Ego Su Eimi
On Christian Meditation and Mysticism
Many in western Europe and North America may not associate Christianity with meditation (sometimes referred to as “contemplation” in older English texts), but the former has utilized the latter for centuries in innovative ways. Akin to the Sufi practice of dhikr, Orthodox Christian monastics and ascetics have triggered the experience of hesychasm by repeated recitation of the Jesus Prayer. Similar practices have appeared in western Europe in texts such as The Cloud of Unknowing, which prescribed the repetition of single words or short phrases to effect a similar experience. Further, contemplative prayer has grown in popularity over the past few decades thanks to the work of Thomas Keating, John Main, and others.
Through the use of these techniques (setting aside whether we call them “meditation,” “contemplation,” “prayer,” etc.), regardless of one’s particular religious tradition, practitioners have triggered otherwise atypical experiences that are characterized by emotional equanimity (or decreased emotional volatility), increased awareness (or decreased dissociation), and long-term psychological flexibility (or decreased cognitive and affective rigidity). Greek Orthodox monks at Mount Athos might describe this experience as opening oneself to the divine energy that pervades all things, including our bodies; while Sufi dervishes might appeal to the end of Attar’s Conference of the Birds, when the birds, in search of their new king, are simply shown a mirror. Virtually all practitioners would describe their experience as a cessation of language (or, more broadly, any way of unconsciously patterning one’s everyday experience) and the eruption of unconditional and ubiquitous love. While many modern people may think of religion as first and foremost a set of propositions or claims about reality, to be taken on trust in the absence of confirming (or even in the presence of disconfirming) evidence, these practitioners appear to see their propositions merely as means (interchangeable ones, even) of explaining a certain set of experiences they have triggered for themselves firsthand.
If, for these practitioners, religion is the triggering of a certain experience rather than the assertion of and assent to certain propositions, then what may we say about that experience?
We may take as an example the use of the Jesus Prayer, a popular practice within Orthodox Christian communities. The Jesus Prayer consists of the repetition of a short phrase — some variation of “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (earlier versions of this prayer lack “a sinner”) — sometimes accompanied by somatic exercises, such as focusing one’s attention on the chest or bowing one’s head in an upright seated position or with one’s knees pulled in to their chest. Repeating this phrase ideally triggers an experience called hesychia (Greek, “stillness,” “silence,” “rest”), a state in which one’s field of awareness is especially active while one’s discursive thinking is downregulated. Symptoms of this experience include increased experiential openness and acceptance of otherwise undesired emotions, thoughts, circumstances, interactions, environments, etc. This practice and resultant experience may be compared to Sufi dhikr, in which practitioners repeat divine names, often accompanied by rhythmic synchronized body movement. Similar practices can also be found within Judaism, especially Kabbalah and Hasidism.
In secular terms, we might explain this experience psychologically. Human experience might be described as having three layers: a primary process, followed by secondary and tertiary processes. The primary process is occupied purely with taking in sensory data (sights, sounds, tastes, smells, touch, internal biofeedback, body mapping, etc.). Much like a mirror, the primary process simply reflects what is in front of it, without analysis or distinction. Experience in the primary process is “oceanic,” as Sigmund Freud once called it, lacking any real distinction between “self” and “other” or any other dialectic. The secondary processes are where the mind begins to organize, analyze, and assign judgments to this sensory data; we may compare these processes to a notepad, where one jots down thoughts on what one sees in the proverbial mirror of their primary process. Tertiary processes, in turn, are metacognitive and metacommunicative, having to do with revising and editing how the secondary processes take their proverbial notes. In this theoretical framework, meditation or any similar technique would qualify as a tertiary process, which acts upon the secondary processes, occupying them with a simple task (eg, repeating a simple term or phrase) or even reshaping the patterns of the secondary processes in such a way that foregrounds the primary process and thus an increased sense of not only being in closer proximity to, but in greater harmony with a more vivid reality.
Somewhat similar to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, the underlying logic of the Jesus Prayer, dhikr, or comparable practices is that our suffering is rooted in the dysregulation of our secondary processes — the aspect of ourselves that divides up our experiences, organizes them into redundant and rigid patterns, and assigns valuations to them (eg, “good,” “bad,” “desirable,” “undesirable,” “pleasant,” “unpleasant,” etc.). These rigid ways of patterning our experiences can lead us to feel incongruent with our circumstances (“I never wanted this!”), our relationships (“I can’t stand that person!”), our bodies (“if only I looked like them!”), our thoughts (“come on, don’t think like that!”), our emotions (“cheer up, won’t you!”), and the like. Advising a person to simply “love” everyone is easy enough, but each of us knows the numerous barriers that stand between us and the Christian ideal of agape or unconditional love, to say nothing of the numerous rationalizations we may add to those barriers (eg, “real love is calling others to live the way I do!”). A heyschast, dervish, or other practitioner would prescribe one of their own unique practices as a means of dissolving this rigidity.
Some have termed this rigidity “sin.” I don’t use the term “sin,” largely because I find many people have varied definitions for this term, while yet believing that we all mean the same thing when using that term. The only two definitions of “sin” I have personally resonated with— and, coincidentally, those which I believe best capture what practitioners of the Jesus Prayer have often meant by this term — are from Thomas Aquinas and Søren Kierkegaard. Aquinas defined “sin” as anything “contrary to the nature of God,” though the “nature of God” certainly requires further definition. To me, Aquinas is saying that “sin” is anything contrary to our highest ideals or ultimate concerns. I personally prefer Kierkegaard’s definition, however, when he wrote that the opposite of “sin” was not virtue but “faith” or trust; that “sin” names our tendency to hold ourselves back or protect ourselves from some aspect of existence itself. For Kierkegaard, the opposite of “sin” is entrusting oneself to existence as it is, or even to fall in love with existence. The Jesus Prayer, dhikr, and other practices are means of shedding this particular type of “sin” in order to open oneself to existence as it is — for all that costs, and all it’s worth.
There are comparable practices in India and southeast Asia (eg, mantra meditation), perhaps having crosspollinated with Abrahamic practitioners via the Silk Road. For example, one may consider Pure Land Buddhism, in which a practitioner engages in chanting either the name of or a refuge vow to Amitabha Buddha. In China, one may chant “Amituofo,” a Mandarin name for Amitabha; while in Japan, one may chant the nembutsu — “namu Amida butsu,” a refuge vow to Amida, a Japanese rendering of Amitabha.
Within Pure Land Buddhism, there are two schools of thought as to what this chanting accomplishes, a debate which practitioners in Abrahamic faiths may benefit from listening in on. One school of thought conceptualizes their practice in dualistic terms: Amitabha is an enlightened being who lived eons ago, achieved enlightenment in an ethereal pure land, and wishes for all beings to be able to do the same, despite their inability to achieve enlightenment in their lifetimes. Therefore, if one chants Amitabha’s name, upon death, they will be reborn in Amitabha’s pure land, where there is no suffering and they may pursue enlightenment more easily. The other school of thought is non-dualistic: the aforementioned narrative is recast as a symbolic expression, representing our capacity to embody the qualities represented by Amitabha in ourselves, allowing us to experience whatever falls within our field of awareness here and now as a “pure land” fit for a Buddha. While the dualistic school of thought conceives Amitabha as a separate being one must rely upon in order to enter a new realm altogether different from our everyday world, the non-dualistic school of thought sees Amitabha as a symbol representing our own latent capacity to express and transmute our everyday world through infinite mercy and awareness. Though the two schools of thought certainly overlap at times, they nonetheless constitute an ongoing debate within the various lineages of Pure Land Buddhism. Even so, though both schools of thought differ considerably in their explanations, they nonetheless engage in ostensibly the same practice — the aforementioned chanting of Amitabha’s name.
We see a similar situation within Christianity, though Christians themselves may be entirely unaware of it. Most people who are reasonably familiar with Christianity will see parallels between modern religion and the dualistic school of thought within Pure Land Buddhism: Christ, a being altogether separate from ourselves, wishes for our salvation in heaven, and upon being petitioned in the proper way will vouchsafe us that salvation after we die and depart our everyday world. However, even devout Christians may be less familiar with non-dualistic versions of Christianity. Though such approaches may be rare today, and though they may strike more conservative practitioners as new or even aberrant, non-dualistic versions of Christianity are anything but. One need look no further than the New Testament itself, such as the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John (Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer) or Paul’s constant insistence (not admonition) that the communities to whom he was writing are themselves the very body of Christ.
However, beyond the arbitrary normativity of the New Testament, one will find numerous examples of non-dualism in early Christian literature. For example, consider the thirteenth saying of the Gospel of Thomas:
“Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Compare me, and tell me whom I am like.’ Simon Peter said to him: ‘You are like a just messenger.’ Matthew said to him: ‘You are like an (especially) wise philosopher.’ Thomas said to him: ‘Teacher, my mouth will not bear at all to say whom you are like.’ Jesus said: ‘I am not your teacher. For you have drunk, you have become intoxicated at the bubbling spring that I have measured out.’ And he took him, (and) withdrew, (and) he said three words to him. But when Thomas came back to his companions, they asked him: ‘What did Jesus say to you?’ Thomas said to them: ‘If I tell you one of the words he said to me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me, and fire will come out of the stones (and) burn you up.’
— Gospel of Thomas 13 (trans. Stephen J. Patterson, James M. Robinson)
An otherwise obscure passage, consider this explication from biblical scholar M. David Litwa:
“In this saying [Gospel of Thomas 13], Jesus reveals three words … to Thomas. When the other disciples urge Thomas to disclose the words, Thomas warns them that if he makes known what Jesus said to him, they will stone him (Thomas). The stones will then take vengeance (apparently to defend the truth of the saying) by breathing out fire and consuming the disciples. [Marco] Frenschkowski argues that the three words revealed to Thomas are εγώ σύ είμί [Greek, ego su eimi], or ‘I am you,’ and comments, ‘Thomas … is actually identical with the revealer, though he does not yet know it.’ This explanation has the advantage of explaining why the disciples would stone Thomas, rather than Jesus, given the fact that Jesus originated the saying.”
— M. David Litwa (2015), “I Will Become Him”: Homology and Deification in the Gospel of Thomas. Journal of Biblical Literature 134(2), p. 442; referencing Marco Frenschkowski (1994), The Enigma of the Three Words of Jesus in Gospel of Thomas Logion 13. Journal of Higher Criticism 1, pp. 73–84
Though some have argued that the “three words” Jesus told Thomas in secret were more akin to the “I am” sayings of the Gospel of John, wherein Jesus equivocates himself with the God of the Hebrew Bible, other scholars note that this would hardly explain why the disciples would attempt to stone Thomas rather than Jesus himself. Rather, were Thomas to equivocate himself with Jesus, this would certainly earn him the rancor of his fellow students. Moreover, salvation by gemination or “twinning,” as Litwa describes, is a fairly common theme in early Christian literature, often expressed through the character Thomas (Aramaic, “twin”). In this sense, salvation comes not by importuning another being (in this case, Jesus), but by recognizing that one is a spiritual twin of, and thus identical to Jesus. In this school of thought, then, practice would consist of shedding whatever accretions one may have accumulated that obscure one’s inner nature — the Christ within. In this worldview, Jesus is therefore not a particular person we must engage so much as a symbol of our own latent capacities.
With such an understanding, the Jesus Prayer may be experienced in an exceptionally new way:
Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God,
have mercy on me,
a sinner.
Amen.
