Robert Thurman along with Deepak Chopra, during the lecture given at
The Tibet House in New York in 1999 entitled, “God and Buddha – A
Dialogue”, makes an apparently unimportant personal remark. He
states, “I sometimes forget the names of my children”. The pursuit of
this kind of divestiture of the apparent limitations of self is at the core of
the goal of both Hinduism and Buddhism.
The Orthodox Faith on the other hand affirms that while God in His
Essence is unknowable, beyond participation and absolutely
transcendent, He is profoundly immanent in His creation through and
in His Energy. This Energy is not created or temporary since it is
absolutely identified with God, “For in Him we live and move and
have our being” Acts 17:28.
God does reveal Himself to us and it is indeed possible to make
positive affirmations about Him. “God is love” 1st John 4:8, therefore
He is Personal and knows Himself infinitely, “For who among men
knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in
him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of
God” 1st Corinthians 2:11. He creates and is aware of us as distinct
from Him without this limiting Him in any way. 1st Corinthians 8:3
affirms, "but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him."
The greatest revelation given to mankind was given in Jesus Christ,
the Word of God. In the Jordan River, during the baptism of Jesus,
God reveals Himself as One in Essence and Three in Person; God
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The human person is limited and
finite but in God, the Persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are
not.
Orthodox Tradition recognizes that we are not ‘our thoughts’. The
form of the ego comes about after the fall, when man becomes
fragmented by sin, and it must die. The ego must wither away,
allowing the spirit to take its place and grow as the soul is healed.
Father Damascene writes, “the soul of fallen man has come under
the illusion of its self-sufficiency. Therefore it is not satisfied with
concerning itself with a man’s temporal needs (food, clothing,
shelter), but seeks also means toward a man’s ascendancy and
sensual pleasure. Such a soul has become (or better to say has
attached itself to) what is today called an ‘ego’. While the spirit
(heart) is our true self-the true seat of our personhood - the
ego is our false self, an illusory self-sufficient entity.
Because it thinks to achieve its ends and overcome obstacles
through its own unaided powers, the ego can also be called our
false problem solver. Having become the master of man through
the illusion of its autonomy, the ego does what it can to conceal
the existence of the spirit. In this way the spirit is not allowed to
fulfill its designation of rising to God, and thus it becomes
darkened. Its light has not been put out; it is still light, but
because it stands apart from the Creator, this light is darkness.
That is why Christ said, ‘take heed that the light which is in you
be not darkness.’ Luke 11:35.
Since the spirit is now held captive by the ego in the realm of the
senses, it has also become sick. The only cure for this sickness
is to give the spirit its rightful mastery by stripping the soul of the
form of the ego”. " When the soul takes the position of servant
and aligns itself with the spirit, then the spirit returns to itself and
naturally fulfills its true purpose, rising to the Creator.
St Basil the Great (A.D. 379) describes this spiritual process as
follows, 'When the spirit (nous) is not engaged by external affairs
nor diffused through the senses over the whole world, it retires
within itself. Then it ascends spontaneously to the consideration
of God. From Hieromonk Damascene's, ‘Christ the Eternal Tao’
p.280-281, St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1999.
The fullness of personhood can only be achieved by overcoming
the passions and by our union with Jesus Christ, by participation
in His Life by partaking of the Eucharist; and hopefully by
communion and eventual union with God in the Uncreated
Eternal Light of Divinity.
When man finds the place of the heart and purifies it through
prayer, asceticism and participation in the sacramental life of
the Orthodox Church then a wondrous flower blossoms, the
true hypostasis or personhood of man. This is what the Apostle
Peter refers to, when he writes, “So we have the prophetic
word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention
as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and
the morning star arises in your hearts.” 2nd Peter 1:19.
In 1st Peter 3:3,4 we read, “Your adornment must not be
merely external …but let it be the hidden person of the
heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet
spirit, which is precious in the sight of God” This verse
identifies the 'heart' with the 'spirit', while at the same time
describes a healthy spirit as gentle and quiet that is, still.
Stillness (hesychia) is the ancient form of asceticism by
which Orthodox Christians have sought, since time
immemorial, the healing of their soul and union with God.
Fr Zacharias Zacharou, the blessed disciple of Elder Sophrony
of Essex, explains in his book, 'The Hidden Man of the Heart'
p.1,Edited by Christopher Veniamin Mount Thabor Publishing
2008; "All the ordinances of the undefiled Church are offered
to the world for the sole purpose of discovering the deep heart
(Ps.64:6) the center of man's hypostasis (person). According
to the Holy Scriptures, God has fashioned every heart in a
special way, and each heart is His goal, a place wherein He
desires to abide that He may manifest Himself.
Since the kingdom of God is within us (Luke17:21), the heart
is the battlefield of our salvation, and all ascetic effort is aimed
at cleansing it of all filthiness, and preserving it pure before
the Lord. 'Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the
issues of life', exhorts the wise Solomon, the wise king of Israel
(Prov.4:23). These paths of life pass through man's
heart, and therefore the unquenchable desire of all who
ceaselessly seek the Face of the Living God is that their heart,
once deadened by sin, may be rekindled by His grace."
How was Fr Sophrony able to escape the maze that is
Eastern Pantheism?
God in His love, knowing Sergei's heart, had mercy on him,
and after a period of some years, gave Fr Sophrony the
solution to the problem. In page 19 of his book, Fr Nicholas
writes, "This quest culminated in his discovery that Christ's
precept to love God with all one's heart, mind and strength
is not a moralistic psychology but a profound ontology.
Love emerged as an authentic source of cognition",
(process of knowing).
Here I would like to point out the words of the Apostle John,
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and
everyone who loves is born of God and knows God."
1st Epistle of John 4:7
Fr Nicholas writes, "If God is to be known by love, then
the divine absolute is a personal being. Fr Sophrony
understood that this personeity (personae) is implied in the
formula of Exodus 3:14, 'I AM that I AM'. It was at this moment
that Fr Sophrony's experience of uncreated light returned in
a more powerful form than in his childhood. It began on Holy
Saturday in 1924 and remained until the third day of Easter
Week; the strength of this experience was never matched in
his later visions of light. These experiences and discoveries
resulted in his return to Christianity, a volte-faceso dramatic
that he began to distance himself even from his
art".
Buddhist monks achieve a divestiture of the mind by means
of energies that are not from God. They are deceived. They
want to be delivered from suffering (as taught by the Four
Noble Truths of Buddhism) and descend into the darkness
of unknowing motivated by the belief that they are God in
their own essence and not merely creatures. This is the pride
of Adam!
Without humility then they behold a certain light in that
darkness, during their meditation. They are not able to realize
this 'light' is only their own beauty as created beings in the
image of God. This light is created and God is not in it. So
they are deceived in believing that they themselves are God
because they possess this light in themselves.
In the book 'St Silouan the Athonite by Archimandrite
Sophrony', particularly chapter 7 "The Imagination and the
Ascetic Struggle Against its Various Aspects" Fr. Sophrony
says, "The overcoming of discursive thinking is not yet
true faith and real divine vision...what they then
contemplate is still merely beauty created in the Divine
image. Since those who enter for the first time into this
sphere of the 'silence of the mind' experience a mystic
awe, they mistake their contemplation with mystical
communion with the Divine, whereas in reality they are
still within the confines of created human nature".
"This mental light, .., might as just as well be called
darkness, since it is the darkness of divestiture and
God is not in it. And perhaps in this instance more
than any other we should listen to the Lord's
warning, 'Take heed therefore that the light which is
in thee be not darkness'. Luke 11:35. The first
prehistoric, cosmic catastrophe- the fall of Lucifer,
son of the morning, who became the prince of
darkness- was due to his enamored contemplation
of his own beauty, which ended up in his self-
deification".p.161-162
The denial and rejection of our nature as personal beings,
as well as the denial of the Personal Divine Absolute, the
God of Moses, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob;
amounts to nothing less than suicide in the spiritual
plane. It is the teaching of demons, utter darkness, death
of the soul and the rejection of the God of love.
