https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=mh1Va3QWPxM
I mean, I’m going to say this, I might get in trouble for this, but you know, the notion of the imaginal has been controversial in Orthodox circles because of the ascetic practice of hesychasm. And in hesychasm, because what the monk or what the practitioner is trying to do is to attain unity, full union with God, there’s a sense in which the imaginal space becomes a dangerous space. Like it’s an intermediary, like it’s like the spirits of the air, right? This intermediary space that has to be crossed in order to reach the higher space. And so the tendency is to say, ignore the images, ignore the imagination part so that you can reach silence and beauty and light, right? So basically going all the way up into the highest sphere. But I think that a lot of work that certain people that I know have been doing, Fr. Silouan Justiniano, some of my work and other people’s work as well, by using iconography, like what we did in Thunder Bay, right? Using iconography as the support to show that this imaginal space also has a positive manifestation. And it’s like the church full of all these paintings and drawings and images, right? It really is. And the way that it’s structured and how it does represent a cosmic image and all of this, I think has been a good bridge to help people understand that there is room in Christianity for this notion of a positive vision of this intermediary world and the imaginal space. And we need it because without it, I think that we’re, I think that we’re very, like Christians are very vulnerable without developing a robust vision of this intermediary space. I totally agree. And I think the imaginal is, I mean, it’s just, it’s like what we said about narrative, right? It’s bound up with human cognition in an important way. I would propose to you that my attitude towards the narrative is the same one you’re trying to propose about the imaginal. You’re so right. It’s not even my, but it is a deep tradition in the Orthodox tradition of being suspicious of that space. So I kind of have to deal with it. I myself am more, obviously more, I mean, I, if people know what I’m doing, like writing comic books, I’m making all these things. I’ve obviously more, I have more room for it, but I also want to formulate it in a way that’s respectful to the tradition because I do believe that there are good reasons why Hezichasm had the form that it did. So maybe then what I’ve been trying to say, and again, we don’t have to pick this up because we keep going. This is another one of our things. By the way, before I forget, you released a video, I think it was part of your Q&A where you sort of said flat out, you know, John is right about this, about the nomological. I want to now return and say thank you for you doing that. That was gracious and that was, you know, part of what we’re all trying to do here together. But what I want to say is I think the narrative is important. It is powerful, but it is intermediary. That is, in a nutshell, what I’m trying to say in a lot of ways. I keep getting cast as John doesn’t, like, it’s unfair to attribute to me. John’s a critic of the narrative or doesn’t think narrative. I’ve never said that. I never said that in Awakening from the Meeting Crisis. That is not my position. And it’s really straw personing me to attribute that to. Yeah, but I think that understanding, and this is the same for the imaginal question as well, is that you see it in the ascetic. I really, St. Gregory of Nice’s Life of Moses, you see it clearly in that text. You see the Moses goes up the mountain, he removes the garments of skin, he removes the layers, he moves into divine darkness. So he basically moves out of any form, any representation. And then, but then when he crosses that space, he’s given the pattern of the tabernacle. And so the idea is that this space, which is above the narrative and the nomological, let’s say the transcendent or the non-dual or whatever, however you want to name it, it’s the source of it. It’s the source of that other space. And so it gives birth to it and it gives it its proper form. So you can have both the aesthetic understanding of moving into that which is beyond being, but then also understanding that, yeah, it’s also the father of being. It’s also that which makes it exist. You just did, to my mind, and I don’t think this is dismissive of what you just did. I’m not taking anything away from Gregory, but that’s also Socrates, that’s a republic. And then the return, and if you separate the ascent from the return, you don’t understand the ascent. I know it’s very, very clear about this. And DC Schindler makes a fantastic argument about that. See, that’s what I, that, the fact that there’s that convergence there about exactly that point, right? And that’s, again, that’s why I want to be doing what I’m doing, because then we can, oh, right, let’s make these connections. Let’s draw this out. Yeah. But that point, I think the point about how the transcendent gives birth to the world and how the world actually exists out of it, I think it’s important today because in the, let’s say in the spiritual but not religious, you get that argument, right? Where it’s like, well, I don’t want the religion. I don’t want the forms. I don’t want any of the practices. I just want the top thing, right? You know, I believe in non-duality. I just want that and everything else, like I don’t want. And so there’s a, there’s a, there’s a kind of naivete about then how does then the world exist? Like how is it? There’s more than a naivete. There’s more. Here’s Schindler’s read on Plato, which I think is profound. The absolute that does not include the relative is not the absolute, right? Because then it’s not, if your non-duality does not afford and properly, I don’t know what to say, give birth to, I’m trying to, like, I want to give that, but then you don’t understand, you haven’t properly understood it. You’ve reified it. Again, the, the, the, the ascent and the descent, the emanation and the emergence, you can’t, you know, you and I have been sort of not arguing about, this is something we’re converging on a lot on. And I think that that connection you just made is so appropriate, right? There’s a profound naivete because it’s based on a profound misunderstanding and misapprehension. If you think the absolute does not include, and I mean, deeply encompass and interpenetrate the relative, then you have not understood it at all. You’ve turned it into something like a totalitarian thing, totalizing it rather than an absolute. And that, and I think Schindler just knocks that argument out of the ballpark. It just says, look, and this is Plato’s argument again and again and again and again. I think what you said, I’m just deepening it, that spiritual bypassing is not just naivete, that is driven by a kind of profound misunderstanding and misapprehension. Yeah. And like you said, it does, it leads to, it leads to two impulses. It leads to a totalitarian impulse and it leads to a kind of anarchic impulse. Yeah. Both at the same time. Like it’s like either anything goes and we can just do whatever because it’s like nothing. It’s all, it’s all nothing compared to the absolute or rather control. Like everything has got to be, got to be completely ordered and has to, so yeah, so you’re right. So there, and in a way like that’s the, but that’s the right hand and the left hand, right? That’s that, that, that, that optimal grip that you talk about, you know, this idea that there’s this letting go and everything has a letting go and a grasping to it. Yeah. That’s a necessary, it’s necessary for the thing to actually exist. I think that’s exactly right. And I think you, like you have to be, you have to be constantly opening to the, the, the, the, the, the one, the absolute, the inexhaustible, and you also have to be closing to the finite, right? The, right? The suchness and you have to be constantly doing both or you don’t have, like you said. You don’t have a world. Yeah. You don’t have a world, you don’t, and you don’t have the, you don’t, you have neither an intelligible world nor the optimal grip needed to realize that intelligible world. And that’s why spiritual, but I mean, insofar as it is spiritual bypassing as a psychological category, which it is, that’s what people are trying to do, right? It’s, it’s kind of a, a crypto gnostic thing of trying to pretend, and I think there is something pretentious of it, that we can somehow be free from the world, you know, like in our embodiment and, and, and, and then we don’t have a, we don’t have a, a, a, a moral, we don’t have moral and epistemic responsibilities, which we do. I mean, I’ve got kids, like if the absolute makes me not treat my kids well, well, I’m sorry, that’s not- Not the absolute, it’s something else. Yeah. And so I, and I, to be fair to me, I did make this explicit criticism in a way beginning from the meaning crisis. I said any notion of enlightenment that, that, that does not have something to tell me about how to deal with the perennial problems and cultivate wisdom. I’m not interested in that notion of enlightenment. And why should you be, why should you be other than you’re having some unique experience that you find really personally wonderful? Like, how is that not just self-indulgence or narcissism? I’m sorry. That’s right. I, I’m not saying that people don’t have a right to engage in spiritual exploration or anything like that. I’m not saying that, but when we’re talking specifically about what goes wrong in spiritual bypassing, I think that’s what goes wrong in it.