertinaje”, in Ensayos sobre Budismo Zen,
Buenos Aires, 1995, pp. 293-299.
572
GE, II, 9, 67.

628
 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS

alone”573. It is to be noticed that he does not just say, “all you have to
do is to do nothing”, since there is a short clarification that changes it
all: “by your own choice alone”. Even just “wanting” not to be (not
to think, not to feel, not to want, not to act) can let the Being work.
Only the non-interference of the Being’s work in the emptiness and
silence of the nothing will bring the Aletheia. But the kenosis of the
soul and its transformation into the Being by emptying itself also
implies the will to “be detached from God Himself”. Only this last
one is the perfect form of detachment and recollection. In that time,
this was one of the differences that justified the distinction between
quietism and recollection. In this sense, the Spiritual Guide does not
follow the suspicious quietism, but the purest collected tradition that
was practiced by Tauler, Kempis, Bernabé de Palma, Laredo, Saint
John of Ávila, Saint John of the Cross, etc.

Three main periods have been distinguished regarding recollec-

tion in Spain574. The first one, from 1523, with the arrangement of
the houses of prayer and the examples of Saint Teresa, Saint John of
Ávila, Saint Francisco de Borja, Saint Peter of Alcántara and some
Jesuits and Dominicans, until the publication, in 1559, of the famous
Index of forbidden books by Fernando de Valdés, which represented
the anti-mystical movement, with the prohibition of not only the al-
ready classic works by Osuna, Laredo and Palma, but also other spir-
itual works of that time such as Archbishop Carranza’s Catechism,
Friar Louis of Granada’s The Book of Prayer and Meditation and
The Sinner’s Guide, John of Ávila’s Audi Filia, Francisco de Borja’s
The Practice of Christian Works, the translations of Tauler and Ser-
afino da Fermo, Giorlamo Savonarola’s Commentary, Erasmus’ En-
chiridion, Colloquia and Modus orandi, etc. Then a second period,
which lasted from 1580 to 1625, in which we should highlight
Nicolás Factor, Friar John of the Angels, Antonio Sobrino, Baltasar

573
GE, I, 7, 44.
574
Melquiades Andrés Martín, Los recogidos; Nueva visión de la mística española
(1500-1700), Madrid, 1976.

629
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Álvarez, Bartolomé de los Mártires, Pelayo de San Benito, Falcón,

Antonio de Rojas and Miguel de la Fuente. And finally a third period
of splendor of recollection, in which we should mention the Francis-
cans Andrés de Guadalupe and Antonio Panes, the Capuchins
Gaspar de Viana, José de Nájera, Pedro de Aliaga and Isidoro of
León, the Mercedarians Pizaño and Serna, the Benedictines Antonio
de Alvarado and José de San Benito, as well as Archbishop Palafox
and others. From the bibliographic point of view, recollection can be
symbolized by the two anonymous works that respectively marked
the beginning and decline of this movement: Hun brevísimo atajo e
arte de amar a Dios: con otra arte de contemplar (1513) and Atajo
espiritual para llegar el alma segura y en breve a la íntima unión
con Dios (1837).

This way, the wonderism was developed up to the extent that

Pope Urban VIII promulgated a decree in 1625, ratified in 1634, by
which he forbade the printing of any work that spoke about revela-
tions and special holiness without the previous authorization of the
ecclesiastic authority, fact that “isolated theology and, conceptually,
mysticism for about two centuries”575. For his part, Innocent XI,
through a decree on August the 28th, 1687, followed by the encycli-
cal Coelestis Pastor on November the 19th, 1687, condemned the
quietism in general and Molinos’ works in particular, fact that had a
devastating effect on those who practiced the ascetic and contempla-
tive life, sowing distrust among them. Paradoxically, the first conse-
quence of this decree was actually the “creation” of quietism in
Spain, since just “illuminism” had existed before. This way, Catholic
mysticism began a sad, long way of gradual enclosure within itself
and isolation from society. “It seems as if the Treaties of Westphalia
–consecration of our decline– had also affected spirituality”576.

575
Melquiades Andrés, Historia de la mística de la Edad de Oro en España y
América, Madrid, 1994, p. 380.
576
Melquiades Andrés, Historia de la mística, cit., Madrid, 1994, p. 380.

630
 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS

And the truth is that “Molinos’ Guide does not contain any prop-
osition that is openly wrong. Those which could be daring regarding
meditation, prayer of silence and quiet, interior way, overcoming of
ladders, degrees and methods, valuation of laws or transformation in-
to God are frequently found also in the works of the great mystics of
the past”577. Precisely, in his work Defense of contemplation, Moli-
nos will be mainly based on the contemplative doctrine of Saint John
of the Cross. It could even be said that the Molinosism is not other
than a commentary of the work of the mystic of the nothings, from
whom he takes many concepts: from the differences between “the
inner and the outer man”, that match those who walk on the external
path of beginners and those who do on the internal one of contem-
plative recollection, up to his concept of the Nothing. It is undeniable
that Molinos adopts the contemplative practice of Saint John exactly
as it was understood by the disciples of the Mystical Doctor. That is
why one of the current greatest experts in Molinos, a discalced Car-
melite, affirms that “the heterodoxy of Molinos’ writings is not larg-
er than a few logical incongruities, in the context of synthesis, or cer-
tain theses that may seem arguable. Even though he went too far in
their pastoral application, that fact does not affect the doctrinal con-
tents, which essentially agrees with the spiritual theology prevailing
in his time throughout the Catholic world”578. Certainly, this author
insists that Molino’s work, “of course, did not contribute any inten-
tionally deforming new idea. Despite this, it was used as the spark to
unleash a confrontation: that which is known with the name of ‘qui-
etism’. I am glad to repeat once again that quietism, in general, was a
dramatic fight between Teresian spirituality and Ignatian spirituality,
between ascetics and mysticism”579. Although Molinos’ spirituality
was condemned at that time as a simple repetition of the mysticism

577
Melquiades Andrés, Historia de la mística cit., Madrid, 1994, p. 459.
578
Eulogio Pacho, in his article “El misticismo de Miguel de Molinos. Raíces y
proyección”, published in Luce López-Baralt and Lorenzo Piera (coords.), El sol a
medianoche. La experiencia mística: tradición y actualidad, Madrid, 1996, p. 101.
579
Eulogio Pacho, “El misticismo de Miguel de Molinos. Raíces y proyección”,
cit., p. 107. Regarding this matter, vid. I. Iparraguirre, Historia de los Ejercicios de
San Ignacio, t. III, Rome, 1973, p. 221 ff.

631
 JAVIER ALVARADO

of the illuminated that he himself had denounced, the truth is that

Molinos was neither “brilliant nor original; neither was he heretic,
nor a liar. He simply called for a permanent moderation, balance and
agreement among mysticisms”580.

The recollected ones, connected with Neoplatonism581, Eastern

Christian contemplative tradition and Sufism, propose the liberation
from the internal disorder of our senses until reaching the bottom of
the secret mansions of the soul, where the ineffable communication
with God takes place. That is why the suspension or recollection of
the senses in the upper powers, and of the latter in their center, con-
stitutes one of the central concepts of the method. Only that way will
the prayer of annihilation lead to the essential humility. There is a
previous active annihilation that consists in the reconnaissance and
acceptance of the own human limitation, of the own nothing, that
gives way to the passive annihilation, which can only be accessed
through the emptiness and detachment, by means of the absolute and
total devotion to the divine will. Recollection is thus connected with
the Augustinian noli foras ire and with the apophatic thought or neg-
ative theology of Plotinus, Evagrius, Dionysius the Areopagite, the
author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Eckhart, Saint John of the Cross,
Nicholas of Cusa, etc. God is “beyond the Being” (Enneads, V, 5, 6),
“beyond the Essence” (En., VI, 8, 19), “beyond the mind” (En., III,
8, 9), so that the soul can only detach itself, “et posuit tenebras
latibulum Suum”582, and “advance forward with its love, leaving all
its understanding behind” (GE, Preface, 1st adv., 4), bearing the
darkness “without acting, knowing, or desiring to understand any

580
Eulogio Pacho, “El misticismo de Miguel de Molinos. Raíces y proyección”,
cit., p. 108.
581
The mystical tradition of recollection, in which Molinos is involved, has been
related to the Andalusi Shadhili Sufi doctrine of renunciation. As God is inaccessi-
ble, He is nothing that we can feel, imagine, think and want. Therefore, all that the
soul may do to reach God will be a hindrance. In order to attain the union with
God, we can just renounce all that is not God and empty ourselves of every desire,
egoism, inclination, etc. Vid. Asín Palacios, “Un precursor hispanomusulmán de S.
Juan de la Cruz”, in Selected Works in Spanish, Madrid, CSIC, 1946, pp. 245-326.
582
GE, I, 7, 40 (Ps. 18:11, “and He made darkness His secret place”).

632
 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS

thing”583, quietly and peacefully waiting for the dawn within the
shadows. This confident waiting of the unknown is similar to the
way “a son who has never seen his father, but fully believing those
who have given him information of him, loves him, as if he had al-
ready seen him”584.

II.- THE INSUFFICIENCY OF MEDITATION AND THE

NEED TO PASS TO CONTEMPLATION

Regarding the polemic concerning the best form of prayer, Moli-

nos defends a prudent, realistic thesis: “contemplation and medita-
tion are not two different paths; there is only one path, but with this
difference: meditation is practiced to begin and contemplation is
practiced to advance forward and persevere. The spiritual path starts
with meditation, then we pass to the affective prayer; from here, we
pass to the purgative prayer; after that, active contemplation, so that
all this is just one path, a real, safe path. But the same path, at its be-
ginning, is called meditation, after that affective, after that, if we ad-
vance, it is purgative, and after that, if we pass through annihilation,
perfection and union, it is called active contemplation” (DC, XVII).
Therefore, as there is only one path according to Molinos, it is nec-
essary to pass from meditation to contemplation in order to culmi-
nate or surmount the way. Given that prayer is an elevation of the
mind in God (elevatio mentis in Deum), “in order to focus our mind
on God, which is contemplation, it is necessary to give up all consid-
erations and discourses, no matter how high they might be, which
are meditation. Meditation is also a means to reach the end and the
goal, which is contemplation. Contemplation is to find the thing, it is
to taste and settle the divine delicacy in the stomach, it is the end and
the goal, and it is to understand and know God” (DC, I).

583
GE, I, 7, 46. Molinos draws a distinction between the virtue of “waiting”, char-
acterized by a docile acceptance, and “hope” (elpis) as an aggressive, greedy atti-
tude that projects one’s expectations on the future.
584
GE, Preface, 1st adv., 4.

633
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Molinos alleges various arguments in order to prove that medita-

tion is an imperfect form of prayer are various. Firstly, because med-
itation, as it is motivated by the individual objectives or interests of
the meditator, is not a pure act: “The multiplication of the acts and
affections in prayer is originated in self-love rather than in pure love
for God, because the soul does not purely seek God through them,
but it rather seeks satisfaction, desiring, with those acts and affec-
tions, to assure itself of and savor the faith and the love of God, and
resignation, all of which is but satisfaction, property, self-love and
desire to know and see what it can do with that harmful reflection...
because, in our discourses, meditations (even though the most holy
ones), acts and sensitive affections, our self-love rules more than the
love of God. The soul does not purely seek God and His most holy
will in these considerations, but its delight, pleasure and satisfaction”
(DC, XVII). True meditation must happen without a reason, it must
be an objectless, aimless meditation in which it must not even exist
the consciousness of a subject who meditates on objects. Only this
way, the nullification of the ego, that is, contemplation, takes place.

Secondly, meditation implies to recreate with the thoughts and

emotions a series of images about God, scenes of the life of Jesus
Christ, or reflections about the faults and virtues of man and about
certain classic topics such as the brevity of life, death, the Beyond,
etc. Certainly, the meditation on thoughts or images (visual thoughts)
is a form of prayer that is necessary and almost indispensable to sof-
ten or tenderize the crust of the mind, but it is not the most suitable
means to “contemplate” God. “Those who imagine God under some
figures, such as light, fire and radiance, think they are similar to
Him, because the creatures are not proportional to the being of the
Divine Creator, and thus those similarities cannot be the right means
to unite with Him. Even though the beginners profit from these con-
siderations and meditations that make them fall in love through the
senses, these are wrong means to unite with God, because God is in-
corporeal and invisible; nevertheless, they usually need to pass

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through them in order to reach the end, the spiritual rest, so that they
may not always work by those means, for otherwise they will never
arrive to the end” (DC, XVII). If God has no form, how can the med-
itator approach Him through the recreation of images? “Neither
should we fear that the memory be empty of forms and figures, for
God has no form or figure; it is safe being empty of form and figure:
the closer it gets to God, the safer it is, because the closer it may get
to the imagination, the farther it will move away from God and the
more endangered it will be, since God, as He is unknowable, cannot
be imagined” (DC, XVII)585.

Therefore, “If we are just thinking about sensible, intellectual,

temporal, corporeal and external objects and about their images and
likenesses, we will never reach the end, which is contemplation and
perfection” (DC, XVII). “God is extremely incorporeal and has no
likeness to corporeal things. Therefore, as long as the soul is occu-
pied with the knowledge, images and corporeal figures, it will be in-
capable of contemplation or union with the purest and most spiritual
God... Therefore, the most perfect and proportioned disposition that
man may adopt to get ready for the sublime union with God lies in
emptying his understanding and stripping himself from all unneces-
sary knowledge and from all natural, corporeal, sensible, intelligible,
imaginary and representable images” (DC, XVII). This means that
“the more detached the soul may be from all sensible things, the
readier it will then be to receive the divine light. This is what Saint
Thomas says with the following words: The more detached the soul
is from all sensible things, the readier it is to receive the divine influ-
ence” (DC, XVII).

Consequently, “vocal prayer is a means to achieve mental and in-

terior prayer; thus, the latter is more perfect than the former, accord-
ing to the opinion of all the saints and theologians”, because “the
place and center of God is neither in the mouth nor in the tongue: it

585
Cf. Saint John of the Cross, LA, 3, 42-45.

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is in the innermost center of the soul, and it would be impolite and

even mad, while God is there within us, to go out to talk to Him”
(DC, XXIII).

III.- THE PRACTICE OF THE PRAYER OF QUIET: THE SI-

LENCE OF THE MIND

The “prayer of quiet” or prayer of “interior recollection” consists

in focusing the eyes of the understanding on the Truth, “beholding it
sincerely with quietness and silence, without any necessity of con-
siderations or discourses”586. That is to say, quiet happens together
with the silence of the mind and the detachment from the thoughts.

According to Molinos, there are three kinds of silence: “the first

is of words, the second of desires, and the third of thoughts. The first
is perfect, the second is more perfect, and the third is the most per-
fect”587. In any case, these three kinds of silence constitute a progres-
sive scale: “By not speaking, not desiring, and not thinking, one ar-
rives at the true and perfect mystical silence, wherein God speaks
with the soul, communicates Himself to it and, in the abyss of its
own depth, teaches it the most perfect and exalted wisdom... You are
to keep yourself in this mystical silence if you would hear the sweet
and divine voice. It is not enough for gaining this treasure, to forsake
the world, nor to renounce your own desires, and all the things creat-
ed, if you wean not yourself from all desires and thoughts. Rest in
this mystical silence, and open the door, that so God may communi-
cate Himself unto you, unite with you, and transform you” (GE, I,
17, 129). Our author dedicates the whole chapter 17 of the first book
of his Guide to the subject of the “mystical silence”.

586
GE, Preface, 2nd adv., 11.
587
GE, I, 17, 128.

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS

In sum, silence is the first condition to attain contemplation,

since “how is it possible to hear the sweet, inward and powerful
voice of God in the midst of the noise and tumults of the creatures?
And how can the pure spirit be heard in the midst of considerations
and discourses of artifice?”588. In order to be able to hear God in the
Temple of the soul, we must remove everything that makes noise
and takes room. “By not speaking, not desiring, and not thinking,
one arrives at the true and perfect mystical silence, wherein God
speaks with the soul, communicates Himself to it and, in the abyss of
its own depth, teaches it the most perfect and exalted wisdom”589.

IV.- THE SUSPENSION OF THE SENSES AND THE

THOUGHT

In order to confirm the benefits of contemplation and dispel all

suspicions of heretic “quietism”, Molinos invokes the authority of
numerous distinguished contemplative. Thus, he cites Saint Jerome
(super cap. 6 Mat.) when he states, “it seems to me that what we are
most requested to do is to pray to the Lord stopping our thoughts and
closing our lips” (DC, XXIV). He also transcribes a paragraph of the
Dark night of Saint John of the Cross (1N, 10) in which the quietness
of him who aspires to contemplate God is compared with the neces-
sary immobility of him who is being painted by an artist: “They must
not be given the chance to think or meditate, even though they may
believe they are doing nothing but wasting their time and they may
not feel like thinking of anything due to their laziness. They will
have gotten a lot if they are patient and perseverant enough as to free
their souls and detach it from all knowledge and thoughts, not mind-
ing at all what they will think of or meditate on. And even though
they may feel remorse for wasting their time and may consider that it
would be good to do any other thing, since they cannot do or think

588
GE, III, 13, 131.
589
GE, I, 17, 129.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

anything there, they must then stay calm and suffer, for they have
not gone there to enjoy. If they worked with their powers, that would
be like to hinder or even to lose the goods that God, through that
peace and idleness of the soul, is settling and imprinting in its face.
And, if that face shook while trying to do something else, it would
not let the painter do anything, hindering his work. Therefore, when
the soul is that idle, any operation, interest, concern or attention that
it may want to have will distract it and thus hinder that God may
work anything in it”. Molinos insists that pure prayer of true recol-
lection is that which is practiced without any discourse or reflection.
He bases his statement on his own experience and also on that of
many saints and theologians such as Saint Thomas and other mysti-
cal masters that support it as “a sincere, sweet, and still view of the
eternal truth without discourse or reflection”590, while the senses re-
main temporary suspended.

Nevertheless, according to Molinos, the complete suspension of

the powers, besides being a very difficult task, for “images and spe-
cies continually come in because the external senses are opened to
the objects”, is absolutely “useless, since, in order to deserve, it is
necessary to act, believe, know and love, and these operations cannot
be done if the soul is suspended with a total cessation or suspension.
To try to achieve, thus, this total suspension is a waste of time” (DC,
XVIII). The mental silence and the suspension of the senses must be
accompanied by an attitude of devotion and silent trust591. Other-
wise, we would have but a mere mental exercise that would cause
but a headache.

590
GE, Preface, 2nd adv., 11.
591
“Internal recollection is faith and silence in the presence of God. Hence you
ought to be accustomed to recollect yourself in His presence, with an affectionate
attention, as one that is given up to God, and united unto Him, with reverence, hu-
mility and submission, beholding Him in the most inward recess of your own soul,
without form, likeness, manner or figure, in the view and general nature of a loving
and obscure faith, without any distinction of perfection or attribute”, GE, I, 11, 54).

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS

V.- SOME OBSTACLES TO MEDITATION

The first few stages of meditation are usually the hardest, be-
cause the mind is not used to control or stop the thoughts. It will ac-
tually fight against quietness with all the available means, the same
way a horse is reluctant to be broken in. At this point, Molinos de-
scribes the strategies employed by the body and the mind in order to
hinder meditation: “No sooner will you have given yourself up to
your Lord in this inward way, but all Hell will conspire against you...
War is very usual in this internal recollection”592. Symptoms of this
internal fight are the desire to finish prayer soon, the annoyance of
the thoughts, the body tiredness, the inopportune sleepiness, etc. In
sum, subterfuges of the ego-mind.

But “this monster must be vanquished. This seven-headed beast

of self-love must be beheaded, in order to get up to the top of the
high mountain of peace”593. In order to overcome these obstacles, it
is necessary to adopt some measures, such as dedicating always the
minimum amount of time to meditation, regardless of the results. If
the mind knows that there is a fixed amount of time for prayer, it will
not want to shorten it. In addition, we must not give up meditation
even though we may not obtain any result; “Though you cannot get
rid of the anguish of thoughts, have no light, comfort, nor spiritual
sentiment, yet be not afflicted, neither leave off recollection... You
may believe, when you come away from prayer dry, in the same
manner as you began it, that that was because of want of preparation
and that you obtain no fruit”594. All these are strategies of the ego,
who tries to approach God as a merchant eager for benefits and re-
sults. But the merchants must be expelled from the Temple so that it
may be absolutely empty; “As many times as you exercise yourself,
calmly to reject these vain thoughts, so many crowns will the Lord

592
GE, I, 11, 67, 71.
593
GE, III, 3, 20.
594
GE, I, 11, 69-70.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

set upon your head, and though it may seem to you that you do noth-
ing, be undeceived, for a good desire with firmness and steadfastness
in prayer is very pleasing to the Lord”595. At those first few mo-
ments, it is indispensable to make an effort and devote ourselves to
prayer so that we may find the right position and the suitable mental
and psychic attitude; but it is very important to keep in mind that the
contemplative quietness, as an essentially interior activity, strictly
speaking, does not require any effort. In fact, true contemplation re-
quires no effort at all; “The effort, which you yourself may make to
resist thoughts is an impediment and will leave your soul in greater
anxiety”596.

Anyway, some authors point out that Molinos, despite profusely

giving advice about how to practice contemplation, did not want to
reveal in writing the specific technique to quiet the mind and achieve
the inner silence. At the most, he offers the usual method of the short
prayer (similar to the Hindu mantra) that had to be employed for a
minimum period of three years, “repeating it as often as he
breathed”, at the same time that one said, “Thy will be done in time
and eternity” until attaining the most perfect peace and inner silence.
If this were the key –question about which there are no judgment cri-
teria to decide whether it is or is not true–, it would have been one of
the best-kept secrets, since it was not explained by any of his disci-
ple.

According to Molinos, contemplation is “a known and inward

manifestation which God gives of Himself, of his goodness, of his
peace, of his sweetness, whose object is God, pure, unspeakable, ab-
stracted from all particular thoughts, within an inner silence”597.
However, “there are moreover two ways of contemplation: the one is
imperfect, active and acquired; the other infused and passive. The

595
GE, I, 11, 75.
596
GE, I, 11, 68.
597
GE, III, 13, 131.

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS

active... is that which may be attained to by our diligence, assisted

with divine grace, we gathering together the powers and senses, and
preparing ourselves by every way that God would have”598. Passive
or infused contemplation is an “admirable gift, which the Divine
Majesty bestows to whom He will, as He will, and when He will,
and for what time He will”599.

In any case, acquired or active contemplation prepare us for the

infused and passive contemplation: “You will know that, when once
the soul is habituated to internal recollection and acquired contem-
plation –that we have spoken of–, when once it is mortified and de-
sires wholly to be denied its appetites, when once it efficaciously
embraces internal and external mortification and is willing to die
heartily to its passions and its own ways, then God uses to take it
alone by itself and raise it, more than it knows, to a complete repose,
where He sweetly and inwardly infuses in it His light, His love and
His strength, enkindling and inflaming it with a true disposition to all
manner of virtue”600.

VI.- HOW TO ENTER THE TEMPLE OF THE SOUL: THE

DETACHMENT AND THE NOTHING

On several occasions, Molinos compares the soul with a temple

that must be looked after in order that God may dwell inside of it.
The soul is “the tabernacle of the divinity”601, so that “you may keep
pure that temple of God”602. Contemplation is the key to enter “that
supreme region and sacred temple of the soul (where) the greatest
good takes its complacency, manifests itself and creates a relish from

598
GE, Preface, 3rd adv., 20. The similarity between this distinction and the two
kinds of Samādhi described by the Vedic literature is to be noticed.
599
GE, III, 13, 131.
600
GE, III, 13, 127.
601
GE, I, 16, 123.
602
GE, I, 1, 1.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

the creature in a way above sense and all human understanding”603.

It is also a city, properly ruled in the image of the Heavenly Jerusa-
lem. That “city of quiet” is a divine city, the center of the being,
from where the soul must rule its subjects (that is, all the intellectual
and sensory faculties604): “You are to know that your soul is the cen-
ter, habitation and the kingdom of God”605. This center or heart606 is
a sacred place and a privileged place of the theophanies607 because,
“when the soul attains to this state [contemplation], it ought wholly
to retreat within itself, in its own pure and profound center, where
the image of God is”608. In order that true contemplation may take
place, the impostor king that tyrannizes his subjects must be over-
thrown. Once the throne is empty, it can be occupied by God as the
rightful king: “To the end the sovereign King may rest on the throne
of your soul, you ought to take pains to keep it clean, quiet, void and
peaceable; clean from guilt and defects; quiet from fears; void of af-
fections, desires and thoughts; and peaceable in temptations and
tribulations”609. If that change of sovereignty takes place and the
rightful rule is established, we will obtain true spiritual peace. That
center, heart or throne of the soul is also compared by Molinos with
“that Edenic state of innocence forfeited by our first parents”610 that
can be recovered or reestablished by turning back to the original
simplicity.

How to access that neutral Edenic state? How to evict the impos-
tor that unrightfully occupies the throne of the soul? The keystone is

603
GE, III, 13, 129.
604
The symbol of the city is particularly developed in the book of Revelation. Re-
garding this subject, vid. René Guenon, “The divine city”, in Symbols of Sacred
Science, Hillsdale (NY), 2004, pp. 443 ff. From other point of view, vid. C. G.
Jung, Symbols of Transformation, Princeton, 1967).
605
GE, I, 1, 1.
606
René Guénon, “Heart and brain”, in Symbols of Sacred Science, cit., p. 405 ff.
607
René Guénon, Symbols of Sacred Science, cit., p. 57 ff. Regarding the symbol-
ism of the center, vid. as well Mircea Eliade, Tratado de Historia de las Religiones
(Treatise on the History of Religions), Mexico, 1979, pp. 335-339.
608
GE, Preface, 2nd adv., 17.
609
GE, I, 1, 1.
610
GE, III, 20, 204.

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS

one word: Nothing. “The way to attain that high state of mind re-
formed, whereby a man immediately gets to the greatest good, to our
first origin and to the highest peace, is the Nothing... Walk, walk in
this safe path, and endeavor to overwhelm yourself in this Nothing,
endeavor to lose yourself, to sink deep into it, if you have to be anni-
hilated, united and transformed”611. It is the true elixir of life that
emanates from Paradise; “O what a treasure will you find if you shall
once fix your habitation in Nothing! And if you once get into the
center of the Nothing, you will never concern yourself with anything
that is without (the great ugly large step that so many thousand souls
do stumble at)”612. In effect, Nothing is the magic word that unlocks
the sealed door of the most unexplored chamber of the temple of
man. “The soul keeps within its Nothing... lives transformed into the
supreme good... lives plunged into God”613. And, insofar as man
dwells in the Nothing, that is, he detaches himself from the things, it
is then when he makes room for God. Such is the case that, ultimate-
ly, even the attachment to God can become an obstacle in the way of
spiritual detachment614.

On several occasions, Molinos turns to the metaphor of the door

in order to symbolize the separation and limit between two worlds or
states: from the profane world to the sacred one, from the human to
the divine. To pass through the threshold equals to pass from the
darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge. This symbol having
been employed by all the religious traditions, in the Christian tradi-
tion, Jesus Christ presents Himself as the true door (Jn. 10:9); “He

611
GE, III, 20, 196, 205.
612
GE, III, 20, 200.
613
GE, III, 20, 199.
614
“Know that he who would attain to the mystical science must be denied and de-
tached from five things. 1. From the creatures; 2. From temporal things; 3. From
the very gifts of the Holy Spirit; 4. From himself; 5. From God Himself. This last
is the most perfect of all, because the soul that only knows how to be so detached is
that which attains to being lost in God, and only that soul that is so lost is that
which knows how to find itself” (GE, III, 18, 185). It is then taken back again one
of the Meister Eckhart’s arguments: in order to find God, we must detach ourselves
from God. “Therefore I beg God to make me free from God”.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

(the Son of Man) is near, at the door” (Mk. 13:29); “Behold, I stand
at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice and open the door,
I will come to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me” (Rev.
3:20). To open it, it is first necessary to close the door to the world:
“Keeping yourself in the Nothing, you will bar the door against eve-
rything that is not God; you will retire also your own self and walk
toward that internal solitude where the divine spouse speaks in the
heart of His bride, teaching her high and divine wisdom”615. Once
closed the doors of the senses, a door is opened to the happy land of
the living. “By this door you must enter into the happy land of the
living, where you will find the greatest good, the breath of charity,
the beauty of righteousness, the straight line of equality and justice
and, in sum, every joy and title of perfection”616.

How to pass through the door of the Nothing? The answer is in-
variably the same: by being the Nothing, one already is, because
man, as man, is nothing, the same way God is everything. The path
is arduous and hard. Actually, “many are the souls that have arrived
and do arrive at this door, but few have passed or do pass it”617. Per-
severance, prayer, silence and acceptance of the own nothingness are
the keys; “Walk, persevere, pray and be silent, for where you find
not a sentiment you will find a door whereby you may enter into
your own nothingness”618. Rest in this mystical silence and open the
door, that so God may communicate Himself unto you, unite with
you, and transform you”619.

The apophatic contemplative tradition is aware that the quickest

annihilation of the ego is not gotten with the roughness of the spiked
belt nor with other physical or psychical mortifications, but through
the total acceptance of the Nothing. Molinos places David himself in

615
GE, III, 20, 203.
616
GE, III, 20, 204.
617
GE, Preface, 1st adv., 6.
618
GE, I, 12, 77.
619
GE, I, 17, 128.

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 MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION ACCORDING TO MIGUEL DE MOLINOS

this tradition: “That is the way [the Nothing] that David got a perfect
annihilation, ‘et ego ad nihilum redactus sum et nescivi’ (Ps.
73:22)”620. “If you persevere constantly, He will not only purge you
from affections and attachments to natural and temporal goods, but
in His own time also He will purify you with the supernatural and
sublime, such as are internal communications, inward raptures and
ecstasies, and other infused graces, on which the soul rests and en-
joys itself”621. Only this way can one settle in the true humility;
“Creep in as far as ever you can into the truth of your nothingness,
and then nothing will disquiet you: nay, you will be humble and
ashamed, losing openly your own reputation and esteem”622. “The
Nothing is the means to die to yourself” because, when one see that
all the things of this world are nothing, the desire and pride of want-
ing to be someone cease.

The Nothing or void conceptually represents a state characterized

by the inexistence of a subject or “I” who may be experienced as
something real. It implies the verification that there is not any indi-
vidual subject who can achieve or possess anything. It seems para-
doxical, since, when one is There, there is no one who may claim
anything. And when the individual consciousness appears and, with
it, the subsequent sense of appropriation, one stops being There. The
Nothing does not allow duality or feeling of separateness. That is
why it is a state that, unable to be described by the intellect, is de-
fined as “empty”. But the Nothing is not a didactic resource, but a
metaphysical principle with formidable effects that cleanse the heart
of all vanity and expectation in this world, since it indicates what the
true nature of the soul is by defining it precisely for what it is not;
“perfect and true dominion only governs in the Nothing”623 because
that nothing marks the transition toward what is Not nothing. It is, as
Dionysius the Areopagite would say, a “supra-essential darkness” or

620
GE, III, 20, 203.
621
GE, I, 7, 43.
622
GE, III, 20, 198.
623
GE, III, 20, 201.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

“darkness of Unknowing”, insofar as it has no limits or particulari-

ties, but, precisely because of that, it is perfect fullness, since infinity
has no limits or definition. As Meister Eckhart would say, the Noth-
ing shows the way that must be walked by the soul until attaining a
state in which it was when it yet was not.

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 SUFI EPILOGUE

“So remember Me and I will remember you”

(Quran, 2:152).

It is to be pointed out that, despite the disagreement or even hos-

tility that has characterized the relationship between Christians and
Muslims throughout history, beyond all dogmas and beliefs, we can
still find certain fields or spaces of tolerance and fraternization based
on common elements. Islam considers Muḥammad as the last mes-
senger sent by God, that is, the last of the prophets (Quran, 33:40).
In this prophetic mission, the Quran recognizes some predecessors
such as Noah, Abraham, Moses or Jesus as chosen ones to receive a
revelation and transmit it to men: “We have inspired you [O
Muḥammad] as We inspired Noah and the prophets after him; We
also inspired Abraham, Ismael, Isaac, Jacob and his twelve sons, Je-
sus, Jonah, Aaron and Solomon, and to David We gave the Psalms”
(Quran, 4:163). It is not a new revelation, but the remembrance of or
return to the original revelation. In the case of Muḥammad, the di-
vine message was transmitted by means of the Archangel Gabriel
(Quran, 42:52; 53:4-9). Through His revelations to the prophets, God
keeps alive and pure the only straight religion according to God’s
Creation (Quran, 30:30). That is why, according to Islam, the mes-
sage of the prophets is always one and the same.

The Quran explicitly agrees with Abraham’s religion, that is,

original Judaism: “Follow the religion of Abraham” (Quran, 3:95),
since “there has been an excellent example for you in Abraham and
those with him” (Quran, 60:4). It also accepts the prophetic labor
carried out by Moses: “God spoke to Moses directly” (Quran, 4:164)
and entrusted him with His commandments: “We gave Moses the
 JAVIER ALVARADO

Book... explaining all things in detail and a guidance and a mercy”

(Quran, 6:154). Likewise, It accepts, admits and recognizes the pro-
phetic mission and teachings of Jesus as a chosen one sent by God to
announce the Gospel, to whom “We gave clear signs [of his mission]
and supported him with the Holy Spirit” (Quran, 2, 86)624. Nonethe-
less, even though original Christianity is accepted, certain adher-
ences and formal dogmas that came later are refused, since they are
considered to be deviations caused by man. But I do not mean to
highlight what separates us, but what unites us beyond the external
shapes and clothes: that common element cannot be other than fra-
ternal love. As the Sufi Ibn ‘Arabī (1165-1240) said:
“My heart can take on all form:
A meadow for gazelles, a cloister for monks.
For the idols, sacred ground, Ka‘ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah, the scrolls of the Quran.
I profess the religion of love,
Whatever its caravan turns along the way,
That is the belief, the faith I keep”.

In effect, according to certain Islamic tendencies, the discussions

about religions and dogmas move us away from the true thing, which
is to experience the sacred or, rather, the Oneness. Out of the spiritu-
al, mystical and esoteric movements and tendencies of Islam, Sufism
(word that comes from ṣūf, wool, of which the garments of the early
ascetics were made of, symbolizing humility) is one of the most tra-
ditional ones. They gather in brotherhoods or fraternities around a

624
The Quran refuses the claim –maintained by Jews and Christians– that they are
the only ones who possess the true religion (Quran, 2:135-140; 3:65-68). Once ac-
cepted the legitimacy of origin of Judaism and Christianity, Islam considers that
both religious traditions have moved away from their source and that it is neces-
sary to rectify or return to the original message. Muḥammad reproached Christians
for the dogma of the Trinity, since it contradicts monotheism, and he therefore de-
nied the divinity of Jesus. Given that “God is one, God is eternal” (Quran, 112:1-
2), Jews and Christians “took their rabbis and their monks and also the Messiah,
the son of Mary, to be their lords besides God. They were not commanded except
to worship one God. There is no god but Him, praise be to Him, above whatever

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 SUFI EPILOGUE

master that “initiates” the candidates directly or through his dele-

gates, transmitting them the spiritual influence (Baraka). Each
brotherhood has its rule or tarīqa, “path, method”, not only about or-
ganizational matters, but also concerning the ascetic and meditative
practices. As it is known, the most spread one is the recitation or re-
membrance of God (Dhikr): “And remember your Lord when you
forget Him” (Quran, 18:24). Out of the formulas or verses of the
Quran, the preferred one is “There is no god but God” (lā ilāha illa
Allāh).

I do not mean to cover the whole history of Sufism in this epi-

logue, nor will I even try to present its profuse variety of “paths”,
subject about which I do not consider myself competent, by the way.
I will just confine myself to showing the characteristics of some Su-
fis, especially those belonging to one of the Sufi brotherhoods or
“paths” (Turuq) that have had the greatest influence on Spain: Shad-
hili Sufism625, which owes its name to Abū-l-Ḥasan aš-Šāḏilī, a Rif
who lived in the 13th century in the village of Šāḏila (Tunisia), fol-
lowing an austere life. Abū-l-Ḥasan was the disciple of Ibn Mašīš
the Rif, who in turn had received the Baraka from the Sevillan Abū
Madyān. Out of the main Sufi writings, I should mention: Ibn ‘Aṭā’
Allāh al-Iskandarī, At-Tanwīr fī-isqāṭ at-taqdīr, about “disregard”;
“Miftāḥ al-falāḥ wa-miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, about mental prayer and the
prayer of “quiet” and “solitude”; Abū-l-‘Abbās al-Mursī, Laṭā’if al-
minan, about the contemplative way; and Kitāb al-Ḥikam, under the
shape of short sentences about eremitic life.

According to Abū-l-Ḥasan aš-Šāḏilī, insofar as we have been ex-

pelled from Paradise, this world is not a real fatherland. That is why
man longs to achieve a state (or mansion) that may give him back his
original condition or nature (Laṭā’if, 1, 202). Likewise, the Sufi Abū

they associate with Him” (Quran, 9:31), and, as well, “It is an infidel who says:
‘God is the third of three’” (Quran, 5:73), since “there is no god but God”.
625
For this purpose, this epilogue is mainly based on the selected texts published
by Miguel Asín Palacios, Šāḏīlíes y alumbrados, Madrid 1990.

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 JAVIER ALVARADO

‘Abd-Allāh Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abbād (born in Ronda in 1371) ex-

plains, in his work Šarḥ al-Ḥikam, that man, as a man, is like a cast-
away in the middle of the sea or like a traveler lost in the desert, who
depends on God’s help to survive (Šarḥ al-Ḥikam, 2, 71). Before
God, the pilgrim must understand his nothingness, since “Man exist-
ed after not having existed, and will stop existing after having exist-
ed. Therefore, we find the nothing in both ends” (Laṭā’if, 1, 207).
Creatures are pure nothing before God; “Every created thing is
darkness and is only illuminated with the appearance of God in it”
(Ibn ‘Abbād, Šarḥ al-Ḥikam, 1, 15-16). Not only creatures are
nothing, but also Creation itself, since just the One Being, who is
God, is the Only Trascendental Reality. The Being is One and
Unique; from its supreme Oneness is deduced the inexistence of all
the rest of things, which, consequently, are illusory, false and vane
(Šarḥ al-Ḥikam, 1, 93).

Therefore, the knowledge of the mysteries of God cannot come

from the created things, since they are illusory, but, initially and as a
previous step, from the detachment from them; “Do not move from
creature to creature, since you will be like the donkey of the mill,
which does walk, true, but the place where it moves to is the same as
the place where it came from. On the contrary, move from the crea-
tures to the Creator, since your Lord is the end and the goal” (Šarḥ
al-Ḥikam, 1, 32). It is not the same to lie in the world, that is, to
identify ourselves with Creation, and to be in the world, understand-
ing the inanity of everything; “It is very different whether you are
with the things or the things are with you. That you are with the
things equals that you are subject to them and that you need them,
that is, that you are their slave and they may later abandon you when
you may have most need of them. You are with the things while you
are not contemplating Him who has given them the being. However,
while you are contemplating Him who has given them the being,
then the things are with you” (Šarḥ al-Ḥikam, 2, 63-65).

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 SUFI EPILOGUE

If only the Being is, and there is nothing other than the Being (lā
ilāha illa Allāh), then the beings are mere appearances with illusory
freedom and will. Whoever may try to claim his autonomy and free-
dom is not only ignorant, but also idolatrous, since he would be
claiming for himself what is an exclusive property of God. To be-
lieve that there are more beings other than the Being is, therefore, a
mistake that, as all the rest of mistakes, can be solved. As Ibn ‘Arabī
(1165-1240) said: “Beloved! Let us go towards the union. And if we
find the way to separation, let us destroy separation!”.

1.- Recollection

In order to successfully walk on the Way (and experience) of the

Oneness, we must understand which things cause separation and
which human instruments or faculties cannot, due to their nature, be
used as aids. Like in other initiatic or metaphysical traditions, the
seeker must experiment until he understands that speculation and
reasoning are not the right means to pray with the heart, since “how
can we get to know, by means of rational knowledge, Him through
whom this knowledge is known? How can we get to know, by
means of any thing, Him whose Being precedes the being of all
things?” (Laṭā’if, 1, 198). The body senses cannot be used either, for
we use them to get around the external world. On the contrary, in or-
der to enter the mansions of the Being, we must suspend or nullify
the senses.

Regarding such a conclusion, Islam not only is the heir of the

Eastern and Western contemplative traditions, which it unashamedly
accepts, but it will also reformulate and reinforce the hermeneutics
of the sacred (old wine into new wineskins). Against dispersion
(tafrīqa) before the created things, recollection (ǧam‘) is explained
as the practice of collecting, gathering and devoting all the senses,
thoughts and concerns to or in God (Ḥayya, 2, 278). First of all, we

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must leave aside all concerns and interests that come from the world.
Next, once we have lost the interest in the created things, we must
suspend all the powers and senses in order to free the soul from the
body ties. Finally, we must focus our attention on the real essence of
the heart, plunging into it. “This way, by remaining in this state
longer every time, the inner vision will gradually become clearer and
purer until opening to the intuitive contemplation of the Lord”
(Kamašḫānawī, Ǧāmi‘, 119). The heart is a sort of subtle or “narrow
door” that gives access to the Spirit, that is, to the real essence of the
heart. It is there where He dwells. As Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)
explained:

The cross of the Christians, from end to end,

I surveyed; He was not there.
I went to the Hindu temples and to the ancient pagodas.
No trace was visible there.
I went to the mountains of Herat and Kandahar.
I looked; He was not in hill or dale.
With unswerving purpose I reached the Mount Qāf;
There was only the abode of ‘Anqā’.
I bent the reins of search to the Ka‘ba;
He was not in that refuge of old and young...
I gazed into my own heart;
There I saw Him; He was nowhere else.”

The Sufis insist that the method to attain mental quiet and silence
consists in putting away all the thoughts by using concentration and
focusing on only one thought: God (Mafāḫir, 130-132). Islam gives
a great importance to the previous formalities and to the posture of
the body during prayer, which, depending on the case, must be car-
ried out in a purified place, with a humble attitude and facing the
Qibla, with both hands palm up on the knees (Mafāḫir, 130-132),
closed eyes, considering oneself as a dead man, and looking for shel-
ter in God (Kamašḫānawī, Ǧāmi‘, 170). Prayer must be carried out

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with humility. And the highest degree of humility is achieved “when

we do not claim any merit for ourselves, even the ones coming from
deeds of humility, which, rather than ours, are God’s” (Aḥmad Ibn
‘Aṭā’ Allāh al-Iskandarī, Miftāḥ al-falāḥ wa-miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, 204).

First of all, we must move away from the thoughts by means of

the vocal recitation of the quick prayer “There is no god but God” (lā
ilāha illa Allāh), uttered with energy and recollection. Over time,
when the thoughts completely stop, our attention will move from our
mind to our heart, the recitation will become sweeter and deeper, and
we will be able to pass from oral to mental prayers. A moment will
come when we can even skip mental recitation, remaining calm and
silent. However, “you will be able to achieve this result just for one
or two hours at the most, since foreign thoughts will soon crowd to-
gether in your spirit again. If you can disregard them only with your
resolution and move away from everything that may suggest them,
you shall do it. But, if you cannot, then return to the mental remem-
brance of the quick prayer, trying to understand the meaning of the
words, but without representing the form of the letters with your im-
agination. And if increasingly numerous and more intense foreign
thoughts pile in, then add the vocal prayer to the mental one, with
decision and constancy at most moments. This way, the nakedness of
your spirit will increase and grow, and you will defeat distractions”
(Kamašḫānawī, Ǧāmi‘, 172).

2.- Dhikr or remembrance of God

The remembrance of God is a fire that, when entering a room,

says: “I and no other than I...”. If there is firewood in that room, it
converts it into fire, and if there is darkness, it lights it up (Miftāḥ al-
falāḥ wa-miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ, 93). The aim of the remembrance of God
(Dhikr) is to break free from ignorance and suffering by means of
the constant presence of God in the heart (Miftāḥ, Preface). There are
three stages. Firstly, there is a prayer or remembrance, exclusively

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vocal or external, with which we struggle not to wander outside the

heart around the valleys of the vane thoughts (Miftāḥ, 92). After that
comes the mental prayer with effort; then, the spontaneous and natu-
ral mental prayer. Finally, we reach the thoughtless prayer of quiet,
in which we lose the consciousness of being praying because God
has taken over our heart up to the extent that we do not notice the ex-
istence of our remembrance or our own heart. That is why, if we pay
attention to the fact of remembering or to our heart, this return to the
consciousness will involve the rise of a thought that will act as a veil
that covers God and makes us go out of the ecstatic contemplation.
In such a state, “the contemplative forgets himself, stops feeling and
is unaware of his own body and of the external world; he has gone
toward God and has gotten lost in Him. However, if he, in such a
state, gets the idea that he has wasted his time with ecstasy, this
means that his ecstasy was still unclear and impure” (Miftāḥ, 94).

As in Christianity, we find in Islam similar discussions about the

preeminence of contemplation over meditation626. Unlike vocal
prayer and pious reflections or meditation, mental prayer, concen-
trated and sustained in the only thought of God, “is nobler and high-
er, since the contemplative loses the consciousness of his own prayer
and of all created things due to its intensity, to his absolute self-
control and to his attention to nothing or nobody but the remem-
brance of God, until he is touched by God Himself”, since “the true

626
On one hand, it is affirmed that the begging prayer to God may be irreverent
and impolite toward Him, insofar as this petition implies that the person who asks
believes that God either does not remember or is neglecting what He is asked for
(Ibn ‘Abbād ar-Rundī, Šarḥ al-Ḥikam, 2, 11). But, on the other hand, no petition
can alter God’s will, since what the prayer asks for was already decreed by Him
from eternity past and, therefore, its cause cannot be a man’s prayer, because
God’s decrees would then lose their highness and their sublime independence, in-
sofar as they would depend on an efficient, occasional cause. Being God the abso-
lute and only one cause of all events, “No disaster strikes upon the earth... except
that it is written before We bring it into being. Indeed, for God, this is easy”
(Quran, 57:22), so “never will we be struck except by what God has decreed for
us” (Quran, 9:51; cf. 16:61; 25:2; 27:57). In sum, God’s Grace does not depend on
whatever the believer does or does not do, because, “where were you when you did

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essence of mental prayer is that the remembrance of God and of eve-

ry other being must cease to exist, so that only the remembered ob-
ject may exist” (Aš-Šuštarī, Šarḥ Rā’iyya, 127-128).

In the Islamic tradition, the most powerful Dhikr is: “There is no

god but God” (lā ilāha illa Allāh). Etymologically, the word Allāh
would come from the third person singular of the verb to be with the
affix hu. In Arabic, this verb is usually omitted in the present tense,
and thus it is not conjugated in a usual way. That is why Allāh would
be derived from the union of the article (Al), the particle li (what be-
longs to him) and the affix hu. According to all this, it is considered
that God has no grammatical person, neither is He masculine nor
feminine, neither plural nor singular. Thus, Allāh would mean “He
who Is”, “The (Only) Being” or “His”, that is, all is His and all
comes from Him. In this sense, His name would have the same
etymology as Yahweh (He who Is).

When reciting “There is no god but God”, the first part causes a
purgation of everything that is not God, that is, the false idols that
revolve around the “I” or ego; and the second part, the affirmative
one, brings His illumination (Miftāḥ al-falāḥ wa-miṣbāḥ al-arwāḥ,
122-136). This prayer cleanses the heart of everything that is not
God, since, as the room must be cleaned before the King’s arrival,
the same has to be done in the heart (Miftāḥ, 177). In an anonymous
mystical commentary on a certain ḥadīṯ, it is stated, “My castle is
‘there is no lord but God’. Whoever may enter my castle is surely
free of suffering... The clause ‘there is no lord’ is like a broom that
sweeps the dust of all the things different from God... so that you
may be an apt subject to become the throne [of God]... and the object
of God’s look at the heart” (Escurialense Manuscript, 1566, page 9,
V). This way, through the practice of recitation, “if the authority of
‘There is no lord by God’ absolutely rules the citadel of your human-

not yet exist in eternity?” (Šarḥ al-Ḥikam, 2, 9). When the believer understands
this paradox, he turns towards a purer prayer.

655
 JAVIER ALVARADO

ity, there will be in your house no other mansions, and no being but
God will walk through it, and these other beings will have no per-
manent and stable dwelling in it” (Escurialense Manuscript, 1566,
page 15, R).

3.- On ecstasy (fanā’) and other non-dual states

The ecstatic trance or rapture is one of the most sought-after

goals for many Sufis. Such a seeking is full of dangers and frustra-
tions for those who attempt to enter this Way with the only aim of
appropriating something, without understanding that it is precisely
about the opposite: the detachment from oneself, emptying oneself,
detaching oneself even from the desire itself of ecstasy. Anyway, as
well as in the Hindu or Christian mysticism, the Sufi Abū-l-‘Abbās
al-Mursī, in Laṭā’if, 1, 216, distinguishes two kinds of ecstatics:
those who, during ecstasy, are with the ecstasy itself; and those who,
during ecstasy, are with Him who causes it. The former are servants
of the ecstasy, because they just seek an experience, and the world of
experiences is the world of the ego, whereas the latter are servants of
Him who causes it (God). A feature of the former is that they feel
sad when losing ecstasy and happy when falling into it. A feature of
the latter is that, on the contrary, they do not feel happy when falling
into it nor sad when losing it, because they are settled in a perfect
quiet. One thing is to rule over things, without the things possessing
you, and another different thing is to live clung to the experiences of
the things. Whereas the former provides true knowledge, that is,
permanent and imperturbable knowledge, the latter, no matter how
much ecstasy we may put into the task, is but a mere state, some-
thing that is not durable. That is why there is a clear difference be-
tween state, which is temporary because all things that change must
cease, and mansion, that is, a permanent condition that has no back-
ward step.

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The detachment must be so deep that it involves a disinterest in

life or, rather, a lack of longing to exist. If, as Saint Paul explained,
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20),
there is not “someone” who lives, so that, as Abū Madyan said:
“Whoever has not died will not see the Truth”. According to the
11th-century Persian mystic Baba Tahir, the highest knowledge is
that “which comes from the union of the Gnostic with his Object of
knowledge, of the contemplative with his Object of contemplation,
and from the absolute non-existence of his being in the sacred Es-
sence of the Beloved”. But what happens when the contemplative
object of knowledge is the subject himself? What is more, what hap-
pens when the “I” dies out? How to explain the experience of a “sub-
ject” that has no sense of individuality? What “I” can claim the au-
thorship or the experience of anyone who has no sense of the “I”?
We are still in the field of mystery and paradox, since “what is this
sense of duality, believing that I am I and that you are you? ... Since
you are, let all else cease to be” (Ḥakīm Sanā’ī, died in 1150,
Ḥadīqat al-Ḥaqīqa). If there is no being but the Being, all references
to an “I” separated from a “you” or a “he” are illusory. As there are
no “I’s” other that the Only One I (God), to perceive oneself is to
perceive Him: “I have not created perception in you but that you
may be my object of perception. If you perceive me, then you per-
ceive yourself. But you will not perceive me through yourself. It is
through my look that you see me, and you see yourself” (Ibn ‘Arabī,
1165-1240). Islamic metaphysics actually explains the height of de-
tachment as a self-annihilation of the “I” (fanā’), as a return or unifi-
cation (ittiḥād) with God. In addition, as the Paradise, which, accord-
ing to some, implies the duality God-I, is a golden prison, they even
talk about the extinction of the extinction, referring to a mansion that
is not experienceable and is beyond human comprehension, since,
insofar as the barriers of individuality are transcended in such a state
of union and takes place the reinstatement or identification with the
Oneness, then it is not possible to talk about an “I”, a “you” or even
a “He” as separate entities. That is why Ḥusayn Manṣūr Ḥallāǧ (857-

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922) stated, “I saw my Lord with the eye of the heart and asked Him:
Who are you? He answered me: You! ... And now I am Yourself,
Your experience is my experience and also my love”. The same
mystery is explained by Abū Yazīd Basṭāmī (11th century): “I was
contemplating my Lord... with the True eye and asked Him: Who are
you? He answered: neither I nor other than I... When I finally con-
templated the True through the True, I lived the True through the
True and survived in the True through the True in an eternal present,
without breath, without words, without hearing, without science”,
then, in the Oneness, “the consciousness of the others disappears,
that is, the consciousness of the beings that are not God; there is a re-
lationship of intimacy with Him” (Ibn ‘Abbād ar-Rundī, Šarḥ al-
Ḥikam, 2, 90). Given that such mansions are inexpressible, the de-
scriptions made by the Sufis, employing metaphors and literary turns
of phrase that seem to affirm the divinity of the contemplative, were
seen with suspicion, if not with open hostility, by the religious au-
thorities. One of the most famous examples of this was the mystic
Manṣūr Ḥallāǧ, sentenced to die for affirming “anā al-ḥaqq” (I am
the truth). Several centuries after him, the Sufi Jalaluddin Rumi tried
to explain that there was no trace of heretic arrogance, but, indeed, of
self-humiliation, in the statement, “I am the truth”, since he who
identified himself that way with God was assuming “I am nothing,
He is everything, there is no being but God”. But, on the contrary, he
who said, “I am the servant of God” was committing a fault of pride
because he was affirming two existences: his own one and God’s
one.

Thus, we reach the end of the metaphysical Way with a dilemma

that summarizes the mystery and the paradox of the seeker: While
there is an “I”, there is experience, but it is false because it prolongs
and perpetuates the duality between a subject who seeks experiences
and an experienced object. On the contrary, without an “I”, the expe-
rience itself is useless. In effect, every experience, insofar as it im-
plies the belief in an experiencing subject different from the Being

658
 SUFI EPILOGUE

(God), is erroneous. But, on the other hand, the only real and ever-
lasting “experience” (the contemplation of God) is not, strictly
speaking, an experience, because there is no “I” who may experience
anything and, consequently, there is nobody who may enjoy or use
that experience.

Surrendered the existence, we can only obey the Lord’s inten-

tions and await the moment when the veil of existence will fall as a
prelude to the eternal Union. Then:
I shall roll up the carpet of life when I see
Your dear face again, and shall cease to be,
for the I will be lost in that rapture, and all
the threads of my thought from my hand will fall;
not me will You find, for this I will have fled:
You will be my soul in my own soul’s stead.
All thought of me will be swept from my mind,
and You, only You, in my place shall I find,
more precious than heaven, than earth more dear,
myself were forgotten if You were near”.
[Nūr ad-Dīn ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān Jami (1414-1492), The I dies in
love].

659
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