We shall approach the discussion of modes of intentionality by first concentrating on the psychic, that is, conative, appetitive or feeling aspect of consciousness. This is readily recognisable in the gospel. By conative we mean those forms of consciousness, or modes of intentionality, which in either case, perceptual or conceptual, result in 'satisfaction'. The word 'intentionality' here simply points to 'aboutness', the way in which each state of consciousness is focused so as to include consideration of, and interest in certain things, and exclude those of others. We could use the metaphor of foreground and background, or describe such intentionality in terms of our interest in certain things at the expense of others. But the more appropriately philosophical definition of the same will concern the discussion of subject and object, one which we shall leave to a later stage.

'Satisfaction' must suggest the role of desire, as this appears in each of the four feeding events in the messianic series. That is part of the meaning of the word here, but this term must also depict the same process within conceptual consciousness. We need to attend to the texts to appreciate the real similarity between the two affective (conative) modes of intentionality. For this too is the realisation of the meaning behind their formal correspondence, the fact that the story of creation and the story of salvation are homologous or isomorphic. The difference between 'satisfaction' as it applies to the perceptual (the gospel), and as it applies to the conceptual (Genesis), has to do with temporal perspectives.  One form of satisfaction is inextricably tied to the vector present-future, the other with that of present-past. These variant perspectives which nevertheless are commonly grounded in present immediacy, recapitulate the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence, and must be regarded as highly contrastive.

It is easy enough to see the latter. The three feeding miracles and the Eucharist together, begin the portrait of that aspect of human consciousness to which the terms appetition-satisfaction refer in the first instance: desire. This is nowhere more clearly stated than it is in Luke's account of the Eucharist:

The Greek text redoubles the word here translated 'desire': e)piqumi/a? e)pequ/mhsa  ('earnestly desired'). So clearly this notion is of consequence to this evangelist. Moreover, the fact that Luke refers to two cups, a fact which has occasioned much consternation and misunderstanding, sits with his emphasis upon the psychology of desire. We noted that the first of the messianic miracles, The Transformation Of Water Into Wine, uses imagery of wine to configure the phenomenon of sexual desire, the milieu of the incarnation of the word, the medium by which the logos becomes flesh. But even though this is the only account of that miracle story we have, John is not alone in his presentation of the psychology of desire, and it is possible that Luke's apparent doubling of the 'cup' connects with the tradition of that miracle story. The pericope in Luke immediately prior to his record of the institution of the Lord's Supper, The Preparation Of The Passover, mentions 'a man carrying a jar of water' (Luke 22.10, c.f. Mark 14.13). This same metaphor, that of water as logos spermatikos for the masculine as opposed to wine-'blood' for the feminine, John later redeploys in Jesus and the Woman At The Well, just as he does in the narrative of The Passion (John 19.34).

The peculiarly Lukan inflection of this occasion will be relevant to another fact concerning his gospel: the apparent absence of a doctrine of atonement. The death of  Jesus on the cross, to which this event, the institution of the supper is directly linked, is other for Luke than it is for Mark. The theology of the cross in Luke will have to reckon with a thoroughgoing tendency which can be understood in relation to tendencies comparable in the other gospels, including John. These are what we are in the process of sketching, here, for now, in only the barest outline. Thus we will contend that the gospels are uniformly organized as a syntax which, in their several intentional orientations of both kinds, cognitive and conative, further Christological doctrine.

There is only one other Eucharistic episode in Luke's gospel, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand (Luke 9.10b-17):


Mark (6.42, 8.8) and Matthew (14.20, 15.37) both use the same expression in each of their accounts of the two miracles of loaves and fish. The Johannine parallel reads:


He uses the same verb 'satisfy' in the same form in 6.26, in the discourse on Jesus The Bread Of Life, immediately following The Walking On The Water. Luke 15.16 combines both key verbs 'to desire' and 'to satisfy' ('to be satisfied')  in the parable of The Lost Son:


Another noteworthy combination of the same words occurs in the parable of The Rich Man And Lazarus, a name which signals the possibility of another point of contact with the gospel of John, and of whom Luke says:


Yet another verse in Luke calling to mind a Johannine pericope, that of The Calling Of Nathanael (John 1.45-51), whom we see John links with the miracle at Cana, the archetypal story of desire, is the following:


We shall return to the themes of vision and desire, in a moment. The expression rendered 'hungry' - nh/steiv - in the Markan and Matthean accounts of The Feeding Of The Four Thousand  does not occur in any version of The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, but it is a common enough term in religious discourse, referring in the first instance to 'fasting'. It thus has a long and complex list of associations in all four gospels.

Hunger-appeasement/appetition-satisfaction, this is time and again the fundamental way in which the gospels describe the prevalence and function of desire in human consciousness. Much of this, as in the canonical expression of desire, to wit sexual desire, should be viewed in association with the second creation story. The myth of the disobedience of the first  human couple in the garden of Eden is evoked by John in the narrative of the exchange between Nathanael and Jesus immediately prior to the first feeding miracle at Cana:


(The depiction of a particular disciple linked with a particular messianic miracle, is not peculiar to John. Matthew similarly connects Peter with The Walking On The Sea.) What is remarkable about the Johannine pericope is that like the prologue, it adopts creation theology, only this time, that of the second such narrative in Genesis. The commonplace interpretation of Jesus' cryptic remark envisages Nathanael as the exemplary pious Israelite. But it is too much at variance with the context and tenor of the gospel at this point. Notice for example that it leaves completely out of the picture the role of vision. Vision is a key element to this story. The verb 'to see' occurs four times, John using both terms we have just noted above in Luke (17.22). Jesus claims to have seen Nathanael under the fig tree; he then repeats this claim in response to the disciple's belief, and adds:


The contrast between seeing and believing here is fully drawn. However the role of vision in relation to the sexual innocence or 'guilelessness' (v 47) of a probably young or even adolescent disciple and in relation to the disciples generally, for in verse 51 both the pronoun 'you' and the verb are in the plural form (u(mi~n o!yesqe), can hardly be missed. In the story of the first human couple the same function is attributed to vision, its power to compel the recognition of beauty. That power constitutes the motive for disobedience of the woman and the man, and the concept of beauty of course sits perfectly with the role given by the author(s) to the woman in particular, a fact which seems to have escaped our notice, probably because we continue to read the narrative with an emphasis on the expression 'good and evil' at the expense of the expression 'good to eat'. Add to this the dialogue between the serpent and the woman which mentions vision also, and a clearer case for the link between vision, beauty and desire could hardly be made:



The tree in this narrative of course reminds us, as in the Day 3 rubric, of the person of the Holy Spirit, whom we have consistently linked with this particular form of sentience - vision, and whom we will link just as consistently also with this specific form of value - beauty. Note that here we are drawing a connection between this identity, the Holy Spirit and both a particular form of sentience - vision - and the particular form of value which the same best exemplifies - beauty. That is to say, we are not in any way attributing the intentional mode to the same identity. As for the connection between the intentional mode, here that of desire, and any identity, we note that all three messianic feeding miracles formulate this mode of consciousness. That is, the miracle at Cana which is linked to the Son, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, which is linked to Transcendence, and The Feeding Of The Four Thousand, which is linked to the Holy Spirit. All three episodes, and their corresponding forms of sentience, inextricably function in terms of desire. That is to say, there is not one and only manifestation or expression of the one intentional mode, here desire. If desire functions as an intrinsic part of the epistemology/psychology of the feeding miracles, and by extension to their logical complements, the three transcendent miracles, equally so, since all denote at the radical level forms of sentience, modes of sense-percipience, then all six such sentient modes must act as occasions for the same mode of intentionality - desire. At a later stage we will postulate the connection between this and other modes of intentionality (consciousness), and a specific identity in God.

For John at least, the 'incarnate word' here signifies physical, that is, sexual, love. How then can we miss this simple fact, the instinctual force of desire? The exchange between Jesus and the 'sixth' disciple, stands as a literary foil to the later  exchange between Jesus and Samaritan Woman At The Well (John 4.1-42), who is notably described as not being an Israelite. The numerical symbolism alone legitimates such a relationship: six disciples at the wedding, including Mary the mother of Jesus; six days leading up to the wedding; six stone jars at the wedding feast; sixth hour, and a woman who has had six husbands. The numerical symbolism could scarcely be more precisely or emphatically articulated.

Our previous survey of the immanent messianic miracles stressed the concept of determinism, the notion that in each of the three episodes, and so presumably also in the Eucharist itself, Jesus is forced to act. This is a major criterion, which like that of temporal perspectivity, serves to distinguish not only the immanent miracles from the 'transcendent' miracles. We are qualifying the latter term 'transcendent' here since they are all immanent at the broadest or most rudimentary level, that is, they are finally all subsumed under the banner of immanence when we look at the broader picture which connects 'beginning' with 'end', Genesis with the gospel. The same criterion adverts us to the broader and more definite distinction between conceptual consciousness and perceptual consciousness. The affective mode we will determine as operative in the former, the conceptual forms, will not like actual desire, possess this same quality, compulsion, necessity, obedience to a driving force, an 'instinct'. Even so, we can speak of it in terms of outcomes, fulfillment, 'satisfaction', achievement and so on.

Another secondary criterion, which holds good for both Genesis and Gospel, is the differentiation between masculine and feminine typology. All the nurturing miracles recapitulate the typological characteristics of the feminine as opposed to the masculine. In this connection, we can note the reiteration of the type of the  Jesus-Nathanael dialogue in John's later version of The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, with the difference that in the latter case John has Jesus himself quite literally 'test' ('tempt') Philip. This is yet another remarkable ironic allusion to the second creation story, whereby John virtually aligns the role of Jesus with that of the serpent:


A comprehensive listing of those pericopae which combine the sense of sight and the experience of desire would take us far afield; the following three examples will suffice:


Nor are such ideas confined to the gospels:


The last two passages bring us to that conative mode of intentionality which is proper to the conceptual polarity - will - qe/lhma. John links this with the Father and 'God' - that is, with Transcendence. Matthew does likewise through his references to the Decalogue.

If we search for this precise expression in the creation narratives, we do not find it, although we did find the concept of desire, the conative form of consciousness proper to immanence and fully articulated in the messianic series, and we will also surely meet the (perceptual) cognitive form of consciousness, already given in the above citation: 'the tree was desirable so as to become clever', and in the references to 'knowledge of good and evil' of the tree itself. In the second creation narrative, which akin to the second half of the first creation story presages the feeding miracles and the Eucharist, desire played a seminal role in the depiction of specifically human consciousness. Given the immanentist persuasion of that, the J creation narrative, clearly visible in the role it concedes to appetition, which  becomes the defining metaphor for desire, that is no surprise. That narrative linked the concept of desire not only to the formulation of the value/disvalue 'good and evil', but also to the formulation of the value beauty. This axiological and specifically human consciousness, is part and parcel of our own sense of mortality, a topic due for further consideration. If then in the last quote  from 1 John we chanced upon that conative mode of intentionality, will, which is the 'antithesis' of desire, and which plays a significant role in the Johannine gospel, such a link again confirms the relation of the two cycles, creation and salvation. But we must now examine the first creation story for evidence of the kind of thing we are describing; a state of consciousness which promotes an outcome or 'satisfaction' so to speak, and yet which stems not from the perceptual but from the conceptual polarity of mind, that specific state of consciousness or mode of intentionality we are referring to as will.

We need not pursue in any more detail just here, the preciser features of what we are defining as desire. Our purpose is initially to sketch in its broadest outlines only, the overall pattern which arises from the previous determination that the series of creation events and the series of messianic events portray the anatomy of mind as constituted by two isomorphic sets of entities. These  twelve various conceptual and perceptual components, which are interrelated in the closest possible way, in their turn act as the basis for further processes both conscious and other than conscious, and of which we are about to see, four in particular, integrate the four gospels themselves. These processes we refer to as modes of intentionality, or forms of intentionality. We shall use common language expressions for each of them, all of which occur within the texts. The first of the four we have now briefly argued is desire. It is presented readily and without any apparent obfuscation in each of the three Eucharistic miracles, as well as in the Eucharist itself, subsequently to the second creation narrative. That story will be examined at a later point, just as we shall consider in further detail the specific bearing that each of these four elemental forms of intentionality has on the  particular theological and soteriological perspectives of each of the four gospels.

We have begun with the most obvious first step, that of the feeding miracles in the gospels, and with the conative form of intentionality of the perceptual polarity. There is of course another side to this. It is the cognitive. That is to say, that perceptual mind is not merely desiderative. The perceptual polarity of mind expounded in the messianic series, the soteriological series, rather than in the creation series, is responsible also for another intentional mode, which is recognisable as cognitive, intellective, epistemic. We shall come to this later. It will be best to continue in the same vein, and to examine the creation series, that of the conceptual polarity of mind, for the countervailing conative form of intentionality. That is, we need now to look to the Days series for a corresponding conative form of intentionality.

Conative Intentionality: Genesis 1.1-2.4a

We have urged repeatedly that the primary, denotative subject of this text is the inception of the spatial manifold. Only this will account for what are the most conspicuous logical features of the story: its repeated threefold form; and the most conspicuous referential features: the expressions denoting space itself: myima#$,ha and (ayqirf. The first term ("heavens") occurs in verses 1, 8, 9, 14, 15, 17,  26,  28 and 30. The second ("firmament" etc.) occurs in verses 6, 7 (three times), 8, 14, and15. The compound ("firmament of heaven" etc.) occurs in verses 14, 15, 17, and 20. Such a tally constitutes a substantial total. The significance of the terms rests on the concept of space, the single entity to which these terms refer. What is the connection between space, the primary instantiation of 'beginning', and will? To  replace the latter by its common synonym, free will is to begin to answer that question. Space is the primary entity which signifies our freedom, because it is the medium of our ability to move, and the theme of movement envisages this repeatedly in the second half of the story. For everything there moves, or appears to move, beginning with the planets, which are made during Day 4.


The idea of movement, that the created living entities, and the planets, change their place, their 'space', can never be merely adventitious to the text, nor according to it, to being itself. As for the first, movement will become one of the dominant criteria determining the Levitical codes as they pertain to food, and food becomes the subject of the next verses in the story:


Even here, in the first creation narrative with its emphatic awareness of transcendence, we find a link between seeing and valuing; that is, we find the motif which will become so important in the second narrative, and which will be finally and fully explicated only in the messianic series. For not only does God create humanity 'according to his image, according to the image of God', but God sees and evaluates the creation, as was already the case twice during Day 3 (vv 10, 12). The P story, Genesis 1.1-2.4a, therefore accepts the implications of immanence. For the same reason, the role of desire is implicit in this second half - the "earth" section - of the story. The injunctions at the close of Day 5 (v 22), and Day 6 (v 28) to 'be fruitful and increase', no less than the theme of eating, comply with the psychological portrait of desire in the second creation narrative, both narratives functioning precursively its final exposition in the stories of the feeding miracles and the Eucharist.

But the real difference between the theology of transcendence as this dominates the first half of the creation narrative, and the theology of immanence such as we have definitively in the gospels, concerns the real difference between the conceptual and perceptual - and one of the means by which we discriminate them must defer to the difference between will and desire respectively, which are the conscious conative (psychic) intentional modes bound to them.

Just now we mentioned that the concept of space is foundational to the holiness code as this concerns the consumption of living things. (That code of course departs from the presentation of the idea of eating in the second half of the P narrative, in narratological time at least, for there, foodstuffs do not include living things. In the post diluvian world however, they do.) Day 5 as the rubric of space-time answers to Day 2 in accordance with the pattern of the relation of the form of unity to the conceptual form, space-time to space in itself. To the same end, both the creatures of Day 5 and those of Day 6 are all depicted in terms of movement. As noted, the sun moon and stars submit to the same notion - motion. Movement is a recurrent marker of the second half of the story. Thus the patterns of the movement of living things become instrumental in determining whether or not they are permitted as food in the Levitical purity codes.

But in a still more fundamental sense, space as emblematic of freedom and of what we may call (free) will, is inseparable from what is effectively the defining moment for Judaism - Torah. For this means finally, the observance of 'the Law'. I cannot live after the decrees of the Torah, I will be unable so to conduct myself, so to perform the business of living in its entirety, unless I am free to do thus. That is, I cannot live in accordance with God's will, unless I am free, just as I am free to move. Just so, will underpins 'beginning' and is itself a foundational psychological premise of Judaism in general to a degree that is as absolute as that of the role of desire in 'end' - that is to say, in salvation.

In the gospels also of course we do meet the ascription to God - there, particularly to "the Father" (the Transcendent) - of a force called will. One of the petitions of the prayer taught by Jesus to his disciples puts it thus:


In John, there is an extended discourse which uses the term frequently. This gospel and Matthew's gospel have certain characteristics in common a propos of the doctrine of mind which we are expounding here, as we shall see. Even prior to its concentration in the discourse in John, where it is indissolubly linked with the identity of "the Father", it appears, within the context of the story of The Feeding Of The Five Thousand. The two messianic miracles which centre the chiasmos, the latter and its complement, The Walking On The Sea, are specifically proper to this identity, the Transcendent:

Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted (h!qelon). (John 6.11)

The discourse which follows, Jesus The Bread Of Life, is replete of references both implicit and explicit, to will:


There is a profound difference drawn by the evangelist just here, between the conative mode proper to the feeding miracle, namely desire, and the kind of psychological (conative) mode proper to the transcendent episode. We are attributing the polar antithesis of desire, that is will, to the conceptual forms, in the first instance, and not of course to the transcendent events of the messianic miracles. Even so, The Walking On The Sea which ushers in not only the discourse, but the entire second half of the gospel of John in which we find the three miracles of the transcendent kind, reverts to the normative event, the Day 2 rubric. Ostensibly the miracle narrative borrows the iconography of the separation of 'waters above' from 'waters below', just as Jesus himself is envisioned in the miracle, between the sea and "the heavens".

Mark uses the expression we have noted, in his own account of The Walking On The Sea:


This term is missing from the Matthean account, and of course Luke omits the miracle narrative altogether. John includes the expression, and it resonates somewhat differently as is given by the translation here:


This juncture in the gospel of John is recapitulated in the synoptic gospels, for they too take into account the full significance of the crossing 'to the other side'. But the synoptics have several such crossings. In Mark they systematically determine for us the subdivided species of messianic miracles, 'transcendent' or immanent, and the pattern is one of consistent oscillation. In John however, there is only one such crossing. Clearly his tradition up to the final chapter does not know of a second miracle at sea, nor of The Transfiguration Of Jesus. The distinction is therefore all the more salient, and clearly put as such by the evangelist. Thus, at the close of chapter 6, and following the dispute among the Jews over Jesus' claims of his relationship to "the Father", we find:



There is a certain connection here between will and belief, and this latter is one very notable mode of intentionality which must concern us, and one which is of particular concern to John. We shall come to that in a moment.

What should be said of Matthew's version however, regards the portrait we have of a particular disciple, Simon Peter, who more than any other figure is the manifest expression of this very psychological reality. Where John in his introduction to the first messianic miracle linked Nathanael to the reality of (physical) desire, Matthew appears to forge a similar tie between Peter and the driving energy of will. These are then not abstract metaphysical principles, but actual entities which profoundly shape human existence. We can even see in the power of the storm the extrapolation of the same: 'The sea rose ... ' (John 6.18); par.: 'And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. ' (Mark 6.48a); par.: '... but the boat by this time was many furlongs distant from the land, beaten by the waves; for the wind was against them.' (Matthew 14.24)

We know very little concerning Nathanael, his name does not appear in the synoptic disciple lists, and apart from the calling narrative, there is only one other reference in the gospel of John itself, that in the last resurrection appearance story, where he is listed with six other figures, of whom four, namely Simon Peter, Thomas, and James and John the sons of Zebedee, are known to the synoptists (John 21.2), the other two disciples being unnamed. With Peter however, the situation is reversed. He dominates the synoptic portraits of the followers of Jesus, and is a similarly prominent figure in the gospel of John. There of course, he is set as in the epilogue (chapter 21) against 'the disciple whom Jesus loved'. We will consider in a moment the image John presents there of Peter.

Matthew's recension of The Walking On The Sea shows Peter in a characteristic light - one which reveals him linked to the very psychological mode we are describing, that is will:


Here again, it is not merely a question of will, but of another state of consciousness, or mode of intentionality - faith. Matthew's image of Peter in this the second miracle at sea, squares perfectly with the image of Peter in the Johannine epilogue. The setting in both is the same, the Sea of Tiberias. After the three injunctions to feed his sheep, Jesus says to Peter:


In the very same pericope, this time in connection with the disciple whom Jesus loved, we find:


We could multiply occasions during which Peter is closely linked to that particular form of intentionality which we are depicting, for the lasting impression we gain of him from all four gospels, is of a man dominated by his own impulsiveness, his own willfulness. We shall refine the association of the will to the transcendent miracles directly, such as Matthew has inferred, for these defer to the normative conceptual forms first outlined in the Genesis story, and the centre of consciousness accounted for in this particular miracle story - acoustic imagination - and certainly all three forms of imagination, are somewhat equivocal in their nature as transcendent. They are the three conceptual forms which are unambiguously transcendent - mind, space and the symbolic masculine, as disclosed in the story of the first three Days of creation. Of these, it is the second, space, which is owing to the Transcendent ("the Father") specifically. Just so, in Peter's declaration about Jesus (Matthew 16.13-20, par. Mark 8.27-30, par. Luke 9.18-21), correlations between Peter and "the Father" and "heaven" are noticeable:


There is here no mention of 'faith' as such. Moreover, no sooner has the avowal been made, than the characteristic willfulness of Peter returns. For Jesus next foretells his death and resurrection:

In the following passage concerning the cost of discipleship, the theme of will is explicitly articulated:


These episodes, The Walking On The Sea, Peter's Declaration About Jesus, and Jesus' Rebuke Of Peter are central to Matthew's portrait of the disciple, and assist us in reckoning the particularity of the evangelist's viewpoint. The second episode follows fairly directly his recension of The Walking On The Sea, and is something of an apologia for the disciple, in the same way that John envisions Peter's rehabilitation in the last chapter of his gospel. But both pericopae in Matthew, The Walking On The Sea, and Peter's Declaration About Jesus, expand the role of Peter in a manner peculiar to Matthew. They are representative of the distinctiveness of this gospel. Thus in the latter we find the following pattern restated: Transcendence ("the Father")-space ('heaven'-will-Peter.

We have not strayed from our task, whose conclusion will comprise understanding the distinctiveness of each gospel from a psychological standpoint. If there is a strong connection between Luke and the psychology of desire, one which cuts to the core of his soteriology, then this is not an isolated case. Taking the messianic series at face value, and as the complement of the creation series, it must be seen that the significance it attributes to appetition-satisfaction acts as a sort of equal and opposite reaction to the psychological reality behind the 'beginning'. This of course is only half the picture; will as native to the conceptual polarity of consciousness and adumbrated in the Genesis narrative, and desire as given in the gospels, the property of perceptual mind, taken together account for only the conative, and only the conscious conative at that. Mind is not mere feeling, mere conation, the satisfaction/achievement of desire/will alone. That is to say, in both cases, conceptual and perceptual, an epistemological (thinking) mode is operative in tandem with the psychological (feeling). Resuming the light metaphor so basic to Christology, Christian epistemology-psychology, we can say that heat which generally accompanies light rather than light, itself metaphorically connotes the conative forms of intentionality. This is as good a metaphor for the affective nature of consciousness as any.

The gospel in its fourfold entirety will submit to this differentiation of these various modes. Moreover, this is the only way in which we can reasonably account for its variety, its plurality. So then, the picture which is emerging of Matthew, is that in adopting as a recurrent if not the prevailing leitmotif the concept of Torah, it allies itself with a transcendental perspective. Its presentation of Peter, the apostle to the Hebrews par excellence, which we have in part examined, certainly follows suit. For there also, we discover that Matthew accords with the conative mode of the 'beginning'. That is, his gospel appears to be typologically grounded in the intentional mode will.  It establishes what is peculiar to his soteriology. This same Christological and psychological mode, the will, formed the backdrop of the creation. Will as the conceptual polarity of consciousness in its conative or affective constitution is thus emerging as a dominant factor in the specificity of the gospel of Matthew, just as  its antithetical intentional mode, desire, appears to be establishing the psychological underpinning of the gospel of Luke, and so too his specifically soteriological perspective. But these matters must be discussed in much greater detail, since we have for now the much wider task of discerning the full gamut of the doctrine of intentionality.
Both will and desire are given to fulfillment. As divergent as they are on account of the disparity between the conceptual and the perceptual, they are both conative. Both are affective or emotive as motivating forces in human consciousness. Both seek outcomes; both require that we discharge certain duties and/or inclinations, obligations, functions, both engage us in the quest or striving for particular ends. On this count then, they are what we have called conative. In the same regard will and desire can be categorised together and distinguished from the cognitive or epistemic modes. On at least two occasions, we can see the same term used for both:


The twelve or so healing miracle stories in Mark replicate the entire corpus of radicals of consciousness depicted in Genesis and the gospels. There are six events of the conceptual type, and six of the perceptual type. The story of The Leper belongs to the latter group. But even though it is classifiable as a miracle of the transcendent subspecies within the immanent (perceptual) group, its subject is perceptual imagination, in this case haptic imagination. Like the messianic miracle focused on the same, The Transfiguration, haptic imagination is radically other than haptic memory. Their alterity is usually configured as the difference between erotic desire and the desire to be clean. Both miracle stories which address haptic imagination, that of The Leper, and the story of The Transfiguration, refer to Moses. Both focus on purity, ritual purity, of a kind which Mark sets beside the story of The Woman With The Haemorrhage. Thus The Leper represents one of the six events which expound perceptual consciousness, and not conceptual consciousness. As such, the conative mode proper to it is desire, not will in sensu strictu. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that The Transfiguration and The Leper are theologically of a piece They denote transcendence within the first order taxonomy of the immanent. We can therefore say of them that they are 'transcendent' or virtually transcendent. This is transcendence of the second order. It therefore remains a non-normative radical of mind. Haptic imagination as presented in both miracle stories is relative to the normative conceptual form mind, its taxonomic equivalent or analogue in the conceptual realm. Thus mind is normative for consciousness, especially in respect of the value it imparts to the same. But haptic imagination is something of a copy of the same entity, even though it is at heart, that is to say, classifiably or taxonomically, perceptual and not conceptual.

The purpose behind the use of the first order distinction which speaks of normativity and non-normativity is the business of the doctrine of the conscious and aconscious respectively  Hence it belongs to the aconscious. The ambivalent taxonomic status of this particular healing event therefore sits perfectly with its conation depicted as will. In coming later to the exposition of the intentional modes proper to the aconscious we shall explain this in more detail. But we may say here that what is at stake is temporal perspectivity which acts as the differential between conscious (normative) will and conscious (normative) desire. For the will is aligned with the future, and desire with the past, as is of course delivered in the doctrine of perceptual memory. But the aconscious, redolent as it must be of paradox, ambivalence, ambiguity and the rest, subverts these logical distinctions. The conative intentional mode proper to haptic imagination functions in tandem not with the past, but rather with the future. In this very respect it is similar to will, for it is essentially 'imaginal'. In this respect it appropriates what is normatively the property of will, it functions in a virtually transcendent manner.

The use in this Markan narrative of the term 'will' to cover a process which is, properly speaking, about desire, for it is about sense-percipience rather than ideation, is understandable given the proximity of the two modes. It is their common capacity to coerce human behaviour towards some sort of effect or conclusion which allows for such latitude in the use of the term 'will'. An example which follows suit, and similarly blurs the distinction between perceptual and conceptual polarities of mind, again in the interests of making clear the conative capacity of both, and the presence of the aconscious, occurs early in the prologue of John, where it adds to the impetus towards the first miracle story:


In the first  instance - 'will of the flesh' - it is abundantly clear that what is involved is desire; in the second, the same conative entity is referred to, this time as the conceptual form. In other words, what John alludes to here are the two radicals of consciousness haptic memory (erotic desire) and that specific form of will based not on sense percipience, but on the conceptual form, the body, to which we have not yet given a name. Both radicals of consciousness, haptic memory and the conceptual form of unity, the body, are in the last analysis proper to the identity of the immanent Son: both are Christological (psychological) entities. The difference is that of the conscious perceptual form from the aconscious conceptual form: that of the haptic memory from the body qua idea; or as we may say, actual immanence from virtual immanence. Both are pertinent here as concerning the Johannine doctrine of the logos become flesh. But once again, there is a substantive difference between conscious haptic memory - the 'will' of the flesh - and  the aconscious radical, soma,  (mind : body) - the 'will' of man. These nuanced tenets of the metapsychology underpinning the narratives and finally the orientations of the gospels themselves, will occupy us later. But even though we must not suppose there is a lasting and insuperable difference between the two basic conscious conative forces, will and desire, the primordial fact of their spatiotemporal vectors  serves logically to specify their real and final variation from one another.

So we can clearly discern a fundamental difference between will and desire, and we can do so without entering the time-worn discussion about free-will versus determinism. It is the latter of course which qualifies what we mean by desire, and this feature is clearly announced in each of the feeding miracle stories just as it is in the accounts of the Eucharist. In effect, we have already achieved the logical distinction between both modes, for one is derived from conceptual consciousness whereas the other stems from the perceptual polarity of the same. But that facet to this very bipolarity itself which formally guarantees the distinction the two modes, will and desire, is the first order difference of the relation of their radically disposed vectors present-to-future and present-to-past.

That difference is encapsulated so nicely for us by the optic semeia. The optic semeia are not mere cosmetic adjuncts to theology. If we accept what is perhaps more generally acknowledged in Eastern religious traditions which utilise yantra and mandala, namely that it is possible to some extent, to see reality, to envisage it, and finally even to represent it visibly, then the use of these semeia for such purposes, viz. metaphysical propositions, will occasion no consternation. Even barring recourse to those traditions, or circumscribing them, we can recur to scientific disciplines such as astrophysics. These teach us that the light which reaches our eyes from distant sources may be of two basic kinds. It may come from either end of the spectrum, the red or the blue. The light in the first case, is said to be moving away from us, and in the second case, to be coming towards us. There is a fundamental difference here of the kind that conforms to the very polarisation of the semeia in their business of representing the two conscious conative modes.

For the radical and real differentiation of these two modes, in addition to that of polarisation of consciousness into its division conceptual : perceptual, corroborates the binary temporal perspectives we notice in the narratives. The Lukan (22.14-23) and Pauline (1Corinthians 11.23-25) versions of the institution of The Eucharist, both use the word 'remembrance'/'memory': a0na/mnhsin (Luke 22.19, 1 Corinthians 11.24, 25). In the recensions of Mark (14.22-25) and Matthew (26.26-29), this word does not occur. Even so, if we accept as a cultic precedent to whatever degree, the Passover, it is implied. If we take rather the view adopted here, which is theological rather than performative, and agree to see the precedent in the creation narratives, the result is the same. For there, in the case of the P narrative, we are confronted with the plethora of living beings and the planets, the subjects of the second half of the story, the four Days which answer to the four Eucharistic events. These things are our past, and humanity is the last of them which is made. That the P narrative not only tacitly supports an evolutionary theoretic understanding of our own connectedness, continuity, unity, with sub-human life-forms, but is the best of any testimony for an evolutionary perspective that we come across in the first part of the canon, I have argued elsewhere as tacit, and a fait accompli. That what follows from this is an evolutionary psychology is equally well assured.

The second section of the P narrative diverges from the three Days which together comprise the theology of transcendence unequivocally: Days 1, 2,  and 3, which formulate the basis for the second creation narrative. This means that the usual point of view adopted when reading the creation stories, namely that these events have already taken place, is legitimate for the second half of the P narrative. But this is not so for the theology of transcendence proper, Days 1, 2, and 3, and these formulate the centre of P's concerns. The second creation story, like the second half of the P story, adopts this very perspective: the events it recounts are considered as having transpired. Its aetiological cast, its purpose to comprehend the intrusion into the created order of suffering, toil and death, renders any alternative perspective impossible. After the stance of immanence, and proper to it, the notion of causality is tantamount to the notion of  that which is past, or before another thing in time. In its simplest manifestation, this is what a cause means; some prior event or events. For the same reason, the second creation narrative is also a second order creation story; as is the second half of the P narrative. But of the first half, in which we find the pure transcendent forms, the opposite is true. Hence will is logically and criteriologically postulated there as consisting essentially in league with the advent of a future. For creation proper remains the business of the future, in other words, the business of will, as opposed to desire. We should not forget this when coming to those astounding first verses of the P narrative. They do not take us back; they draw us forward to a future as yet unknown. Here they mark the foundation of the transcendent messianic events, events which propose imagination, which also is nothing if not grafted to the 'not yet'. Thus the three transcendent messianic miracles at once echo both the resurrection, and the creation. Creation or true beginning purports final or teleological causality. Creation or 'beginning' in this its primary sense therefore, can never be past: it belongs to the future in all its manifestations - promise, hope, and also dread and fear.

It should be clear now, that a Christian epistemology-psychology of the radical difference between will and desire reverts to the bipolarity of time. In the first place will and desire are logically distinguishable as concerning precisely the two temporal perspectives which recapitulate the categoreal paradigm; those of the present-future and the present-past, transcendence and immanence, will and desire, respectively. At least this is so for the conscious mind, wherein these processes are normative. There is an aconscious form of will, and an aconscious form of desire. These controvert the normative and standard order. They reconfigure what we understand as the fixed and accepted natures of these same intentional modes. This too might be expected due to the presentation of the categories responsible for them. These are the aconscious categories, depicted in the texts in terms of ambivalence, and again in the temporal cycle by the two quarters of the year which contain both the autumn equinox and winter solstice. Thus that half of the annual cycle in which the diurnal duration, (day)light is always diminishing, represents these as well as the remaining two aconscious modes of intentionality. Just one way in which the conscious as norm is reconfigured in the aconscious concerns the rudimentary logical rationale for the difference between will and desire; the difference between future and past respectively. We shall find in the case of the aconscious, that desire and not will is aligned with the vector present -to-future, just as we shall see that the normative association occurring between the past-to-present and desire is completely modified, so that will now becomes aligned with the immanent vector, past-to-present. Here however, we need first to observe the conscious and normative expressions of these two fundamental conative modes of intentionality.

Consequently an irrefragable break between will and desire obtains: for the first is free, possible, non-actualised, self-determining and 'ideal' or conceptual, whereas the latter is actualised, determined and perceptual in nature. This fundamental rupture between will and desire, one which recurs to the primordial category space : time, for it devolves upon the differentiation of the two temporal perspectives, helps explicate the normativity of the forms outlined above. It can be further expounded according to the contents of the theology of immanence, in which persons play such an important part. Here there are varying portraits of being as autonomous, social, dyadically corporate as in the case of desire, and so on. These will also elaborate the discussion of the modes of intentionality. But their fuller exposition can wait.

Extrapolating reciprocally between the creation series and the messianic series together as their isomorphism requires, at first glance it appears we have two subsets of things which are superfluous to need. For on the one hand, the transcendent messianic miracles look like mere pale imitations of the first three Days, and on the other, the last four Days seem, in the light of the four Eucharistic events, equally redundant. These two sets of entities, the forms of imagination and the forms of unity, moreover confront us with their ambivalence where the categoreal paradigm is concerned, because the forms of imagination as perceptual in kind, yet manifest some of the characteristics of immanence; while the forms of unity look all too similar to the forms of memory, in spite of their taxonomic denomination as transcendent.

This same ambivalence vis-à-vis the paradigm transcendence : immanence, will be of enormous avail, and these six entities are by no means otiose. They are vital to a comprehensive doctrine of mind. But the fact that the purely transcendent entities - mind, space and the symbolic masculine - are normative for transcendence, and that correspondingly, the forms of memory - haptic, acoustic and optic - likewise function in the realm of immanence, can now be further understood. For what we mean in the first instance by the word 'desire', will always possess the temporal orientation of which both sets of texts speak; our own animal past, and the 'Eucharistic' events. That is, the perceptual mind as this is allied with the vector present-past. Imagination must take its cue from memory, and here the doctrine of immanence which posits that there is no memory in itself, that is, no memory without imagination, is self explicative. That there is an imagination without memory must follow from the doctrine of transcendence; imagination has this paradoxical quality of being at once conjunct with memory in so far as memory itself is concerned, but existing in itself  and for itself, that is, disjunctively of the very same, memory. In other words, memory is internally related to imagination, whereas imagination itself is externally related to memory. For this reason, perceptual imagination is firstly immanent in its kind - sense-percipient - even so, it demonstrates the characteristics of transcendence. Likewise, those centres of consciousness to which the forms of unity give rise must be categoreally explained in terms of transcendence, in spite of which, their full definition will entail the theology of immanence.

Hence desire is necessarily grafted to past occasions; it is inseparable from anamnesis, or memory. It is always the recovery of something already experienced, albeit in a form which is not perfectly or not immediately recognisable. Here then, it is the pattern of salvation, of redemption. It is the fact of regaining what was lost; recovering, retrieving, reliving. That is because desire as unequivocal desire, what we mean by the word in its normal every day sense, is always beholden to memory, rather than to imagination. There are forms of desire whose spatiotemporal orientation is that of present-future. These are those sorts of desire which are predicated of the modes of perceptual imagination. Although imagination is like memory in so far as it is part of the sentient or sense-percipient heart of mind, it presents us with certain features of transcendence. In other words, it is similar to the conceptual polarity of mind, similar but certainly not the same.

We have stressed at every opportunity that the forms of imagination are ambiguous, equivocal, and paradoxical. This means that they cannot, as the forms of memory can, be considered as representative of 'desire'. The exemplary forms of desire, are those which are formulated after the essentially sense-percipient modes of memory; the haptc, the optic and the acoustic.

So too with the forms of unity. For these must be categorised under the rubric 'conceptual' in first order terms. That is, they are of a piece with the conceptual forms proper - mind, space and the symbolic masculine. Yet they manifest certain characteristics proper to immanence, and function similarly to the functioning of memory. They can act as the premise for particular species of will. Thus mind : body, space : time and male : female give rise to voluntaristic mental processes which are of a kind with those processes logically classifiable as will. Nevertheless, these same forms of unity are not as the pure conceptual forms are, constituted according to the vector present-future. This creates the fundamental or exemplary disposition of what we call will. It is criteriologically oriented towards the satisfaction of a future goal. It always entails novelty, 'beginning' or creation. Whatever else is true of the forms of unity as they establish certain species of will, they do not accord completely with this pattern. Their particular spatiotemporal bias is that of present-past, and in this they seemingly function as does memory. These types of will then, subversive of true will, are neither normative nor exemplary, nor representative of what we mean by the term 'will' in its primary sense. The forms of unity are equivocal, ambiguous, and paradoxical, as are the forms of imagination. Thus the varieties of will to which they give rise, cannot be deemed fully typical of this mode of intentionality.

The normative occasions of desire are those three centers of consciousness which arise from sense-percipient memory - haptic memory, acoustic memory, and optic memory. These are the definitive forms of perceptual consciousness. The normative occasions of will are those three centres of consciousness determined by (pure) conceptual forms - mind, space, and the symbolic masculine. These are the definitive forms of conceptual consciousness. In the same way the exemplary and normative varieties of desire, are those which are the products of the former; and the exemplary and normative varieties of will are the products of the latter. In each of these two classes, that of the perceptual memory, and that of the pure conceptual forms, one of the three occasions or roots for the expression of desire and will, is normative to a maximum degree, or as we shall say canonical, and sovereign. More shall be said on this topic, and we shall in due course, also say more concerning the equivocal status of  the forms of imagination and forms of unity, in the discussion of the aconscious.


We have introduced the concept of intentionality as this concerns appetition-satisfaction or fulfillment, which is so clearly a fundamental part of the meaning of the Eucharistic ('feeding') miracles and the Eucharist itself. This is intentionality of the psychic, feeling, or conative kind. According to the metaphor of heat-light, it answers to the former. It is a truism that it is much easier for feeling to influence thinking, than for thinking to influence feeling. Thus feeling, which in Christian philosophical psychology means firstly will and desire, thought of as the aspect 'heat' in this metaphor, enjoys a kind of status which is denied to thinking, since it is in the understanding of very many philosophers, the basis of experience: Hume, Spinoza, Whitehead, and Sartre are among such. This may or not be consonant with biblical metaphysics, the question remains open for now. Indeed the epistemic processes, which we may envision in terms of the metaphor light, these do indeed have their day. In now turning to the cognitive modes of intentionality we shall call upon experience itself. For already we see in the terms we have just employed - 'desire' and 'will' - how absolutely familiar are the things we are describing. We are not then searching for anything which we do not already understand as essential to our lived experience. The existential reality of each of the four elemental modes of intentionality is total. They are the common coin of our own epistemic and psychic lives, and so we must use common language as well as common sense, to describe them.

Here, the order of dealing with the two modes may seem odd in view of the fact that we shall find Genesis a better source for the cognitive mode proper to the gospel (immanence), and the gospel also a better source for the cognitive mode native to Genesis (transcendence). The J story of creation focuses on desire and knowing both, and even the P story implicitly refers to the former of these in its second half. We find repeatedly in the gospel of John, references to will. The sources, that is the texts, are so systematically related that this is no real wonder. Again and again we shall observe just how closely related they both are; as if we could not intelligibly read one without the other. In any case, we have already practised this method; for we have already observed the prominence of the theme of desire clearly announced in the second creation story, and the description of will clearly presented in both gospels, Matthew and John. The discussion of the cognitive form of intentionality proper to the conceptual polarity of mind will in fact have to take into consideration The Letter To The Hebrews, in which we find it very clearly depicted and with particular emphasis on the creation.

 Genesis 2.4b-34

If we can use the creation narratives as a source for what is the finally and definitively presented by the gospel, namely a form of intentionality grafted to perceptual consciousness, then it is more than likely that it will come from those sections of the text which correlated most closely with the latter. These are of course the second half of the P narrative, and the second creation narrative. It is the latter which best serves us. Since there is a wealth of information for us to consider, we shall deal with it according to the order of its appearance.


The J (for Yahweh) narrative, adopts the close association between the rubrics of Day 3 and Day 6. We reasoned in the first essay of The Markan Mandala that the first of these signifies the masculine in its transcendent status, as paradoxical as this is. It is paradoxical because the form of unity male : female is weighted in virtue of immanence. Thus it is set at odds from the entity space, the thing which most unequivocally instantiates transcendence. This means that space is by nature disjunct with what is otherwise its compound form, space : time. Space exists in the first place, in itself and for itself. This transcendent space is equivalent to the expression 'heaven' or 'heavens', the latter being emphatic of the tri-dimensional manifold nature of  transcendent space, which, being the space of the future, is void of passage, and is portrayed in terms of the seal of its provenance in a  transcendent God who is also threefold.

Mind too can and does exist in itself and for itself, without its complement, soma or body, where body is always the form of unity mind : body, just as time, is always the form of unity space : time. Such mind is what the fourth gospel understand as the logos. The latter, time and body always comprise the transcendent, the other, in their composition, and to a certain extent, they compromise it. But they do not and cannot obtain in themselves and for themselves. Body however, is not weighted either according to transcendence, as is space, or to immanence, as is male : female. Or if it is so accentuated, it is accentuated equally, now according to transcendence ('heavens') and now according to immanence ('earth'). Thus it stands literally in the middle between the two terminal categories, space and male : female as exemplifying both polarities.

Now the meaning of the accentuation of the male : female category according to the principle of immanence is clearly envisaged in the J narrative. This narrative selects this the least developed of the categories in P for the reason of its complexity. Thus P first presents the symbolic masculine under the guise of two sets of terms, those of Day 3. Firstly there are the earth and sea, then there are the two types of plants. These of course are the products of the earth, clearly the typological equivalent of the feminine. (We can extrapolate from this relation to that of the 'earth-animals' and humans of Day 6; so that the Day 3 pattern of this relation, suggests the latter are the product of the former.) In other words, P like J appears to be saying that there can hardly be a male without a female; yet there must be according to his logic, for all the things subsumed in this narrative conform to the categoreal paradigm - transcendence : immanence - and this will necessarily attribute some sort of transcendent status to the masculine. We have referred therefore to this, as 'symbolic masculine'. Thus we saw that the two types of plants appear as some sort of reference, however veiled, to the distinctive patterns of the organs of generation in both animals and humans: external in the case of the male, internal in the case of the female, just as the same are to be linked with not only the continuity of life itself, but with the supply of foodstuffs, a recurrent theme of the second section of the story. Thus too this part of the triad, Day3-Day 6 theologically identifies the life-giving Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

All of the above complexities, the P text must deal with in fairly summary fashion if the clear propositional outlines of the story are to maintain their meanings. And they do. The J text does not start anew, but ramifies what is already implicit in the first narrative; in doing so, it elaborates in particular the close metaphorical association between plants as some sort of prototypical pattern for animals and humans both, and furthermore the nexus between the propagation of species and food and death. For fruit-bearing trees, humans and animals are locked together, and interrelated in the unfolding drama.


Here again we notice the epistemic, the cognitive, that is a consciousness as manifest in a form of thinking about something, and the same consciousness which is peculiarly sentient; consciousness which derives not from the conceptual, but from the perceptual. Thus the trees are not only 'pleasant to look at' but also 'good to eat'. This consciousness is of the thinking type, not the feeling type. We have considered the affective mode of sentient consciousness, it too is clearly articulated in the story: desire. This feeling type of consciousness is somehow related to its thinking mode; there is no mere feeling by itself, but feeling and thinking. The J narrative therefore connects the conative and cognitive forms of intentionality, but not without clearly articulating the latter: 'knowing'.



This element in the story too, in however modest a degree, reinforces the theme. It was used in the first section of the P narrative; there God named the light 'day', and the darkness 'night' (Day 1); the vault 'heaven' (Day 2); the dry land 'earth' and the water 'sea' (Day 3). In both cycles the result reinforces the conceptual link between humanity - and solely humanity - and deity. So that if for P, humanity alone is made 'according to the image of God' (Genesis 1.26-27), for J this similitude of humanity to God will be achieved in its determination to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Where for P that God creates and names the creation is iconic of deity, for J man recreates and names his companions and in knowing good and evil becomes iconic of deity.

What is missing from the J story is any sense of the real independence of the masculine from its complement. It is there initially as a suppressed premise, in just the same way that light-darkness and hence day-night functions in the P story. For just as the P text leaps ahead of itself in positing its categories, as it must do, the most significant of which are the primordial space of space : time and mind ofmind : body, so too the J text acknowledges some sort of priority (transcendence) due to the 'symbolic masculine', but in a very understated manner. The ceremonial naming his companions as the due of the man, extends to his companion:


The naming in this case though it may be linked to the same action of God in the prior narrative, is also part of the presentation of the event of knowing. The naming emphasises the close connectedness of male and female, the circle is closed, and the suppressed premise is confined to virtual oblivion. Where naming was the right if not the privilege of the man, only because the woman has not been formed from his own rib, the woman will be instrumental in the act that conduces to knowing. This typology fits the same pattern that we encounter in the gospels. If we acknowledge a propos of desire, the conative mode, that the feeding miracles like the creation stories, replicate the feminine polarity in a manner that even subordinates the role of the masculine, then we must acknowledge also the same in relation to the cognitive (thinking) mode. There is no dodging the fact that the texts pronounce this form of intentionality - knowing - as the province of the feminine, equally to the link between desire and the symbolic feminine. This has never been fairly recognised, and an emphasis has been accorded the affective mode - desire - at the expense of the thinking mode - knowing. Such an emphasis the texts will not support. Where both the masculine and the feminine are concerned, the story is a two edged sword. This idea, that of the link between feminine and masculine typologies and certain intentional modes, we shall return to later. It calls for some refinement, and when we listed the secondary criteria which distinguish the two subsets of messianic miracles, nocturnal/diurnal, free will/ determinism, and so on, we did not include it for this reason. These two principles themselves, masculine and feminine, are among the six conceptual radicals. That they are simultaneously engaged in Mark's very clear and logical account of perceptual consciousness is true enough, but the other criteria were sufficient to the task of separating those messianic miracles which depict perceptual memory from those which depict perceptual imagination. Clearly for J then, it is now the woman and the serpent who are responsible for the final outcome, for the intentional process in this case - knowing - belongs to the perceptual polarity of mind, and in some way, this is profoundly linked with the symbolic feminine rather than the masculine. So the woman and the serpent appear as the harbingers of knowing as well as desire, although that is already there (Genesis 3.6):


Behind any aetiological rationale for suffering, toil and ultimately death in this account, lies the simple fact that everything we consume, with the exceptions of water, milk and honey, is or was at one time a living entity. Rather than escape from this ineluctable reality, it is duly acknowledged, whence it is intimately implicated in the realms of desire and knowing. For its author(s) then, knowing is no different from desire. When therefore the man names his wife 'Hawwah (Eve) because she became the mother of all living' (2.23, 3.20), it is with a view to the ties to which we are drawing attention: the feminine - the past - knowing - desire and of course the life and death struggle which is our common inherited existence. The verb 'know' - t(d, - is referred to three times in this the second creation narrative: 3.5, 7, 22. Thereafter, in 4.1-26 it will be used in the context of 'carnal knowledge' both of the man 'knowing' his wife Eve (4.1, 25), and likewise of Cain (4.17). The story of Cain murdering his brother Abel (Genesis 4.1-16) introduces the archetypal masculine form of evil, namely destructiveness which runs counter to the creation itself. In it we hear the expression 'sin' for the first time. It stands as a foil against what is ostensibly the feminine form of evil, namely greed, delineated in the first part of the story of the disobedience of the human couple in the garden. These narratives thus concern the sexual psychology of evil as finally countermanding the likeness of God in male and female humans (5.1-2). The wickedness of humankind is multiplied with the burgeoning human population (Genesis 6.6s), thus the narratives cede to the justification of God's decision to destroy the human race and to the story of The Flood.

But our concern is with the J creation story, and to add to it, whether there is one tree in the garden, or two compounds the complexities mentioned above. The 'tree of life' is mentioned only in the introduction and at the conclusion (Genesis 2.9, 3.22-24). The ambiguity is purposive just as is the ambiguity of the copula in the expression 'good and evil'. Both knowing and desiring are connected in this myth to two forms of value, good and evil, and beauty and its corresponding disvalue. We must bear in mind this related axiological value/disvalue, beauty/ugliness, because the function of seeing in the story is so pronounced, just as it was in connection with the 'fig tree' in the introduction to the first messianic miracle, the classical New Testament theology of desire; and as we observed, the theme of shame (Genesis 2.25, 3.7, 10, 11, 21), is inseparable from this phenomenal mode of sentience. One aspect of the subtextual import of the J narrative clearly has to do not just with the experience of shame, but with the complex axiological awareness that arises from seeing the naked human form. This is a mythological aetiology as much about clothing as it is about consciousness, the likeness and unlikeness of humankind to God, and the other factors already mentioned, although most hermeneutical efforts seem to concentrate on the association the narrative draws between sexual experience and sin, or regard its primary purpose as accounting for the incursion of death into the world. The link, however tenuous, between its two axiological strands, good/evil and beauty/ugliness, is seamlessly woven into the text, and is central to its psychological thrust.

The Gospel
 
It is not long before we encounter the idea of knowing in the gospel, it confronts us in the first miracle story:


The subsequent amazement at the 'new teaching' (didaxh\) of Jesus and his commanding the unclean spirits 'with authority' (e)cousi/an, v 27) lend weight to the idea. 'Teaching' and its cognates - 'teacher', 'to teach' and so on - will feature prominently in this gospel, as of course in others. The Paralytic similarly portrays the power and authority of Jesus:


The parable of The Seeds begins with an expression characteristic of Mark: 'Again he began to teach ... '  (4.1). In it we find the process of knowing twice indicated:



In the first of the above references, the indissoluble tie between perception and knowing is very pronounced. It will be resumed in the recapitulation of the two miracles of loaves (Mark 8.14-21), which miracles of course, reiterate the theology of semiotic forms of both hearing and seeing. For this evangelist then, as for those who adopt his narratives, if in fact both Matthew and Luke do, the bond between perception and knowing is complete.

In yet another two stories of miraculous healing, that of Jairus' Daughter and The Haemorrhagic Woman who touched Jesus' garment (5.21-43), the idea recurs. In the latter story, sentience of two distinct kinds, hearing and touching occurs first:


Then follows the occasion of knowing:


In the subsequent healing of The Daughter Of Jairus, the expression occurs in the context of an injunction to silence, and is followed by a reference to assimilation:


It is difficult to separate this story from that which Mark has interleaved within its two halves, The Haemorrhagic Woman. The two pericopae share many motifs: both persons healed are females, both are referred to as 'daughter', the figure 'twelve' is common to both pericopae, and both accounts refer to touch, and however indirectly, that is, modestly, to the idea of the menses associated with the ritual impurity of women. This chain of ideas should in fact be extended to cover the next healing miracle story, The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter (7.24-31), which has several things in common with the first two of these three narratives dealing with women and female children:


Mark's recension may have borrowed the idea of Jesus' renown from the first story, and that of prostration before Jesus of the hapless and importunate parent from the second. At any rate it is as clear an indication of the importance of knowing to the evangelist, as say faith or desire, or will. We could quote all instances of the various expressions used in the gospels which refer us to this mode of intentionality - knowing. Some of these as well as in those texts already cited, will include instances where cognates of the verb to know occur: Mark 9.30, 10.38, 10.42, 12.14, 12.24, 13.29, 13.33, 13.35, 14.68, 14.71. (We shall later discover a deep-seated theological connection between the two miracles of loaves and knowing, as well as their more obvious linking with desire or appetition. This is forcefully portrayed in the recapitulation of the two feeding events (Mark 8.16-21). And since we have interpreted these to the theologies of both forms of perception, hearing and seeing, it is hardly surprising that the discourse should contain so many references to the same in various guises: 'perceive, 'understand' (twice), 'hearts hardened', 'fail to see', 'fail to hear', 'remember'.)

But even given that we are employing common language expressions, and so searching for nothing more arcane than the kinds of things already spoken of, will, desire, knowing and so on, and notwithstanding the prominence of the various psychological-epistemological entities in question, which we are arguing are determinative of the specificity of the gospels, and as such in relation to the central question of time, not every evangelist will manifest the same penchant for clear and precise enunciation as in particular John will. There is a obvious inclination on the part of that evangelist to announce at every opportunity, the term which designates the epistemic mode proper to that gospel. But it would be misleading to expect of each situation, the clear and precise expressions: 'desiring', 'knowing', and so on. We shall later see in the case of John, the verb 'to know' exceeds his use of expressions which fit his native intentional outlook.

Where the gospel of Mark is concerned, equally significant to the latter idea is the presentation of Jesus as teacher. The function of teaching, and the casting of Jesus in the role of teacher is highly significant to our case, and is so perhaps more emphatically than any penchant  for a term or group of them indicating the specific epistemic (cognitive) or psychic (conative) mode.

The situation is somewhat muddied by the longstanding received wisdom which appraises Matthew as the specifically teaching gospel. This is a gross misrepresentation. If the two source hypothesis is correct, which sees Matthew like Luke, as dependent to a large extent, on the gospel of Mark, then it is already rendered dubious. We are coming directly to the question of the specific natures - both psychological and epistemological - of the four gospels, for that devolves upon the connexity of time and consciousness; but for now, we should enter a caveat against any tendency to underestimate the significance to who is arguably our earliest synoptist, Mark, of the function of teaching, and the role of the teacher. We shall concentrate upon the gospel of Mark in what follows. So then everything we have already said concerning intentionality and the rest, and everything else which will be posited in this essay, takes its cue from the gospel of Mark. The entire hermeneutic of the theology of semiotic forms accepts that particular gospel - the gospel of 'knowing' so to speak, as its primary source. It is hardly necessary to add at this point in the outline of intentionality as it is operative within the specific and varied quarters of the gospel, anything more concerning Mark.

The verb didaskei~n 'to teach' is first announced just where we might have expected, just as we saw for the first instance of the concept of knowing, in the setting of the synagogue, and equally importantly, in the story of a healing miracle. These events carry so much freight in this gospel, as in this hermeneutic, that it is hardly possible to overestimate them. If we have failed to see the full extent of Jesus' teaching in the gospel of Mark, and here is meant precisely the specific thrust of this presented hermeneutic, epistemological-psychological - in a word 'Christological' - much of the reason lies in the failure to recognise that the value the healing miracles, and the messianic miracles, carry for the evangelist is paramount:


This first miracle story cements the kind of relationship between the miracle catena and Markan doctrine that we are proposing. Thus the first miracle story puts itself and all subsequent narratives of the genre, miracle narratives, as part and parcel of Markan doctrine. It is not to parables, of which there are too few in this gospel, nor to lengthy theological disquisitions of a kind we might associate with John, nor indeed to historical narrative, one of Luke's favoured genres, that we turn in the gospel of Mark for teaching. Such narrative genres as these which occur in Mark, do certainly convey what we might call Jesus' teaching; but they do not refer to Markan metaphysics. In Mark teaching belongs to the purpose of the miracle stories, and it is precisely those which occupy us here. It is to the two miracle catena that we must look if we are to understand the pedagogical thrust of the gospel of Mark. The first such narrative, the healing of The Demoniac In The Synagogue (Mark 1.21-28), then posits also a certain connection between the episteme or epistemic mode of consciousness, knowing, and the acoustic mode of sentience. These aspects of consciousness will be determinative for Mark in particular.

It is not necessary to comment on each and every occasion Mark refers to the word 'teach' and its cognates; we note that he uses the term 'teacher' of Jesus in the following: dida/skale - 4.38, The Stilling Of The Storm; 9.17, The Healing Of The Deaf Mute; 9.38; The Unknown Exorcist; 10.17, 20, Giving To the Poor; 10.35, The Request Of James And John; 12.14, Paying Taxes To Caesar; 12.19, The Issue About Resurrection; 12.32, The Great Commandment; 13.1, The Destruction Of The Temple Foretold; dida/skalov ('teacher') is used of Jesus in 5.35,  Jairus' Daughter, and 14.14, The Instructions For The Celebration Of Passover.

In addition to the incidence just noted above of the verb 'teach', we find the same in the following: 2.13, 4.1, 2, 6.2, 6, 7.7, 8.31, 9.31, 10.1, 11.17, 18, 12.14, 35, 38, 14.49. This is an appreciable sum, which taken together with the references to 'knowing', constitutes much of the evidence for the  presentation of a consciousness ('intentionality') generally describable as 'knowing', the episteme (epistemic or cognitive mode of consciousness as distinct from the psychic or conative mode), derived from sense percipience. The major presentation of this tenet of Markan metaphysics however, we have not yet commented on. It occurs in the recapitulation  of the two miracles of loaves:


This passage is absolutely crucial to Markan doctrine, and so accounts for the absence of lengthy discourses regarding what are the central questions of not merely New Testament metaphysics but Christian metaphysics. That is, it signals the reason for the ostensible absence in the gospel of Mark, of anything comparable to those genres in the other gospels whose business is that of teaching. Until we begin to understand the meaning of not only the miracles referred to in this pericope, but also the accounts of the Eucharist, referred to in its introduction (v 14), and the remaining Eucharistic miracle, The Transformation of Water into Wine, as well as the three complementary transcendent messianic events; and until we recognise and understand the relationship of all seven of these episodes to the creation story in Genesis 1.1-2.4a and beyond, we will remain in a position no better than that of the followers of Jesus as described by the evangelist

Inadvertently we have already introduced this; it is frequently mentioned in the healing miracle narratives, usually as the noun 'faith' - pi/stiv (5.34) or the verb 'believe' - pi/steue (5.36). These two words, are used interchangeably here. In the two contiguous pericopae just referred to, The Haemorrhagic Woman and Jairus' Daughter, we encounter the theme of faith. The initial picture we have of the 'woman who had suffered much under many physicians' as well as the role of the crowd (vv 21, 24b, 27, 30, 31) suggests the priority of knowing over believing. The woman's initiative in having heard, that is, in learning, of Jesus in the first place, like that of The Syrophoenician Woman a little bit later, is what enables the healing in both cases. Moreover, in The Woman With The Haemorrhage, the crowd functions precisely as it does in the story of The Feeding of The Five Thousand, a narrative which is related between these two healing miracle stories. It acts as an exact marker of the nature of the form of intentionality: knowing. Knowing is unlike believing, in several important respects, the primary one being of course the differentiation between perceptual consciousness and conceptual consciousness. But knowing is depicted in both the healing miracle, The Woman With The Haemorrhage, and the messianic miracle, The Feeding of The Five Thousand, in terms of its public nature; its context is irreducibly social. It is shared and corporate. Believing on the other hand is qualified in other distinctive ways. We must attend to the details given in the messianic miracles, and recapitulated in the healing miracle stories concerning such things as the numbers of persons present. Such contents of the narratives advance biblical epistemology consistently and purposefully. There are other miracle stories in the gospels more closely related to believing than either of these stories, although that of Jairus' Daughter certainly does qualify as an epistemology of belief, albeit belief in its aconscious mode which is yet to  be analysed. Part of the reason for this is its Christological orientation. The Woman With The Haemorrhage and The Feeding of The Five Thousand on the other hand are theologies of the immanent Transcendent, that is, "the Father" qua immanent. We shall find at every turn the strongest possible correlation between desire/believing and the identity of the Son; just as we shall see a corresponding affinity between knowing/will and Transcendence.

The Paralytic (Mark 2.1-12)

This particular healing story, the one which presents precisely the epistemic mode 'believing', also involves a crowd. The crowd here is clearly distinguishable from the person healed, which was not so in the previous case, for the paralyzed man is borne to Jesus by his four friends, and has to be lowered through an opening in the roof in order to get close to him.  There is no mistaking however, even if in the absence of the secondary criterion of privacy, the insistent number of terms in the account directly following the description of the actual cure, the (social) psychology of believing as a state of awareness, or mode of intentionality. These several and highly  cogent references all support the categoreal distinction that obtains between knowing, an irreducibly social  and heteronomous mode of intentionality, and belief, which the images of the privacy of mentation picture as autonomous. The evangelist reports that Jesus discerned the inner mental state of  'some of the scribes',

• 'questioning in their hearts' (v 6);

• 'they questioned within themselves' (v 8);

• '"Why do you question thus in your hearts?"' (v 8).

There is here a plethora of terms referring to the privacy of thought itself. These must qualify any description of belief as given by the initial mention of the 'four men' (Mark 2.3) on whom the man is reliant for being brought to Jesus. It is sometimes suggested that this is something of a statement concerning the nature of belief. It is nothing of the sort. Faith may be shared, but it remains irreducibly private, and even more private than the immanent intentional mode which envisions erotic desire. This is because its principle moment, its defining category, its necessary condition is mind. It is the paralytic alone to whom Jesus addresses the words which effect his healing:


The form of address is signal, for as just averred, of the four conscious modes of intentionality, belief and desire are manifests of the Son. After the account of the cure, the entire remainder of the pericope has to do with internal and private states of consciousness (vv 6-12). The weight of this conclusion qualifies the significance of the initial setting. Faith does not remain the condition of any single individual, it is always shared. But in itself, it must be set at variance with knowing exactly in respect of its psychological nature. It is the citadel of the believing self which Mark here puts not against the social and public nature of knowing, as of its aconscious counterpart. But there must be no misunderstanding of the nature of faith on this score. It stands in comparison with The Transfiguration, the messianic miracle which most isolates the Son. Hence the stream of expressions which constitute the controversy story, effectively the most important pedagogical element in the narrative, should be understood in relation to the nature of faith. There is nothing in this account which contradicts what we already know from the examination  of our own selves, our own minds, of our own 'hearts' (vv 6, 8) or 'spirit' (v 8), or 'within' ourselves (v 8) - that is through the existence of the mind itself. This is the realm of faith. There is finally nothing 'social', nothing 'public' about it.

We are affirming quite clearly, that the substantial difference between knowing and believing, as modes of epistemic or cognitive intentionality, that is, as distinct from desiring and willing, is one of the essential differences between perceptual (knowing)  and conceptual (believing) polarities of mind or logos. The same applies of course to the difference between desiring and willing, only they are conative, that is appetitive forms of consciousness; what we might otherwise call 'feeling', affective, or emotive modes of intentionality, rather than 'thinking' modes. The word thinking here does insufficient justice to the idea of knowing; for we have just above used this term - 'thinking'/'thought' - in connection with the private and intellective, that is, the conceptual side of consciousness. But there is no appropriate expression in English which stands adjacent to the process of believing, which is of course properly speaking 'thinking' in sensu strictu. So for the moment, we use this expression - 'thinking'/'thought' - as an umbrella term to cover both forms of consciousness, believing and knowing, the one a conceptual mode, the other a perceptual mode of intentionality, so as to map the difference between episteme and psyche, cognitive and conative, emotive and intellective, feeling and thinking. The study of the messianic events confirmed as one of the indices epitomising the certain difference between transcendent and immanent episodes, this the real alterity between the privacy of thought, here belief, and the publicity of speech. In view of what we have just observed concerning the motifs of crowd, publicity, speech, reports and so on, in The Woman With The Haemorrhage, this throws into even greater relief the statement of Jesus concerning The Paralytic. Hence the overtly public nature of his forgiveness of the man carried to him, occurs in the greatest possible relief to the actual focus of the occasion, which centres on the inner, private, mental state of the individual. The contrast is reflected in that of the crowd, including 'some of the scribes',  with the individual paralytic.

No gospel is without a substantial number of references to believing and to faith. But of all four, it is to John that we turn for the definitive account of the same. The extraordinarily high incidence of such references must have contributed much of the reason for the inclusion of that gospel within the New Testament canon. No other evangelist compares to John in this respect; from the inception of his gospel, he has the firmest grasp of the centrality to Christian discipleship of this attitude, disposition, state of consciousness, mode of intentionality; that is, faith. He has this because he has the firmest grasp of any evangelist of the centrality to Christian metaphysics of the existence of mind. The further discussion of this particular form or mode of intentionality depends on its analysis in the fourth gospel, of whose soteriology it is the foundation. We shall come to consider the intimacy of belief with that particular gospel, John, directly, and also the relationship between the other gospels and specific forms of intentionality. But for now we must concentrate further on the theology of belief as given in the miracle narratives. Once again it is time to consider not the healing stories, but the messianic miracle. Surprisingly enough, this particular messianic event, The Transfiguration, is not told in the gospel of John, although it is present in each of the synoptic gospels. The Johannine equivalent of this, the theology of the transcendent Son, is the last of the miracle stories in John, that of The Raising of Lazarus.

The Transfiguration (Mark 9.2-13)

Let us be clear about the relation of this narrative to the unfolding hermeneutic. We are now dealing with the gospel, not the story of creation as such. In the healing miracle catena, there are twelve or so events. These replicate in toto the categories of both  'beginning' (transcendence) and 'end' (immanence), Genesis and the gospel. That is, six healing miracles replicate the conceptual categories, and the remaining six the perceptual categories. Thus we are able to point to that particular healing miracle, which like the story of Day 1, covers the entity mind; and similarly, the episode from the same cycle, which stands for the complementary rubric in the immanent series. These are respectively the stories of The Paralytic and The Leper; the first concerns mind, the second haptic imagination.

The Transfiguration is according to the postulates laid down in this hermeneutic, the theology of a form of consciousness whose centre of gravity is in the first place, the phenomenon of haptic sentience. Its equivalent in the healing miracle cycle is the The Leper. Both texts address the reality to consciousness of the sense-percipient mode of touch; but most significantly, touch in a manner that is completely juxtaposed to touch in the body of memory. The Transfiguration is about haptic imagination, not haptic memory. The latter is the concern of the first messianic event, Transformation Of Water Into Wine. Both of these messianic miracles are of course Christologies. In the overall scheme of things, both testify to the identity of the Son, rather than either the Holy Spirit or to Transcendence ("the Father").

Now haptic imagination for all its espousal of transcendence, remains beholden to the haptic as a form of sentience. That is the primary quality of this mode of consciousness. And sentience itself, that is sense-percipience, is as a rule, immanent in kind. Its normative and categoreal denomination is that of immanence rather than transcendence. Hence the intrinsic value of haptic sentience pertains to haptic memory, not haptic imagination. As such, the status of transcendence belonging to haptic imagination, or to any form of imagination for that matter, must be qualified. We have accordingly at every turn qualified the transcendent messianic events as nevertheless belonging to a series of episodes - messianic miracles - which are firstly defined  taxonomically as immanent. At the most radical and elementary level, all the messianic events are immanent, just as all the things disclosed in the creation theology are transcendent. At a second level however, we have a set of somewhat ambiguous elements in either case: the 'transcendent' messianic miracles, and the 'immanent' elements in the creation series, which are the forms of unity, space-time, mind-body and male-female. The former do not exemplify immanence unequivocally, just as the latter fail to exemplify transcendence without remainder. Thus transcendence and immanence do not represent categories incapable of further definition . Neither is unexceptionable.

So where 'transcendent' messianic miracles qualify themselves as ambiguous, a propos of immanence, just as do the forms of unity, which are the 'immanent' occasions in relation to the transcendent categories proper, they do so in two ways. They qualify any hard and fast notions we may have of immanence itself, and similarly any fixed notions we may have about perception. The term haptic imagination has two parts, the first of which denotes the mode of sentience, while  the second affirms the categoreal aspect. In either case, the entity in question is indeed in question. The result is that we must revise our understanding of both sense percipience and here at least, the categoreal paradigm also.

The Transfiguration thus firstly depicts the centre of consciousness grafted to haptic sentience and to the imaginal  rather than mnemic form of the same. This entails apparent contradiction or equivocation as we have noted. In the second place, its governing intention is really the conceptual form - mind. So as for the categoreal issue, the fact of transcendence (here imagination), rather than the aspect of sentience (here the haptic), the thing that manifests the identity of the Son (transcendent) intrinsically, normatively, and unequivocally, is mind. And to this, haptic imagination must defer. The story of Day 1, the story of mind which announces the entire biblical corpus dominates The Transfiguration. There can be no such story as this without a prior story of mind, and the same is true of all the transcendent messianic miracles. That is why they may look like mere copies of the theology of creation contained within the first half of Genesis 1.1-2.4a.

If then there is no messianic miracle denoting the category mind, precisely because this has already been disclosed, and was disclosed at the very inception of scripture, and because the real task of the messianic series is to complete the theology of mind by the revelation of the perceptual modes of consciousness rather than repeat the conceptual polarity, then even so, The Transfiguration can and necessarily must recur to the prior normative, definitive entity, mind. For it is this which discloses intrinsically the identity of the transcendent Son:


Luke appears to contradict this for his introduction reads 'Now about eight days after these sayings ... ' (9.28). We shall not comment on this fact here but to note that Mark and Matthew constitute the majority reading.

This introduction is important because it validates the claim that the messianic miracle series exists as the logical and theological complement of the creation series, and without that we are at a loss to understand any and all of these episodes, and finally at a loss also to comprehend the Eucharist in its theological setting. Mark's and Matthew's introduction to the Transfiguration are instantly comparable to the introduction of the fourth gospel as a whole. So that if John lacks the last of the messianic miracles - just as Mark lacks the first, then clearly his gospel comports with the purpose of these same as given by the introduction to The Transfiguration. The absence of the last messianic miracle from John, is as the absence of the first from Mark, perplexing. Clearly both are intended as counterparts, and both are critical to a full and complete Christology. But any shortcoming in this matter, is of course made good by the inclusion of healing miracles in both gospels. Thus Mark contains The Man With The Withered Hand, which covers the immanent Christology, whose theological expression is grounded in The Transformation Of Water Into Wine. For his part, John includes, and it is the last episode of its kind in his gospel, The Raising Of Lazarus, the Christology of transcendence which we shall discuss shortly concerning the concept of belief. Similarly, this is an alternate rendering of the theologoumenon of The Transfiguration. John's last miracle story resumes motifs present in the opening hymn to the Word, notably those of light and time which of course loom so large in the story of creation.

Returning to the gospel and its presentation of that form of intentionality to which we refer to as epistemic or 'thinking' - though here we certainly do not mean knowing, for that belongs to the province of the perceptual -  returning that is, to the ideational or conceptual 'cognitive' mode of intentionality, which belongs properly not to the gospel but to the creation narrative, there are more than sufficient indices in the miracle story which signal the connection we are making between belief and the elementary conceptual epistemic mode, that is, between belief and mind. The first of these we have just quoted and highlighted above. The intention of Mark's introduction, like John's, remains unmistakable in its reversion to, that is, in deferring to, the theology of mind. This occurs in spite of the fact that the logical business of the miracle story is the depiction of a form of sentience. In addition to the invocation of the creation narrative roundly proclaimed in the introduction, another pointer to the normative status of mind as the counterpart of haptic imagination is the following:


The meaning of the presence of such figures cannot be decided without recourse to the concept of belief. One thing else is equally certain, that is that like the introduction they invoke the concept of time. For both transcend the immediate present; both figures 'appear' as it were from another time, or other times. This is doubly perplexing in the case of Elijah as 'a' Son of man. Elijah is arguably the more important of the two, as we see in the pericope which follows the actual miracle story. As 'a' Son of man, he is linked with both the past and the future, whereas Moses is linked only with the past. The 'Son of man' concerning whom Jesus speaks to his disciples firstly in the future tense - 'until the Son of man should have arisen ( e)k nekrw~n a)nasth~?) from the dead'  (Mark 9.9) - troublingly becomes elided with Elijah-John of whom Jesus lastly says - '"But I tell you that Elijah has come ( e)lh/luqen), and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him."' (v 13) This adroitly draws as close a comparison as possible between the fate of Jesus qua Son of man and that of Elijah-John qua the same. For the previous verse which concerns 'the Son of man' as explicitly identified with neither John nor Jesus reads:


Certainly the text here draws a comparison between Jesus and John and their sufferings and deaths. And even if The Transfiguration is somehow a theology of glory, epitomised by the radiance of Jesus' garments and confirmed by Peter's remark - "Master, it is well that we are here ... " (v 5) - such a theology does not rule out these ideas of suffering and death, first outlined in the prior text (8.34-38).

Furthermore, if the persona of Elijah may leave us somewhat just as confused as Peter, particularly in relation to issues about time, the introduction to the miracle story is no less apparently convoluted:

 

In either case, the conceptual form mind, or the perceptual category haptic imagination, the axiology is one and the same. Just as the creation of the light is valorised, the first of a series of such processes:

And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. (Genesis 1.4 NRSV)

The same is given in Peter's remark (Mark 9.5 - kalo/n) in The Transfiguration, just as it was in The Transformation Of Water Into Wine by the remark of the steward of the feast (John 2.10 - kalo\n). This guarantees the Christological rationale, whether of (virtual) transcendence or actual immanence, shared by these two particular miracle narratives. But we must observe carefully that in one instance this value - 'good' - the specifically Christological form of value, is what we shall term 'intrinsic' and in the other 'extrinsic'. This varies between the two sets of occasions; so that where the pair haptic memory : body is concerned, that is, in the case of immanence, it is the perceptual category, haptic memory which functions intrinsically, or what is the same thing, normatively. For haptic memory is as we have seen, unequivocally immanent in its kind. In the case of these entities, the perceptual is the normative ('intrinsic') category.

In the case of the pair haptic imagination : mind, the situation is the opposite. For here, where it is a question of transcendence, the real, actual, 'intrinsic' bearer of transcendent good is mind rather than haptic imagination. In the case of transcendent good, the conceptual, transcendent entity, not the perceptual one, is the normative category. We must not enter any further here these concerns which belong to axiology; they lie well beyond the compass of this study which has enough to contend with. But this much must be put in the interests of making clear the real factors inherent in the meaning of both Christologies.


We may now return to the epistemic mode belief, which is according to Christian philosophical psychology, the property of mind. Each of the radicals classified in the two narrative cycles, has one and only one mode quintessentially exemplary of it. Just as the intentional mode desire belongs to haptic memory, meaning that it acts as the utmost instance of this particular mode of intentionality, meaning that sexual desire is the paragon of desire itself, so then mind is the defining occasion for what we mean by the intentional mode belief. We refer to this relationship between the radicals and their respective exemplary intentional modes as canonical or sovereign, applied to the latter, the state of consciousness. Desire is the canonical form of intentionality relative to haptic memory. Belief is the canonical or sovereign intentional mode of mind. Certainly, if the final, or rather the first and foremost theology of mind in its conceptual forms, or logos asarkos, is to be found in Genesis 1.1-2.4a, and therefore if the real subjects of belief are those very six entities there categorised, then we must note also that time itself is of the very fabric of this same conceptual polarity of mind, or logos. The introduction to The Transfiguration therefore does not only present us with the perceptual category haptic imagination; nor with the comparability of this mode of sentience to the conceptual form mind as the consequence of a common axiological nature. It also clearly explicates the real propinquity between mind and time, as between Son and "Father". It is to this essential affiliation that the phrase 'After six days'  first alerts us.

Nothing in the story of 'beginning' falls outside the purview of temporality, it is the very fabric of the categories, each of which is classed under the order of a particular 'day'. The very word itself, 'beginning' marks the category time, in its essential relatedness to mind. The same, the tenet that time and mind are essentially related, forms a major premise of this essay. It guarantees the internal coherence of the categoreal schema of Markan metaphysics.

We can find no mention at all of belief in the Genesis pericope. Here that John like Mark, takes up the story. We have already seen that he specifies the psychic ('feeling') mode, namely will, which the conceptual forms generate. This was announced in the hymn to the logos  (John 1.13), which no less plainly than the introduction to The Transfiguration in Mark and Matthew (if, so it seems, not Luke), reverts to the story of 'beginning', as to the theology of conceptual forms. But prior to that we find:


Thus both evangelists, Mark (and Matthew) with the story of the last messianic miracle, and John in the opening hymn to the word become flesh, interpret the theology of conceptual forms, the theology of 'beginning', in relation to the process of belief. Several of the motifs of the opening of the fourth gospel will be resumed in the last miracle story, that of Lazarus, and if this is as we argue, the Johannine healing miracle story which presents the subjects of the The Transfiguration, then we must examine it here.


The Death of Lazarus (John 11.1-44)

The sheer size and scope of this narrative, and its location in the gospel underscore its significance for the evangelist. When the author(s) of the messianic miracle series determined The Transfiguration as the last of the six texts comprising that chain, and when the fourth evangelist contextualised the story of Lazarus, they had in mind the same purpose. For John at least, whose gospel has no account of the Eucharist parallel to the synoptic and Pauline accounts, the formulation of those entities which constitute the biblical doctrine of mind ends as it began, focused theologically on the person of the Son as on the entity mind itself, the embodiment of that very identity.

It is not clear to what extent John intends to itemise the category of haptic imagination under this story. In its contextualised antithesis to his first miracle narrative, which certainly is about haptic sentience, it would seem that he is aware of the importance of the same to Christian psychology/epistemology. The previous two miracles deal with sentient forms of consciousness: The Walking On The Water (6.16-21) itemises acoustic imagination, and The Man Born Blind (9.1-12) catalogues optic imagination. The latter, the second last Johannine miracle story shares with the last imagery dealing with light and time (John 9.4, 5 cf. 11.9, 10; cf. 11.37). Hence it seems that these last three miracle stories in John recapitulate the progression of the three 'transcendent' miracles from the messianic cycle clearly referred to in chapter 21. That is, the organization of the second half of the 'signs' in John accords with the pattern: acoustic imagination (The Walking On The Water) - optic imagination  (The Man Born Blind) - haptic imagination  (The Raising Of Lazarus), in keeping with the consistent references to the messianic series in the epilogue.

On the other hand, while there is in the story of Lazarus no clear index of creation theology comparable to Mark's 'After six days', the references to 'two days' (11.5),  'twelve hours in the day' and 'if any one walks in the day' (v 9), as well as the repeated references to Lazarus' death 'four days' prior (vv 17, 30) and of course that to 'the last day' (v 24), all suggest this pericope as being consonant with the purposeful recapitulation of the theology of conceptual forms in Mark's introduction to his last messianic miracle story. And if these several references were insufficient, there is yet another which connects this miracle narrative and that of the Transfiguration which can be directly associated with the theology of creation - the theology of the 'Days'. The text following the story of Lazarus (11.45-57) describes the plot to kill Jesus. Whereas The Transfiguration dwelt upon the similarity between John (the baptiser) and Jesus, and tended almost to conflate their identities in the single (?) persona of Elijah in the case of the former and the 'Son of man' in the case of the latter, the Johannine narrative develops the theme of a similarity between Lazarus and Jesus. Immediately following the story of the plot against Jesus is that of The Anointing At Bethany, the introduction of which reads:


This suggests that there is no difficulty in construing the Lazarus pericope in light of the six conceptual forms, that is the 'six Days' of beginning.  Thus John's text allows for the identification of either category, perceptual or conceptual, haptic imagination or mind. Whatever the provenance of the various miracle story traditions, the parallels are striking. Once again, John here returns to the theme of belief:


As for the theology of perceptual forms, the actual resurrection of Lazarus from the dead involves the voice of Jesus:


Once again this reiterates certain thematic elements of The Transfiguration:


Prior to this 'Elijah with Moses ... were talking to Jesus' (v 4), and the later pericope (vv 9-13) contains two further references:


The role of the 'voice' in the Johannine miracle story confirms the earlier passage:


Any resumption in the Johannine miracle story of the theology of creation does not of course preclude the possibility of a simultaneous intent to deal with the perceptual category haptic imagination. The clear link in all of the texts which we have just mentioned, between the acoustic mode of sentience and the conceptual category time, is clear evidence of the connectedness of the perceptual and conceptual polarities of mind. There is an obvious reference to haptic perception in John's text:


And if the first miracle  story in John used one sentient mode, taste (John 2.9), in order to present another, the haptic, the same connection may be intended in the last miracle story, this time the link being that between smell and touch.


This of course resonates immediately with the two references in the miracle story to the same, the sense of smell, the second of which is explicit:


Of course there is no mention of any physical contact between Jesus and the dead man, unlike Mark's story of The Leper.  Such contact would render Jesus ritually impure. We can find however, a  better reason for the absence of physical contact between Jesus and Lazarus, and for the allusiveness to touch of such references as we do in fact find. We should repeat here that the driving force of all forms of imaginal perception is non-sensual. That is precisely what the term 'haptic imagination' conveys, and wherein lies its differentiation from  'haptic memory'. Touch as actual, realised touch is an occasion of haptic memory, not haptic imagination. In John's story as in Mark's Transfiguration narrative, every effort is made to distinguish the fundamental difference of this mode from its mnemic form, in spite of their common perceptual ground. Every effort is made by either evangelist to convey that whereas haptic memory, that is, the 'erotic', establishes a prevailing centre of consciousness in human mentation, one which we commonly dignify by the word 'love', haptic imagination does likewise, and does so in virtue of its haptic nature, or sameness. Hence we may speak of it also in terms of 'love'. Yet for all that sameness, and simultaneously, it remains radically different, radically other, as is given by the contrastive expressions memory and imagination, and correspondingly past and future, immanence and transcendence. A major aspect of that difference preoccupies both evangelists.

We should add here also, the apparent association between the figure of Lazarus and that of 'the disciple whom Jesus loved'. There are two references in the miracle story which promote this association, the first being in the introduction:


An even stronger image emerges in the course of the narrative:


The enigmatic portrayal of the 'beloved' disciple and the singularity of the relationship between Jesus and Lazarus have given rise to the speculation that the two are one and the same. So for example, in a text  (John 1.35ff) which some consider to be the introduction of the same disciple, we find the same expression, "Come and see." (v 39) albeit in a different form. If there is any such tie between Lazarus and 'the disciple whom Jesus loved', then the final picture we have of the latter from chapter 21.20-23 adds to it, and does so in a manner which yet again recalls not only the Elijah-John persona  of The Transfiguration, but also the remark at the beginning of Mark's text concerning the '"... some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power."' (Mark 9.1):

The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, "If it is my will that he remain, until I come, what is that to you?" (John 21.23)

In conclusion then, it would appear certain that John's last miracle story is comparable to the last of the messianic miracles, The Transfiguration, in so many respects, not the least of which is the dual presentation of the perceptual form of consciousness - haptic imagination, and the conceptual form of consciousness - mind. If that is so, then it is because both are instantiations of the uniquely Christological form of value 'the transcendent good'; the only difference being that one, namely the conceptual radical mind, is the intrinsic or normative instance of the same.

A propos of the relation between mind and belief, the Johannine story leaves us in no doubt:


There is a multitude of other references in John's gospel to this form of intentionality or mode of consciousness, that is, believing. Any serious treatment of the more than sixty such instances would be a study in itself. We will have further occasion to comment on some of them in dealing with the modes of intentionality specific to each gospel. The point here is that the absence of any explicit statement about the same in the creation theology is overruled by the clear references to the same which we meet in the gospels. It will be the Son whom we find linked with the mode of intentionality belief, just as Transcendence is associated with that of will. In the creation theologies the latter intentional mode, will itself, the psychological crux of the entire story of creation, remains unspoken, although it is pervasively implicit. There were, as we discovered, significant references to both knowing and desiring in the second creation story. These square perfectly with the immanentist perspective of that text, which defers to perceptual consciousness. But neither conceptual mode of intentionality, neither will nor belief, is actually articulated in either creation narrative.

Until some sort of flesh can be assigned to the former, if only because as noted the category mind : body is weighted neither in favour of transcendence nor immanence, but persists as their equipoise, as innately mediatory, until then, the disclosure of the intentional mode proper to logos must remain in abeyance. That is why the gospel of John in particular is of such import. The theological business of the stories of creation certainly encompasses the identity of the Son. Theologies of recapitulation, of the 'second Adam' such as we find in Paul for example, are founded on such a premise. Insofar as the entire compass of the P narrative is the logos itself, mind, we can propose that belief is as necessary a concept to 'beginning' as is will. Theologically belief can not be taken other than in relation to the identity of the Son; just as psychologically, and metapsychologically, it cannot be taken other than in relation to the conceptual categories or mind itself.


Hebrews


The Epistle To The Hebrews is one of the few New Testament books containing extended and explicit references to the P story of creation. It also recurs to Psalm 95.7-11:


It will be to the gospel of John in particular that we will attribute the conceptual, cognitive form of intentionality, faith. But prior that, we note the presentation in a New Testament text, which like the gospel of John, not only is concerned with the reality of faith, again like that gospel, recurs to the P creation narrative. Just as we found in the J narrative of creation, where we would otherwise least have expected them, the announcement of the two perceptual forms of intentionality, knowing and desire, since we associate these with the theology of immanence which is formally and fully given only in the messianic series, we find in Hebrews, again quite unexpectedly, the presentation of the conceptual, cognitive intentional mode, faith. It is unexpected for the same reason; namely that we would logically associate it with the creation narrative, as with the theology of transcendence, and the epistemology of the conceptual. But like the conative, conceptual form, will, it is not explicitly given in either the P or J narrative. The gospel of John as well as Hebrews more than makes up for this apparent omission. Once again also, this indicates the extensive relatedness of the two canons, and of what for our purposes here, are their specific contents; theologies of transcendence and immanence, and epistemologies of the conceptual and perceptual polarities of mind.

The gospel of John and The Epistle To The Hebrews share also a common metaphysical ground which may be broadly defined as Platonic. It is also often described as 'dualistic'. This may be generally true of Platonism and Middle Platonism, but it does not apply to the fourth gospel, if by it we mean the belief in two distinct realms, which have no means of interchange, no effective relation to one another. The very first 'sign' in John alerts us to the idea of process or becoming, and the same is confirmed by the last event of the messianic series. There is no abiding separation between the 'above and below', 'the heavens and the earth', transcendence and immanence. The isomorphism of the Days and the messianic events squarely proscribes this, as does any grasp of the logical affinity between polarity and analogy. The reiteration of the categoreal paradigm within each taxonomy, that of the conceptual forms and that of their perceptual counterparts, militates against the attribution of a Procrustean 'dualism' to John as to biblical metaphysics as a whole. Those Johannine texts such as the following, in which we see initially at least, evidence suggestive of so simplistic a conceptual framework, must be understood always in light of the isomorphism between the events of 'beginning' and the events of 'end'. This is both balanced and nuanced, robust and subtle:


These are the first of many such motifs in John which must be taken as referring to the essential rapport between the categories listed in the creation story and those which follow in the gospel. The quotation from Hebrews is party to this same schema. It explicitly names the Sabbath day and the concept of God's rest in keeping with the same. Therefore if faith looms almost as large in Hebrews as it does in John, this should cause no surprise in view of the logical consistency of the metaphysics which we are in the process of outlining. We shall treat in greater detail the presentation of faith in Hebrews in the discussion of the gospel of John, the last of the four gospels to be addressed. But it should by now be apparent that the two conscious, cognitive forms of intentionality are knowing and believing. As related elementary modes, the former perceptual, the latter conceptual, these stand to one another as do the conscious, conative forms, desiring and willing. These then are the four modes of conscious intentionality. In each case, that of the perceptual polarity of mind and that of its conceptual polarity, there are two modes; one conative, that is affective, emotive, or feeling mode and the other cognitive, that is epistemic, or thinking mode.

The conative, perceptual mode, is desiring. Every one of the six centres of perceptual consciousness, the subjects of the six messianic miracles, is susceptible of this form of intentionality. Thus the three forms of memory, and the three forms of imagination each possess their own distinct species of desire. Desire is at the same time, most itself, in the occasion of haptic memory. Thus sexual desire is the archetypal, sovereign, canonical, or essential form of desire. This is part of the doctrine of normativity.

The cognitive, perceptual mode is knowing. Here once more, each of the six perceptual forms of consciousness instantiates this form of intentionality. There is thus a modus cognoscendi expressed by each perceptual radical in turn, making for a total of six generic species of knowing. Knowing is as desiring is, a function of perceptual mind. The intrinsic expression of this particular mode is given by acoustic memory. Acoustic memory therefore is the single defining occasion of this mode of conscious intentionality. The product of acoustic memory will function as the canonical or sovereign form of knowing. It will be exemplary of knowing just as the product of haptic memory, sexual appetition, is of desiring.

Conceptual mind is the subject of the creation cycle, which exists in relation of logical analogy to the messianic cycle. The conative, conceptual mode is willing. This means that the three pure conceptual forms, and three forms of unity which are the conceptual categories depicted in the creation story, all in turn exhibit the conative, conceptual  mode of conscious intentionality, willing. All six conceptual categories act as occasions for the manifestation or exemplification of this conscious process, willing. Of these six expressions of will, that generated by the conceptual form space is the defining moment. The idea space is that  particular pure conceptual form which realizes the inherent nature of what we understand by the term willing.

The cognitive, conceptual mode is believing. Hence, as for willing, so for believing; there are in all six specific varieties of the mode of conscious intentionality, belief. That specific pure conceptual form mind, is the final exemplar of this form of intentionality. In other words, mind is the definitive occasion of the intentional process believing. Even so, all six conceptual categories are occasions for the instantiation of this process.


That there is a specific mode of conscious intentionality proper to each gospel, is a major thesis of this essay, and it stems from the proposition that the four forms of intentionality are related to time itself, and that the nature of mind is time 'transformed'; the process of one - time - becoming the process of the other - mind. This last idea, the theory of mind, belongs to the hermeneutic of The Transfiguration, and we shall discuss it in the final section of the essay. But there is yet is another aspect to consider. Each of the four forms of intentionality we have postulated thus far concern the conscious. Thus we have considered only that half of the creation taxonomy and of the messianic series which was described as being normative.  The four forms of intentionality we have enumerated briefly correspond only to the normative member of the analogous pairs manifest in the correlation cycles of 'beginning and end', creation and salvation, Days and messianic events. These are normative in virtue of being the intrinsic expressions of value, which in a given sense, is coterminous with 'God'.

There remain four corresponding modes of intentionality which we must describe as other-than-conscious, or aconscious. These arise from both sections of the categories which replicate the binary paradigm transcendence : immanence, such that the transcendent, conceptual forms admit three corresponding forms of unity, which appear to us as virtually immanent, and the three normative perceptual modes which are the three phenomenal forms of memory, admit three forms of imagination, which correlatively, are ostensibly transcendent. It is this aspect or order of consciousness we see portrayed consistently as ambiguous, and precisely the texts which so demonstrate it, whether creation rubrics, messianic miracles or healing miracles, which complete the account. The modes of intentionality will, desire, knowing and believing, therefore are each alike determinants of our conscious life. However, they each have a corresponding or complementary mode, an aconscious parallel. It is now necessary to give a summary account of each case, that is, of each form of intentionality which is the aconscious mode or form of intentionality corresponding to its conscious counterpart.

The reckoning here with the fourfold structure of the gospel is overtly psychological-epistemological. It diverges fundamentally from previous methods resting upon historical reasoning, 'the history of the tradition', to reckon with the form and nature of the gospel. We stress again and again that the same, psychology-epistemology, remains identical with Christology. The task of explicating mind, that is logos, the word, is indistinguishable from that of the doctrine of the identity and work of the Son. Hence no apology is made, nor need be made for the method pursued in this essay. It is overtly and irreducibly Christological  in its basic premise, that of the identification of the Son with the phenomenon mind or consciousness itself.

The formal intention in the isomorphism of the two textual cycles therefore squares with the fact that the normative occasions of conceptual and perceptual mind are just that; normative. Further modes of intentionality will be superfluous to need. So to the explication of haptic imagination, and indeed of any other radical of consciousness which is not an intrinsic bearer of value, in other words, which is non-normative, the existing modes of consciousness are more than adequate. Hence all four modes of aconscious intentionality are capable of exposition in terms of the extant elemental, radical, simple, normative modes, to wit: desiring, willing, believing, and knowing. These forms of conscious intentionality are equal to the task of explicating the modes of aconscious intentionality. Such is implicit in the apparent duplication of the form and content of the narratives. There is really no better way than this to explicate this aspect of the doctrine of mind which we encounter in Genesis and the gospel.

 

 2 THE ACONSCIOUS

In keeping with the parallel metaphors before us, those of light/darkness, and sun : moon, or day : night, (morning : evening), and so on, we will expect that each of the four forms of conscious intentionality has its analogous aconscious form. In practical terms, the former, the conscious modes, function as analogues of the four seasons of the solar cycle; the latter, the aconscious modes are analogous to the phases of the lunar cycle, which again has four distinct point-instants. These figures need not restrict the hermeneutic in that they will form a procrustean bed. They serve as hermeneutical prompts or cues. Thus for example, we shall argue that the time of The Transfiguration is congruent with the interval midday, due to the prevalence of the solar imagery in the texts, and the clear reference to the Day 1 rubric. This is warranted by the analogy which allows us to assign optic semeia to the various members of the series, and to extrapolate the theology of perception to the theology of the conceptual mind. In pressing the details of another analogy, that regarding the correspondence between waking conscious life, and the diurnal intervals during which the light is increasing up to the point of its zenith, represented by midday, and so by Transfiguration, and following this, formulating the analogy between the miracle at the wedding at Cana and the period centred about midnight, we shall put that the haptic memory constitutes a radical of mind, which due to its representative intentional mode, desire, structures the conscious order, and that correspondingly the haptic imagination by dint of the intentional mode proper to it, rightly belongs to the aconscious. There are very many and different aspects of temporal periodicity to which these same structures and their semeia are relevant. Thus the normative radicals, with which we have first dealt until now, include the three perceptual centers of mind which are its memory, and which are given in the mandala by the nocturnal optika, all belong to the conscious order.

A second point should be made a propos of nomenclature. A battery of theories of mind and hence doctrines of the other-than-conscious mind exist. The idea originated in antiquity, and as we shall see in the history of ideas in the west, is at least as old as Aristotle. The sheer variety of terms used to refer to this other-than-conscious mind may seem bewildering: unconscious, subconscious, nonconscious are just some. Here the use of the term aconscious is intended to emphasise the independence of the present hermeneutic. No system whether of Aristotle or Whitehead will be adopted here; instead various components from various systems or epistemologies will be used in the hermeneutic. The fundamental source for the doctrine put here remains biblical, as must necessarily be so for any epistemology/psychology which purports to be also a Christology.

Essentially, the above argument concerning the normative conceptual forms, and the normative forms of sentience, also describes the conscious mind, and its modes of (conscious) intentionality. That is, those radicals which are the intrinsic  or normative bearers of value constitute the conscious intentional mind. Thus the conceptual form space is in a certain sense responsible for the intentional mode will, even though each of the remaining five conceptual forms are occasions for the expression of this same process. We shall refine further on the relationship just denoted by the term 'responsible for'. We have described this close tie between the radical of consciousness and the intentionality as sovereign or canonical. The specific kind of willing generated by the conceptual form space, is definitive for that particular mode of intentionality. So the other occasions of willing also have about them something of this 'spatial' expression of the conation. That is, the other forms of willing all accept as their model or parent, what is definitively given in the case of the relation between the will and the conceptual form space.The same applies to the cognitive conceptual mode. Thus whereas mind is the radical or categoreal occasion of the process we denote by the words 'believing' and 'faith' and so on, but the remaining five conceptual forms share or adapt this. So if the concept of the body, or yet again, the concept of the symbolic masculine can and do act as the conceptual form space does in their particular expressions of will, then all of the remaining five conceptual forms take their cue from one particular conceptual form, that of mind, in their expression of the intentionality of belief. So the idea of space generates a particular species of belief, even though this is not the canonical and sovereign expression of this particular mode.

The same applies to the perceptual consciousness. Acoustic memory defines knowing, just as haptic memory defines desire. But the other five perceptual radicals of consciousness manifest these same modes in varying degrees. The last qualification is necessary, because it admits to consideration the various hierarchies; hierarchies of will, of faith, of knowing, and of desire. But the details of that need not here concern us. We must rather address the other half of the doctrine of mind. This is the theory of the aconscious. We shall deal with it in fairly summary form in order to present the categoreal schema in its entirety, which will later call for comment in relation to the study of specific gospels, and other texts of both canons. The picture thus far may be briefly summarised as follows:


But this image says nothing of that half of the creation narrative consisting of Days 4, 5, and 6,  accounting for the forms of unity, just as it omits half of the messianic miracles, the three miracles of 'virtual transcendence', accounting for the three forms of imagination. The components of mind addressed in these narratives must also be acknowledged, for they are indissolubly linked with other members of their kind within their series, and with their correlates belonging to the alternate series. We must therefore represent iconographically the full coherence of the structural patterns of 'beginning' and 'end'; both as these are within themselves, and as they are in relation to one another. The above image must be inclusive of the radicals constituting the aconscious. We shall revisit here several important factors which have to do with time, which we have already engaged, and yet again with the 'sign of Jonah' saying.

Firstly as to time, let us note that indeed only one half of the annual cycle is represented above by the conscious, that is, normative, order of mind as portrayed in the texts. We are utilising the template of the annual cycle due to the analogous relationship between the seven Days of the archaeological week, and the seven teleological messianic events. We have reduced the 'hebdomad', mentioned repeatedly in Hebrews in connection with the 'rest' of 'God', and this is central to the further interpretation of 'the sign of Jonah' and the link between the aconscious and death, the latter being suggested by the logion as well as by the references in Hebrews to kata/pausi/n. That is, we have opted to deal initially with Days of creation proper, and messianic miracles proper, leaving out of consideration for the sake of simpilcity the Sabbath-Eucharist parallels. The optic semeia signify each of the six members in both sixfold categories, conceptual and perceptual. These they arrange representatively according to the analogy, the isomorphism, obtaining between the two narrative cycles. So for example, the 'first' optic 'sign', the first member of the visible spectrum, 'red', indicates both the conscious conceptual radical space, tantamount to the event of beginning itself, and the aconscious perceptual radical acoustic imagination. It does so indistinguishably. This solves one immediate  problem, the representation of a total of twelve entities, since there are only six semeioptika in all, as we have omitted the Sabbath-Eucharist initially for the sake of simplicity.

First however it is essential to stress the presence in the iconographical model of the four cardinal point-instants. These are correlates to the specific ratios of conscious to aconscious orders in the gospels. We are firstly not as concerned with the Pneumatological categories. They indicate most importantly the process or graded transition from an initial to a final point-instant. They are these initial and final point-instants in the annual temporal cycle which, following the hermeneutic of Ezekiel 1 and 10 and subsequently those portions of The Apocalypse already cited, indicate for us the variation in the ratio of diurnal to nocturnal intervals, as they indicate the two solstices and the two equinoxes. They stand for the four cardinal point-instants of the year representatively of the gospels in their variation from one another. Their interpretation a propos of the doctrine of intentionality regards the division of consciousness into two orders: conscious and aconscious. As already put in the above iconography, that particular half of the annual cycle represented, signifies the conscious order. We have called it normative, since in every case, the three members of either of its halves are logically unequivocally defined in terms of the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence.

This means that the conscious mind is not simply the business of the pure conceptual forms, which would involve relegating the perceptual to a second rank. The perceptual forms of memory, and these include the haptic, which is responsible for the intentional mode desire, are constitutive of the conscious to an equal degree as are the pure conceptual forms. In other words, the conscious order is signified by the entire spectrum of semeioptika; it includes the signs for the nocturnal as well as the diurnal intervals. There is no direct analogical equation between day : night as analogous to conscious : aconscious, a process which will be repeated in the aconscious itself, which likewise will consist of the full spectrum of signifiers. This designation of the aconscious must be read against the  temporal references in 'the sign of Jonah logion', and are seminal to the theology of death, that is, to eschatological doctrine. Both the doctrine of intentionality and its origins in the radical constituents of mind as delivered to us in the creation taxonomy and the gospel narratives, are vital to understanding time and the theology of death, or what is the same thing, Christian eschatology.

Thus in the above paradigm we have applied the diurnal-nocturnal division of the messianic miracles, or again, what is the same, the 'morning and evening' pattern of the Days. This representation has resulted in an equal division of the conscious order in terms of both the conceptual and the perceptual. The immanent messianic miracles replicate the three analogues to the half of the twenty-four hour cycle in which the light is diminishing, whereas Days 1, 2 and 3 of creation stand as the diurnal intervals of the same. The point to note here is then that the figure of day-night is not mapped tout court directly onto the division conscious-aconscious, as if it were simply a matter of the difference between 'waking and sleeping' orders of mind or consciousness. For both are signified as present in the conscious, day and night, morning and evening. This makes for a much subtler doctrine. But even though the diurnal-nocturnal twenty-four hour cycle is indispensable to the final designation of both conceptual and perceptual categories by the semeioptika, the overarching template is not that of the diurnal-nocturnal. For the very good reason that the sevenfold schema will not at once fit squarely into the twelvefold, nor will it execute the hermeneutic of the precisely fourfold division of the gospel.

Those semeioptic signifiers in the above diagram which denote the perceptual conscious do indeed simultaneously mark nocturnal intervals so portrayed in the stories of immanent messianic miracles. Additionally, the semeioptika proper to the three transcendent miracles which are correlated with the three transcendent rubrics of the creation story denoting the three pure conceptual forms, logically serve to assign the latter to specific diurnal intervals as well as to the corresponding quarter of the annual cycle, that of summer. But the more important function here served by the semeioptika of the perceptual conscious is to figure the spring quarter. In effect then, we have first to reckon with the fourfold pattern of the annual cycle. The two quarters of which represented above depicting the conscious order in terms of the annual cycle, are thus those of spring and summer. In either case the initial phase is of the same type, conative, and the final phase also, for it is cognitive. The graded transition is in both cases from conative to cognitive as for the forms of intentionality.

Here then we have put in summary iconographical form the very first part of the doctrine of intentionality or consciousness. We have introduced the four elemental, normative modes of intentionality, as they are affiliated with their normative radicals or categories, and associated these with the four cardinal point-instants of the annual temporal compass. These are desire, knowing, will and belief, which are innately linked with the categories haptic memory, acoustic memory, space and mind respectively. As simple as it may seem, there is a great deal of information in the above iconography, and we must add yet more to it in order to set out in its entirety the categoreal schema as this applies to the doctrine of intentionality, the form of the gospels, and the beginnings at least of a Christian understanding of time, including eschatological doctrine. What remain to be added now are the six categories which delineate the aconscious order. These are as follows:

We must now outline some of the major issues concerning the aconscious, and its relation to the conscious. We need to recall that in the case of the pure conceptual forms, transcendence is thorough, pure, unmitigated. These entities absolutely and unequivocally transcend the corresponding immanent occasions in which they are also co-opted; namely mind : body, male : female, space : time, and these are ambiguous, ambivalent, equivocal as to the categoreal distinction, transcendence : immanence. That is, they are immanent occasions of what are otherwise transcendent entities, and so they manifest transcendence ambivalently. They are non-normative, and extrinsic as to the axiological functioning of mind. The identity of mind, consists in its absolute transcendence of the form of unity mind : body. So whereas mind in itself persists, there can be no body in itself, that is, no body which is without mind. The same applies to the neighbouring pure conceptual forms, the symbolic masculine and space.

Now the corollary characteristic equivocation applies to the forms of imagination in respect of immanence. For immanence proper is the necessary conjunction of memory and imagination.  Here conjunction is normative. Thus just as there is no memory without imagination, whether it be haptic, optic, or acoustic, there may be imagination in each of these modes of sentience, which at least seeks the transcendence of memory. The forms of imagination are therefore transcendent versions of what are otherwise irreducibly immanent entities - the modes of sentience. Like the forms of unity, which are not truly, not purely transcendent, the forms of imagination are neither truly nor purely immanent. As such they too are non-normative expressions of their native forms of value; they express their values extrinsically.

Both these taxa of radicals the forms of unity and the forms of imagination, inhabit a twilight world where their definition according to the categoreal paradigm is problematic; for they manifest features of both transcendence and immanence, or what is the same thing, they confer real ambiguity upon consciousness. We therefore described the former as categories of 'virtual transcendence', and the latter as categories of 'virtual immanence'. They are essential to the comprehensive Christian understanding of the nature of consciousness, just as they are to Christology.

Now this ambiguity thus must be a primary feature of aconscious mind. For everything we have previously discussed in relation to the intrinsic conscious mind was recognisably either unambiguously transcendent - the pure conceptual forms, or unambiguously immanent - the forms of memory. Hence the first thing to note concerning the Christian doctrine of mind which is other than conscious mind, is its characteristic ambiguity, its paradoxical nature. We have emphasised this at every turn in the discussion of the forms of unity and the forms of imagination. The radicals mind : body, masculine : feminine, space : time, the three forms of unity, and haptic imagination, optic imagination and acoustic imagination, the three forms of imaginal sentience, impart to mind everything that can be subsumed under the description 'ambiguous'. We shall further elaborate upon this ambiguity later.

Before we approach the issues surrounding the aconscious forms of intentionality, we must clarify one thing concerning the relation of both the conscious and aconscious forms of intentionality to the radicals of mind - the three conceptual forms, the three forms of unity, the three forms of memory and the three forms of imagination. In other words, what is the precise relation of the various forms of intentionality to these twelve constituent entities of mind? We previously indicated this relation by saying that the radicals are responsible for the forms of intentionality. It is necessary to elaborate this relationship. We have already indicated also that a special relationship obtains between a specific radical and a specific mode of intentionality, for example, that between haptic memory and desire, or acoustic memory and knowing, or space and will, or mind and belief. Such a special relationship is denoted by the words 'canonical' or 'sovereign'. But This does not prevent that the same form of intentionality covers all six members of its class, meaning that there are in all six generic occasions or expressions of each, desire, knowing, willing and believing, identifiable on the basis of the relative categories.

It may seem from the previous content that one mode of intentionality is exclusively specific to just one of the twelve radicals. That is because the series of six radicals, now conceptual, mental, or ideal, and now sentient, perceptual, or physical, establish a hierarchy among themselves in response to the intentional modes. The radicals are one or the other; either conceptual or physical. There are just six of each; and even though we must be alert to the ambiguous nature of the three forms of unity and the three forms of imagination, for they do not stand as clearly and certainly as transcendent and immanent respectively, they are nonetheless members of those very categories. Taxonomically at the first level, the forms of imagination are immanent as belonging to the perceptual polarity, and just so, the forms of unity are transcendent as belonging to the conceptual polarity. This logical fact does not contravene their innately equivocal disposition. It entails the recognition that perceptual forms of intentionalityand conceptual forms of intentionality apply indiscriminately as to the division between the conscious and aconscious.

This means that every one of the conceptual elements of mind, the three pure conceptual forms and no less, the three forms of unity, adopts a certain conceptual mode of intentionality. Thus in the case of belief, a particular variety of belief will be the product of each of these six entities. There will be a total of six different species of belief, each one pertaining to a  particular transcendent category - mind, masculine, space, mind : body, male : female, space : time. The same will apply for all modes of intentionality, whether of the conscious or aconscious order. And since there are two conscious modes of intentionality relative to the conceptual polarity of mind - namely belief and will - and yet another two,  the two aconscious intentional modes of the conceptual order, which we are yet to discuss, there will be twenty four such categories. There will be twenty four expressions of the conceptual mind; the product of the four modes of intentionality, two conscious and two aconscious, and the six conceptual forms.

The same applies to perceptual mind. We have introduced only the two modes desire and knowing, which are the property of the sentient or physical polarity of mind. These are both conscious forms of intentionality. Thus we shall have to reckon with six archetypal forms of desire, and six archetypal forms of knowing. And furthermore, after we will have elaborated the modes of intentionality which are aconscious rather than conscious, there will be similarly six of one type and again six of another, for there are two aconscious modes of intentionality which correspond to the conscious modes.

If therefore the above discussion gave the impression that there was one only 'archetypal' form of desire, for example, that notion must be discarded. Haptic memory establishes a centre of consciousness which presents itself as the 'archetypal' form of desire. In terms of a hierarchy of desire, such a contention is tenable. There is a sense in which haptic memory is the definitive form of desire. But another five expressions of the same mode of intentionality, resting on the other five sentient radicals of consciousness, exist. There are six archetypal forms of desire, and the erotic as established by the single radical haptic memory, is hierarchically at least, the paragon of these.

The same applies in each case. Thus where we spoke of belief vis-à-vis the radical mind, any impression that this is the only occasion of belief must be corrected. It is not. There are in all six such occasions, for there are six entities comparable to mind, the six categories of transcendence. Mind is the occasion of belief to an ultimate degree, just as haptic memory is the physical radical expressive of desire to the highest degree. This is the doctrine of the hierarchy of forms. We should be aware of this in the following discussion and as applying to the previous one. For whether conscious forms of intentionality or aconscious forms of the same is at stake, the result is the same. Every mode of intentionality has six expressions according to the doctrine of mind given in the creation and salvation theologies, the stories of 'beginning and end'.

But equally, every mode of intentionality organises either the six conceptual categories or the six perceptual categories hierarchically. This organisation institutes the basis of the serial orders we find in the creation story and the messianic series. It provides our method in establishing the aconscious modes of intentionality. So we are about to examine the two sentient modes haptic imagination and acoustic imagination, and the two forms of unity soma (mind : body) and space : time, with a view to understanding the Christian doctrine of the aconscious. These four categories all share the common axiological basis of being non-normative. They do not express their respective forms of value intrinsically. So according to the hierarchy of forms, they define the parameters of the various modes of aconscious intentionality. We need to understand the texts delineating these four radicals. These include the two passages from the creation series and the two messianic miracle stories; but equally the four pericopae within the Markan healing miracles whose subjects are the same four radicals. These stories we have in part already examined, they are: The Deaf Mute Boy (Mark 9.14-28) - acoustic imagination; The Leper (1.40-45) - haptic imagination; The Haemorrhagic Woman (5.24b-34) - space : time; and Jairus' Daughter (5.21-24a, 35-43) - mind : body.

It is necessary to recall here the rationale for the precise number of modes, and the number of exemplary or paradigmatic occasions of these - just four. We mean of course by the latter, the fact that each of the four modes, whether conscious or aconscious, has one and only one paramount expression or occasion, one sovereign or canonical exemplification. In the case of desire, this is the perceptual category haptic memory as noted; in the case of belief it is the conceptual form mind.These are the two conscious Christological forms of intentionality. If in all there are four modes of conscious intentionality and an equal number of modes of aconscious intentionality, the tally will be eight. This means that each subset or class of three radicals has only two definitive or paradigmatic occasions. Thus in the case of the pure conceptual forms, that is mind, symbolic masculine and space, there are only two forms of intentionality, namely will and belief, which express one of these radicals to the utmost degree. We have presented the argument that for belief, this is mind. This means, that mind is the ultimate occasion for the mode of (conscious) intentionality belief.

Mind, as conceptual form, or pure idea, supplies the process of belief with its definitive reality. The other pure conceptual form from this triad, space, is the occasion for the canonical expression of will. So we must emphasise that one of the three radicals, here pure conceptual forms, does not express a given intentional mode to its maximum. For where there are in all three radicals, there are only two intentional modes capable of definition to such a degree. In each subset, that radical exempted from the final or definitive expression of a mode of intentionality is depicted more or less as a copy of another. So in the previous example, the Day 3 rubric, that of the symbolic masculine, we have a text which follows fairly closely that of Day 2. The same motif water, and the same concept spatial expansiveness, recur. In the gospels, correspondingly we have the two miracles at sea, with the apparent 'copy' being that of The Stilling Of The Storm. In the feeding miracle series, one event, The Feeding Of The Four Thousand, again appears ostensibly at least, as a copy of the prior miracle of loaves and fish.

A major part of the explication of this apparent 'copying', or 'duplication' of a rubrical text or messianic miracle story has to do with the fact that the hierarchical organisation of the eight modes of intentionality always leaves one member in each subset unaccounted for in terms of the formal tetradic character of the modes themselves, a topic to which we shall return in the later discussion of the Pneumatological texts. Of course in each case there is always an initial member, a radical least expressive of the particular mode of intentionality. So in the previous example, that of belief, space is the mental occasion least susceptible of this very mode of consciousness for its class, that of pure conceptual forms. There is some variance, some real difference, as between conation and episteme, so also between the conceptual forms space and mind. The conceptual radical space is properly and canonically suited to the intentionality of willing; that of mind to believing. The symbolic masculine supersedes  space in its degree of fittedness to belief, and finally mind constitutes the final definitive occasion for the same process, belief. Where however will is concerned, the process is reversed. For here the conceptual form mind establishes only an initiating opportunity and the one least susceptible of the actual process willing, according to its taxonomic status. It is superseded by the conceptual form symbolic masculine, which is in turn superseded by the conceptual form space.

The conceptual form symbolic masculine thus once again remains betwixt and between; for in neither process, that of belief nor that of will, does it achieve the final expression of the mode of intentionality. Hence the apparently 'duplicate' radicals of consciousness - the symbolic masculine, male : female, optic memory and optic imagination - whose texts look so much like doubles of an original, these elements remain incapable of expressing either end of the hierarchic spectrum, conative or cognitive, to their maximum degree. They do not constitute either the initial nor final phase of the triadic relations between intentional forms.

The first of the texts we must review we have already discussed at length, those  of The Transfiguration Of Jesus,  and The Leper. The intention of these is the same - the portrayal of the centre or radical of consciousness we refer to as haptic imagination. So it is most appropriate here, at the outset of proposing the doctrine of the aconscious, to list the entire twelvefold series of healing miracles in its relations to the categories of Days and messianic events.



We have already utilised stories of healing in this study, even those from the gospel of John. Because both cycles mesh as to the categories of transcendence and immanence, this is a standard part of our procedure. In understanding the theology of the aconscious, the healing miracle series comes very much to our assistance. For this cycle accepts as its premise the entirety of the two related cycles, 'beginning and end'. Mark's twelve or so healing miracle stories replicate the categories of both cycles - creation and salvation. There are six such narratives which deal with perceptual consciousness, and six which reformulate the categoreal forms of the Genesis narrative. We referred previously to the first set, they are as follows:

1. The Series Of Healing Miracles - Perceptual


The Cleansing Of A Leper (Mark 1.40-5) - haptic imagination

The Man With A Withered Hand (3.1-6) - haptic memory

A Deaf And Dumb Man (7.32-37) - acoustic memory

A Blind Man At Bethsaida (8.22-26) - optic imagination

The Boy With An Unclean Spirit (9.14-29) - acoustic imagination

Blind Bartimaeus (10.46-52) - optic memory


2. The Series Of Healing Miracles - Conceptual

The six miracle stories which reiterate the categoreal forms of the creation narrative, that is the conceptual consciousness are as follows:


The Man With An Unclean Spirit (Mark 1.21-28) - space

The Paralytic (2.1-12) - mind

The Gerasene Demoniac (5.1-20) - symbolic masculine

Jairus' Daughter (5.21-24a, 35-43) - mind : body

The Haemorrhagic Woman (5.24b-34) - space : time

The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter - (7.24-31) - symbolic feminine (male : female)

The only miracle story omitted from the above lists is that of Simon Peter's Mother-In-Law, (Mark 1.29-31), which is uncommonly cursory, even for Mark. Effectively it counts as a preamble to the summary or general statement about healing (Mark 1.32-34), of which there are other examples in the gospel. The story of Peter's Mother-In-Law could be seen as a statement of the category of the symbolic feminine. However it is preferable to leave it from reckoning due to its brevity, and its dependence on the healing-summary type of statement. An argument for its inclusion in the gospel of Mark, which attends to the fact of a deliberate editorial parallel between the first three episodes, The Demoniac In The Synagogue, Simon Peter's-Mother-In-Law, and The Leper, with the later tripartite catena consisting of The Gerasene Demoniac, Jairus' Daughter, and The Haemorrhagic Woman, will reveal that Peter's Mother-In-Law, and The Demoniac In The Synagogue, have together been edited with this same catena in mind. The editing of The Leper appears to have departed from this procedure, it may have been edited earlier still. But at any rate The Mother-In-Law of Peter is possibly an early attempt to itemise or include within the twelvefold schema, an event typologically and taxonomically representative of the category symbolic feminine. The later story of The Syrophoenician Woman, which stands apart from the catena, while obviously belonging to it, better fulfills this purpose. Hence, we omit from consideration the former, especially due to its brevity, accepting in lieu of it, The Syrophoenician Woman as the theological text which proposes the category symbolic feminine.

And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." (Mark 8.34-38)

If we revert time and time again to the text of The Transfiguration, that is because it is basic to Christology and hence to the doctrine of mind. Clearly the tradition was important in the eyes of the early church, for which reason we have a version of it in an epistle (2 Peter 1.16-18). In a previous discussion of the pericope, part 2 of the second part of Miracles As Metaphysics: A Hermeneutic of Mark, 2 TheMessianic Miracles: A Hermeneutic, we spoke of 'Desire Versus 'Desire'?' That discussion drew comparisons between both Christologies, The Transformation of Water Into Wine, and The Transfiguration. The encapsulation of the second term in inverted commas was intended to redefine the concept of desire in the light of haptic imagination as opposed to its formulation in haptic memory. It was also our first foray into the question before us - that of the mode of (aconscious) intentionality proper to haptic imagination.

Such a comparison stems from the obvious complementarity of the two Christological miracles. Both narratives gravitate about the concept of love, and Mark's reference to Jesus as "my beloved Son" (or "my Son, my/the Beloved") make this all the more plain (Mark 9.7). To understand part of the first Christology contained in the story of the miracle at Cana is to understand the psychology of desire, since this is the normative member of the pair haptic memory-haptic imagination, and the normative occasion of desire proper, so the same is true of the latter. For the concept of love stands as a common denominator for both Christological miracles, and identifies their shared axiological identity. It acts as a major signifier of haptic mind in its entirety. For that reason we introduced the theme of desire in the previous study.

Haptic Imagination Desiring

The mode of intentionality, desire, is effectively one of the conscious mind, because it belongs essentially to those radicals of consciousness which are normative as to value, and are intrinsically immanent: haptic memory, optic memory and acoustic memory, in degrees of a graded hierarchy. As for desire itself, it is appropriated by the aconscious radicals - here haptic imagination - even though its origins are in the conscious form, haptic memory. This will be the case for every mode of intentionality, a fact which we have constantly emphasised. There will thus be conscious and aconscious forms of both desire and knowing, even where these two modes of intentionality are proper to the conscious itself. Conversely, the conceptual modes, will and belief, belong as conscious forms of intentionality, to the conscious - that is to the normative occasions of transcendence, the three pure conceptual forms. Nevertheless, the three forms of unity also appropriate these modes. The conceptual aconscious, the three radicals mind : body, space : time, and male : female, function as occasions for the conscious modes - both will and belief. The perceptual aconscious does the same vis-a-vis the conscious perceptual modes - knowing and desiring. The mode of 'desire' proper to haptic imagination is clear - it is the desire for purity of the kind manifested here, as elsewhere in the literature, under the figure of  'garments' (ta\ i(ma/tia Mark 9.3) of Jesus, the figure for the skin.

The 'derma', the body's external 'covering' ('tent') is the haptikon or haptic semeion for this radical of perceptual mind. We instinctively associate the skin with touch, and so with purity and impurity. What this pericope articulates as a Christology of transcendence and the meaning of the figure 'the Son of man', which we have equated with the symbolic masculine, evokes the fullest scope of religious aspiration, the cost of which is the forfeiture of secular goods,  one's family, and everything subsumable under the headings 'life' and 'the whole world'. Conscious desire simpliciter which pertains to the radical haptic imagination is nothing less than the quest for self-realisation in self-transcendence. It is the desire for purity, the desire which sits at the heart of a variety of religious traditions, in a sense, the least of which must be either Judaism or Islam precisely because of their lack of just such ascetic idealism, and their consequent commitment by default to forms of secular idealism. I do not mean to suggest that Judaic traditions were and are not concerned with purity and impurity. Indeed they were and remain so pre-occupied. But clearly the miracle story here speaks of the transcendence of the erotic form of appetition. There is all too little evidence of such a concern in either religious system, Judaisms or the Islam traditions, equivalent to its prevalence in Christianity.

Thus the desire which stems from haptic imagination as the desire for purity, is explicitly given in both miracle stories, The Transfiguration and The Leper. The form of actual desire, desire simpliciter which is the product of haptic imagination is certain and a recognisable trend within both major Eastern religious traditions, those of Sanatana Dharma and Buddhism. The phrase 'the multitude with his disciples' certainly has something about it of the universalistic. It should be taken with the mention in the miracle story itself of the two personae 'Elijah with Moses'. Such personae were ready at hand to a writer steeped in the Judaic religion, and if neither can be said to represent the ascetic tradition, so inimical to mainstream Jewish religion with its emphasis on marriage and the family, then that initial problem is overcome by the later elision of John the baptiser first with Elijah and next with 'the Son of man' (9.11-13). For John is nothing short of  peremptorily ascetic. Mark's  narrative, The Baptism Of Jesus (Mark 1.9-11), which includes  the ascription to Jesus of the same title "my beloved Son" (or "my Son, my/the Beloved"), thus resonates loudly with The Transfiguration. The term 'multitudes' (to\n o!xlon)  cannot refer simply to the narrow circle of Judaic religion, just as Elijah/John the baptiser cannot be restricted in its meaning to either the mythical figure nor to John, nor to both only. Thus while haptic imagination is an occasion of desire simpliciter, a desire which is in one sense the very antithesis of actual, canonical, sovereign, desire, since it reconfigures the erotic to the point of subverting it altogether, it is also responsible for a form or mode of aconscious intentionality which is itself cardinal, or canonical, and stands in analogous relation to belief as does the  aconscious to the conscious.


The words of this introduction and the miracle story itself would be prophetic for the Christian tradition in the centuries to come, with the historical manifestation of this form of appetition in the monastic traditions of the Christian East and West, even as The Transformation Of Water Into Wine and the subsequent Johannine narrative, The Cleansing Of the Temple would be for the supersession of the same in the historical event known as the Reformation. But not prophetic only. For, remarkably enough, just as the combination of Moses and Elijah portend not only Torah and prophets respectively, as personae they inhabit juxtaposed domains of past and future. This introduction therefore, like the meaning of the actual event, lays claim to the wholesale tendency in human religious consciousness towards purification and renunciation, and looks back equally as it looks forward. Both Christological messianic miracles are momentous then in this respect.

Haptic Imagination Knowing

We will in a future part of the hermeneutic, delineate the specific varieties of  'knowing', 'desiring', and so on, which proper to each of the perceptual radicals. The precise definition of each and every radical in terms of each of the four modes of conscious and aconscious intentionality will assist in their demarcation. Even though that undertaking in detail lies beyond the scope of this essay, we can see fairly plainly from the quotations above, replete as they are with references to discourse, that haptic imagination as a modus cognoscendi or mode of knowing, is to be linked with those episteme broadly described by discourse itself; episteme defined as 'linguistic', 'semiotic', 'semantic' and so on. These will constitute the epistemic (cognitive) range of this perceptual radical, rendering it consonant with the intentional mode proper to haptic imagination itself, as we are now about to see.




Every perceptual radical has its own expression of desire and, since it has its own expression of knowing, it has thus its own expression of the desire for reason. The intentional mode of which haptic imagination is the final expression is thus in a certain sense one of 'desire', but desire other than, even if necessarily related to, sexual desire, the product of haptic memory and the ultimate occasion of desire simpliciter. It is intimately related to the mode of knowing just referred to.

That aconscious form of intentionality which is specifically the product of haptic imagination, with its conative quest for purity, is clearly related to the process of knowing. That is, its object is "'my beloved Son'" (o( ui(ov mou o( a)gaphto/v). Whitehead puts it thus: "The ages of faith are the ages of rationalism." (1930:73) The religious quest, the aspiration for the complete purification of the self from the self qua actual desire, which inevitably mires it, has historically existed in tandem with the creative advance of culture, and the general advance of reason. Religious institutions in the East and West have historically always been centres of learning and cultural advancement for this very reason. The ascetic ideal as the outcome of aconscious affective intentionality is at its most effective when allied with the quest for understanding. Nothing so concentrates the mind as a particular object which stands before it  as yet unknown and which it nevertheless desires with a force equivalent to the force of sexual desire. All of this is conceived in the story of the last messianic miracle.

Perhaps no other miracle story raises as many questions as does this one. It is shrouded in mystery, the very thing envisioned by the cloud, and yet there is the clearest intention on the part of the witnesses to comprehend the event, and on the part of the traditores to convey its meaning, the clearest desire to know. This then is the effect in the aconscious and conscious mind of the perceptual radical haptic imagination. It is the feeling or appetition towards intellectual gratification - the desire for reason or logos itself, and for its own sake. Such an entity can be conceived as the attempt by mind or consciousness to grasp, handle, feel, touch, prehend things by means of naming them. Language will in large measure be attributable to this perceptual form, haptic imagination, just as it will be to the conceptual form mind as is tacitly given by the identity of the logos from whom the radical haptic imagination, and mode of intentionality alike, the desire-to-know, both accrue.

Having just previously observed that the normative occasions of conceptual and perceptual awareness are in all six, and that furthermore one of each kind of these is clearly given in the texts as an ostensible duplicate, the one in both cases which refers to the identity of The Holy Spirit, we know that only four elemental modes of intentionality occur. The ambiguity native to the aconscious, and hence to its own modes of intentionality coupled with these observations, therefore justifies our description of the mode of aconscious intentionality proper to haptic imagination in terms which we have already employed. We can say thus that the desire for reason itself is the same as the desire-to-know. This is nothing new to psychology. The first mention of such a form of consciousness comes in Aristotle, at the very beginning of Metaphysics. That it is fundamental to Christian doctrine as to practice and further to culture, is apparent in the story of Jesus' Transfiguration.

This mode of intentionality lends itself to the perceptual polarity of mind in its entirety. So while its full exemplification belongs to haptic imagination, in varying degrees all forms of perceptual mind are capable of its manifestation, including of course haptic memory. Haptic memory is not simply concerned with erotic desire. It has its appropriate form of 'knowing', and consequently must be susceptible of the intentional mode 'desire-to-know'. The figure 'six' in the introduction of the narrative, reminds us certainly of the analogous relation between the conceptual and perceptual radicals of mind, of which there are six each. But it posits also The Transfiguration itself  in its function as the last of the perceptual forms - haptic imagination - clearly in context. The serial order of the messianic miracles and the mention of this figure are together the clearest argument that the aconscious motivating force portrayed here, the one which seeks intellectual satisfaction on a par with the erotic compulsion towards physical gratification, is susceptible of each and every mode of perceptual consciousness. Thus all six perceptual episteme, or modus cognoscendi, each of the six kinds of knowing, is established is prone to this intentional form. Whatever can be known, can be desired to be known. The objective content of knowing is equally susceptible of our intellectual desire.

One aspect of this seriality which can be mentioned here in passing, relates to a strain of developmental psychology throughout the gospels. We shall see everywhere in this study the close connectedness between time and mind. Thus one avenue for the hermeneutic of the messianic miracles will address the basic tenet of such psychology - namely that certain forms of consciousness are given as due to certain phases of one's life. The placing of the story of Transfiguration last, where it stands in clear contradistinction to the first event, the miracle at Cana which roundly posits the reality of sexual love and the concept of desire simpliciter, not only postulates the corresponding difference between these as perceptual forms of consciousness, it posits as well the modes of intentionality which are their inherent  or necessary functions in the same pattern. Thus if the desire-to-know stands in some sense at opposite remove from desire itself, that is, if intellectual desire and sexual desire can be juxtaposed in the serial organisation of the miracle series, part of its hermeneutic must raise the issue of the trajectory of the life course, with its changing emphases. It will be only through time that the entire spectrum of what interests us as persons will be able to achieve its fullest satisfaction.

We should enter here a rider against any polemic concerning the arrogation to older and to aged persons of this mode of appetition, at the expense of the young. The Daughter Of Jairus, the healing miracle which clearly connects to The Transformation Of Water Into Wine, is described as having been 'twelve years of age' (Mark 5.42). We have stressed that all immanent radicals of consciousness are necessarily conjunct with their transcendent complements. This means of course, that haptic memory must comprise haptic imagination, while the inverse is not the case. There is no haptic memory sans haptic imagination. The same applies to the modes of intentionality which are necessary to the cardinal radicals. The erotic form of appetition always has its intellectual component. We are familiar enough with the Old Testament usage in Hebrew of the verb 'to know' in this sense of 'carnal knowledge' so-called. That said, we must also allow the complete independence of the aconscious mode from its correlate. There is, even if it occurs in a qualified sense, the sense arising from the equivocal, ambivalent, ambiguous nature of a 'transcendent' member of a series of categoreally immanent entities, a sense in which haptic imagination exists in itself, disjunctively from any trace of haptic memory.

The very same principle applies to modes of intentionality. Those which are categoreally immanent must obtain in conjunction with their transcendent counterparts.  Accordingly then, there is in the same sense precisely, a mode of aconscious intentionality which likewise obtains in itself; this is the intentional mode the desire-to-know. We shall elaborate this doctrine as we proceed. Here we encounter the first example of the four modes of aconscious intentionality which stand as counterparts to the four conscious modes. Hence sexual desire, desire proper or simpliciter as we have referred to it, must be juxtaposed from the point of view of the life-course, that is of time itself, to the desire-to-know, intellectual desire. And this entails the complementarity of a conscious form of intentionality (desire) to an aconscious form (desire-to-know). The former will prevail as a dominant pattern of emotive experience during the first stages of one's life, and the latter during the latter. Such is the obvious delivery of the arrangement of the miracle stories before us. Even so, it will be apparent that the former must include the latter precisely due to immanence.  Hence sexual or erotic desire, necessarily enlists the very form of appetition known as the desire-to-know, even though the latter can and must persist in itself and for itself alone.  If this seems to obviate its identity, then so be it. Identity as such belongs to transcendence, and such identity as immanence is susceptible of, must always be second order identity compared to that of transcendence.


We have  noted just now the sort of aconscious intentionality which answers to the description conative-perceptual. Haptic imagination is defined as taxonomically or categoreally immanent; even though it involves non-sensuous perception, and possesses characteristics which align it with transcendence, it remains determined as immanent, that is as a perceptual form. Hence the affective or conative mode proper to it is on a par with that of haptic memory. In the first place, it is a species or variety of 'desire'. However it is desire of an order other than erotic desire, being the desire-to-know. Both expressions 'desire' and 'know' evoke the perceptual polarity. Desiring simpliciter and knowing simpliciter occur in virtue of perception. Moreover, we must concede the recognition which accords to the initial term of the compound in the expression 'desire-to-know'. If this is not the same thing as 'desire' simpliciter, then neither is it the same thing as 'knowing'. As a species of desire, it is affective in kind. Knowing is not affective but cognitive. These points must be made clear. We shall in a subsequent section of this essay, clarify  some of the differences between the conscious and aconscious with reference to the ambiguity native to the latter.

This makes our future procedure in the discussion of aconscious intentionality all the clearer. In establishing the first of the aconscious forms of intentionality, we have also set down certain parameters for what is to follow. The remaining three modes must cohere in conformity with the four forms of conscious intentionality. This does not mean only that two of the four with which we are now dealing will function as cognitive and two as conative. True enough, this pattern obtains for aconscious modes as it does for the conscious modes. There exists an appetitive or conative sort in each polarity, conceptual and perceptual, and correspondingly an intellectual or epistemic sort of each of the same two kinds.

The aconscious modes will stand in one-to-one relationships with their counterparts. In the case just noted therefore, desire subtends to desire-to-know the relationship implicit in the complementarity of the first and last messianic miracles which account for the centres of consciousness haptic memory and haptic imagination respectively. The latter two perceptual modes are the respective 'beginning and end' of the former, the intentional modes. Both are 'Christological' modes proper to logos ensarkos, or perceptual consciousness; the first being a conscious process of intentionality and the latter an aconscious process.

There are of course two 'Christological' conceptual forms, those of logos, that is logos asarkos or transcendent mind, the pure conceptual form, and mind : body, the form of unity. As for the latter, we can see immediately that soma or mind : body is tolerably close to the form of sentience just mentioned, haptic memory, and that it realises transcendence equivocally. Due to this ambivalence, comparable to that of the equivocal realisation of immanence by haptic imagination, it will determine aconscious mind, and will give rise to a form of intentionality which must stand to belief just as the desire-to-know stands to desire. We can on the basis of the triune structures inherent in both textual cycles, begin to understand the various relationships between the various radicals themselves and their proper forms of intentionality.

The relationship of desire-to-know to belief is already entailed by the clearest relation between haptic imagination and mind. Both centres of consciousness identify the transcendent Son. Mind does so unequivocally, that is normatively, since it is a pure conceptual form. Haptic imagination does so ambiguously as noted. The modes of intentionality native to these are respectively the conscious one of believing and the aconscious one of desiring-to-know. Since both radicals function in their respective series as identifying the transcendent Son, both can be signified as above by the same optikon, or optic semeion, that of yellow, or as we may say 'gold'. It is to this essential relation between these two psychological modes, that the quotation from Whitehead about faith and reason also testifies. The relation between these two particular psychological modes, and others which likewise conform to the analogy of  'beginning' and 'end', must later occupy us. Certainly the clearest connectedness each of these modes maintains with the other will influence our understanding of them. It may indeed surprise us to realise just how closely the gospel posits both factors of our psychological experience. Believing is pictured here as in the very closest proximity with the phenomenon of intellectual curiosity, that is with intellectual desire. A fuller examination of the emerging doctrine of mind will enable us to further put this relationship, for certainly that is already guaranteed by the texts, one whose logical foundation is analogy, the method original to metaphysics.

Other parameters which will have already settled part of our future course must now be observed. There is simply no need to introduce more terms. The four radical  or cardinal states of intentionality - knowing, desiring, believing and willing - are just that. Such must follow from the doctrine of the normativity of the conceptual forms and  perceptual forms which are their essential exponents. There need be no unnecessary multiplication of terms. The verbs 'desire' and 'know' denote (conscious) mental processes or forms of intentionality. We have compounded them to introduce a third such entity: 'desire-to-know'. We repeat, this is identical with neither simple (radical) form of intentionality. That is, the desire-to-know is completely other than either process, 'desiring' or 'knowing'. Nor does it refer to second order desire so-called by certain schools of contemporary philosophical psychology.  It means what it says:the impetus given by a perceptual radical of mind, namely haptic imagination, whose objective is understanding, meaning, in a word, the Word itself, logov.

Furthermore the term 'desire-to-know' does not posit a special relationship between the two. That is, it is not another name for 'desiring and knowing'. We shall assess more clearly this relationship later. Indeed there is one, for both are pure perceptual modes. Both concern forms of memory, the first haptic, the second acoustic, which are normative for their class or taxon, purely immanent, (purely perceptual) categories. In every case where there is a pair of such modes - two pure perceptual modes, two pure conceptual modes, two modes of imaginal sentience, two modes produced by the two modal (essential) forms of unity - in each of these cases, a special relationship obtains. This devolves upon the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Desire-to-know is intelligible as that process which issues in knowing. There is an emerging pattern at work here, which involves the interplay between conscious and aconscious intentional processes, and of which we can speak in terms of supervenience. One mode supervenes upon another according to the dictates of the principle of causality. Thus will and desire, both conscious intentional modes, issue in supervenient intentional modes belonging to the aconscious. In the present case case, the desire-to-know is itself aconscious, and its supervening mode, obviously knowing, is conscious. In a sure enough sense the initial verb 'desire' is another name for cause. All conative modes share this feature - all are causal. To speak of will or of desire, is to speak of the conscious and aconscious motivating forces in human and subhuman awareness. The difference is one of the categoreal distinction between ideas or conceptual forms in the case of will, and percepta in the case of desire. Party to this self-same difference, is the temporal vector aboriginal to each. Desire in its elemental, normative, and therefore conscious occasions, consists in terms of sentient memory. Its objective is always the retrieval of some thing, state, property of things, relation and so on. In other words, it is always clearly the quest for recurrence of something already settled, actualised, determined. To desire what in some sense has not already been, is categoreally not possible. This is already vouched for by 'memory'.

With will, a conative function of conceptual forms, and this includes the three forms of unity, it is surely otherwise. Will projects the self forward towards some future end, or state, which remains not as yet actualised. Pure conceptual ideas are always of this nature - space, mind and the symbolic masculine - they are as such, potentialities for consciousness, but no less real for that. Their corresponding forms of unity lend them actuality; even so, the transcendent status of the space of space : time, and the mind of mind : body, and the symbolic masculine of the anthropic category male : female, ensures that these ideas are susceptible of will. "Your kingdom come, your will be done ..." puts with unequivocal ease the true direction of the purposiveness of the will as opposed to that of desire. The innate temporal-vectoral quality of will is one of present-future.

Here then is a fundamental, metaphysical, and psychological differential between the two conative modes. Accordingly the optic semiosis represents forms of memory  and their inherent modes of conscious intentionality, knowing and desiring, by those semeia from one end of the spectrum, the blue end so-called. The pure conceptual forms along with their own inherent modes of conscious intentionality, believing and willing, are signified by semeia from the opposite end, that is the red end of the spectrum.

But that said, the aconscious modes now before us which correspond to these, and of which we have reviewed the first, namely the desire-to-know, throw this differential into doubt, and effectively reverse it. The ambiguity of the desire-to-know as to immanence, is equivalent to its ambiguity of vectoral orientation. For it consists not in keeping with memory, as the vector past-present, but rather as the word 'imagination' itself heralds, in keeping with the perspective present-future. This we normally associate with will. The intention of the desire-to-know is like will, and like transcendence itself. It is bound to the realm of the future which exists discretely in relation to the present. In this manner it contradicts the intrinsic quality of desire, introducing paradox to mind and standing as a mode of aconscious intentionality rather than conscious intentionality:


The next step will be to discern that mode of aconscious intentionality which reconfigures the conscious mode, willing. We can expect this will be a paradox in that its vectoral quality too will reverse the normative pattern of will. Whatever this species of aconscious will is, it will be premised on the vector past-present, which according to the Markan mandala is innate to the categoreal form, the form of unity space : time.

The conscious intentional mode 'desire' is identifiable as Christological, as is the aconscious intentional mode, the 'desire-to-know'. There exist other Christological forms of intentional awareness, one of which of course is believing. This too will have its corresponding aconscious form, and this will be likewise pistikos, a mode of believing. Our next topic however, is not that particular aconscious mode which reinvents belief.  It concerns instead that aconscious mode of intentionality which reconstructs the will. Both modes, conscious will and the aconscious remodelling of the same, identify the Transcendent ("the Father"). Thus whereas belief and desire, and their aconscious equivalents manifest the Christ, the Son, the various modes of will and knowing evince Transcendence. We may refer to the latter as 'Transcendental' for this very reason.



The Conceptual Form Of Unity Space : Time

We contended above that will is that form of intentionality which the synoptists and the fourth evangelist all connect directly with "the Father", the Transcendent as we prefer to say, and that equally it was ultimately and pervasively implicit in the story of creation. The intentional process willing, must be a function of ideas or conceptual forms, the entities categorised in the story of the archaeological week. We said in passing that there is a distinct correlation between will and space, which supports these same arguments. Thus if the primary subject of creation qua 'beginning', is the identification of the tri-dimensional spatial manifold with that very event, then the delivery of our quotidian experience conforms the philosophical psychology of the creation theology. Birds fly, fish swim, so goes the general image of Day 5, which stands in a complementary relation to Day 2, the rubric of 'the heavens' (myima#$@fha), that is space in itself and for itself. The entire second half of the creation story can be understood as iconographic of the spatiotemporal manifold, that is of space-time, since there is no such entity as time in itself.

There is no mistaking this meaning. The waters above/waters below division of the Day 2 story is an image of spatial dimensionality; and with it, the image of the expanse of waters gathered together in the Day 3 narrative, coheres. Even the Day 1 story, although it does not mention the sun, moon and planets, for that belongs to its own particular complement, Day 4, nevertheless speaks of light and darkness, and we can hardly conceive of these without accordingly imagining 'the heavens'. Thus all three rubrics in the first half of the narrative comprise an image of the three dimensional spatial continuum, and all four rubrics of the second, present an image of movement and hence time, by which we mean of course space : time. The seventh Day speaks of the preceding acts of creation in a summation:


It is not possible to read this without an accompanying sense of purposive fulfillment, that is of the accomplishment of a plan, design, the will, on the part of God. Thus the Sabbath rubric draws together in one whole, the entirety of the prior fiat. If the gospel will subsequently mark the Eucharist as belonging in kind with the immanent messianic events, so bringing their tally to four rather than three, then the proleptic tendency in the creation narrative, especially its second half, its prospectus towards 'end' which is here depicted as 'rest', at the very least allows for the kind of relationship which we have urged between these 'last' four Days and the actual, pure, immanent events, which are the four feeding episodes of the messianic series.

Where then the first three Days signify transcendence, the Sabbath being reckoned logically as belonging to the second half of the creation narrative, warrants our reading the second half of the narrative as a whole, as complementary to the first, and justifiably as the complementary image of the four-dimensional spatiotemporal manifold. This redoubles the significance of the same two entities, transcendent space which exists in itself, and space : time, for the creation story, since these have already been the subjects peculiar to the particular pair of rubrics, Day 2 and Day 5 respectively. The created living forms - in addition to the planets - all move. This mobility, which reflects time, reflects likewise the will of the creator, but, as we shall directly note, will in its aconscious form. There is no conceptual form other than space which can serve as the very foundation of this form of intentionality.

Movement is the guarantor of our experience of will, and of a comparable if not similar experience in animals, particularly those collected in the Day 5 rubric, birds and fish. The latter of course move more freely still than we are able to, since for bipedal humans movement is often confined to a planar surface. We can of course climb and descend inclines, but in no manner that compares to the creatures mentioned. Certain migratory species of these animals furthermore, are capable of traversing vast distances at particular times of their life-cycles. Unwittingly or not, the author of the creation narrative could scarcely have chosen a more fitting image of, a metaphor better suited to the spatio-temporal continuum than that conveyed by this rubric. We need to emphasise in close connection with the distinctions between the categories space and space : time, that it is the former which instantiates the identity of Transcendence and which acts as the ground for the intentional mode, will. If we associate changing the place of a body, movement, the exercise of the various members of the body for which they were designed, with the phenomenon of will, we are doing so in virtue of the intrinsic appurtenance of space to the temporal order. We have emphatically put that time void of spatiality does not exist. It is the space of space : time, the 'heavens' of 'heavens and the earth' which ensures the existence of this intentional mode. So in observing the theme of movement in the second half of the creation narrative, which in its fourfold form answers the threefold first half, as immanence standing in relation to transcendence, and space : time standing in relation to transcendent space, we should nevertheless not confuse the finer point. Will proper, will simpliciter, belongs to transcendent space, and not to space : time. That intentional mode which obtains by reason of the categoreal nature of the spatiotemporal order is doubtless a species of will.

Just as the categories haptic memory and haptic imagination occasion the two intentional forms, desire and desire-to-know respectively, in every case of an analogous dyad, that which concerns us being space and space : time, the proper forms of intentionality will be so related. This combined with the fact just mentioned concerning causality and supervenient relations between modes of intentionality already directs what the hermeneutic should seek to advance our understanding of the category 'time', or to put it more formally space : time, and also the question of that specific form of intentionality for which this category is responsible.

We shall here utilise as elsewhere, that particular one of Mark's twelve miracle narratives which categoreally nominates the entity in question. The Haemorrhagic Woman addresses the conceptual form space : time. To extricate this pericope from its context is not a simple matter. Mark 5.21-43 bears characteristics of having been more or less seamlessly composed. The two narratives, Jairus' Daughter and The Haemorrhagic Woman are intended to interpret one another. The third story of a woman (7.24-31) is also somehow involved in this chain of events. If we attach the story of The Gerasene Demoniac (5.1-20) to the catena, then the inclusion of the story of The Syrophoenician Woman makes even more sense. Just as distinct thematic concerns are shared by the two central narratives, the first of which the evangelist interrupts in order to enclose still more closely the central event, similarly, the two outer events involving The Gerasene Demoniac and The Syrophoenician Woman have several key elements in common:

1. both cures are exorcistic in type (5.2f cf. 7.25f);
2. both exorcisms involve impurity or uncleanness, the subject of an extended discourse prior to the last miracle (7.1-8, 14-23) ( 5.2f cf. 7.25f);
3. connected to the latter and to the previous discourse on purity, both healings refer to animals feeding (5.11 cf. 7.27-28);
4. on the first occasion Jesus negotiates with the unclean spirit 'Legion' (5.7-13), and  during the later event he negotiates with the woman herself  (7.27-29). This last member of the chain, The Syrophoenician Woman thus refers back to the first. In this way, both pericopae, first and last, present the symbolic masculine. But the first narrative, the story of The Gerasene Demoniac is the more exclusively focused on the same. The categoreal subject of  the last exorcism then, is the symbolic feminine, which, like each of the forms of unity, must include its transcendent term.

The concepts of gender and sexuality are paramount here. All four healings in the catena 5.1-7.31 are of a piece; that is, all four events establish a continuous block in which certain themes close to the Markan perspective and to his doctrine are central. What is equally true is that of these four, the narrative of The Haemorrhagic Woman stands at the zenith so to speak, of this series of events. If we look at the text, this conclusion is unavoidable. Thus not only structurally and formally are the separate incidents so organised as to secure the centrality The Haemorrhagic Woman, but narrative content itself also ensures the paramount significance of her healing. The significance of which we will investigate later on when we come to the issues surrounding the fourfold form of the gospels. For we will contend that each of the four conforms to a pattern of specific intentional modality outlined in this essay. This healing story, so important to Mark, operates as a virtual signature text, and is vital to the argument that the gospel of Mark, like every other gospel, is suffused with one particular dyad of intentional modal perspectives. For Mark, the conscious intentional mode of this dyad is knowing; its corresponding aconscious mode we are about to see. Due to the integration of these several healing stories, before concentrating on that of The Haemorrhagic Woman, some general and important observations are called for.

The Healing Miracle Stories Which Recapitulate The Three Forms of Unity - The Spatiotemporal, The Psychophysical And The Anthropic

Firstly, it is necessary to note, even if summarily, how the texts reiterate the formal countenance of the actual events they describe. I am arguing that the formal pattern here is something like a parabola, whose arms diverge from this peak event. The Haemorrhagic Woman crowns the chain of events. It stands as the ultimate point towards which the miracle narratives arch; beginning with The Gerasene Demoniac, and observing the link of this with the prior episode, The Stilling Of The Storm; and from which they then descend, beyond the intervening text to the story of The Syrophoenician Woman. The meaning of the healing of The Haemorrhagic Woman, Mark's figurative representation of the conceptual category space : time, must then reckon with the following shape of the texts. The Markan catena of healings which begins at 5.1, and ends only with The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter, has as its climactic point towards which and from which all else is arranged, the description of the cure in The Haemorrhagic Woman:


As its apogee this verse determines the structure of the catena in its parabolic or chiastic outlines:

The Haemorrhagic Woman (5.24b-34) For she said, "If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well." (v 28) and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment.(5.27) She had heard the reports about Jesus, (v 27) and was no better but rather grew worse. (v 26) and had spent all that she had, (v 26) and who had suffered much under many physicians, (v 26) And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, (v 25)

The Haemorrhagic Woman And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, "Who "touched my garments?" (v 30) And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you  say, "Who touched me?" (v 31) And he looked around to see who had done it. (v 32) But the woman, knowing what had been done to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. (v 33) And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease." (v 34)

Jairus' Daughter And he went with him. (v 24a) And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. (5.24b) ... and besought him, saying, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live." (v 23) Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and seeing him, he fell at his feet ... (v 22) ... and he was beside the sea. (v 21b) And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him. (v 21) Gerasene Demoniac And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and all men marvelled. (v 20)

Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter (7.24-31) But immediately a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell down at his feet. (v 25) Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. (v 26) And he said to her, "Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children's bread  and throw it to the dogs." (v 27) But she answered him, "Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." (v 28) And she went home, and found the child lying in bed, and the demon gone. (v 30) Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee ... (v 31)

Gerasene Demoniac (5.1-20) Now a great herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; (v 11) And he begged him eagerly not to send them out of the country. (v 10) And Jesus asked him, "What is you name?" He replied, "My name is Legion; for we are many." (v 9), "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me." (v 7) And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped him; (v 6) And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, (v 2) They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. (v 1)

Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter (7.24-31) But immediately a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell down at his feet. (v 25) Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. (v 26) And he said to her, "Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children's bread  and throw it to the dogs." (v 27) But she answered him, "Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." (v 28) And she went home, and found the child lying in bed, and the demon gone. (v 30) Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee ... (v 31)

The above arrangement of the text is intended to highlight its parabolic structure. If we accept that the Jairus' Daughter pericope has been meaningfully placed around the story of The Haemorrhagic Woman, then we are led to view the two narratives at the outermost reaches of the catena, The Gerasene Demoniac and The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter, in the same way. The net result of this is the emphasis it places on 5.29, the verse detailing the very instant of the cure of The Haemorrhagic Woman. This makes the verse fully functional in the sense that its very shape reflects its meaning, a feat which then extends to the two arms of the text arching backwards in time and forwards in time from the same point, the zenith of the parabolic arch, and so comprising the two exorcistic cures, which do indeed have a very great deal in common. It indicates what will be for this particular evangelist an abiding concern, the concept space : time, and its proper intentional mode, reflected in his gospel at so many turns.

This structure is intriguing as to time and place. For its outermost reaches consist of two distinct stories. Not only do they share a remarkable amount of content, but the overarching structure of the  catena confirms their identical nature. This shared content is immediately announced in the proper names 'Legion' and 'Syrophoenician'. Further to which as noted are the motifs: exorcistic disease, uncleanness, feeding, animals, negotiation. This is much more than merely adventitious. The two exorcistic miracles occur in differing places and at differing times, but might they perhaps not be in effect, one and the same event essentially? We are bound to ask just such a question because of the lucid shape of the series. The main event inasmuch as it portends the resurrection appears to be The Daughter Of Jairus, consisting in two distinct halves. But prior even to this of course is the central episode which I will contend contains a key to Markan metaphysics where the disposition of the fourfold gospel is concerned. This story of The Haemorrhagic Woman is one continuous event, it flows. But it has a very obvious climax, indicated for us by the verb 'ceased' ( e)chra/nqh, v 29). If the narrative up until this point moved inwards, it now stops, turns, and begins its trajectory externally, that is outwards.

This type of exercise, it is well known to us as chiasmos, is constrained by the printed page. And the same constraints have perhaps made it difficult to arrange the text on this page in a way that fully serves the eloquence of its formal articulation. The general or overarching pattern is that of an initial illness and a concluding cure. But this is also the pattern of the individual units which are comprehensively related as the unitary chain. The first person, The Gerasene Demoniac, will be cured no less than the last; just so, the last must be, initially at least, ill, otherwise there is to be recovery. And so we find with the two episodes at furthest extreme from the central event, certain concessions are made to common sense, as well as to actuality, and that these overrule any pedantic adherence to the pattern. There is no fastidious application of the reflexive structure which the chiasmos represents, and the time sequence of certain elements in the stories is thus not perfectly mirror-like of the previous situation, that is to say, never artificial or disingenuous. This ought to suggest that the narratives are grounded in historical actuality as well as having been understood and interpreted by those who have written them.

It may be that The Syrophoenician Woman is a later addition to the recension of the gospel. Indeed a significant amount of text stands between these two exorcistic healing narratives. Even so, we should notice that some scrupulous editor perhaps, has made the point of mentioning the locale as well as the sea, at the conclusion of the last healing miracle, just as it marks the inception of the catena; the same figure, sea, being  a clear index of the symbolic masculine as of the identity of the Holy Spirit. We encountered this figure in the Day 3 rubric of the Genesis creation story, a story to which the previous event, The Stilling Of The Storm certainly recurs.  The narrative intention is thus very sure. It is absolutely congruent with the occurrence of the same chiastic structure as the organisational principle of the messianic miracles, another means whereby the two cycles, messianic miracle and healing miracle, are integrated. This may lead us to inquire as to the provenance of the miracle catena. At the very least it is possible that the editing of both the messianic miracle series and this chain of healing miracles in Mark were executed by one and the same person.

One indubitable inference to be drawn here is that of the value to the evangelist of the pericope which functions as the axis about which all else turns. That Mark's story of  TheHaemorrhagic Woman signified a great deal to him is obvious. Theologically it is, if not identical to the story of The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, which, with its companion piece, The Walking On The Water, occupies the centre stage of the messianic series - then connected to this, as denoting the conceptual equivalent of a perceptual form. The conceptual form of unity space : time, denoted in the story of Day 2, has as its counterpart in the messianic miracle series, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, denoting acoustic memory. Both identify Transcendence. But the first, the conceptual form of unity, pertains to the aconscious, whereas the last belongs to the conscious order of mind. Even though the subjects of the two narratives vary as to the difference between conceptual radical - time, that is, space : time qua idea, in the case of the creation story - and perceptual form - acoustic memory - in the case of the messianic feeding miracle story, nevertheless they both relate the same theological reality, namely the Transcendent ("the Father"), now in terms of 'virtual' immanence and now in terms of actual immanence. This accounts for the repeated references to 'daughter.' In one of the peripheral adjoining stories which address the identity of the Holy Spirit, The Syrophoenician Woman, and Jairus' Daughter, which addresses the identity of the Son, the same occurs. In this way, the catena itself reflects something of the universal category, that of childhood,  to which the roles of Transcendence and the Holy Spirit are necessarily related. For Mark however, it is apparent that Transcendence is a key component in all of this.


These several miracles, however we count them given that the evangelist is grappling with the dialectic between identity (transcendence) and unity (immanence), enact the categoreal forms of unity. All three-four stories concern one and the same type of mental entity which we have called a form of unity, and which number three. These are conceptual realities, part of the radical anatomy of mind. But although conceptual or ideal entities, they are not pure conceptual forms. As concepts consisting of two conjunct terms  - space and time, mind and body, male and female - where the second term always comprises the first, and suborns it to some extent, and where the first exists in itself, they import ambiguity to the pure conceptual mind. Thus they mitigate identity. Unity is set against identity according to the categoreal paradigm, where the first term corresponds to pure identity and the last to unity. These forms of unity, equivocal, ambivalent members of the taxon transcendence, the class of conceptual entities, reformulate transcendence itself in the light of immanence. They ostensibly share features more appropriate to the forms of pure memory. As such, they circumscribe the domain of the aconscious, and the modes of intentionality which they generate likewise determine the province of the aconscious.

The healing miracles of this chain thus reconstitute that succession of categoreal forms of unity listed under the rubrics of the second section of the creation, Days 4-7. Not surprisingly many of whose themes now resurface here in the gospel. If we extend this block even further, to include the immediately prior event, The Stilling Of The Storm (Mark 4.35-41), this pattern is even surer, since this is the messianic miracle which functions as counterpart to the story of Day 3, the rubric categorising the symbolic masculine. The Day 3 rubric is adroitly placed, since it terminates the true categories of transcendence, of which it remains the least representative. This is because the anthropic form of unity is, with the body itself, the most immanent of all the things specified in the creation theology. Hence the announcement of the symbolic masculine in the Day 3 narrative as entailing the anthropic category which remains weighted in favour of immanence, is the announcement simultaneously of that section of the creation taxonomy which deals with 'immanent' transcendence, or as we have said, 'virtual immanence', that is, the three forms of unity.

The important thematic matters from the immanent half of the creation narrative recurrent here in Mark are those of the sub-human creation, the propagation of species, both sub-human and human, and of course the attendant concepts of human sexuality, and assimilation. The ordering of the events in the gospel follows the precise order in which the creation deals with these same categories: Day 4 - soma; Day 5 - space : time; Day 6 - male : female. These three categories are the subjects of the narratives: soma or mind : body is recapitulated in The Daughter Of Jairus; the spatiotemporal manifold, that is space : time in The Haemorrhagic Woman; the anthropic form of unity, male : female in both first and last episodes, which reiterate the symbolic masculine and symbolic feminine respectively, The Gerasene Demoniac and The Syrophoenician Woman.


The Haemorrhagic Woman

Something of the importance attached to these narratives we can judge partly by their length. The Gerasene Demoniac is one of the lengthiest texts of its kind. This makes good any lack on the part of the creation narrative itself to deal with the categories. But of the three categoreal forms of unity, Mark selects that of space : time for greatest emphasis. The reasons attaching to this are germane to Markan psychology-epistemology. They will follow from the psychological-epistemological perspective of this gospel as to no others. The situation of the woman is identical to all who come after Jesus, in time, a meaning lying behind the introduction to the story:


We find similar references in the subsequent narratives, and in the story of Jairus' Daughter, they (polla/ - 'the many' (5.38)), are given the dubious role of 'weeping and wailing loudly' (v 39). This crowd forms a backdrop to both episodes, and is more closely linked to The Haemorrhagic Woman. She never escapes from the crowd, and her healing, unlike that of any of the other figures, The Gerasene Man, or Jairus' Daughter, or Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter, must take place openly in a public space. The public and social setting of the miracle is vital to our understanding of the intentional mode it signifies.


This line again places her on a footing level with our own, for it sits with the public nature of the genesis of faith. The social overtones of the event cement the profound link between this miracle and that of The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, as between the idea space : time and the radical acoustic memory. Both the conceptual form, time and the perceptual form, acoustic memory identify the immanent Transcendent. Their relationship is analogous to that of the conceptual form mind and the perceptual form haptic imagination, both of which identified the transcendent Son.

But it is the graphic description of her illness, an experience which isolates her from the 'great crowd', which affects us most. Mark is not sparing in his use of language here, and if the presentation of the illness of the daughter of Jairus puts the crowd in a somewhat tragicomic light, there is no lightness of touch in:


The figure 'twelve', while it articulates the totality of the two sixfold series, also connotes  the twelve months of the lunar year, consisting of 354 days or twelve moons, here given graphically as the congenital condition of the feminine body, prone as it will be to menstruation, and the measure of time. As a cipher, it suggests all three dorms of unity: space : time, symbolic feminine, and mind : body. Thus it secures the relationship of this event with the next - ('she [Jairus' daughter] was twelve years of age' ( v 42)), and with the final event of the chain, The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter. Other features in the texts accomplish the same end; for example the terms 'daughter'. The woman herself says at the very instant of her recovery:


The body is explicitly named here. It is proper to the surrounding events which depict the physical maturation of the 'little daughter' (v 23). For the connection forged by the evangelist between these two episodes, justifies our understanding of her condition vis-à-vis that of the woman. The description of her age, the involvement of the 'tumult, and people weeping and wailing loudly' (v 38), the mention of food, all strive to the same end. Mark is describing the onset of menses in the girl. This is the reason for the structural links, the interpolation of the story of the woman within the two halves of the story of the girl, as it is for the referential details which bind the narratives into one continuum.

In just one fell swoop then, by means of a portrait of the human condition as that of the body of woman, in all its vulnerability to the vagaries of time, conceived under the phenomenon of menstruation, Mark recounts the three categoreal forms of unity - the somatic form of unity, the mind : body, first adumbrated in the Day 4 rubric; the temporal form of unity, space : time, the subject of the story of Day 5; and the anthropic form of unity, male and female, given in the creation rubric Day 6. He links them categoreally just as the creation taxonomy had previously. For this evangelist the conceptual form of unity space : time, if not actual space : time itself, functions comprehensively. Its connectedness to both remaining entities of its class entitles it to a consideration afforded by no other evangelist. In one sense, it is not too much to say that Mark's Haemorrhagic Woman is virtually his own alter ego. He is not alone in his epistemic-psychic predilection in this regard. Every one of the four evangelists will demonstrate a similar partiality for specific categories. But it is not the categories themselves so much as their own canonical modes of intentionality which are the real and evident subjects of their predilections. Thus what matters most to the author of this pericope, and to the author or authors of the gospel as a whole as much as to its editor or editors, if these are not one and the same, is that particular intentional process which arises from the conceptual form of unity space : time.

These ideas, the three categoreal forms of unity, soma or the body, the time of the spatiotemporal manifold, and the anthropic form of unity male : female, are themselves as interwoven as the very texts of this miracle catena. If time itself is somatic or bodily, which it certainly is in the case of woman, who experiences a periodic cycle of fertility, then the soma is temporal. It is as much temporal for a male as it is for a female. The Day 4 rubric posited the planets, chiefly the sun and moon, as figures for the body, that is the mind : body. Like the other things contained within the second section of the creation story, they manifest cyclical movement. The same metaphors, sun and moon, might suggest themselves as figures for male and female respectively. However it is preferable at least initially, to view them as metaphors for consciousness; the first being the metaphor for conscious intentionality, the second for aconscious intentionality, irrespectively of the sex of the particular person's body. (In the discussion of the gospel of Luke, we shall revert to this metaphor for the soma, particularly in regard to its third member, that of the stars. For this effectively both combines and abrogates both relata, male and female, in a third entity, not a third sex, but their relation(s), in that it portends childhood itself as the universal human condition. And if we align at the metaphorical level, the masculine-solar imagery and the diurnal-conscious on the one hand, and the feminine-lunar imagery and the nocturnal-aconscious on the other, then we are left with the issue of their relation. These topics belong to the further discussion of the Day 4 rubric.)

Markan doctrine emphatic as it is of time, nevertheless takes full account of the other two entities with which it is most immediately connected; the soma, and the human. The last, the symbolic feminine, for that is what the anthropic means, must always be understood as form of unity. The feminine always comprises the masculine. There is no feminine in itself nor for itself. Thus these two figures, The Woman With The Haemorrhage and The Daughter Of Jairus, signify the composite nature of the feminine. There is no need to add another description of time under the aegis of the symbolic masculine. This is already accounted for, already reckoned by the anthropic category, the feminine. If there were any doubts about this, they should be allayed by the prior healing event, that of The Gerasene Demoniac, and the significantly later episode of The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter. For both these narratives clearly nominate the symbolic masculine, the first in the aspect of transcendence, the second in that of immanence, where it belongs to the anthropic category, symbolic feminine. They have been placed in this chain of events in virtue of their connection with the role of the two women central to the Markan portrayal of temporality - The Haemorrhagic Woman, and somaticity - Jairus' Daughter.


Those terms which, because they are explicit, most concern us, are given above in the Greek. We are in the process of arguing that the epistemic perceptual mode proper to this particular gospel, is that of knowing. Hence it comes as no surprise that in this one of the two signature healing miracle stories which denote the specifically Markan perspective, that term should appear. Even if this mode of intentionality, knowing, is a conscious one, whereas this story addresses the corresponding aconscious mode, its appearance here is entirely justifiable. The overture to the healing contains an ironic aside directed at the medical science of the day:


As to the second term, 'faith', which appears again in the ensuing drama enveloping the little girl, we need to note how common it is. 'Faith' is often mentioned as ingredient in a cure by this evangelist. It occurs in the healing of A Boy With An Unclean Spirit (9.14-29, at vv 23 and 24), and that of  Blind Bartimaeus (10.46-52, at v 52). Not all of these occasions are one and the same. It is obvious that both of these episodes concern  perceptual modes rather than conceptual modes. We have argued for a systematic correspondence between the conceptual and the intentional mode belief proper. Hence hearing and seeing as implicated in the events here, have to do with the (cognitive) process knowing, not believing. That faith/believing is central to Christian psychology is beyond question. We noted the extraordinarily high incidence of the same in the fourth gospel. (John correspondingly, will manifest a very high word count for the verb 'to know' and its cognates, higher in fact than the tally for 'faith'/'to believe'.) It is not surprising that this term, like others, is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition serving to define the intentional mode in question.

We have already noted its occurrence also in the healing of the paralytic (5.2). There it did function as signal of the specific form of intentionality native to mind, the subject of the narrative. That is, we argued that faith simpliciter, as a conscious form of intentionality, pertains to the category mind. What follows from the parameters set down above, and the schematic hermeneutic of the gospel itself, in relation to the story of creation, is then that the category mind : body (soma), will also produce a related form of intentionality, this time an aconscious one. We are postulating that the category soma, that is, mind : body, will thus be responsible for an aconscious mode of intentionality, which is a species of believing. It is, as we see in the ensuing narrative about the unconscious little girl, for this precise reason the word appears (pi/steue believe (v 36)).

Thus where the word 'body' appears in The Haemorrhagic Woman, and the word 'faith' too, these terms are directed at the story of Jairus' Daughter. In spite of their certain connexity, the body rather than time, is what produces an aconscious mode of intentionality which is a form of faith, answering to the conscious mode faith simpliciter, the product of mind. Space : time will function in consciousness as the partner of transcendent, or pure space. Since the latter, space simpliciter, or space in itself is responsible for will simpliciter, a conscious form of intentionality, time (space : time) will generate an aconscious variety of will.

This really leaves one intelligible option above all others, and one which advances the Markan Christology. That mode of aconscious intentionality generated by the conceptual category time must be the will-to-believe. We shall see in due course that one of the defining characteristics of this intentional mode is its public and social quality. If the crowds establish the setting for the event, then they do so with the purpose in mind of depicting the will-to-believe in distinction both to will simpliciter and belief itself. For the texts which will present the conceptual basis of these two modes of consciousness, that is intentionality, both deploy imagery which is anything but public. Thus the first thing to note in connection with this form of intentionality, whereby it compares immediately with the conscious equivalent, namely knowing, is that it transpires against the backdrop of one's being within a class of persons. Unlike Jairus' Daughter, no name whatsoever serves to distinguish 'the' woman. Her anonymity is representative in this respect, and shorn of any qualities that might portray her in an individual, a personal, a unique light. Her membership of a class consisting of others from whom in some way she remains indistinguishable, is what she conveys in this story.

Here then is the second of the aconscious modes. Like the previous one, the desire-to-know, the product of haptic imagination, it operates in certain relations to other forms of intentionality. Where the desire-to-know stands in a sense antithetically to desire simpliciter, for the former is the result of haptic imagination and the latter that of haptic memory, the will-to-believe must also stand in opposition to will simpliciter. The former is the consequence of the conceptual category, form of unity space : time, while the latter remains the consequence of the pure conceptual category space. So also we can now determine similar relations between modes of intentionality which function  identically within their given series. This consists less of antithesis in the sense just mentioned. We must be aware of a variety of modes of antithesis. There are several. Already within the creation narrative we determined at least three such. Thus the relation subtended by haptic imagination to mind is analogous to their respective modes of intentionality, desire-to-know vis-à-vis faith. The consistency of these two intentional processes, is as the relation between the will-to-believe and knowing, which are the intentional modal analogues of time and acoustic memory respectively. The former is an aconscious form, the latter the conscious one. These relationships will be made clearer as we proceed, and it is here precisely that the theologies of semiotic forms are indispensable.

Returning to the story of the woman, we can now begin to understand the role of the crowd. The role of the crowd is definitive for both occasions, The Haemorrhagic Woman and The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, the subsequent messianic miracle. These deal with the subjects we have just mentioned: the conceptual category time and its innate mode of intentionality, the will-to-believe, and the perceptual category acoustic imagination, and its corresponding intentional mode, knowing. Both incidents identify the immanent Transcendent, the immanent "Father". In both events, the individual is contextualised within the group. If we never hear the name of this particular woman, that suits the depiction of the entity in question perfectly. The psychology of both the will-to-believe, and of knowing, is irreducibly social. The self involved in such processes is an irreducibly social self.

This will not always be so for given radicals and their corresponding modes of intentionality, to which purpose we sometimes find personal names mentioned in stories of healings, and sometimes patronyms; for example, Jairus, Lazarus, Bartimaeus. We can see this in the contours with which the very narrative itself is imbued. So for example in Jairus' Daughter we read: Jesus '... put them all outside, and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him ... ' (Mark 5.40). This is a quite different affair from the previous incident. It refers in the first instance to the body as a fundamental ingredient in human conceptual awareness, and of course to the actual physical maturation of the little girl. These are indeed less public aspects of our consciousness than that of space : time. Just so the form or mode of awareness that is, mode of intentionality, to which the soma, mind : body gives rise, while it is related to the will-to-believe, must be other than it. It is therefore necessary to acknowledge the full weight of the verse which introduces the faith of the woman with the flow of blood:


One does not arrive at faith independently of one's society, but through membership of a class of persons, and this same class will be largely constituted by acts of social intercourse. Here once more we find that the conceptual form squares perfectly with the perceptual form, acoustic memory, which points immediately to the realm of speech and to the public arena. This is a very important reason why the reference to 'faith' in The Haemorrhagic Woman must not be taken on a simplistic level, nor at mere face value. In one sense, the expression 'faith'  belongs as we shall see, more properly to the 'little daughter', that is to what the healing of Jairus' Daughter concerns for Markan psychology, whence Jesus' remark :


The adult woman does indeed have faith; but just as significantly she would never have had it without having heard the 'reports about Jesus'. We can and must therefore distinguish between those acts of faith which derive foremost or even fully, from our social milieu. Religious culture is no stranger to multitudinous gatherings in which people act in conformity to their membership of a crowd. And this willingness of persons so grouped together in accordance with their common cultural property is exactly what the evangelist portrays in this story. If there is no immanent messianic miracle involving a greater crowd than that which delineates the acoustic memory, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, then there is no healing miracle more public in nature than that of Mark's Haemorrhagic Woman. She never once steps outside of her given social circle; she is never differentiated for us from the crowd; she is never more than 'a' woman who had had a flow of blood. This does not at all detract from the import of either her illness or its outcome. In the scheme of things she is well placed and just where she belongs. Her story is valuable to us precisely because it details the essence of the provenance of faith, the necessity to it of culture. We see it virtually lampooned, even if only momentarily, in the narrative immediately following, in which Mark refers to the 'tumult (qo/pubon) weeping and wailing loudly' (v 38). Matthew gives it a slightly more attractive accent, and with more emphasis on the link between cult and culture also, with his mention of the 'flute players' and so on (Matthew 9.23). Jesus himself, according to Mark's characteristic perspicacity, will call this into question by means of the certain juxtaposition he maintains between the two narratives: 'And when he had entered, he said to them, "Why do you make a tumult (qopubei~sqe) and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping?"' (v 39). Putting the appurtenance of religious hysteria to the psychology of crowds aside, or to put matters more finely, to social psychology, we cannot mistake the meaning of The HaemorrhagicWoman.

Of course its index in the categoreal taxonomy was the Day 5 rubric, which pictured the creation of those creatures inhabiting the two realms formerly described as 'the waters above' and 'the waters below', under the Day 2 rubric. ("Birds of a feather flock together.") There is indeed therefore a strong connection made to the notion of place, or space. And this is again taken up in the Johannine narrative of The Healing At The Pool (John 5.1-9), which John too contextualises as closely as possible with the relevant messianic event, The Feeding Of The FiveThousand (John 6.1-14). The synoptists and John are thus as one on this point of the relation between the conceptual form, space : time, and the analogous perceptual form, acoustic memory, since both identify the Transcendent in terms of its immanent polarity.

The parabolic form of these miracle stories, has as its centrepiece, the woman prostrate before Jesus, approaching him with the utmost reverence and in genuine humility as the outcome of her illness. The same pattern can and does intend the phenomenon of social hierarchy. There are of course more than enough stories containing images of such persons: that of The Leper, another instance of ritual impurity, who approaches Jesus 'kneeling' (1.40), or  that of The Gerasene who,'when he saw Jesus from afar he ran and worshiped him' (5.6), and indeed Jairus who 'fell at his feet, and besought him ...' (vv 22-23).

But the woman, both because she is a woman, and because of the opprobrium attached to her illness, is of any figure in this sequence of events, the most abject, the most lowly. Even The Syrophoenician Woman who, as a 'foreigner', is above her, shows mettle enough and sufficient self-respect to counter Jesus' invitation to negotiation, whose topic is the same reality, social hierarchy. Add to this the fact that 'she had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse.' (v 26)  Once again she contrasts with Jairus, who meets us, if not Jesus himself does, as the prosperous bourgeois; 'one of the rulers of the synagogue' (v 22), a title which we hear twice more (vv 36, 38). Matthew pictures him as a virtual patron of the arts by means of the reference to the 'flute players, and the crowd making a tumult' (Matthew 9.23). Measured against such a man of property, the social standing of the woman with a haemorrhage is as next to nothing; even when the deed is done, immediately after her cure her status appears to be the same:


The setting, and the portrait of the woman's psychological condition therefore sit perfectly with what Mark tells us in terms of the narrative structure. A society consists of a multiplicity of persons of various states and conditions, that is to say, classes. Hierarchic status requires gradations which organise things or persons into superior and inferior. The link with time is immediate, and often we find it in other logia in the gospel which relate the gospel itself to its antecedent Jewish roots. The saying which concluded the miracle at Cana is a case in point, where the 'good wine' has been, as if inexplicably, served last (John 2.10). Another instance also from John, is preparatory to this:


John 5.1-9

This puts so nicely the paradoxical  and all encompassing status of Jesus himself, who is portrayed in this gospel as in others, as the one who serves. But there is another passage in the gospel of John, which broaches the main themes of The Haemorrhagic Woman. Before passing to the next story, Jairus' Daughter, and to the next subject, the categoreal form soma, so tellingly connected to this one of time, a brief survey of the Johannine miracle story will repay us.


The words italicised hold vital clues to the psychology of the event, and to its 'sociology'.  We shall examine the relation of each to each in the succeeding course of this essay, especially a propos of the gospel of Mark. That the both are linked goes without saying. This text resonates so strongly with the Markan miracle story we have just considered, that one is almost hard put to understand how other details, such as specific time, and specific place, the duration of the illness, the two persons involved and so on, are as different as they actually are. The two salient themes of social hierarchy - '"...another steps down before me ..."' -  and time, loom large. The figure of another stepping down (katabai/nei) fits perfectly one of the criteria exhibited with preternatural facility by the acoustic semeia, which are soon to be the subject of the gospel as that of the feeding miracle. We have postulated that the feeding miracle story is about acoustic memory, the contents of which are signified by the members of the twelve tone 'scale'. Acoustic sentience no less than time, thus informs us with the basis of our understanding of hierarchy, a matter we must leave for future study.

On this occasion Jesus is said to have intuitively known that 'the man had been lying there a long time' (v 6). In addition to this, we are informed that he 'had been ill for thirty-eight years' (v 5). Taking this together with the figure of descent into the water, and the figure 'five' in the introduction, we can only wonder if the allusion to the Day 5 rubric, the categoreal exposition of this conceptual form, time, was fortuitous or deliberate. So the differences between the Markan healing miracle and this account of a completely other occasion in the gospel of John, are as nothing next to their comparability.

Not only do both narratives show a distinct preoccupation with the concept of time, but their contexts are identical. The story in Mark, accepting it as the central occasion in the chain of events, is the healing miracle prior to the messianic miracle, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand. We have already commented on the logical relationship between the two. John has organised his two miracle stories in exactly the same way. If this narrative (5.1-9) is the Johannine equivalent to the Markan narrative (5.24b-34), which is more than likely, then both have been clearly edited with the connection to the messianic event in mind. Thus both John and Mark are determined to draw out as fully as possible the affinity between time qua conceptual category and the 'isomorphic', or analogous perceptual form, acoustic memory. John interposes an extended set of discourses between The Healing At The Pool and the messianic feeding miracle. In all of which we find the following references to both, that is, to time and to hearing:


What impresses us here however, is the psychological portrait of the man who is ill. The word 'will' recurs frequently in this gospel, for it comports with John's transcendental perspective, which  logically emphasises the identity of Jesus in relation to "the Father" (Transcendence). That topic, namely the epistemic-psychic orientation specific to John, we are coming to directly. We first noticed this term in the hymn to the logos. It recurs again in the intervening texts just observed:


This miracle story must be taken as evidential of the postulate we are putting, even though our brief is for the most part with the gospel of Mark. There is a clear-cut case for this tenet of Markan doctrine; namely that where acoustic memory gives rise to a form of intentionality with which it is inseparable, to wit knowing, the corresponding conceptual category, time, as idea determinative of consciousness itself, gives rise to the aconscious intentional mode, the will-to-believe.

We have examined two of the modes of aconscious intentionality: the desire-to-know and the will-to-believe. All four aconscious modes will consist of the rudimentary forms of consciousness: desiring, knowing, willing, believing. Since these are of one of only two kinds, either conceptual - willing and believing - or perceptual - desiring and knowing - these composite modes will be either 'pure' or 'impure'. It is reasonable to expect an equitable spread of all possibilities: the combinations can consist of conceptual-conceptual, perceptual-perceptual, which are the two species of 'pure' modes, and conceptual-perceptual and perceptual-conceptual, which are the two species of 'impure' modes. Both cases we have examined are of the first type, 'pure'. For both willing and believing are processes functional of the conceptual polarity of mind; and desiring and knowing are both functions of perceptual mind. We may predict an even spread across the board. That is, we can predict the remaining two forms of intentionality to be those of the 'impure' kinds. Logically one should combine a conceptual coefficient with a perceptual radical, and in the case of the other, mutatis mutandis, the coefficient should be perceptual and the second element conceptual. The internal coherence as well as the comprehensiveness of the doctrine of intentionality will demand this.


Having arrived at the point of consideration of The Daughter Of Jairus Markan catena, whose value to the writer can be gauged in part by its logical and textual proximity to The Haemorrhagic Woman, we remarked the incidence of the term soma in the latter text, and assigned its importance to the episode which envelops the woman's healing. The two stories are carefully interwoven, and we have argued that at the base of Mark's presentation lies a description of the passage of a little girl into sexual maturity and the accompanying onset of menses. Touch plays a vital role in the healings of both 'daughters', yet for all that, neither of these texts categorises haptic sentience. Both are about ideas or conceptual forms, and their ingression in human and animal consciousness. All three-four events in this chain consist in virtue of addressing the conceptual mind. This accords perfectly with the discourses on purity, which intervene after the two central messianic miracles, and before the final member of the chain; the following should suffice as examples:




The ruling metaphorical construct here is that which is common to the feeding miracles, assimilation, the standard or chief metaphor for the processes of sentience, that is the four modes of sense-percipience: seeing, hearing, touching and tasting-smelling. The discourses on purity, located subsequently to the two messianic miracles, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand and The Walking On The Water, whose subjects are the two acoustic modes, occur in tandem with the shift of emphasis back towards conceptual rationality and affectivity. In other words, those intentional modes which are species of believing and willing, are leading mental agents deciding the purity of one's conscious existence.

These dialogues are thus well placed. For just as The Haemorrhagic Woman explicitly expounds the entity will-to-believe, so we saw in each of the narratives associated with it, the element water. This can be traced directly back to the story of creation. In Jairus' Daughter, we do not find this element,  its mention would be superfluous, so meticulously has the evangelist rendered the connection between the conditions of the two women. Indeed, the forms of aconscious intentionality which correspond to space : time and mind : body, the subjects of these stories, are no less  sympathetic to one another than the categoreal radicals themselves which generate them in their canonical instances. In view of this connection, the final clause in The Daughter Of Jairus is succinct:


This conclusion serves to index the event as 'virtually' immanent in kind, even if it does not belong to that set of occasions which deal with actual sense-percipience, and to posit the haptic semeion. Hence it need not and cannot indicate haptic memory. That is, this story does not concern touch and the entailed phenomenon of sexual desiring and its corresponding form of knowing. It is about the body as a rudimentary element of conceptual consciousness. Of course it can and does mean that what follows in the case of the little girl will be sexual experience of some kind. There is no gainsaying the honesty and psychological insight of this gospel on such a matter. Only we should not miss the tone  in these texts which is always chaste, even if it is ingenuous. Mark is therefore saying by means of this conclusion that which we argued about the miracle all along, namely that it is a dramatic exposition of the idea of bodiliness, which is notably and indissolubly linked with time. And more importantly still he is affirming the manner in which this ingresses in human and sub-human consciousness.


We saw above that one of the central categories of Markan as well as Johannine metapsychology is that of faith, which we here identify with the term 'believing'. Moreover, we stated that this is an inherent function of the conceptual form mind, the Christological category envisaged in the story of the first Day. Hence the metaphor for the same, one which John will redeploy consistently  throughout his gospel, is light. Now it must follow from the argument put so far, that where a form of unity corresponds to a pure conceptual form, as does space : time to transcendent space, the intentional modes which are due to those same categories must also correspond. If then will simpliciter is proper to space, then will-to-believe is the aconscious mode proper to the form of unity space : time. This can only mean one thing, and it is corroborated for us in the resumption of The Daughter Of Jairus as cited above: that a species of believing must be innate to the conceptual form of unity mind : body. For if the mind is responsible for faith, that is, believing, then mind : body must be responsible for that variety of believing which the aconscious generates.

Calling upon factors of Markan Christology so far disclosed, we know that the two remaining forms of intentionality must be of the 'impure' kind. They will compound simple intentional modes which are mixed, both conceptual and perceptual. Thus, if the intentional form inherent in the soma qua idea accepts the process 'believing' as its foundation, then the secondary process must be either that of desiring or knowing. The answer in this case is more than obvious. Common sense and the miracle narrative posit faith-in-desire as the obvious aconscious intentional mode. The only alternative, faith in knowing, makes no sense at all. Moreover, the story of the little girl is everywhere underscored as we have seen, with the notion of desire. The body itself is the very locus of desiring. All forms of appetition are addressed to the mechanisms of sense-percipience, or 'somisms' as we may call them. The story of Jairus' Daughter may not be about desire in its rudimentary (conscious) form. That does not preclude that it is about desire. It is, and it is about an aconscious mode to which we shall refer, in keeping with the categoreal scheme set out here, as faith-in-desire.

This is in many ways equivalent to what Santayana for one, refers to as 'animal faith', belief in substance, belief in nature,  belief in matter and so on. But neither concept, substance nor matter, has any purchase in Markan metaphysics, even if in some sense, the concept of nature is tolerably close to that of the symbolic feminine. Moreover the account phrased in terms of substance is an ontological one. The accent in Mark is Christological, that is to say, epistemological. What really concerns us, is how the mind functions, not claim and counter claim about what exists. Or rather, what exists, first and foremost, is this form of intentionality, belief-in-desire; and it is the conceptual and aconscious underpinning of desire itself. It is to be regarded equal in importance to the latter, as it is the foundation of appetition, of desire itself. We will put the case for such assertions later. What is most apparent then is the theological and psychological value of this story for the evangelist. It is notable, and sits with its companion piece, The Haemorrhagic Woman, at the epicentre of Markan doctrine.

All categories have signifiers, and these are the semeia which are themselves the contents of percipience. Thus there are in all three semiotic series - the acoustic series, the optic series and the haptic series, signs or signifiers of the conceptual-perceptual radical. The haptic semeia are members of the body, and they are routinely disclosed in the healing stories. They pertain to the notion of embodied conation/cognition. Firstly, the signifier for soma, mind : body, as given in The Daughter Of Jairus, as for the companion text, The Haemorrhagic Woman, which presents the concept time, (space : time), is not the womb. For put simply, the subject of these narratives is not the symbolic feminine, although this belongs to the same subset of categories, forms of unity, as space : time and mind : body, the subjects of the narratives under discussion. The semeion for The Haemorrhagic Woman, is carefully disclosed in the text, and is explicitly figured in her approach to Jesus 'from behind: it is the spine, the back, the dorsal region of the body whose signification of time was previously discussed in relation to embodied knowing in the first essay. This sign renders more aptly and palpably than any other conceivable member of the haptic semiotic series, the idea of hierarchy.

The semeion for the category soma or mind : body, is as we have noted already, the gut. The Old Testament book of Jonah focuses this haptic figure, the belly,  not only in the action of the whale, whose swallowing of Jonah is a construct for death as separation from God, but also as given in the fabulous stories concerning the fasting of all of the animals as well as that of the inhabitants of Nineveh. This, like the story of Jairus' Daughter, configures in terms of the haptic sign what we mean by belief-in-desire. We shall investigate it in relation to Luke, and of course, in relation to the intentionality of belief simpliciter, that is, conscious belief. The category of mind : body as a rudiment of consciousness is responsible for the intentional form belief-in-desire; and the category mind, is responsible for the intentional mode belief. Thus the forms of intentionality stand in relation to one another just as their analogous categories do. The concluding  injunction in the miracle of healing - 'give her something to eat' (5.43), another reason for not mistaking this as a story about desire simpliciter - reminds us of this sign. No other member of the body as sign can put with such consummate tact just what we mean by faith-in-desire.

If both semeia, that of the back as sign for the conceptual category time, and the stomach as sign for the conceptual category the body, are other than the semeion, the womb, which remains the sign for the symbolic feminine, then the relatedness of these both with this latter is tacit. Just so, the two  modes of aconscious intentionality will-to-believe and belief-in-desire must be acknowledged as typologically feminine; that is to say of course, masculine and feminine. A great deal remains to be said concerning the narratives and of course the modes of intentionality. For example in The Haemorrhagic Woman, the word 'truth' functions as an evident token of Transcendence. Then there are the questions concerning the meanings of the chiastic structure of the messianic miracles for psychology. Clearly in the case of Mark's ordering of these healing events, Jairus' Daughter and The Haemorrhagic Woman, the combined categoreal and intentional forms are given as marking particular stages of the life course. The same must apply to a 'sociological' perspective, since this is already evoked as central to the meaning of the radical, time itself, as expounded in the gospel miracle and in the rubric Day 5. But we cannot digress from the task at hand, which must be to set down the doctrine of intentionality in its barest outlines. It will be under the banners of specific gospels that we shall investigate in finer detail these narratives as to the meaning of the aconscious forms of intentionality. We repeat here, the discussion of the aconscious introduces no new terms. The simple, elemental, conscious forms of intentionality - knowing, believing, desiring and willing - are sufficient for the entire doctrine. Occam's razor insists that we do not multiply categories unnecessarily with a fulsome disregard of both Mark's own economy and elegance, and the principle of parsimony. But the elaboration of the intentional modes, particularly of the aconscious ones must await its proper context.

                                         


We have two primary texts to consider as referent to this centre of consciousness: the messianic miracle, The Walking On the Water (Mark 6.45-52), and The Healing Of A Boy With An Unclean Spirit (Mark 9.14-29).

In Mark, the presentation of the intentional mode inherent in acoustic memory is at once recognisable:




We have already commented on the significance of the verb 'to teach'. In Mark's recapitulation of the two similar feeding miracles (8.14-21), the relation to 'knowing' of both forms of sentience thereby signified, acoustic and optic, is indeed pronounced. It is not necessary to cite the text again; the expressions which announce the same intentional mode, knowing, both positively and negatively are indeed multiple: '"perceive ... understand ... hearts hardened ... having eyes not see ... having ears not hear ... remember ... how many ... how many ... not yet understand"' (vv 17-21). We could further extend this list to cover related expressions in the introduction: '"leaven of the Pharisees ... leaven of Herod" ... discussed ... "why do you discuss the fact that ... "' (vv 15-17)

Now, at the conclusion of The Walking On The Water, whose subject is acoustic imagination, which consists sympathetically with acoustic memory, the subject of the immediately prior feeding miracle, we read:


In the later exposition (8.14-21) recounting the two miracles of loaves and fish, both words cited here in the Greek will recur (vv 17, 21). What is this if not confirmation of the connectedness of the two events as they concern the very things articulated - one's mental disposition, one's consciousness, will, knowing and the like? Mark never leaves us in any doubt. John is slightly more oblique and characteristically ironic:


The significance of the several numerical references in all of these accounts must also be weighed as evidence for the postulate that acoustic memory is formally linked with knowing. Much of the business of knowing has to do with mathematical reckoning, and the Greek for 'disciple' - maqhta\v - suggests as much. (I will argue however, that mathematical  reasoning is unavailing in unravelling the hermeneutic of the numerals with which all three feeding miracle narratives are replete, and that we are to look to acoustic semiotics for their full-scale explication.) We may say the same of seeing, which is mentioned both by John and Mark in varying ways. But for the moment, we are emphasising  the four cardinal modes of intentionality, and the four cardinal modes of either conceptual or perceptual awareness, the inherent occasions from which in their turn they accrue. Acoustic memory has a significantly longer ingression in consciousness than optic memory, for not only do we learn to speak in advance of learning to read, but we are prone to some sort of  intrauterine acoustic sentience even prior to birth itself. So concerning the latter, the texts make the clear and unmistakable link between hearing and knowing.

Two inferences already support the occurrences of such terms in the text cited above, which propose 'knowing' as the first component of the intentional mode proper to acoustic imagination. This messianic miracle is contiguous with the immediately prior Feeding Of The Five Thousand, both episodes occupying the centre of the chiasmos. Since both of these miracles have to do with acoustic sentience, the first with memory, the second with imagination, we reason that the same intentional radical is common to both: knowing. This is in keeping with the postulate that both miracles which are about haptic sentience, The Transformation Of Water Into Wine, and The Transfiguration Of Jesus, have as their respective intentional modes desire and the desire-to-know, a pattern repeated in relation to will, and again in relation to belief. Acoustic imagination must logically therefore fit the same principle of organisation.

We can reasonably expect on  another basis also, the occurrence of a kind of knowing as the necessary product of acoustic imagination. Every other one of the four rudimentary processes, desire, belief, and will, has occurred. We know also, that given the possible combinations, an even spread will require that this last form of consciousness must be a perceptual feeling of a conceptual feeling. We have already described the two pure aconscious modes: desire-to-know (perceptual-perceptual), and will-to-believe (conceptual-conceptual), as well as one of the impure modes, faith-in-desire (conceptual-perceptual). The remaining form of consciousness would therefore answer to the description perceptual-conceptual. The first term, 'knowing', accords with the first part of this description. On the basis of the same expectation of an even spread among the second terms, the answer regarding the second term will be immediately forthcoming. But let us examine the stories first.

The Walking On The Water presents us with a nucleus whose logion is the same in all three versions we have - e)gw/ ei)mi mh\ fobe~isqe - "I am (It is I); have no fear." (Do not be afraid." Mark 6.50)). There is some slight variation in the details, and the fuller accounts are:




The first part of the saying is usually connected to the self-identification uttered by 'YHWH'  to Moses on Mount Sinai:



The argument for a rendering of the Hebrew in the future tense - "I will be who I will be" - stressing the active quality of the Qal imperfect verb, comports with the transcendent perspective of the miracle, namely its temporal orientation of present-to-future. Just as transcendence concerns the independence of God to the created order, something of this is envisaged in the relation of Jesus to the disciples in the boat. Gratuitousness as opposed to determinism was a defining factor of transcendent as against immanent messianic events. At the same time, the Hebrew terms 'name' and 'memorial', at the centres of their respective clauses, equally square with the broader definition of the miracle as immanent, as are all messianic events when considered in opposition to the categories of 'beginning'. Acoustic imagination is, even if transcendent, that is, imaginal, nevertheless an immanent form of consciousness inasmuch as it is perceptual and not conceptual.

For us however, the closest of any Old Testament narrative to the miracle story, must be that of Day 2 of the creation series. This identifies the 'beginning' itself with the inception of the spatial manifold. This does not mean that it is a precedent, which in some sense the narrative of the revelation of God to Moses on Mount Sinai is, a propos of the formulaic self-identification attributed to Jesus in the miracle story. For what the creation story lists, are the conceptual entities constitutive of mind or consciousness; and what the messianic events list are the corresponding forms of perceptual mind; here of course, acoustic imagination. The two textual cycles are isomorphic, and analogous. So if we speak of precedence, as in the case of the second half of the 'beginning' series deferring to the pure immanent, feeding, messianic miracles, then we must equally acknowledge that the 'transcendent' messianic miracles reciprocally defer to the pure conceptual forms, the categories of Days 1, 2 and 3. This is the meaning of normativity and the concept of intrinsic rather than extrinsic value, which attaches to it.

The story of Day 2, is the story of the separation of the 'waters above' from the 'waters below'. It conceptualises spatial dimensionality in a clear and certain way, and this extends to all three of the initial rubrics, simply because they are subsumed under the greater rubric 'heavens'. The opening inclusio 'heavens and the earth', separated the entire text into corresponding halves, with the first, the inceptive section, standing for the spatial or 'heavens' half', and the second, the immanent or 'earth' half standing for the spatiotemporal. Not this alone, but also the fact that every one of these first three events occasions separation, or fission, and the consequent attribution of true identity  to the entity posited in utter alterity from its putative other.

Thus the first three Days can and do stand as iconographical of the three-dimensional manifold of space, that is, 'the heavens', transcendent space. In the miracle story, we see and hear Jesus himself in the very same place; midway as it were, between the heavens or waters above, and those below. He does not replace 'the firmament of heavens', the uniform manifold of space itself. Even so, the semantic thrust forward of the Genesis rubric to the gospel miracle is of real moment. For it gives us a construal of acoustic imagination, indeed of all three forms of imaginal consciousness. It puts him, the Jesus identified at the heart of this and every other transcendent miracle, as the point of disjuncture between present and future. Concomitantly it establishes his presence as the fissure between conscious and aconscious percipience. We will comment later on the aptness of this image to the doctrine of the aconscious in relation to death as given in the reference to 'fantasma' - 'ghost', a common theme delineated in all of the transcendent messianic miracles and which concerns the aconscious.

We have linked the normative conceptual form, the idea of space as a categoreal ingredient of our conscious mind, with the psychological  or conative intentional mode, will. This mode should now come into play a second time in the aconscious, since all four modes must be repeated in this order. There are only four elemental modes, and the four modes of aconscious intentionality are all compounds, that is they recombine the same four rudimentary modes. This entails that each rudimentary mode occurs twice; once as the coefficient, that is, the initial or premising (feeling/prehending) intention, and secondly as the final or ultimate (felt/prehended) intention. It will be seen that the four aconscious modes reformulate a fourfold pattern which is congruent with that of the aconscious modes. Thus finally, each aconscious mode has a conscious mode analogous to it. It is this larger pattern of fourfold conscious-aconscious modality that manifests the formal disposition of the gospel a propos of time.

Anyone following the argument put here will be aware that (a) what is the initiating intentional force in this case must be knowing, since that is the denominator common to both modes of acoustic sentience; and (b) that the single remaining element of the compound intentional mode is will.  Also, that this psychological mode  must be of the 'impure kind', comparable to faith-in-desire (conceptual-perceptual), but again different, and that it must however conform to the pattern perceptual-conceptual. For this brings into equilibrium the count of two pure modes of aconscious intentionality, (desire-to-know and will-to-believe), with the two impure modes of the same, faith-in-desire, and knowing of some kind. Knowing fits the description of the first intentional form. Given such facts, we are led to identify the intentional mode proper to acoustic imagination in just these terms: knowledge-of-will.

Let us test this thesis against the narratives. As for the messianic miracle, its conclusion leaves us in no doubt, as we began to indicate in the citation above:


Mark here reverts to the previous miracle of the loaves, as denoting the normative occasion of knowing. Certainly this miracle pertains to knowing. Every effort has been made to link it with its complement, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand. Yet for all that, the two episodes are in some sense antithetical. This difference, the difference between mnemic and imaginal forms of the same perceptual radical, the acoustic, is vividly illustrated by John's version of the events. For the first words of Jesus to his followers who have pursued him to the opposite side, 'the other side of the sea (pe/ran th~v qala/sshv)', are:


We are thus talking not about knowing simplicter as such, but about a kind of knowing, another and aconscious mode of intentionality which has a conceptual ('eternal') side to it. John sustains this profound contrast between the two contiguous events, and we must accordingly maintain a contrast between knowing and knowing-will. We noted in this gospel occurrences of the expression 'will' above (5.6, 21, 30), where they served to delineate the intentional mode will-to-believe, and where of course they were irrefragably linked with Transcendence ("the Father"). It is precisely here, subsequently to The Walking On The Water, in an extended discourse on Jesus as '"the true bread from heaven ... the bread of God ... which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world"' (6.32-33), that the same term, will, resurfaces emphatically:



Mark's Healing Miracle Denoting Acoustic Imagination

The story of The Boy With An Unclean Spirit (Mark 9.14-29) presents us with a clearly cut instance of a miracle of the transcendent kind. So for example, we find the theme of amazement (v 15), even if somewhat oddly early on in the piece, before the actual recovery of the boy; so too, the gender of the sufferer, and the privacy motif (vv 25, 28). Party to this, there are no mothers nor daughters in sight, and the drama consists of the exchange between Jesus and the father of the boy who is ill, and to some extent, the incompetent disciples. In Mark, exorcisms occur only in events whose theological rationale is either identity, Transcendence or the Holy Spirit. They never concern the Son. This particular episode is as a healing involving acoustic sentience, firmly grafted to the former identity, "the Father":

Belief is mentioned more than once:



At first glance, the description of the boy in the throes of his cure, as well as the actions of Jesus, and yet again the succeeding mention of the house, again somewhat oddly, all seem very similar to Jairus' Daughter:


This is the second time only in a Markan healing miracle story that we encounter the idea of death. The same theme was integral to the Johannine narrative about Lazarus. Accordingly, we treated all three stories in the context of the aconscious mind. It supports the function of this episode, like The Daughter Of Jairus, as portraying the aconscious:


Bearing in mind the conspicuous similarity the evangelist here draws between this event and the healing of Jairus' daughter, it is worthwhile to pursue the evident contrast and the possibilities afforded by the variant reading of the ultimate verse, which is well enough attested. In fact a majority of texts contain the phrase - kai\ nhstei/a - against the textus receptus. But first, let us note just how many are the similarities of the two events.

The introductions to both narratives are comparable, with the 'great crowd' figuring on both occasions (5.24b cf. 9.14). Next, Jesus is importuned in either case and acquiesces to the request (5.23, 24a cf. 9.17-19), in the first instance going with Jairus to his house, and in the second requesting that the boy be brought to him. The crowd once again is mentioned, and somewhat like the chorus of a tragedy, voices its faithlessness:


Note here also the references to Jesus as 'Teacher'. The situation of Jairus' daughter is referred to more than once; there is Jairus' own description of her condition, that of the 'some who said', and lastly that of Jesus himself (5.23, 35, 39). In the later healing miracle we hear twice the graphic description of the plight of the boy in identical terms (9.18, 20), then a further report from the mouths of 'most of them', '"He is dead."' (v 26) This is soon to be disproved, thereby reverting to the third description, the dominical one, in the previous story '"The child is not dead but sleeping."' (5.39) Next there is the privacy theme. It is modulated in the first episode, because immanence almost always criteriologically involves publicity, as a secondary index, and that event is immanent in kind. In the second episode, to which privacy as a secondary criterion of transcendence rightly belongs, it is therefore modulated, at least when first articulated. Its mention in the final scene properly posits the motif of privacy in keeping with transcendence, and leaves us in no doubt. Is the apparent awkwardness of this motif in the first story, and its modulation in the second an effort to sustain the correlation of the two stories? The difficulty arises over the use of the same criterion, public/private, of two events which are typologically contrastive, yet which the evangelist, for other reasons, is at pains to correlate:


We have already introduced both ideas, the ostensible death of the sufferer, and that of faith/faithlessness. These also serve to draw the pericopae into close comparison. Both cures engage the same action by Jesus, allusively to resurrection:



Finally, in both cases there is mention of the illness in relation to age to children:



Why are there so many similarities in these two events which are nevertheless theologically very different? To put the same question differently, what are the other reasons Mark has for wanting us to draw comparisons between the stories of the daughter and the son? If we allow this question, the force of the conclusion, including the variant, 'and fasting', comes into full focus. For then, the real difference appears between the two occasions as immanent and transcendent respectively, since feeding is a primary marker of immanence.

The best possible way of answering this question, is I believe, with regard to the idea we are pursuing here; that of a mode of intentionality proper to the acoustic imagination, which compares to belief-in-desire and yet which is altogether different from it. The last two forms of intentionality we have been considering are those whose infrastructures are the concept of bodiliness (Jairus' Daughter) which gives rise to the form belief-in-desire, and the perceptual form acoustic imagination (The Boy With An Unclean Spirit), to which the intentional form knowledge-of-will is inherent. These consist as something of a pair, just as did the previous two forms of aconscious intentionality, the desire-to-know and the will-to-believe. We can see very plainly that the latter are both epistemic in their final determinations. One is about knowing, the other about believing. Certainly they are prehensions of prehensions, or feelings of feelings, to use Whitehead's terminology. That is they are intentions about intentions. This is central to the Markan doctrine of the aconscious. All forms of aconscious intentionality are compounded in this sense. These two then, are cognitive; they are both focused ultimately on epistemic ends, knowing or believing. Furthermore, both are pure. For the co-ordinates in the one case desiring and knowing are both perceptual, and in the other, willing and believing they are conceptual.

Here however in the last two modes of the aconscious to concern us, belief-in-desire and knowledge-of-will, the ultimate end is conative rather than cognitive. This makes them similar, just as the previous two are. Both modes, that inherent in soma or the concept of the body, and that inherent in acoustic imagination, while they are premised on a cognitive (epistemic) co-ordinate, now believing now knowing, are finally focused on conative ends. Whether this is desire (belief-in-desire) or whether it is will (knowledge-of-will) we can momentarily ignore. The comparison between them is sustainable on this basis. They are similar in one other important respect. If the previous two aconscious modes were pure, consisting either of two co-ordinated conceptual modes, or two co-ordinated perceptual modes, both the latter two modes examined here, are 'impure'. One, that which is occasioned by the body as idea, is a conceptual prehension (belief) of a perceptual intention (desire); the other, which we are presently examining, is a perceptual prehension (knowledge) of a conceptual intention (will). Thus knowledge-of-will, the mode of aconscious intentionality innate to the acoustic imagination, combines the two variant modes knowing and willing, in that order. It is perceptual-conceptual, and as such, is an 'impure' mode, just like the belief-in-desire.

This it seems to me is the only manner of reckoning with the profound similarities and dissimilarities between the two healing miracle stories, The Daughter Of Jairus and The Boy With An Unclean Spirit. Both co-ordinates  in the two cases are at variance. To believe is other than to know, just as to will is other than to desire, according to the fundamental disparity between conceptual and perceptual polarities of mind. Here then, there is a redoubled difference. For even though the two forms of intentionality may be compared as both impure compounds, they are opposed to an extraordinary degree.

Now we can reckon also with the distinct possibility that the variant reading of the last verse of the latter text throws more light on what we mean by 'knowledge-of-will'. For the mention of 'fasting', no less than prayer, puts will in a position where it militates against desire. We need to draw a certain distinction between will proper and the knowledge-of-will. For the former is elemental, conscious and a conceptual mode of intentionality, and the latter is aconscious and a compound and perceptual form. But will cannot function in vacuo, any more than desire can. It is this underpinning in each case that the two modes, knowledge-of-will and belief-in-desire supply to their respectively ordered conscious modes. We shall have to say much more concerning this, the relationship between the various modes, one conscious and the other aconscious, which are identifiable on one and the same theological basis, as the two modes will (conscious) and knowledge-of-will (aconscious) are manifests of Transcendence ("the Father"). For it goes to the very heart of the thesis we shall propose concerning the fourfold gospel.) Conscious will is thus fed or informed by the aconscious psychological function, the knowledge-of-will. It is this which is lacking in the disciples, not will per se. Let us be perfectly clear about the conclusion:


We have at least twice before in the story,already met this notion of power, capacity or ability. The father has already informed Jesus of the inability of the disciples; (Mark 9.18 - i!sxusan; cf. Luke 9.40 and Matthew 17.16 - h)dunh/qhsan). It is at the heart of the exchange between Jesus and the father of the child:


On this count, the concept of power, here the power over the deathly force dominating the boy, is certainly proximate to the concept of will. We might almost say the 'belief' in will, for that too is a term which figures several times in the narrative. But one does not believe in will anymore than one knows desire. These are tautologous constructions. To believe in will is already to will; and to know desire is already to desire. Or, to put the same matter in other terms, will is instrumental to belief just as desire is instrumental to knowing. We shall comment further on this same relationship between the conative, initial mode and the cognitive final mode as it is represented in the mandala. It is of fundamental importance to Markan and biblical metapsychology. We need to observe here for now that will simpliciter however is susceptible of knowing, and is so by dint of experience. Once we have achieved something we regarded initially as difficult and perhaps even impossible, we are in a position to know our own will as that power or capacity we may exercise over a force that dominates or forces that dominate us against our own intentions. This is why the variant reading which adds 'fasting' to the praxis of prayer, conforms to the dialogue concerning power. For like prayer it is something comparable to will in the sense of being a mental or conceptual discipline. It is here at the last, now where the similarities between the two psychological entities in question, belief-in-desire and knowledge-of-will, have been secured, that their equally important and real difference can be stated. Mark now utilises the privacy motif to good effect, and the actual disparity between the two healings, Jairus' Daughter and The Boy With An Unclean Spirit, is clearly exposed.

Much more needs to be said concerning this and other pericopae. We have omitted mention of the relevant messianic miracle in the gospel of Matthew, The Walking On The Water, because it is at variance with the other accounts. We shall in due course refer to it, and see just how closely it complies with the psychological perspective peculiar to that gospel as to no other. However, there is one expression in the Matthean healing miracle story, The Boy With An Unclean Spirit (Matthew 17.14-20), which we should not fail to notice, and which simultaneously reverts to one of the paradigms for Markan metaphysics and leads into the next topic in this survey, namely the relation between the analogous conscious and aconscious modes. Of course, the fact that the story refers more than once to the death-like state into which the illness casts the boy, which we noted was a point of comparison with the condition suffered by Jairus' daughter, should be taken as evidential of a state of consciousness determined by the aconscious mind. But it is the description by Matthew using an ancient term for his particular illness that interests us equally in this same context:


The word 'moon' is by no means a commonplace in the gospels, though all three synoptists are familiar with it. The root of the expression here given as 'epileptic', is selh/nh, meaning 'moon'. This is one of the few instances where all three motifs, sun, moon and stars, of the Day 4 rubric recur in the synoptic gospels. Luke's use of  the word 'moon' in relation to the coming of the Son of man in close proximity with the word 'signs', shmei~a, returns us to that rubric. Matthew too has the same term, shmei~a, only it occurs earlier in his version of the Markan apocalypse (Matthew 24.3). That rubric presented us with the creation of the sun, moon and stars, the very things which produce light and regulate the seasons and times. The hermeneutic treated this radical in the creation story in tandem with the Day 1 rubric, which posits the conceptual form mind. Accordingly, we argued that the subject of the later and immanent Day 4 rubric, is the form of unity mind : body. This might be mapped against the anthropic category male : female, even to the point of pressing the analogy of the stars, as a figure for offspring, so much a concern of the theology of immanence.

Something of the gist for us now of this seemingly primitive conception of the psychophysical, can be reaped. If we posit the metaphor sun-moon as a literary representation of the soma or mind : body, that is, precisely qua constituent of consciousness itself, then it also serves as one of several  paradigms for the relation between conscious and aconscious. For we have been employing the term 'consciousness' to comprise both conscious and aconscious intentional processes. One of the most ready to hand conceptions of that order or domain of our mind other than the waking conscious, is the state of consciousness associated with sleep, hence night, hence the moon. But we cannot make a simple equivalence between these two halves of the diurnal cycle and the two orders of consciousness. The 'sign of Jonah', the Passion predictions, and other sayings, will suggest that just as the conscious is signified by both of the halves of the twenty-four hour cycle, both diurnal proper and nocturnal proper, so too is the aconscious. It will be the annual cycle in which all twelve components or radicals of mind are arranged that we may find the paradigm immediately suited to our wider purposes, as it is inclusive of the hexadic references of the Christological messianic events as well as the dodecad referred to in The Feeding Of The Five Thousand. This event is of prime importance to the theology of semiotic forms. For this reason, each order, the conscious and the aconscious, utilises repeatedly, the full spectrum of semeioptika.

We have observed the self-replication of the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence within each narrative cycle; the transcendent theology of Days, and the immanent theology constituted by the messianic series. The presence of an ambivalent category in either series, being the forms of unity in the Day series, and the forms of imagination in the messianic series, these two subsets which present us with 'virtual immanence' and 'virtual transcendence' respectively, and which at every turn are marked by ambiguity, these and precisely these, circumscribe the biblical doctrine of the other-than-conscious mind, which we refer to here as the 'aconscious'. This brings to the clarity and robustness of the normative, a nuance and subtlety requisite to any understanding of this order of consciousness. Its effect is to  maintain that conscious mind is operative throughout the entirety of the diurnal-nocturnal cycle, and the aconscious mind likewise. There is no simple equation of one to the other, the conscious to the diurnal and the aconscious to the nocturnal. The immanent messianic events which portray the perceptual memory are analogous to nocturnal intervals, and as normative, represent the conscious order; whereas the miracles of 'virtual transcendence', denoting perceptual imagination, in spite of their signification of the aconscious, are analogous to the diurnal intervals of the same twenty-four hour cycle. It is the annual template with its clearly demarcated four solar quarters which will best illuminate the structural features of both series, 'beginning and end', as they disclose both orders of consciousness, the conscious and the aconscious, and both polarities, the conceptual and the perceptual, and also, both divisions of intentional modes, cognitive and conative. Where the diurnal-nocturnal template is indispensable to our method, is in the assignation of atemporal interval, albeit a diurnal-nocturnal one, to the messianic events, that is, to the perceptual categories, and thereby analogously, to the Days, that is, to the conceptual categories. We shall elaborate on these matters in what follows.

If then we have not introduced a raft of different words to denote the workings of the aconscious or other-than-conscious mind, if we have instead reproduced those already given as the elemental and radical modes to be attributed to the conscious mind, and so if we understood the aconscious in terms of their reconfiguration in compound forms, as intentions of prehensions, the desire-to-know and the will-to-believe, and again as prehensions of intentions, the belief-in-desire and knowledge-of-will, this accords with the Genesis paradigm. Seldom reappearing in the gospels, it is remarkably evoked in Mark's passion narrative even if only implicitly:


The passion narrative, on account of its being punctuated with references to time (15.1, 25, 29, 33, 34, 42), is that continuous text in Mark's gospel which  we can readily associate with the stories of creation. And since this is so, it allows for and reinforces that correspondence between the Sabbath and the Eucharist to which we have previously referred. John's passion narrative shows the same congeries of associations with extraordinary economy in the depiction of the proof of Jesus' death:


That this takes us back to The Transformation Of Water Into Wine, is obvious. That narrative reporting Jesus' answer to his mother's request presaged the text here -  'And Jesus said to her, "O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come."' (John 2.4) Where Mark clearly evokes the Genesis rubric, so does John. For even though he does not allude to the light-time construct in the rubric, the miracle at Cana is the messianic event parallel to Day 4. Where the former is about haptic memory, the latter is about soma. In both cases, the perceptual radical of mind or the conceptual one, one and the same identity, the immanent Son, is disclosed. John's two accounts emphasise immanence in the fullest sense of the word, because they evoke the anthropic category, male : female. This as noted, can be mapped analogously against the form of unity mind : body. To do so, confers upon the aconscious the greatest significance because the immanent term, the feminine, and correspondingly the body, soma, always comprise the transcendent term, the masculine, and correspondingly mind. The aconscious is not reduced to being a pale and subliminal reflection of the conscious, but is understood in its sense of completeness and totality. So we have as a metaphorical model for consciousness in the fullest extent of its intentional structures: the ciphers of sun and moon, consequently day and night, diurnal and nocturnal, which are repeated in either case, in both orders, conscious and aconscious.

We can now extrapolate from the pattern of fourfold solar-lunar temporality to the iconographical representation of mind as consisting of conscious-aconscious forms of intentionality. This brings back into focus the issues surrounding the form and varieties of the gospel itself. First we needs must summarise the above findings, and to do this there is no better way than to use the optic semeia. The previous discussion has brought to light an important relation between causal or conative forms of intentionality, and their resulting forms. This is one benefit accruing from the consistency of the language used. It will propose certain features stemming from metaphysical method, namely analogy, which will assist us in better grasping the aconscious modes. Thus for example the desire-to-know results in a cognitive mode, knowing, and the will-to-believe results in believing. This is a process we can refer to as supervenience. There are two basic sets in which the patterns of supervenience are manifest, and these couple with the grouping of the parallel modes, just mentioned. That is, they operate in conjunction with conscious-aconscious forms which we will predicate as specific to the mental and affective perspective of each of the four gospels in keeping with the fundamental paradigm of the mandala, that of the four seasons. These two sets which combine the patterns of supervenience and of conscious-aconscious paired modes of intentionality are best introduced iconographically as follows:

THE RELATION OF SUPERVENIENCE OF FORMS OF INTENTIONALITY

A variety of relations between intentional modes obtains. Some of these are already inferred automatically by the nomenclature we have used as well as by the above diagrams. We spoke of the conscious and aconscious, modes standing  in 'parallel' to one another, for example those of will parallel to knowledge-of-will, and belief parallel to desire-to-know. These 'parallel' forms of intentionality stem from radical conceptual and perceptual categories which are determined as analogous to one another; they reflect the one-to-one correspondences given in the morphology of the two textual cycles, creation and salvation. Each conceptual radical is 'mirrored' by a perceptual equivalent. The ensuing analogous relations obtaining between modes of intentionality thus function in tandem with the relations of supervenience. We indicated the relation of supervenience between two modes as already inferred by the conative forms in both orders of consciousness, the conscious and the aconscious. The last of these helps greatly in determining the meaning of those forms of intentionality less transparently intelligible, such as belief-in-desire and knowledge-of-will, since there are not only relations, but relations of relations. Hence knowing follows from, or supervenes upon, desire-to-know, a relation which is analogous proportionately to the relation between desire and knowledge-of-will. The previous mandala illustrated such patterns, in having grouped the four sets of parallels with their supervenient relations into two simple contrastive groups. Examination of the relations as well as of the nomenclature should reveal however the close connection of the members of each of the two. It would be a mistake to understand the two groups themselves as anything other than organically interdependent. Their correlation takes us on the next step of explaining these instances of relatedness and towards the thesis concerning the gospels.

We may speak of  these two groups outlined in the previous iconography provisionally distinguishing a common enough division made in epistemological discourse, that between theoretical or speculative and practical or applied reason. There will be other means of comprehending the distinction, a major one will employ the acoustika, but before that can be undertaken, we need to complete the presentation of the semeioptika regarding the annual and twelvefold paradigm. The basis however of the twofold grouping in the previous mandala can be explained at once: that group signified by conscious, cognitive and aconscious, conative intentional forces, namely: belief; knowing; will-to-believe; desire-to-know - all of which answer to theoretical logos, logos asarkos, all configure moments, point-instants, in the year, culminating in the summer solstice, during which the light is increasing. It is for this reason that we have, even if only conditionally, referred to them as signifying that aspect of logos, 'theoretical' reason. We shall put this same distinction in another mandala directly. But we note also that the other grouping, consisting of aconscious, cognitive and conscious, conative forms of intentionality, given in the second mandala above, namely: belief-in-desire; knowledge-of-will; desire; will. This second grouping, in which the conscious forms both conceptual and perceptual are conspicuously conative forces, and whose cognitive forces lie within the aconscious, exists in rapport with the first by reason of its semiotic configuration of the half of the year in which the night, here the cognitive aconscious, gains ground over the day, now the conative conscious. These then are modes of intentionality which may well be defined in relation to the logos ensarkos, the practical reason of epistemological discourse.


Care must be taken however not to sever these halves of reason one from the other. For just as we introduced the cosmic, planetary and global image of the creation narrative pursuant to the hermeneutic in the second part of the previous essay, Miracles As Metaphysics, we can now agree that the two above systems of intentional forms are simultaneous. The globe is one whole, and at any given time it consists of a diurnal-nocturnal ratio in juxtaposition. There is need therefore to understand that at any point in either of the two cyclical processes, there is concurrently an alternative in the juxtaposed 'hemisphere'. To take the example concerning the Christological modes: belief occurs simultaneously with belief-in-desire, in a locus to which it is antithetical in some way, since the first is representative of the diurnal interval at the point of midsummer, and the latter of the diurnal interval at midwinter in the opposing sphere simultaneously. This is not to mix the two things in question; they are decidedly antithetical. It is designed rather in order to prevent any vision of the iconography itself which fails to reckon with its encompassing capacity. The above mandala also, concern the canonical forms of intentionality, about which we shall have to say more in due course.

The same applies to the remaining Christological forms of intentionality, since the conscious one of which, desire, is representative of the nocturnal interval at midwinter, when the nocturnal is at its maximum duration, or as we may infer, force, intensity and so on; while the desire-to-know is represented by the opposing, but nevertheless simultaneous night, that of midsummer. Even while they occur in oppositional locations, or hemispheres,  these remain nevertheless simultaneous. Again this is far from saying that the two processes are one and the same. But it is to utilise the metaphorical construct to its fullest extent, and consequently to avoid any bifurcation other than the epistemological-psychological method sorting the categoreal forms of intentionality according to another criterion essential to Christian metaphysics. We shall have to account for this in any hermeneutic addressing the eschatological dimension of the aconscious, that is, its relation to death. Consequently, the apocalyptic literature will be our best guide here.

The same thing must obtain in the case of the Transcendental forms of intentionality. We use the term 'transcendental' here, to identify those intentional processes which instantiate Transcendence, "the Father" of classical theological discourse. If we can speak of a process or intentional mode of knowing, then we must also speak equally of the intentional mode knowing-will. The two are not coterminous - but they are related as signified by the construct of simultaneity according to the paradigm we are using. In this case, the first, knowing, answers to  the  peak moment of a cognitive force, which acts as a boundary. Its global or planetary analogue is the nocturnal interval at the spring equinox. It is partnered by an equally powerful form of intentionality, the will-to-believe, which although aconscious, is analogically figured the diurnal interval of the same place and time, and which likewise evinces Transcendence.

The second part of the equation is the relation subtended between will-to-believe itself and will simpliciter. Again, both of these are 'Transcendental' in nature. Like the two species of knowing, both find their theological rationale in the identity of 'God, the Father', that is, Transcendence. But the spatiotemporal figure for will-to-believe devolves upon the imagery of the day at the inception of winter, when the light of day has just begun to decrease, the manifest of its aconscious status, at the very point immediately succeeding the autumn equinox.  Analogically as immediately subsequent to the spring equinox, will is represented by the day  at the inception of summer,  in the opposing order, that of the conscious mind.  Once again, these two modes of intentionality, will and will-to-believe are given as simultaneously obtaining in oppositional hemispheres, that is, as occurring at the same time in different places, just as is the case for knowing and knowing-will. It is difficult to pin down exactly just what this 'simultaneity' must denote; time, which is space : time, is the key factor, and that is why we must pursue each of the four gospels, and equally, the apocalyptic literature as we shall see directly, in their turn. For they alone will illuminate the doctrine of mind in its broadest outlines. But at the centre of all this imagery lies the relation between mind and time; for there is neither one without the other, just as there is neither the Son without the Transcendent, "the Father".


This particular set of supervenient relations occurring between intentional modes, is already implicit in the terminology we have used, only we have not as yet drawn attention to it. There is a clearly causative defined relation between the desire-to-know and knowing, just as there is analogously between desire simpliciter and knowing-will. The  latter mode in each case is an effect, of the initiating mode or conatus. Again, the will-to-believe must relate to belief itself analogously to the relation between will and the belief-in-desire. These four instances of related modes are so obvious that we have left their description until now. They will assist us later in explaining in more detail what we mean by knowledge-of will or knowing-will, and believing-desire or faith-in-desire, although the meaning of these expressions should be already intelligible in part. We need to note in passing here, that supervening cognitive forms of intentionality are related to their conative forms in neither the same way as are the coherent ('parallel') modes which establish the perspectives of the four gospels, nor that of the hybrid forms of intentionality which fuse members of the same taxa.

Here there is no distinct congruence of value as in the coherent or 'parallel' modes of intentionality operative specifically within each of the four gospels. So for example, the relation between the will-to-believe and belief, is altogether dissimilar to that between the will-to-believe and knowing, the two coherent ('parallel') modes of intentionality which determine the theology of the gospel of Mark, to take one example. Nor are the four instances of supervenient relations among intentional forms comparable to the synthetic intentional forms which are the four hybrid Pneumatological instances of intentionality.  Instead we are dealing with the way in which a particular mode of intentionality leads to another, or the way in which the one supervenes the other. These supervenient relations also traverse the conscious-aconscious divide, and this is part of the meaning of supervenience.

In the previous discussion we have used the various terms: 'derived from', 'necessary to', 'determined by' and so on, to express the relation of a given mode to a specific radical of consciousness, and meaning the same thing, we have said that a specific categoreal radical is 'responsible for' a given mode of intentionality. We have also termed this relation one of the 'inherence' in the radical by the specific mode of intentionality. By saying that the manifestation or expression of the intentional mode by that particular radical is its 'sovereign' or 'canonical' or 'exemplary' occasion, we are indicating the same fact. By radical of consciousness we mean of course the entities first described in the two textual cycles, creation and salvation. They are the six conceptual forms in the former case, and the six perceptual forms in the latter. These are the elementary subjects of the narrative cycles Genesis 1.1.s and the messianic series. The first duty of the literature is to posit them. They are foundational to biblical metaphysics, and we refer to them accordingly as categories. They are the primary, ultimate, pervasive, radical generalities of existence understood by consciousness and pertain in the first instance to such, mind, that is consciousness itself. Thus they concern the reflexive aspect of this mind which secures the possibility of communication between persons, and arguably, the possibility of thought itself of the person as unique and individuated. So for example we averred that the conceptual form mind is responsible for the intentional mode belief, or what is the same, that belief inheres in this conceptual radical of consciousness, or is derived from it, and that the particular variety of belief thus generated by mind, is its 'canonical' expression, the 'sovereign instance' of what is meant by 'belief' in the first place

CONDITIONALITY

We must here begin to examine the relation between dyads consisting each of a conscious and an aconscious form of intentionality, outlined above by means of identical optika, which we referred to as the 'parallel' forms of intentionality. There are four such, and they fit the unique psychological mindsets of the four gospels. They are as follows: analogously to the autumnal and vernal equinoxes respectively, (1) aconscious knowledge-of-will and conscious willing; and (2) aconscious will-to-believe and conscious knowing; and analogously to the summer and winter solstices respectively, (3) aconscious desire-to-know and conscious believing; and (4) aconscious belief-in-desire and conscious desire. The former two are enantiomorphic, meaning that the relatedness of the dyads themselves is analogous to the concept of bodily sidedness. For the aconscious and conscious are in equal proportion in both cases, as is true of the relation between the durations of day and night at the equinoxes. In the latter two cases, the ratio of the aconscious to conscious is diametrically opposed, following the given relation of the diurnal and nocturnal intervals at the solstices.

Hence the desire-to-know is subordinate in degree to belief, whereas belief-in-desire is subordinate in degree to desire. We are not interpreting the conscious modes as analogues of the diurnal and the aconscious modes as analogues of the nocturnal. Thus even though The Transfiguration marks the duration centred on midday, it stands, representatively of an aconscious radical, analogously to the nocturnal interval at the summer solstice. And even though the Day 4 rubric signifies a diurnal interval, the diurnal interval of the midwinter solstice, it functions representatively of an aconscious radical. As for the equinoctial dyads, the Day 5 rubric marks the diurnal interval at the spring equinox, and this signifies an aconscious order, as do all members of the creation series belonging to the second half of the taxonomy; and finally, the autumnal dyad, consists of both the Day 2 rubric, and The Walking On The Water, which also occurs during the first of the diurnal intervals, the former being normative, signifies the conscious component, while the latter, belonging to the members of the messianic series which are taxonomically depicted in terms of 'virtual transcendence', must concern the aconscious.

These structural features of both series introduce the thesis concerning the specific natures of the gospels themselves as precisely fourfold. The occurrence in the story of The Feeding Of The Four Thousand of the same figure, four, in keeping with the proposition that the logical subject of this narrative is to denote the existence of the optic memory as a centre of consciousness or perceptual radical of mind, belongs to this very thesis regarding the tetradic form of the gospel. If the messianic series is itself likewise part of the semantic of this particular miracle narrative, that is, if that particular unit of the tradition, the sevenfold messianic miracle series has been handed down as written rather than oral gospel, we have further evidence for the meaning of the same figure, four, the most immediate numerical sign of immanence that we possess. It answers to the existence of precisely four conscious (simple) and four aconscious (compound) intentional modes.

The standard statement regarding conditionality asserts: 'if p, then q' and 'p only if q'. This is equivalent to saying that 'the truth of p is sufficient for the truth of q' and 'the truth of q is necessary for the truth of p' respectively; or that 'the truth of the consequent ('q') is necessary for the truth of the antecedent 'p'', and that 'the truth of the antecedent is sufficient for the truth of the consequent'.  Such phrasing  should make perfectly obvious at once the relation that holds between the (antecedent) radical, whether perceptual or conceptual, and  its (consequent) intentional form. We shall find each of the four moments of the 'parallel' modes, conscious-aconscious, related on the basis of their axiological identity in the section, which deals with the specific character both epistemic and psychic, of the four gospels, but first we need to recognize the full integrity of the relation between categoreal radical and intentional mode, in each of the four instances.

Let us take an example obvious to common sense, that concerning desire vis-à-vis haptic memory. There is in a certain sense, no way for anyone to desire without the experience of the radical of consciousness. In other words, if I can be said to desire in the sense of the word as here used, then I must also entertain a memory of experiences of this haptic mode of sense-percipience: 'if haptic memory, then desire'. Here, the antecedent category necessitates the consequent intentional mode. There must be the memory of past occasions of the appetition arising from the haptic mode of sentience and its subsequent satisfaction for the experience of desire. Not just haptic desire itself, but desire in general, which will stem from this particular form of sense-percipience. The various expressions of desire according to other perceptual modes will take their cue from the defining occasion of this intentional form as it obtains in haptic memory.

In order to amplify this example of conditionality as the prime definition of the relation between a radical of consciousness and an intentional mode, we need to say something however briefly, concerning the clear connexity between touch and smell/taste. This is assumed in the clear association drawn in the gospels by the miracle at Cana and the Eucharist, just as it is by the deliverance of our own experience: nothing that is tasted can avoid being touched. All three feeding miracles invoke the Eucharist, not the least the first of these. The Feeding Of The Five Thousand stands to the Transcendent and The Feeding Of The Four Thousand to the Holy Spirit in the same way as does The Transformation Of Water Into Wine to the Son. They are epiphanies as manifesting sense-percipient in terms of the structure of human consciousness. The first is the single Christological and purely immanent event of the messianic series. Hence it is crucial to any real doctrine approaching 'incarnation', the reason for its appearance first in the gospel of John, hence also its connection to the Eucharist is intelligible.

Assimilation is a congenial instance of the intentional mode desire, and we shall argue of the perceptual mode, knowing also. It is the prototype of perceptual modes of intentionality, the conceptual scheme at the very basis of the immanent messianic miracles, if not the series in its entirety. As foundational to existence itself, assimilation may dignify the various forms of desire. An evolutionary psychology, such as we find in the creation taxonomy and in the stories of the healing of The Gerasene Man and The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter, supports claims regarding the elementary nature of the olfactory-gustatory mode of sense-percipience. Thus we can say that the mode  smell-taste functions as a substrate of sorts for each of the three 'phenomenal' modes of sense-percipience. The three Eucharistic miracles are couched in terms of the actual Eucharist for this reason. The petition for 'daily bread' in the Lord's Prayer makes plain the fact that our survival depends on the operation of this protean or substratal mode of perception. The relation thus of the actual mode smell-taste to the perceptual-mnemic forms of intentionality, desiring and knowing, and beyond to the perceptual forms of intentionality derivative from the perceptual-imaginal categories, the desire-to-know and the knowledge-of-will, deserves our careful attention. As does the question of a possible relation between the olfactory-gustatory mode of sentience and the four conceptual forms of intentionality. This is implicit in both creation narratives, the first and the second. For without its counterpart, the Eucharist, the Sabbath remains a more or less vacuous concept .

That said, what we should note in passing here, is that if we have not predicated of the combined sentient modes smell-taste, peculiar or inherent forms of intentionality, that is because the gospel depicts the same as the precedent to all three forms of phenomenal sentience.  Every one of the immanent messianic miracles subscribes to the assimilation metaphor, appetition followed by satisfaction. But what the Eucharist proper as a messianic event denotes, is no mere form of appetition, but the very thing itself - the sense-percipient mode smell-taste. Hence its archetypal status for all other forms of appetition. The haptic, acoustic and optic are phrased in terms of this most rudimentary of all modes of sentience, smell-taste. This is further evidence, if that were required, for an evolutionary psychology operative within Markan metaphysics. Upon the related modes of intentionality, belief-in-desire and desire, the entire apparatus of assimilation, in the literal sense, will depend. Concomitantly, the related or 'parallel' modes knowing and will-to-believe are also germane. If day to day survival depends in whatever way upon the conscious processes of desire and upon its aconscious parallel, the faith-in-desire, then it depends also upon knowing and its aconscious correlative, the will-to-believe. We are therefore bound to affirm the existence of states of intentionality approximate or akin to these, in all conscious living creatures. The continuance of life requires not only the operation of desire motivated by hunger and thirst. Every living thing must also know the difference between good and bad as the difference between food or drink which sustains life and that which terminates it.

While ever its life endures, there is no possibility of a human or animal  not experiencing belief-in-desire, ('animal faith'), as defined here, as well as desire itself, according to the mode of smell/taste. Likewise, the experience of states of intentionality in animals akin to the paired modes will-to-believe and knowing should be assumed.  The earliest stages of life whether they occur within an uterus or an egg, will be marked by this rudimentary sense-percipient mode. Viviparous, oviparous and ovoviviparous creatures alike are from the inception of their existence, subject to the experience of smell-taste in however embryonic a form. Hence at this level, the function of the same four modes of intentionality in an embryonic form must be guaranteed. Two of them, the aconscious modes, belief-in-desire and the will-to-believe, we can trace back to categories outlined in the second half of the creation story, the categories soma or mind : body and time, which are certainly linked. One of these at least, the story of Day 5, employs figures from the animal kingdom. This rubric denotes the categoreal form time. It would seem worth contending provisionally at least, not only that animals entertain such a concept, time, but that even vegetative forms of life may too have some rudimentary grasp of it. If that is so, then such living forms have the capacity in some degree to participate in the intentional processes consequent upon these same radicals.

Such arguments have ramifications for the meaning of the Eucharist. Since it is in short the pre-eminently salvific event, they must extend its compass beyond the confines of which we have been prepared to admit in the past. (Surely this is one of the implications of The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter too.) They will further the soteriology of the gospel in connection with doctrines of samsara and rebirth such as we find in those religious traditions of the East which, having inherited the Jain principle of ahimsa or non-violence, have tended to regard the sub-human world with vastly more respect and consideration than the theistic traditions of the West.

To insist upon the links subtended by the Eucharist to the first Eucharistic miracle, and to the complement of the latter, the last miracle, under the auspices of conditionality, as a working definition of the relationship between the radical of consciousness and the specific intentional mode inherent in it, is to make more concrete still that relationship. For the perceptual modes which the Eucharist itself denotes for the purpose of Christian metaphysics, the combined ones of smell and taste which we have characterised as fundamental, can be conceived in terms of this relationship. The mode smell-taste is the perfect example of the conditional relation between category and intentional mode. No radical of consciousness, here the mode of smell-taste, then no appetition in the literal sense of the word. No Eucharistic category then neither desire nor knowing in the 'sub-human' consciousness in the strict sense. Moreover, the existence of the conscious intentional modes, 'parallel' to belief-in-desire and will-to-believe, which are desiring and knowing respectively, will be thrown into doubt. Between the first thing, a sentient mode in some degree or kind shared by all living organisms, and the second, a mode of intentionality, the bond is a fait accompli. The first entity is sufficient for the second: 'if p then q'. This must remain the model for the relation between all the categories and their inherent modes of intentionality.

Two points should follow. The first concerns the subject object distinction, for this is the alternative means of putting the path from category to intentionality. To underscore the fact that perception itself always entails things, stuff, objects, data, is to make perception the sufficient condition for the perceptual, conscious modes of intentionality - desiring and knowing. Whatever else desiring and knowing are, they involve objects. This is irrefutably posited in the feeding miracle stories themselves, replete as they are with figures and quanta. The experience of touch functioning in the mode of desire must involve the touch of something or someone in particular: a specific and given thing is desired as tangible. The case for knowing is essentially no different. It must entertain its own particular object. In the mode of haptic memory, as briefly stated previously, knowing assumes the form of technological rationality. This is rather more like 'knowing how' than it is like 'knowing that'. In other words, it is not the beginning and end of knowing as such; it does not manifest knowing in its canonical or sovereign form. Knowing will assume its full identity as a perceptual, conscious mode of intentionality distinguishable from desiring, relatively to acoustic memory, not haptic memory. Nonetheless, technological consciousness, the mode of knowing which devolves upon haptic memory, is a form of knowing. It has its own data, its very own given objects. Technological consciousness and erotic consciousness stem from one and the same radical - haptic memory. The only difference is that between conation and cognition, or as we say, between desiring and knowing. The data of one may be among the data of the other - as we are about to see when we address issues pertaining to the Paraclete. But what is clear at all costs is the fact that the intentional mode both arises from and brings full circle, precisely what we mean by the specific radical in the first place. Thus desire and haptic memory serve to define each other; but the radical, haptic memory is the beginning and end of the intentional mode desire. It is  prior or antecedent, and a sufficient condition for the intentional mode.


What we have now argued for the perceptual categories applies as well to the conceptual categories. The only difference in this case is between a state of awareness, or mode of intentionality in which the focus rests with the subject rather than with the object. These categories are not forged in final and irrevocable isolation of either polarity of consciousness from its other; perceptual and conceptual. What we shall see is in the case of a perceptual mode, a specific subject, although the focus remains fixed on the object qua object. So too for a conceptual mode. If in believing, or willing a 'something', the person is aware of it, it nevertheless remains true that the real and full force of the awareness is on what we might call the self. That is, it remains fixed upon the actual believing or willing subject. This is fundamentally what the two terms, object and subject imply. Hence, if no state of awareness which is in the first place externally related to an object is without a given subject, the obverse applies. The explication of this nexus between subject and object, as functions of the polarisation of consciousness into conceptual and perceptual sides, is a major element of the theology of semiotic forms. But either way, for objects as for subjects, the relation of a category to its inherent mode of intentionality is implicit in these very terms.

This fact, that perceptual modes of intentionality necessarily engage objects or somethings, and that conceptual forms of intentionality similarly involve someones, or subjects, are mutually inclusive. The subjects and the objects are in effect nothing other than the actual entities referred to as 'transformed' and 'transfigured' in the first and last messianic miracles respectively. They are not to be taken in isolation anymore than the two basic psychological tenets of these Christological narratives, Eros and Thanatos. We are coming to a fuller exposition of this matter. It is essential to grasp here, as a second important demonstration of the relation occurring between a radical of consciousness and its necessary form of intentionality, the reciprocity of subjects and objects. Thus to speak of haptic memory (Eros) or to speak of any kindred perceptual radical, is to speak of a something, an object, since it is to speak of the thing as desired, known, and so on. The notion of an object of perception is tantamount to the notion of a perceptual mode of intentionality. Similarly, to speak of mind as in the context of logos qua Thanatos, is to speak of a someone, a subject. This for its part, is to speak equally of  a conceptual mode of intentionality. For does it not of its own accord mean the identity which believes, wills, and so on? The sense-percipient object, and the sense-perceiving subject, locked as they are in relation, are thus evidential of the necessitation of modes of intentionality by the perceptual and conceptual radicals of consciousness. The larger explication of this aspect of Markan metaphysics, stated in the very explicit references to 'breaking' and 'fragments' of portions remaining and the rest in the Eucharistic miracles, must delve more deeply into mereological issues germane to the same.

The second and final point must add to the brief discussion above of the Eucharistic mode of perception and its relation to desire in particular. Any undermining of the affinity between sense-percipient taste and the intentional mode desiring, runs counter to common sense as well as counter to the witness of the gospels. But there remains the task of assessing the Eucharist itself, and its actual epistemological designatum, the compound mode smell-taste, in connection with the various perceptual modes of intentionality. That cannot be undertaken here. What we should add however, is a note concerning the notion of need as against desire. This is not meant as a salve to conscience, given the long and acrimonious account of desire not just by the theistic traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam; but by so many other religious schools of thought.

In Hinayana Buddhism of course, and in certain Hindu traditions, generally the attitude towards 'desire' is nothing less than adversarial. It is therefore refreshing to find, as we shall find, in the gospel of Luke, an approach which stands in the clearest opposition to the veritable barrage of calumny levelled at this, the poorest of relatives among the family of forms of intentionality for religious consciousness. So if we seem to add to the long litany of complaint against desire issuing from religious quarters in making this last point, that is not what we mean to do at all. The point concerns the notion of need. Indeed it is necessary to differentiate this from the intentional mode. Need and desire are neither coterminous nor mutually exclusive. Thus one's 'daily bread' one may both need and desire. This is possibly the best of all cases, since it guarantees a vital part of what we mean by 'satisfaction'. Satisfaction in the truest sense requires hunger or thirst, that is, it requires need; and desire of itself may not generate satisfaction. This is by way of saying that desire may stand of its own accord, without genuine need. Any comment about not only the Eucharist itself, but the Eucharistic miracles which accept it as their prompt, must include a comment along these lines. So pertinent are these narratives to a world in which vast tracts of humanity still want in the direst need for 'daily bread' - and not food alone. We mean of course the things which ensure health and some measure of human happiness if not prosperity.

Finally, the view adopted here, is that conditionality is not equivalent to causality. Saying that given radicals or categories of consciousness necessitate given modes of intentionality along the lines posited above, does not amount to saying that the former are the causes of the latter. 



The following mandala encapsulates most of the argument proposed thus far, and also anticipates the further discussion. It is as part of the latter where the concepts of ontogeny and phylogeny enter. These were first introduced in the third essay of Miracles As Metaphysics, where the same terms, albeit from biological discourse, were engaged in response to questions concerning the numerability of mind. This greatly concerns us, especially regarding the eschatological doctrines of the Christian faith, which in recent years have seen the virtual disappearance of concepts such as the personal, that is, ontogenetic, immortality of the soul or mind. These same issues thus recur in the four great eschatological texts which must also necessarily form a part of the exposition of the Markan Mandala, the reason for having said previously, that we must pursue more than the gospels. We have referred already, if only briefly to two of these texts, Ezekiel and The Apocalypse. These in a very clear sense respond to the radicals symbolic masculine and optic memory respectively. Thus the former sits within the context of the categoreal schemata of 'beginning' just as the latter does within that of 'end'.

That is to say, the one, Ezekiel, sets before us the Pneumatological category of the transcendent, conceptual form, symbolic masculine, which we find so often referred to in that book as 'Son of man'; whereas the other, The Apocalypse, is the literary epiphany of a category of pure immanence, optic memory. The remaining two expositions within the literature can be listed here: the first is the book of Job, which clearly presents the category symbolic feminine, and of course the New Testament book of The Acts, which is fundamentally iconic of the perceptual radical optic imagination. All four texts, the two from the Hebrew scriptures, and the two New Testament writings, are first and last fixed on the identity of the Holy Spirit. Even though our central concern is essentially that of the four gospels, and so the identities of the Son, and Transcendence, nevertheless it is also the case that we cannot ignore the  connexity between these and the same four texts which propose the Pneumatological doctrines on an equal basis. In the following mandala where we see the same four gospels iconographically portrayed in terms of the four cardinal points of the annual solar cycle, those of the two equinoxes and the two solstices, the actual processes serving as ligatures between these cardinal, that is, canonical point-instants, also have individual representatives within both canons. Therefore we will make use of these same texts: Ezekiel and The Apocalypse, Job and The Acts. The mandala which posits the integration of the radicals of consciousness as well as their sovereign forms of intentionality in tandem with the the cosmic imagery of the 'four living creatures' relative to the fourfold structure of the annual cycle, can be put as follows:



In each half of the top section of this iconography we have listed each of the three radicals belonging to the same class or taxon, in their graded hierarchies. These orders comply with the patterns of the creation taxonomy and the messianic series, to both of which, serial order is fundamentally important as it will be to the notion of time itself, and hence to mind. In both halves of the lower section we have listed the intentional modes 'inherent' in their respective categories. This 'inherence' is not the same as confinement. We have put a proper definition of it in terms of conditionality; that is, we have accounted for the relation between the canonical instance  of eight modes of intentionality and their affiliated categoreal radical, whether conceptual or perceptual. But we must not forget for example, that all six perceptual forms participate in modes generated by the various four perceptual radicals. In other words, the three forms of memory and also the three forms of imagination, are each in their turn occasions for each of the four intentional modes: desiring; knowing; desiring-to-know; and knowing-will. Similarly instantiation in the case of the conceptual polarity is equally wide-ranging. There are in all six conceptual radicals, six constituents of consciousness  taxonomically posited in the creation story; three pure conceptual forms, and three forms of unity. All six such categoreal ideas or conceptual radicals, are occasions for the four intentional modes generated in turn by the various cardinal, that is, canonical, conceptual forms: willing; believing; willing-belief; and believing-desire.

Conditionality is tantamount to canonical or paradigmatic representativeness. So for example, that species of desire occasioned by haptic memory, in effect, erotic desire, is the representative form of this mode of intentionality, taking an example from the perceptual polarity. But there are in all six species of radical desire. All six conceptual radicals are occasions for belief; but only one of these, that of mind, generates the specific kind or variety of belief which we recognise as such.  In other words, one particular form of belief is sovereign over all others as the defining instance of what we mean by the word 'belief'. Thus the canonical, or sovereign, or representative form of knowing, its epitome, is occasioned conditionally by acoustic memory; that of desire by haptic memory; that of belief by mind; that of will-to-believe by time and so on. Nevertheless the intentional modes, be they conceptual or perceptual, range over the entire spectrum of the two polarities, conceptual and perceptual. There are six radical forms of each intentional mode, but only one canonical or sovereign instance of each of the eight modes, reviewed so far.

The above positioning of the non-normative radicals and their innate modes of intentionality is deliberate. It attempts to bring into 'parallel' those conscious modes with the aconscious counterparts. The directional or vectoral quality of the semeia is not simply that of left to right, as we see. For the initial phase in each case is that of the causal, or conative mode, a mode of either will or desire. This will be better and fully explicated, as will many other features of Markan metaphysics given here, by means of the acoustic semeia, the twelve tones of the acoustic series. The dodecaphonic semeia clearly arrange the entire gamut of radicals into a hierarchy of forms, several aspects of which the above iconography is meant to display. Such means are equal to the full exposition of the appropriation of the various radicals of consciousness of modes not inherent to them. So for example, we will be able to posit knowing in its full scale, as it is occasioned by the five modes of perceptual mind other than acoustic memory, and so on. Indeed other relations between the modes of intentionality, and the relations of their relations obtain.  But it is not necessary to enter these here, because so much of it can be properly articulated only by the acoustic semiosis. Since the optic semeia are the best introduction to the theology of semiotic forms, it is fitting to begin with them as we have done here. Two points relevant to the next stage of the study can be entered, and they are as follows:

• There are four sets of canonical instances of non-hybrid modes of intentionality 'parallel' to one another, each consisting of one conscious and the one aconscious polarity. These manifest the same given identity, and this will be either Transcendence or the Son, for as we see, there are no non-hybrid intentional modes proper to those radicals which exemplify the Holy Spirit. Accordingly they are designated by the same semeioptika, the same optic semeia. These four sets of two modes stand in the same relation to one another. They are of course (1) will and knowledge-of-will, (2) knowing and will-to-believe, for Transcendence; and (3) desiring and believing-in-desire, as well as (4) believing and desiring-to-know, for the Son. It is this fourfold group of modes, each consisting of a conscious and an aconscious polarity, that we will later have to pursue in relation to time and furthermore, in the quest to address the tetradic form of the gospel, and the specific contents of each gospel.

• There are however, two remaining 'parallel' sets of modes of intentionality, which although they are hybrid, as we are about to see, are also demonstrable as canonical, and which complete the doctrine of intentionality. These are the four occasions in either categoreal polarity, conceptual or perceptual, which identify the Holy Spirit: symbolic masculine and optic imagination in the case of transcendence and virtual transcendence, and optic memory and symbolic feminine in the case of immanence and virtual immanence. The same are figuratively proper as processive between the four cardinal members of their respective taxa. These same Pneumatological radicals of consciousness we need to investigate a propos of the doctrine of intentionality before advancing further to the study of the fourfold form of the gospel.

 




Nagarjuna's typological psychology differs from the pattern which is emerging here, in relation to the form of the gospels, in a variety of ways; nonetheless it intuitively seizes upon a basic feature of the natural world, the annual cycle with its four marked seasons. (For more on the  use  of the light/darkness metaphor  as a metapsychological typology in Buddhist doctrine see  Bikkhu Kantipalo, 'Access To Insight: The Wheel of Birth and Death', in the section titled 'The First Ring', June 2007, Buddhist Publication Society.) As noted, the first intimation we have of the value of this for metaphysics is delivered in the Day 4 rubric. Thus far we have been modelling some of the doctrinal elements of the metaphysical gospel by means of very simple  sexpartite and tripartite linear iconographic representations, using the semeioptika. But the dodecad is equally fundamental to the same pattern as expounded in the coherence of the six Days and the six messianic miracles, and again reformulated in the twelvefold system of healing events/disciples, which of course resumes in part at least, the previous tradition of the twelvefold tribal system, a theological construct developed even more strongly in The Apocalypse. The convergence of the two, the co-incidence of the fourfold and twelvefold is plainly proposed by the product of the two ciphers for transcendence and immanence respectively, 3 and 4.

Each of the four classes or taxa contained within the categories consists of three members. Some of the simpler two-dimensional mandala will consist of a tabular arrangement of the same two groups of six semeioptika.  The twelvefold schema which we find not only in both Ezekiel and The Apocalypse, was also visually expressed in the 'ephod', the breastplate of the high-priest, which represented the twelve  tribes of Israel by means of precious coloured stones. To all intents and purposes, this too is nothing more or less than a mandala. It will not be necessary to investigate every one of these traditions. But we need to indicate here pursuant to the doctrine of intentionality, its remaining theological concern. We have already put the canonical relationship between the 4-8 cardinal modes of intentionality and the Transcendent and the Son; willing and knowing, and desiring and believing respectively. We began by outlining the importance to of the theology of the Holy Spirit, as is given in the fact that we have to do with the written word at every turn. Even if from the introduction of the semeioptika as well as from the Johannine epilogue, we noticed the ascription to the Spirit of movement, change, and process always from a conative and so, causal, form of intentionality, whether a species of willing or of desire, to a cognitive, and immediate one, whether of believing or knowing, we have still to say more concerning this very process. Beginning with Ezekiel, the classical Pneumatological exposition contained in the Tanakh, we encounter the theme of movement and change as a primary attribute of this identity in the Godhead. The theologies of semiotic forms which employ both types of semeia, optic and acoustic, will insist on this same function, transition, as germane to the Spirit, a property echoed in the chiastic arrangement of the messianic series which locates the Pneumatological events as the second and second last of the three members of the two subgroups. It is necessary to fully profile the basic contents of the doctrine of intentionality, and in order to do just that, we have now to address the forms of intentionality proper to the Holy Spirit. This will bring into full focus one example of the dodecadic aspect of the pattern.

It may seem that we have forgotten to mention this, the third identity germane to Trinitarian theology, the Holy Spirit. The Son is recognisable in the various forms of faith and desire, and The Transcendent ("The Father") likewise in the various modes of knowing and will, a postulate which follows from the peculiar relationships between the Christological conceptual and perceptual radicals and their intentional modes faith and desire, and the analogous relationships between the modes knowing and willing and the  perceptual and conceptual categories proper to the Transcendent. To the Holy Spirit no particular forms of intentionality are assigned as yet. The issue is an outstanding one, and brings into focus the first of the relations we need to examine. If we have left until now the completion of the doctrine of intentionality in regard to this identity, that is precisely because it was necessary first to outline the non-hybrid modes of intentionality, whether simple, for example desire, or compound, for example desire-to-know. It is important to recognise here, that the compound forms of intentionality, all of which belong to the aconscious, are nevertheless non-hybrid. In other words, the desire-to-know is not the same thing at all as desiring and knowing. If there is just such a thing as desiring and knowing, and we are about to argue that there is indeed, then this is altogether other than the simple mode desire, just as it is different from the simple mode knowing, and yet again, different from the compound mode desire-to-know. Just as surely, as optic memory differs from haptic memory,  from acoustic memory, and from haptic imagination. Thus even though the Pneumatological forms of intentionality appear to borrow as it were, from the extant modes, in that all four are hybridised forms of the latter, they nevertheless possess these same hybrid forms which they define canonically. In this respect the Pneumatological radicals of consciousness are identical to the Christological and Transcendental categories. There are as such, four forms of intentionality for which the relevant Pneumatological radicals act as the sovereign, that is, canonical instances.

As we noted, conative or causal forms of awareness are of two sorts: will, by which we mean will simpliciter and the will-to-believe in the case of conceptual forms, and desire which is desire simpliciter and desire-to-know in the case of perceptual forms. Cognitive or epistemic forms of consciousness are likewise divided according to the emerging difference between conscious and aconscious polarities. The primary model for this division accords with the rubrics of Day 1 and Day 4 of the creation story, which present the light/darkness : night-day relation, and so present the Christological conceptual categories mind and mind : body. In that the entire creation narrative rests on the light-time metaphor, the narrative in its entirety concerns the same entities, mind and mind : body, principally the former, due to the governing tendency of transcendence, the primary inclination of the theology of creation. We adopted as the cue for any working hypothesis regarding the division between conscious and aconscious orders, the fundamental distinctions in the creation Christologies, namely light/darkness and day : night.

It will be necessary to return to these figures as we proceed. For one thing, it is apparent that the radicals which necessitate two aconscious intentional modes, haptic imagination, necessitating the desire-to-know, and acoustic imagination necessitating the knowledge-of-will, are represented in the miracle narratives as transpiring during diurnal intervals, or periods of increasing light. The Transfiguration occurs during the day, and indeed during the period of the sun's zenith. But it is clear that the Festival Of Booths, which in some sense acts as its precedent, was an autumn, that is, harvest festival. Hence, it marks the inception of autumn, and we have represented it as such in the arrangement of the taxa. The Walking On The Water, denoting acoustic imagination, takes place during the very first part of the day when light is increasing. Yet we have said of both in the discussion above regarding the specific forms of intentionality, that their canonical forms of intentionality suggests the nocturnal, in keeping with their aconscious status. Accordingly, those three immanent messianic events which purport the three forms of memory occur within the afternoon to midnight. In spite of this, we have argued according to the annual paradigm argued that the canonical modes of intentionality which they in turn necessitate, are conscious. We shall say more concerning the significance of these intervals in due course. The resolution of the problem concerns the integration of both cycles, lunar and solar.

We opted to set out above the categories, not just of the creation story, but correspondingly those of the messianic series, by means of the semeioptika, in their simplest form. Thus we have selected one of the terms of the light-time conceptual scheme, that of the 'season' mentioned in the Day 4 rubric. For this pinpoints our topic of the specificity of each of the four gospels. To use the optic semeia, which are nothing other than reflected light, so to illustrate the various radicals of consciousness and their related and equally various modes of intentionality, therefore fits with the narrative. These same optika are not just metaphors. All that is suggested by the word 'sign' (shmei~on - Mark 8.11-13, John 2.11), must be admitted in any procedure germane to the theology of semiotic forms. There is a given sense in which the semeioptika are functional analogues of the radicals of consciousness and consequently of the modes of intentionality which these generate.

If then, the discussion of intentional forms thus far has failed to refer to The Paraclete in a measure equal to the references to the Son and the Transcendent, it is obvious that there are categories assigned to this identity in both series. How are we to account for these? How are we to address the apparent deficiency regarding intentional modes proper to the Paraclete? The last of the mandala above of itself already begins to propose the answer. For it sorts the arrangement of the two series which observes the closest connection between conative and cognitive, the causal form of intentionality and the responsive or reactive one, according to the four taxa, the four sorts of conceptual or perceptual entities classified in the two sevenfold series. This does not mean that, as arranged above according to the annual/seasonal and global paradigm, the latter follow from the former. The will-to-believe is causal of believing; the desire-to-know of knowing; desiring is causally connected to knowledge-of-will, and finally, will is connected causally to faith-in-desire. These supervening relationships are not the ones set out in the above diagram. What we have there instead are the two intentional modes, the first conative - causal - and the second cognitive - caused - as both of these are derivative from the four sorts of radicals, or orders, taxa, themselves. Thus to take one example, desiring and knowing are necessitated by two different categories, radicals of consciousness, but these belong to the same class or taxon. For the condition for each is a particular form of memory. This common denomination of members of the four taxa is vital to the understanding of the hybrid forms of intentionality, and serves furthermore to differentiate them from compound modes. For in every one of the four cases of the Pneumatological forms of consciousness, or what is the same thing, the hybrid modes of intentionality, the same applies: namely the taxonomic standing of each is one and the same. But whereas in two cases of compound, aconscious forms of intentionality, the knowledge-of-will and the belief-in-desire, the component intentional forms belong to disparate taxa; this is never so for the hybrid forms of intentionality.

In the mandala above, there are two modes, initial and final,  corresponding to the four cardinal, seasonal, point-instants of the annual cycle. Each of the four taxa contain the conditional radicals necessary for the two hybrid modes. The radicals themselves vary; thus haptic memory is the condition for desire, and acoustic memory is the condition for knowing. But these two radicals belong to the same taxon or class: they are forms of memory. Here we can briefly review one of the most basic aspects of the hermeneutic: the fact that there are four distinct taxa or classes of radicals of consciousness divulged in the homologous series, creation and salvation, beginning and end. The four taxa are those we examined in the first part of The Markan Mandala:

TRANSCENDENT TAXA Genesis 1.1-2.4a - Conceptual Polarity		IMMANENT TAXA The Messianic Series - Perceptual Polarity
transcendence	virtual immanence (immanent transcendence)	virtual transcendence (transcendent immanence)	immanence
pure conceptual forms Days 1 Day 2 Day 3	forms of unity Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7	forms of imagination 1) Transfiguration  2) Walking On Water 3) Stilling the Storm	forms of memory 4) Transformation 5) Feeding  5,000  6) Feeding 4,000  7) Eucharist
1 mind (faith) 2 space (will) 3 symbolic masculine	4 mind : body (faith-in-desire) 5 space : time (will-to-believe) 6 male : female Sabbath	1) haptic imagination (desire-to-know) 2) acoustic imagination (knowing-will) 3) optic imagination	4) haptic memory (desire)  5) acoustic memory (knowing) 6) optic memory 7) olfactory/gustatory memory

Here we should briefly review the discussion of the four classes which was the outcome of the first part of our study, by first attending to the incidence of the categoreal paradigm 'heavens and the earth' as this sorts with the various Christological titles and the internal and external structure of the categories:



                                                                                      space : space-time   ('beginning             

                                                                                       mind : mind-body      and                        

                                                                                       male : male-female    end')             

The internal triadic structure of each of the three forms of unity also conforms to the paradigm transcendence : immanence. Additionally, we have already seen that two forms of unity, space : time and male : female, stand in a particular relation to one another. These, the primordial and eschatological forms of unity, taken in analogous relation, answer to the binary form of the paradigm. The two categories together recapitulate the same order. Their relationship brings to light the paradoxical and central character of mind : body, and fulfils the totality of the morphological scheme as announced in the opening words of Genesis. Another way of putting the same is as follows:

The extensive relation of the three categories reifies the 'image and likeness of God'. It has both triadic and dyadic formal aspects. These are inseparable from one another, and establish the recurring patterns of this text as of the messianic series.


 

The words italicised denote the categoreal analogy of transcendence, and the words underlined, the categoreal analogy of immanence. These converge at the Christological category. This co-ordination as the Christological category of juxtaposed transcendent and immanent is encapsulated in the various Christological formulae 'beginning and end', 'first and last', 'alpha and omega', by means of the copula 'and'.  The Christological entity, the category of mind : body is accordingly accentuated in its transcendent pole: that of mind proper. That is, mind persists in itself and for itself, independently. It is nevertheless also accentuated in its determination as immanent form of unity, soma, the conjunction of mind and body, in virtue of the principle of immanence, unity. Mind is equal to space in its transcendence, just as the mind-body unity  enjoys parity with the anthropic form of unity, which is weighted in virtue of immanence. The categoreal analogy of immanence defers to the deliveries of the messianic series. Thus where 'earth' is first announced in the creation story, its abiding and real significance is given in the isomorphic messianic series. There of course it is defined as the conjunctive relation between forms of imagination and forms of memory. That is to say, that the latter, the forms of memory - which is what the word 'earth' must finally signify - always comprise their alternate pole, a specific form of imagination. Optic memory therefore, the most exclusively or definitively immanent form of memory, always necessarily contains or includes optic imagination. This conjunction of optic imagination and optic memory redefines the anthropic category such that the symbolic masculine is embodied in optic imagination and the symbolic feminine in optic memory. There is no pure memory void of an imaginal consciousness, memory in itself and of itself, least of all, optic memory. Memory according to the categoreal analogy of immanence, whereby the masculine symbolises the imaginal and the feminine the mnemic, but in a way which accords with the essential, unitive or conjugal union of these relata, is indeed the synthesis of past and future sense-percipient occasions, even where the imaginal sense-percipient forms of these unions can and do obtain in themselves to some degree, and ostensibly remain non-perceptual.




(1) Pure Conceptual Forms

These are ideas in the truest sense of the word. They attest transcendence and so stand independently of their co-option by the forms of unity. The space of the form of unity space : time is other than 'immanent' space : time just as mind in se, the transcendent conceptual form, persists in alterity to the soma, the psychophysical, or mind : body unity. We have already seen that the forms of unity substantiate the aconscious, whereas the pure conceptual forms inhabit the conscious. The symbolic masculine however, blurs this picture somewhat; since it represents a transcendent occasion of what is weighted in favour of immanence. Thus the form of unity male : female, is the definitive expression of the anthropic category. Space on the other hand remains obstinately transcendent. The Christological categories, mind and mind : body, are weighted in favour of both transcendence and immanence respectively.

(2) Forms Of Unity

These are space : time, mind : body and male : female as fundamental constituents of consciousness. They are immanent determinations of what are otherwise taxonomically transcendent realities and so assume the characteristics of immanence. This means that in terms of their effects, they may bear comparison with the forms of memory, which are taxonomically purely immanent. The creation narrative, in listing them in serial continuity with the pure transcendent forms, proposes the three forms of unity as transcendent, although their paradoxical status means that we might just as legitimately construe them in terms of immanence.  Thus they are criteriologically conceptual.  It may seem most difficult  to concede as conceptual, the body, and again the anthropic, male and female. We tend naturally to associate the body and its sexual determination with anything other than the conceptual. Nonetheless, in the first instance, these must be classified as concepts and not percepts, even though both as existing at the end of the spectrum of conceptual forms opposite to that of space and mind. However, like these latter, the body and the anthropic category  are indeed, as conceptual forms of unity, ideas. As such, they furnish the aconscious polarity of conceptual mind along with the conceptual form of unity space : time. At the broadest level, the role and function in consciousness of these three entities is truly comparable to the role and function of the transcendent forms, even though they seem to operate like the forms of memory. Hence they occasion the modes of intentionality will and belief, which accrue initially to the two transcendent forms space and mind respectively.

Where the logical appreciation of the conceptual categories was given in the creation account in terms of modes of antithesis, we noticed that the forms of unity subvert what is proper to transcendence, identity as the operation of disjunction, fission, separation from an 'other'. We might therefore say of the logical modality of these constituents of consciousness, the conceptual forms of unity,  that they embody a 'conjunctive diaeresis', a 'combinatorial analysis'. These oxymorons express their irreducibly ambivalent nature, their inherent proneness to the equivocal.



(1) Forms Of Imagination

The ambiguity attendant upon the attributes and functions of the imagination is ineluctable. The forms of imagination are transcendent determinations of what remain congenitally immanent in kind. Thus, we cannot deny the ambiguous natures of either the forms of imagination or the forms of unity. One way of coming to terms with this is to think of both in terms of the language given in the relevant texts. The second half of the creation narrative is dominated by the motif of the propagation of living species. It looks forward to the motif of multiplication in the immanent messianic miracles, there, of provision of food. Of course the Genesis story makes the connection between this process and the phenomenon of nurturing also. We can therefore think of the forms of unity as adding something non-essential to the pure conceptual forms. On the other hand, we can conceive the forms of imagination as abstractive from, or reductive of, the forms of memory. This is already implicit in the miracle narratives depicting imaginal consciousness. Each of the three episodes is marked as evanescent or fleeting, and as having a dream-like quality. In other words, they are depicted in terms of the loss of something, or the reduction of something. The Stilling Of The Storm clearly refers to this idea of loss with its sense of the imminence of death: "perishing". There is similarly a penumbra of death and loss evoked in the other two events of the class, The Walking On The Water, by means of the word "ghost", and The Transfiguration Of Jesus, which contains a lengthy discourse on death and resurrection.

If therefore the picture we have of memory presents us with the notion of multiplication in keeping with the same pattern given in the second half of the creation story, where it is living species that multiply, correspondingly, the first part of that narrative utilised the event of separation, division, disjunction. This is proleptic of the way in which the workings of imagination will be understood in the gospels. Imagination is thus we can say reductive. It takes away something from memory, and this same something which it abstracts, or 'subtracts', belongs in itself to the phenomenon of death, just as do the conceptual forms themselves, which function as the normative equivalents of the imaginal mind. This normativity should be understood as inherent and authoritative. It is definitional of transcendence, so that if imagination itself is to be understood, it must be so in relation to the pure conceptual forms. They are presented in terms of the disjunctive form of antithesis; light separated from darkness, above separated from below, land separated from sea, and plants of one kind separated from plants of another kind. It is only in the latter case, that of the symbolic masculine, with its clear relation to the imaginal, that there is any modification of this reality. Hence if we were to describe the antithetical nature of the imagination, we must take into account the fact of its innately perceptual disposition. We might say of its division from memory, that it is a 'disjunctive synthesis', an expression redolent of the ambiguous character of the aconscious.

This ambiguity is reflected in that imaginative consciousness engages 'non-sensuous perception'. The concept of the imagination put here redefines both the ideas of perception and imagination. For it defines imagination inextricably with perception, while the concept of transcendence seems to qualify the notion of the sensuous to the point of annihilation. One difficulty in conceiving perceptual imagination is the misconception that future events are not real in the same way that past events are. Future events may be not yet actualised in the same way that past occasions already are, but they are as potential, no less real in virtue of that. The sense in which the imaginal consciousness consists of discrete and identifiable forms may also seem problematic. If imagination is involved in the functioning of memory, how then can we argue the existence of thoroughly independent imaginative centres of consciousness? We have not stated such a case. In the last resort, imagination is beholden to memory, from which nonetheless, it differs. Just so, the forms of unity are beholden to the pure conceptual forms. As defining transcendence and immanence, the three pure conceptual forms and the three forms of memory respectively, express at the barest or most radical level, the taxonomic principle, the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence. These six radicals of consciousness alone are consequently the normative occasions of the various values inherent in the categories.

(2) Forms Of Memory

Where the story of creation stresses the conceptual polarity of consciousness for Christian epistemology, this is answered and ultimately balanced by the unstinting and consistent appraisal of the perceptual which we encounter in the gospels at every turn. We should see this as squaring perfectly with the 'incarnation'. The normative mode for perception is that designated by the common language term, memory. Thus the modes of haptic, acoustic and optic memory stand juxtaposed to the three pure transcendent forms with the greatest degree of contrast.

There is no dearth of speculative systems of philosophy-psychology which describe the nature and functions of memory in our mental and affective lives as humans. The great distinctiveness as well as the advantage of Mark's doctrine of soma is that it secures the co-operation of memory and imagination with sense percipience. At one stroke then, Markan metaphysics resolves the issues surrounding what memory is and how it works. The recurrent metaphor for the latter is assimilation, and so appetition-satisfaction. Every one of the miracles which elaborates the doctrine of mnemic consciousness  uses this figure.

Immanence declares the unity of relata which to some extent are oppositional, contrastive, antithetical. The forms of imagination, haptic, acoustic and optic are seconded if not suborned in the same unity. There is no memory without imagination. The contribution of memory to consciousness, a contribution that is inseparable from the functioning of sense perception in its various modes, is also inseparable from imagination. Thus, imagination too participates inextricably in the activities of sentient memory. The principle of immanence, the unambiguous sense in which immanence espouses manifold unity, entails that memory in itself can not exist. Memory is necessarily compounded, multiplied even, with imagination. We ought not to understand the contrast between memory and imagination in absolute terms, those of the theology of transcendence. There is no absolute and lasting distinction possible between the forms of memory and the corresponding forms of imagination, contrastively to the utter disparity between pure conceptual forms - space, mind and symbolic masculine - and the forms of memory. Memory is defined as the co-operation of both actual past sense-percipient occasions in which imagination was itself already implicit, and the future non-sensuous, but nevertheless perceptual occasions in virtue of which the latter obtains.
 


Thus far the discussion of intentionality has been framed in terms of four distinct simple forms - will and belief, which are conceptual modes of intentionality, and desire and knowing which are perceptual modes. To this group of four conscious modes, we added the corresponding compound modes: will-to-believe and belief-in-desire, and desire-to-know and knowledge-of-will. In accordance with the rule of parsimony no new terms were necessary. This followed the conceptual scheme of the two narrative cycles, which recapitulated the taxonomic paradigm within each of the already defined categories. Now we are on the verge of articulating the way in which intentionality is generated by those radicals of consciousness evincing the Holy Spirit. For the discussion has not yet addressed these remaining four Pneumatological radicals of consciousness: the symbolic masculine, the male : female form of unity; and both optic imagination and optic memory. We must now pursue these in relation to the doctrine of intentionality.

The above table presents the four taxa or classes of categories. In each of the four cases, a pair of conative-cognitive radicals are grouped together as belonging to one of the four taxa: pure conceptual forms, forms of imagination, forms of unity, and forms of memory. Additionally, each of the four classes contains three members, although,  if we include the Eucharist, as we shall, then the class of radicals 'forms of memory' has in all four members. These two figures, three, the numerical cipher representing  transcendence qua identity, and four, which stands for immanence and correspondingly for the principle of unity, establish the outlines of the two series as a whole. They yield the twelve entities fundamental to Christian epistemology. Just eight of these same twelve entities are responsible for what we have called variously, intentional modes, forms of intentionality, and so on. These are listed above in the bottom four frames and their necessary intentional modes are listed parenthetically. 

There are four conscious such modes, and four aconscious modes. The conscious modes are simple, the aconscious modes are compound. Each of these eight modes stands in a specific relation to a particular category. The category or radical is the necessary condition of the intentional mode. Thus four of the archaeological - creation - categories and four of the eschatological - salvation - categories, determine what we call intentional modes, the fundamental feature of which will be a relation between a subject and an object. The four categoreal radicals from Genesis which serve as conditional for their respective modes of conceptual intentionality are: (transcendent) space - the mode willing; mind - the mode believing; space : time - the mode will-to-believe; and mind : body - the mode faith-in-desire.  Even though all six radicals of consciousness taxonomised at the most basic level as transcendent, that is, conceptual, are opportunities or occasions for all four conceptual modes of intentionality listed thus far, only one such radical exemplifies that intentional mode with its definitive form, or as we may say, its canonical expression, its sovereign occasion.

The four categoreal forms of the messianic series serving as conditional for the remaining four perceptual modes of intentionality, are: acoustic imagination - knowledge-of-will; haptic imagination - desire-to-know; acoustic memory - knowing; and haptic memory - desiring. The sequence of this list is given correspondingly to the sequence of the previous list. Once again, the entire series of six perceptual radicals expresses the four perceptual modes of intentionality listed thus far. Thus there are six identifiable occasions of knowing, desiring, knowing-will, and desiring-to-know. However, only one of these, the category or perceptual radical which acts as the sufficient condition of the relevant mode, defines the intentional mode canonically. For example, haptic memory is the condition necessary to the canonical form of intentionality desire


Two patterns emerge here: the paired conscious modes of intentionality are those which are fitted to the intervals of increasing diurnal light - spring and summer, while the aconscious forms of intentionality answer to the seasons during which the darkness increases, that is, the days shorten and the nocturnal intervals increase - autumn and winter. There is a further distinction between the conatus and the cognitive intentional mode in each case. The first or initial mode is always conative, as providing the impetus, the second or final mode is always cognitive as a realisation of the epistemic tendency inherent in the taxon. Nagarjuna's Friendly Epistle quoted above, if it does not directly refer to the four seasons of the year, can be said to allude to this pattern. Many other traditions, those of native American Indians for example, have sacred illustrations or mandala which reproduce the four cardinal points of the compass, which are then interpreted as analogues to the four seasons. It is the spatiotemporal rather than spatial structures that must interest us here. Although  we are not proposing that the temporal exists independently from the spatial. But such traditions as we find in native American cultures and others both older and younger, reproduce the fourfold pattern of temporality, the comprehensive and quintessential aspect of the model to which we will appeal in order to explicate the form of the gospel. The practice of Christian meditation will be observant of these fundamental contours of temporal existence and their subsequent relatedness to human consciousness.

The first noticeable feature of the mandala in this connection is the binary division of the year into periods of increasing and decreasing light. One half of the year consists of increasing light against decreasing darkness, and this comprises the year immediately following the spring equinox until the summer solstice. Corresponding to this half of the year are the forms of memory and the pure conceptual forms respectively, and their inherent modes of intentionality, all of which are conscious, that is to say, normative. So we notice that the half of the year during which the dynamic relation between light and darkness involves an increase in the former at the expense of the latter, is analogous not only to conceptual forms. Ideas or concepts are not privileged above all else, as they might otherwise be by a Christian Platonic system for instance. Hence the whole gamut of semeia, is deployed in signifying these categories and their relative modes of intentionality. The semeioptika involved are not only those which designate the transcendent pole, red-orange-yellow, but also those which signify the perceptual pole in its purest form, that of unmitigated immanence, green-blue-violet. If the order of the latter is reversed here for conscious modes of intentionality, the corollary aconscious orders will invert the previous set of semeia, just as, in a sense, the aconscious orders subvert their conscious counterparts.

Three pure conceptual forms, and their corresponding intentional functions, are analogically represented by the summer, signified by red-orange-yellow, and three pure perceptual forms with their own innate or necessary intentional functions are the analogues to spring, signified by violet-blue-green. As a result, will and belief and the intentional function yet to be assigned to the symbolic masculine, do not formulate a priority arrogating to itself the sole analogous signification of light, first announced in the creation story. For we must reckon also with the fact that the half of the year to which summer belongs is preceded by the spring, and in the Markan mandala, we see that this is clearly the province corresponding analogously to the perceptual memory and its proper intentional functions, of which the two so far reckoned are desiring and knowing. If we must insist on the application of a differential, it should involve the careful distinction between light : darkness in the former cases, the conceptual, and night : day in the latter, in the cases of the perceptual, resuming the terminology of the creation account. For both the conceptual categories and the conceptual intentional modes are simples, reflecting their disjunction from the corresponding forms of unity, whereas the perceptual radicals and the perceptual modes of intentionality are compounded; haptic memory comprises haptic imagination, just as desire comprises the desire-to-know, and acoustic memory comprises acoustic imagination, just as knowing comprises knowledge-of-will. The latter two radicals like their respective two intentional modes, replicate the conjunctive mode of antithesis.

The other half of the year comprises the ensuing period, from immediately after the summer solstice as far as the winter solstice, and includes autumn and winter until the very point of midwinter. The categoreal analogues in this case are forms of imagination and forms of unity, and their inherent modes of intentionality, all of which are aconscious, and beset by paradox. In all then, these are the four periods referred to in Nagarjuna's Friendly Epistle. quoted above: darkness to light - spring; light to light - summer; light to darkness - autumn; and darkness to darkness - winter. The difference between Markan metaphysics and that of Nagarjuna being that no one figure is to be favoured over any other.

The coloured diagrams above and below illustrate the serial contiguity of the radicals of consciousness and their corresponding modes of intentionality. They sort the categories into four orders according to the totality of the narrative cycles, creation and salvation, and thus emphasise the processive aspect of time as it shapes consciousness. One such basic aspect of consciousness in which we recognise the principle of immanence, unity, focuses this contiguity among the radical categories: both the two conceptual and two perceptual categories, and consequently that of the various modes of intentionality necessitated by them. The sheer continuity between the radicals of consciousness is maximal in the case of immediately proximate or neighbouring radicals. The same is best illustrated by the optika. These have the capacity, which the acoustic semeia do not, of blending imperceptibly, one into the next. The tones of the dodecaphonic scale, are hierarchically graded as punctuated, and their more or less equally recurrent interval is the semitone. They are twelve in number, discrete and individuated so as to render all but impossible, the blurring of identity in the interests of unity. But in addressing the identity of the Holy Spirit, it is the phenomenon of unity that confronts us, and this is best demonstrated by the optic semeia. Optic sense-percipience itself identifies the Holy Spirit, a subject which we are about to pursue.

So for example, there is an immediate continuity, proximity, in consciousness, between the pure idea space and the idea the symbolic masculine, just as there is between the latter and the pure conceptual form, idea, mind. Even though we affirmed that the comprehensive division between conceptual and perceptual means that all six conceptual radicals function as occasions for all four conceptual modes of intentionality, and that the same applies to the six perceptual categories and the four perceptual modes of intentionality, let us for the moment keep this aspect of the mandala as simple as possible, so that we will concern ourselves only with the four distinct periods or seasons, the analogues to which are of course  the four taxonomically ordered triads. In other words, let us confine the examples to the four distinct taxonomic divisions: pure conceptual forms, forms of imagination, forms of unity, and forms of memory. These four classes of radicals correspond to the year beginning with summer. Additionally, let us concentrate on the four intervening radicals of each of these four taxa; for they have not yet been reckoned according to the doctrine of intentionality, the reason why we have yet to account for the Holy Spirit in terms of the same tenet of Markan metaphysical doctrine.

We can see that those four radicals which are intermediate in each of the four groups, are those which have no proper or individuated mode of intentionality, no mode that is, susceptible of identity, and that these same four radicals instantiate the Holy Spirit, spoken of in The Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed in terms of 'procession'. What we have just said about continuity and proximity of radicals to one another will concern the intentional modality to be ascribed to the same. These are the four radicals: the symbolic masculine, the male : female form of unity, or symbolic feminine, optic imagination, and optic memory. First let us make a simple observation about the four texts as a whole, which provide this tenet of the theology of Trinity in both narrative cycles, Genesis and the gospels.

 

THE PNEUMATOLOGICAL RADICALS AND THEIR INTENTIONAL MODES

TAXA	CONATIVE 'AND' COGNITIVE INTENTIONAL MODES
transcendent conceptual  (conscious) symbolic masculine	willing + believing  (light to light - summer)
transcendent perceptual (aconscious) optic imagination	desiring knowledge + knowing will (light to dark - autumn)
immanent conceptual (aconscious) symbolic feminine	willing belief + believing desire (dark to dark - winter)
immanent perceptual (conscious) optic memory	desiring + knowing (dark to light - spring)

THE CONCEPTUAL ACONSCIOUS IN GENESIS AND THE GOSPEL

Having completed the comprehensive survey of the modes of intentionality, we are in a better position to broach the discussion of the form of the gospels. We have classified the modes of intentionality in various ways, but one of the most important of these has involved their distinction as either conscious or aconscious. We can now say more about this. The model for the same distinction reverts to the standard Christological metaphor of light which is first encountered in the two Christological rubrics of the creation story, Day 1, where light and darkness are separated, and Day 4 where day and night are brought into relation. In the messianic series we do find a similar reference in The Transfiguration, in which light plays an important role. At first glance, it might seem that nothing in The Transformation Of Water Into Wine alludes to the stories of Day 1 and Day 4. Yet one can hardly fail to notice the introduction, which serves to link this story with its transcendent complement, The Transfiguration: 'And after six days ... ' (Mark 9.2) c.f. 'On the third day ... ' (John 2.1). A further reference in the Johannine narrative - '" ... My hour has not yet come."' - (John 2.4), cements the relevance of this miracle as of the Markan account, to the creation narrative as precedent. Indeed if any doubt remained, it should be finally and fully dispelled by the mention that 'six stone jars were standing there, for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding ... ' (John 2.6).

John's link between purification, a theme clearly seminal to The Transfiguration, and the three conceptual forms and three forms of unity, is well worth exploring. But of course the real accent in that story is reserved for the water made wine, not the water itself. That water was such a fundamental motif to the creation narrative we saw repeatedly. In John's miracle story it performs a variety of functions. In addition to the immediate evocation of that narrative, it certainly also suggests the symbolic masculine. Water and wine, later re-invoked as the water and blood manifesting the death of Jesus, thus symbolise in no uncertain way, that to which the narrative points in the first instance - sexual love, which provided the very means for the incarnation of the Word. (Whether John can be said to hold a view espousing the virgin birth of The Christ cannot be determined on the basis of this text, nor any other in his gospel. The summary manner in which Jesus deals with his mother, and the cryptic, almost gnomic utterance, '"O woman, what have you to do with me?"' (2.4), will avail of nothing in this connection.) But we cannot lose sight of the fact that we are here introduced to the very first of the six perceptual categories. The normative three of which, the forms of memory, as recounted in each of the three Eucharistic miracles, denominate perceptual memory. The same three forms of memory, whether haptic, optic or acoustic, are all characterised by binary structure. They each consist with a polar ingredient of the same sense-percipient mode. That is, each form of memory in itself contains the correlative form of imagination. The two morphological elements, which we also see in the forms of unity, as they appear to copy immanence, are expressed as the two relata of the eschatological conceptual category, male and female. It it this therefore, which ought to guide our understanding of the way in which the two elements, water and wine, are deployed in the first miracle story. They allude to the imaginal and mnemic modules by means of the metaphorical status of the water and wine, figures for the male and female of the eschatological and anthropic radical.

The event denotes physical, that is sexual, love, a fact already marked for us by the telling interchange between Jesus and 'the sixth disciple', Nathanael (John 1.45-51). This last passage of course ends in the vision promised to the disciple that [he] '"you (plural) will see (o1yesqe) heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man."' This figure redoubles  the  clear referentiality of the episode.  If it does not quite ascribe a kind of sacramental value to the act of sexual intercourse between lovers, then that is in keeping with the overall cast of the gospel where the sacramental is concerned. But surely the verse has something to do with a metaphysical view regarding the provenance of the soul at conception. This rescues the meaning of physical congress from any purely erotic exercise, from mere transactional satisfaction of an appetition and nothing more. The mention of 'angels of God' suggests if anything, severance of the human experience of sexual love from that of animals. We should not forget that the Day 4 rubric, which taxonomises the conceptual form soma, or the body, the conceptual counterpart of the perceptual radical haptic memory, the essential subject of the story of the miracle at Cana, is the only member of its subclass which does not contain references to animals. And if there are no exorcisms in John - although there is a reference to 'the devil', and subsequently one to 'have [having] a demon' ( John 8.44-48), and another to 'Satan' (John 10.27) concerning Jesus' betrayal by Judas - the introduction to the miracle story envisaging the ascent and descent of angels upon the Son of man, is one of the few references in this gospel to supramundane beings.

Angelology is relevant  to any discussion of what we have here called the 'aconscious' mind. As far as the Day 4 rubric is concerned, such a thing as the 'aconscious mind' itself is already implied in the language which speaks of 'sun, moon and stars'. We read and interpreted this rubric as the creation-theological postulate regarding the form of unity mind : body. Thus whereas the transcendent theology set before us the disjunction of light and darkness, the complementary theology of immanence in the second half of the creation story, presented us with the conjunctive relation between day and night. Here then, 'moon and stars' can act as preemptive to the metaphysics of the gospels, which accepting the cue, amplifies the doctrine of mind not only in relation to an ontology which includes such things as 'angels', 'demons', 'Satan'  and the rest, but, what is more readily acceptable to  us  in later modernity, the animal realm, from which arguably we must be descended. Certainly we have seen this realm of the sub-human mentioned several times in the healing miracle stories, further to its presence in the second half of the creation narrative, and just as certainly, the evangelists have linked it as a metapsychology of the aconscious to the 'demonic' and to the dead.

The two main strands of biblical angelology which will occupy us combine at a stroke, these sub-human and super-human realms. One of them we have already introduced, the visions of Ezekiel and the author(s) of The Apocalypse which speak variously of 'livings creatures' and 'cherubim'. These beings, the four living creatures which ultimately stand in relation to the gospel, representatively of its fourfold structure, and as we shall argue, of the doctrine of intentionality which is confirmed also by the story of The Feeding Of The Four Thousand, are both sub-human and super-human. The other reference in scripture to similar beings is that of the inaugural vision of Isaiah 6, which mentions the seraphim. This mythology is not so extensively reworked in The Apocalypse, although there is indeed an allusion to it in the description of the heavenly worship, in which the four living creatures themselves repeat the songs of the seraphim (Apocalypse 4.8). These two references are absolutely basic to any angelogical doctrines which may concern us. The striking things in each case, apart from the combination both makes between the animal kingdom and the celestial realm, are their structural aspects. We have already proposed the basic configuration of the four living creatures is immediately germane to an understanding of the sequential patterns in The Apocalypse as bearing on that of the formal nature of the gospels. We shall do likewise in the case of the similar vision of Isaiah.


The forms of imagination and the forms of unity are suffused with paradox, for on the one hand the two conceptual forms of unity, space : time (Day 5), and mind : body (Day 4) do not fully conform to transcendence, that is to the conceptual polarity of mind. The are depicted in the creation taxonomy as immanently transcendent, proleptically to the forms of memory to a large extent. On the other hand, forms of imagination similarly mitigate the class, immanence. For unlike the forms of memory, they exhibit certain features which we associate with transcendence; so whereas they are classed as immanent, that is as belonging to the perceptual side of mind, they are nevertheless transcendently immanent. These two categories, forms of unity and forms of imagination constitute the realm which we have described by the term 'aconscious', meaning  'other than conscious'. In biblical metaphysics it will more often than not be presented by two disparate but clearly related metaphors. The first of these is the angelogical vocabulary, the second and more familiar one represents the realm of the sub-human world. There is of course a certain symmetry here as between suprahuman and subhuman, as there is between the two cycles. And if we refer to the transcendent messianic miracles as 'transcendent immanence' or 'the transcendence of immanence', or 'virtual transcendence', or some such term, and to the forms of unity as 'immanent transcendence' or 'the immanence of transcendence', or 'virtual immanence', this is the reason.

Philosophically there is a long-standing precedent for this procedure. It concerns the history of the philosophy of substance. If substance is posited as a fundamental category of being, ontology, then matter alone may not possess substantial status. Intuitively, ontology suggested that matter must be complemented by another substance, denoted by a  variety of terms: mind, spirit, soul, psyche. The Aristotelian tradition settled for 'form' as the category contrastive to 'matter'. The Cartesian raised the contrast between matter and mind to the level of metaphysical dualism, but left unanswered, or as incapable of being answered satisfactorily, the question of their relation.

The Cartesian tradition also, notoriously by modern standards, refused to concede any real mental status to animals. This robbed them of the capacity to suffer. For some time, Western science itself was incapable of acknowledging that animals were sentient and prone to states of awareness comparable to our own. It is here of course that we must begin to understand the biblical  doctrine of the aconscious. Not because of the precedents set either by evolutionary theory or by philosophy, although of course we must allow for their contributions, but because given the significance of the creation story as an epistemology and a Christology both, it is there that we first encounter the animal realm; but not there alone. In our brief survey of the healing miracles, we found in several stories the same. In The Gerasene Demoniac, the healing episode which recapitulates the category of the symbolic masculine, and in the later story, The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter, the equivalent in the healing miracle series to the category of the symbolic feminine, we found similarities to obvious to ignore. These included the concept not only of the sub-human or animal world, but also that of what the evangelist designates in both cases by the term pneu~ma (Mark 5.1, 8, 13 and 7.25). In the literature this word is variously rendered 'breath', 'spirit, 'disembodied spirit', 'human soul' and so on. It is also the noun in the term Holy Spirit. In both stories of healing miracles, the word was qualified by the adjective 'unclean' - a)kaqa/rton (Mark 5.2, 8, 13, and 7.25). Both narratives also use cognates of the word daimo/nion. The Gerasene man is referred to after the cure as 'the demoniac (daimoni/zomenon - the one possessed by an evil spirit) sitting there, clothed and in his right mind' (Mark 5.15), and again as 'the man who had been possessed with demons' - daimonisqei\v (v 18). In the later episode we find : '... And she begged him to cast the demon (daimo/nion) out of her daughter' and '" ... the demon (daimo/nion) has left your daughter"' (Mark 7.26, 29). One of the transcendent messianic miracles similarly posits something akin to what the exorcistic cures present us with. In The Stilling Of The Storm, which is a Pneumatology, like the other texts mentioned here, the vocabulary is unmistakably that of an exorcistic healing.

In both stories there is a certain link between animals and these references to an  unclean spirit/demon. Theologically both pericopae concern the identity of the Holy Spirit. The link with the categoreal forms, masculine and feminine is clear cut and the best clue of any towards what concerns us here, the similarity of the forms of imagination and the forms of unity as comprising the aconscious. We do not find animals mentioned in the feeding miracles nor the miracle at Cana, but we did notice an abundance of them in the second half of the creation narrative. That is where the forms of unity are categorised. There is no reason to expect such references in the narratives dealing with what we have called forms of imagination. We shall find them represented again in three very decisive occasions of Old Testament literature, which best encapsulate the three forms of unity: mind : body, space : time and male : female. These are of course the books of Jonah, Daniel and Job respectively. But clearly operative within these texts is a link of some kind between the sub-human and the 'super-human', the animal and the demonic, to which the references in the healing narratives are the first of any clue.

If we look to the New Testament texts which are corollaries to the creation rubrics detailing aconscious mind, namely, the three transcendent messianic miracles, we find the same pattern which links the two 'other than human' realms. These references follow a pattern. They most characteristically refer to darkness, sleep and death. The same pattern accords to both the 'sign of Jonah' saying and the similar references in the passion predictions and John to 'three days and three nights', and the template which orders the categoreal radicals of the aconscious analogously to that half of the year comprising both seasons, autumn and winter, during which the ratio of light to darkness, diurnal to nocturnal, moves in favour of the latter. We need to reassess all six narratives in view of the emerging image they provide of the aconscious order of mind.

1a) Day 4

This is the first of the Genesis rubrics to begin the taxonomy of the aconscious. In keeping with the story of Day 1, that of the formal separation of light from darkness, the theology of conceptual mind, the second half of the narrative correspondingly begins with the presentation of the conceptual soma. The reality of beginning is paramount here, even though it belongs logically to the category of space ('heavens'). But it should be noted that if the soma as a conceptual radical of mind enjoys a kind of primordial quality akin to that of the conceptual radical space, they nevertheless differ. There is also a certain amount of paronomasia on the Greek, 'arche' for the verb 'to rule' - a!rxw - and the word 'beginning' - a)rxh\ - are cognates. We meet a resonance of these terms in the homologous story of a miraculous healing in the expression 'ruler of the synagogue'.


We may note also that the Greek Septuagint expression in the above translation twice rendered 'to rule' in verse 16, since it associates the body and space,  sits well with the text and also with its logical structure, both of which make the same connection, as space is synonymous with 'beginning'. In the past, the expression has been translated as 'beginnings', so that the clause reads: 'the greater luminary for beginnings of the day, and the lesser luminary for the beginnings of the night'. The narrative within the Markan miracle corpus which also defines the conceptual soma, bears some resemblance to the Genesis text in that its three main characters, the father, mother and the daughter, answer to the metaphors sun, moon and stars.  It is not possible to press more of the detail of the miracle story into an allegorical hermeneutic of the initial Genesis rubric, but clearly Mark's narrative does reflect it. This metaphorical construct should be interpreted as a portrait of the conceptual form, soma.The most  relevant portions of the Markan text are:

1b) Jairus' Daughter


It is instructive to read the lines concerning Jesus' understanding of the condition of 'the little girl', an aptly enough summary description for the manner in which the concept of the body functions in consciousness, as per belief, here presumably in the 'raising' with which the narrative ends, that is, the resurrection. We see 'belief' mentioned in this as in the previous story, The Haemorrhagic Woman, which we interpreted regarding the intentional form will-to-believe. Here of course, it is belief-in-desire that presents itself as a basic intentional mode of the aconscious mind. If the two forms of intentionality are connected, then so too are their correlative conceptual forms of unity, space : time and mind : body.

The mind : body then, or soma, may best be understood as giving rise not only to stances towards desire itself, which is the philosophical belief/disbelief in the same, desire; its aconscious status stamps it as nothing less than ambivalent. The body is subject to death, and it is death which naturally enough, along with darkness and sleep, is commonly used in the literature to envisage what we have called the aconscious. This means of course that attitudes towards sexuality (Eros) as well as those towards death (Thanatos), will both be shaped by the ambiguity native to the aconscious radical, soma. Where the story in Mark and its parallels in both other synoptic gospels, is essentially useful in illuminating the conceptual soma, must remain the link this narrative forges between the body and the immediately contiguous forms in the series. One of these is space, and we have already commented on the innate tendency to link 'bodies' with 'space', that is, to understand the embodied, gendered, conscious, and self-aware entities which we are, as capable of changing our place relatively to other bodies. Part of the relation of supervenience between their proper intentional modes, will being that for space, and belief-in-desire being that for soma, must be due to this. Thus if will-to-believe is prior to belief, then will simpliciter is prior to belief-in-desire. A major facet of the latter instance of two intentional modes related by supervenience, is the fact that 'I' move my body about from place to place. But since two quite disparate taxonomic divisions are involved here, the pure conceptual, to which belongs the process of willing, and the conceptual form of unity, to which belongs the soma, there is a still closer contiguous conceptual form of unity to consider, that of the symbolic feminine.

This, the other neighbouring form of unity, the other component in mind which is nearest to that of soma, is more similar to it than conceptual space. If then, there was derogation of the feminine in favour of the masculine implicit or otherwise in the creation rubric, for we do quite habitually think of 'the 'sun' as greater than 'the moon', this must be disregarded at once. Mark allows the symbolic feminine its fullest epistemological and psychological import. There is no denying on his part the role the symbolic feminine plays in consciousness, nor its intimate nearness to the conceptual form in question. This cuts to both paramount families of desires of which the body remains the generatrix; those of  love and death. Here we must insist with Mark on the symbolic feminine as the primary bearer of meaning.

The metaphorical ligature between 'the moon' and the symbolic feminine must not infer the confinement of the aconscious to the nocturnal half of the circadian process. We can of course relate the six radicals of both categories, conceptual and perceptual, to the twenty-four hour cycle. But we are already seeing in the texts of the Eucharistic miracles, that normative, conscious, perceptual categories fit the pattern of the nocturnal half of the circadian cycle. There is an even spread of both diurnal and nocturnal intervals in both orders, conscious and aconscious. So the division conscious : aconscious cannot simply mirror that between the two halves of the circadian period. We may even so read the entire gamut of categories against the sixfold-sevenfold pattern of 'days' first articulated in the theology of creation. This would arrange each of the six parallel components analogously to the night and day, 'evening and morning', figuration. We can once again read the twelve constituent categories analogously to the twelve equal divisions of the annual cycle. This remains our dominant template. It best determines the parallel radicals, the one-to-one correspondence between conceptual and perceptual components as given in the isomorphism of the creation and salvation theologies, those of 'beginning and end', according to the sixfold day cycle.

We are leaving out of consideration for now the seventh event as a complicating factor, but shall nevertheless later account for it. Here then, in the case of the categoreal soma, we are dealing with what is at heart a conceptual form. Form of unity though it be, and dual though it be as comprised of body and mind, so much like its parallel, haptic memory, which consists of memory and imagination of one and the same sense-percipient mode, it is radically, at the first level of classification, an idea, a conceptual root of consciousness. As such then, where the day : night template offers itself to any understanding of the relation between soma and haptic memory, the aconscious radical, soma, corresponds to the diurnal and haptic memory to the nocturnal, as these are measured by the winter solstice. This construct will help us when we come to consider the gospel of Luke, for which these two elements and their corresponding point-instant in the year function as a guiding paradigm. That said however, it is equally important if not more necessary, to appreciate the analogical value of the annual fourfold cycle of 'seasons' to which the Day 4 story refers. Its explicative capacity is wide ranging. So it is necessary to assess the conceptual form of unity soma, as belonging to a class of three entities, which taken together, are analogously intelligible in relation to that interval of the annual cycle commencing immediately after the autumn equinox and culminating in the winter solstice. These remarks follow what was put just previously regarding the symbolic feminine. The Genesis rubric defers to the gospel in the sense that the normative value of the two elements, haptic memory, is there and only there finally explained. We should not therefore read its figure of 'the moon' a propos of the diurnal : nocturnal template.

These same three figures, male, female and offspring,  are implicitly recurrent within the remaining two rubrics, Days 5 and 6. For indeed the whole second section of the taxonomy in its broad outlines, denotes immanence contrastively to the transcendence of the first three Days. That is, the 'earth' section, rather than the 'heavens' section, has as its ruling or definitively final event, the anthropic category, male and female. The same injunction is given in both Days 5 and 6:


The increase and multiplication of the animals, like that of the loaves and fish in the miracles, serves the need of humankind, as well as that of the sub human realm itself, for food. The link between such necessity and the generation of species is tacit, and includes the plant life mentioned first in Day 3, where of course, there was no similar injunction:


In the second section of the healing miracle story dealing with the soma then, the same three figures predominate: the male and female parents, and their progeny. We should take care not to construe the masculine principle in accordance with transcendence as this is associated with "the Father". Both parental figures, male and female, or father and mother such as we found in Jairus' Daughter, are subsumed under the category of the symbolic feminine. There is a trinitarian rationale operative within the framework of the three forms of unity. Space : time is clearly associated with "the Father", for which reason we find The Haemorrhagic Woman referred to as 'daughter' (Mark 5.34) by Jesus; and of course, the 'real' daughter, in the sense that she exemplifies the Son, is Jairus' Daughter. But in each story, that of Jairus' Daughter or that of The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter where the illness is portrayed relatively to the relation of the child to its parents, the latter ought to be understood in terms of both relata which constitute the anthropic category, male and female:


The real focus of the story of Jairus' Daughter is certainly the daughter herself. This is not the case for the last pericope of the chain, The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter, where, even though we do not hear of the father, both parents share the limelight, and in which the exchange between Jesus and the woman effects the healing of the daughter. In this case, the mother is the focus of the narrative. Hence if the last three Days effectively simulate the first three Days, they do so also in virtue of the presentation of the identities of the Son, the Transcendent, and the Holy Spirit respectively, as do the corresponding healing narratives: Jairus' Daughter is a Christology; The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter is a Pneumatology.

2a) Day 5


This narrative has several vital points of contact with the Markan healing episode which like it, denotes the conceptual category, space : time. Both rubrics, Day 5 and Day 6 rubric (vv 21, 28), refer to movement. But the image of the waters in particular accords with that of 'flow of blood'. After all, what is in motion here is the course of the order of living things. The illness of the woman with the flow of blood clearly relates to the propagation of one's kind. This resonance is further cemented by the parallel between the verb 'to teem', and the situation of the woman, lost in the crowd milling about Jesus, a crowd from which she is in fact barely distinguishable.

2b) The Haemorrhagic Woman


Like the intentionality of knowing, that of the will-to-believe is innately phylogenetic. It concerns very much less the individual person rather than the specific time and place in which one's birth is determined, if not predetermined. This means nothing less than the milieu, the species at its greatest extent as ranging over both time and place. It is more than the family, more than the household, the oikos of the symbolic feminine. Mark refers to 'knowing' firstly obliquely, and indeed its inextricable bond with hearing and speaking:



The detailed exegesis of these narratives belongs to specific gospels. Indeed this particular narrative is quintessentially Markan, in that it is the theology of those two forms of intentionality, knowing and the will-to-believe, which shape his gospel as they do no other, and indeed as no other modes of intentionality shape his gospel. Clearly the woman's initiative tells us much about mind itself as shaped by the conceptual radical space : time.  The duration of her suffering is more than likely a major factor in her decision to act. And this is the only instance in Mark's gospel where we learn of such a detail. Her belief, but moreover, her willingness to believe is representative. She is a token of 'the crowd'.

The story occupies the apex of the events both before and after it. The healing of the Gerasene man, and the first part of the healing of Jairus' daughter precede it, and the second part of the latter, followed later by the healing of the Syrophoenician's daughter follow it. The structure perfectly reflects the approach of the woman to Jesus, and his turning around, and the second part of the episode:


On this structure, reflective of the entire chain of events beginning with the cure of the Gerasene man, we have already commented. The events of the catena tend both towards and from this central episode involving the woman. The verb 'ceased', which means literally 'dried up', resonating with The Man With The Withered Hand (Mark 3.1, 3: e)chramme/nhn, chra\n), marks the epicentre of a parabola, which recapitulates the spatial imagery of the Day 5 story, reverting to that of Day 2, the rubric concerning 'waters above' and 'waters below'. It certainly reinforces the image of fluidity, of a flow, albeit here of blood. Many motifs confirm its essence as involving the conceptual form, space : time - the sex of the person; the mention of the length of her illness; its nature, being a 'flow of blood; the detailed description of her approach to Jesus and his resultant actions forming the contours of a parabolic arch, reiterating the spatial-dimensional imagery of the creation narrative; the setting of the episode within its context which also corroborates the category. Further to that,  is the remarkable consistency of the 'water' metaphor in in these several stories. The Johannine pericope, The Healing At The Pool (John 5.1-9), which proposes the very same centre of consciousness, the conceptual radical, space : time, also utilises it, there in keeping with the given sex of the man, as is true again of The Gerasene Demoniac and the allusion to male sexuality in the story of The Syrophoenician Woman, both of which refer to the sea, (Mark 5.1, 11, 7.31).

Can we learn from either or both of these texts any general truths which apply to the aconscious as it is composed of these three similar conceptual forms - space : time, mind : body and male : female? Of course the Genesis rubric infers most plainly that the roots of this aconscious mind lie in our animal past. If the forms of memory and the forms of unity are likewise disposed in virtue of immanence, which consistently designates the inheritance of the past by the present, the sense in which existence is continuous with what is prior to it chronologically, then we can at least see why the Day 4 story is so apparently different from the remaining two rubrics. There is a substantial variation between what is personal and even private to me as mine, my ontogenetic self, which is my body, and so too, the idea of it, even though it is a body among others, a shared thing to some extent. The conceptual form of space : time on the other hand, whose image in the creation story first introduces the sub-human realm, differs substantially from the soma on this score. Their difference is not to be confused with the intervening category, that of male : female. A clear disceprancy between the conceptual form, space : time and that of mind : body pertains to the former as phylogenetic and the latter as ontogenetic. Just so their resultant modes of intentionality, will-to-believe and belief-in-desire, are innately contrastive in like terms. The ages of the woman and the daughter of Jairus expose this difference. For the woman, the reproductive power of the body has accomplished its role; for the little girl, it yet awaits her. The two categories from the messianic series which answer the conceptual forms of unity mind : body and space : time, are haptic memory and acoustic memory respectively. These are set out in the messianic series as the first, The Transformation Of Water Into Wine, and third, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand respectively. Part of the intent of the sequential ordering of these events is clearly visible in that John links haptic memory and all that it entails, chiefly of course, sexual desire, with the inception of adult life. We have yet to determine the kind of desire, as well as the kind of cognition, to which acoustic memory is foundational. But it is at some remove from erotic desire in the scale of any developmental psychological understanding of the messianic series. The awareness of the body and the awareness of the transient temporality of existence while they do not preclude one another, do mark different stages in the life trajectory of the individual as of the race, as far as their inceptions are concerned.

Care must be taken not to misunderstand the relation of supervenience with that which orders categories and their corresponding modes of intentionality, according to their membership of same class. The two things, space : time and mind : body, as determinants of consciousness belong to the same class. Their intentional forms, will-to-believe and belief-in-desire also belong to the same class. But will-to-believe has belief simpliciter as its supervening mode of intentionality; whereas belief-in-desire itself supervenes upon will simpliciter. What relates the two modes of intentionality is instrumentality, about which we shall say more later. That there is a relation is assured, for the two forms of intentionality are susceptible of composition. Their synthesis is the business of the symbolic feminine. Regardless of which, the one is also nevertheless set against the other, the conative will-to-believe which the woman epitomises, is certainly other than the belief-in-desire, the intentional form of which the little girl stands representatively.

3a) Day 6


3b) The Syrophoenician Woman


The links established by this story with the prior Pneumatological exorcism, that of the Gerasene man, with which it has much else in common, demand detailed scrutiny, as concerning sexuality, one of the major subtexts of this chain of miracles. The pericope also has clear points of contact with Jairus' Daughter. In fact, it resonates with all the events in the chain which began with that of the Gerasene, so that it pronounces an end of sorts, indicating the last of the three categories which the three healing miracles involving females, resume as formally linked. These belong to the same taxon, they are each compound conceptual forms, forms of unity. In The Syrophoenician Woman, lastly we come, as in Genesis, to the anthropic category, male and female. The father of the child is not mentioned here as he was in Jairus' Daughter, though The Gerasene Demoniac stands as a token of the symbolic masculine in its transcendent aspect, if not in combination with the feminine. This explains something of Mark's editing of the episodes, their structural integrity, as well as their shared content. Themes germane and common to  the Day 6 narrative and the healing miracle story are obvious: animal and human life, both associated and dissociated; reproduction; and assimilation.

THE PERCEPTUAL ACONSCIOUS

We can briefly complete this survey of the aconscious by following the same procedure. That is, by similarly comparing the classical texts, three messianic described variously as those of 'virtual transcendence', 'transcendence of immanence', ' immanent transcendence', with their equivalents from the healing series. These oxymorons put as well as anything else, their paradoxical character, and they complete the presentation of this order of consciousness. Where the forms of unity compromise the identity of the pure conceptual forms and introduce ambiguity, the forms of imagination subvert the composite nature of memory, from which they extract themselves. The result is the same. In the former case, identity is suborned, in the latter, unity is diminished.  The language of 'separation' in the first section of the creation story, and the feeding miracles and their recapitulation, both of  which speak of 'breaking ... giving ... taking up', these set the normative parameters for the conceptual and perceptual poles of consciousness respectively.

1a) Transfiguration

All three accounts contain references to darkness and death:


Only Luke refers to sleep:


Matthew's account has the closest contact with the healing miracle story as far as the mention of the sense-percipient mode is concerned, the latter saying firmly connecting this messianic event with The Walking On The Water:


1b) The Leper

Three recensions of this narrative are extant. The healing miracles corresponding to the transcendent messianic miracles in the synoptic gospels, are not related in one continuous block, as were those in Mark which answer to the three conceptual radicals denoting the aconscious conceptual pole, and which we have just examined. Remarkably however, the gospel of John places the story of The Man Born Blind (John 9.1-12) after that of The Walking On The Water (John 6.16-21), and The Death Of Lazarus (John 11.1-41), completes his series of signs. This pattern reads the serial order of the three transcendent messianic events, that of acoustic, optic, and haptic imaginations - The Walking On The Water, The Stilling Of The Storm, The Transfiguration - according to the isolation of the same three episodes, from the integrated messianic series. That is the  three equivalent Johannine signs - The Walking On The Water (John 6.16-21), The Man Born Blind (John 9.1-12), and The Death Of Lazarus (John 1.1-44) - are arranged serially as a whole, albeit with intervening texts. This bears a strong resemblance to Mark's editing of the stories of healings of the three females. John's editing is of course referred to in the epilogue (John 21), by the cipher '153'. That John structures the seven signs in this way, which sorts with the fact that there is one only crossing 'to the other side' (John 6.1, 22) in his gospel, would appear to confirm his perspective, transcendence. Hence all three transcendent Johannine signs are arranged in the second half of the gospel, once the 'crossing to the other side' has taken place. It would appear then that either the Johannine order has followed the synoptic patterns or vice versa.

The privacy motif and the sex of the leper secure the  status of the healing as transcendent rather than immanent. Further to which, the two references to 'will' (qe/lh?v v 40, qe/lw v 41), tie this theology of imaginal consciousness and the conceptual polarity mind, envisioned in the very next miracle narrative, The Paralytic (Mark 2.1-12). The links with The Transfiguration are every bit as plain; Moses is mentioned in both stories (Mark 1.44 c.f. 9.4, 5), and the saying:


sounds very similar to:


Haptic imagination is depicted in both narratives as ontogenetic in character, in which regard it is utterly disparate from the phylogenetic imagination of acoustic sense-percipience. There is no reference to death in the healing event in any recension. Matthew redoubles the tie to both Moses and Transfiguration by means of his introduction:


This is the first of any miracle recounted in the gospel of Matthew, a fact which may intend its recapitulatory relation to the Day 1 rubric. In the gospel of Mark, the remaining two healings of the class which present imaginal mind, The Blind Man At Bethsaida (Mark 8.22-26) and The Deaf Mute Boy (Mark 8.14-29), border The Transfiguration and its associated pericopae (8.27-9.13). Of these, only the latter mentions death. What is equally significant, is that the story of Peter's Confession and The Transfiguration contain several references not just to the narratives concerning the deaths of John the baptiser and Jesus (Mark 8.28 and 8.31 c.f. 9.13, 9.9), but also to Jesus rising 'after three days' ( meta\ trei~v h(me/rav 8.31). This and other references of its kind will much assist us in the elaboration of the doctrine of the aconscious.

2a) The Walking On The Water

 Here the references to death are unmistakeable, and only John does not include the word 'ghost':


2b) The Deaf Mute Boy

His illness is referred to by Mark three times:


The ensuing narrative passes for the second time to a prediction of the suffering and death of Jesus, which once again includes the phrase 'and after three days' (meta\ trei~v h(me/rav 9.31).

3a) The Stilling Of The Storm

This episodes bears all the traces of an exorcism, except that nature rather than an individual person is the thing healed:


The verb 'rebuke' is used in the story of The Demoniac In The Synagogue ( e)peti/mhsen Mark 1.25), the first and exorcistic healing in the gospel, ties the narrative to the last of the same kind, The Deaf Mute Boy (Mark 9.14-29. The two pericopae reiterate the relationship between the Day 1 rubric and the corresponding messianic event, and posit the conceptual form space and the perceptual form acoustic imagination respectively. In this story of course, we are dealing with optic imagination, whose corresponding conceptual equivalent is the symbolic masculine. It is by no means merely adventitious that all three persons involved in the cures relating the three forms of imaginal consciousness are males. The same applies to the aconscious as disposed by the forms of unity. All persons healed in the three stories dealing with the forms of unity were females. Here Mark clearly refers to the creation rubric in which the sea plays its most prominent role, that of Day 3, which concerns the symbolic masculine. It is possible that this miracle narrative is intended to evoke the figure of Jonah, although the absence of any reference to 'three days and nights' such as the story provides is remarkably absent if that is the case. Certainly the motif of death which the reworking of the same persona and the book bearing his name in 'sign of Jonah' logia is consonant with the messianic miracle narrative. The detail that Jesus was asleep may even refer to the image of the sleeping Adam in the J creation narrative. Clearly the healing miracle which follows immediately the messianic miracle, that of The Gerasene Demoniac (Mark 5.1-20), notably an exorcism and thus in keeping with the messianic event which has just taken place, and which takes place in the vicinity of the sea, make clear the link between the conceptual form, symbolic masculine, its own subject, and that of the messianic event, optic imagination. Both stories are redolent with the theme of death; Jesus' sleep during the storm at sea itself functions metaphorically for this, the very thing of which the disciples themselves are fearful:
  the

The Blind Man At Bethsaida

This story likewise reverts to some of the imagery of the Day 3 rubric:


Contextually, the story sits follows the recapitulation of the two feeding miracles, the second of which and most recently recounted (Mark 8.20-21), concerns optic memory. It is also situated as closely as possible to the first passion prediction, with its reference to 'after three days' (Mark 8.31) as noted.

DEATH AND THE SIX SIGNS OF JONAH

We noted a certainly similitude between the persona of Jonah as the book of the same name in its entirety and The Stilling Of The Storm, although this association is not explicitly exploited in any of the versions we possess of the messianic miracle. The reason for this may well be that the cycle of six messianic miracles as a whole is better considered in relation to the figure and the book than merely the one episode. Three of these events, precisely the three transcendent messianic miracles, or miracles of 'virtual' transcendence which resemble Days 1, 2, and 3 of creation, can and should be accounted for in terms of a theology of death. They are all equally suffused with the notion. These three alone of the six messianic events denote those components of mind which determine the perceptual aconscious, for the three feeding events refer us to the normative, perceptual conscious, even though the six messianic miracles as a whole, when taken finally in tandem with the creation cycle rubrics are to be reckoned a propos of the nocturnal as opposed to 'days'. There must be a link of some kind with the six aconscious radicals and the 'sign of Jonah', since the latter broaches various tenets relating to a biblical doctrine of the aconscious as touching upon the theology of death. That is to say, that the three Days figurative of 'virtual' immanence from the creation cycle, and the three 'nights' of the messianic series, the miracle of 'virtual' transcendence. The 'sign of Jonah' saying and other similar references to the 'three days and three nights' or 'three days', therefore assuredly ramify this vital aspect of the doctrine of mind. According to the twelvefold template which adopts the annual cycle as paradigmatic of the logical organisation of the four categoreal taxa, these same six constituents of consciousness are organised in the way previously described. But it is now possible to incorporate the Christological formulation of the messianic miracles, their hexadic morphology, with reference to the specifically aconscious categories. Mark's references to 'three days and three nights' in the three predictions of Jesus' passion are as follows:

Matthew refers twice to the 'sign of Jonah'; the second time, there is no mention of the temporal construct;:


However, Matthew's first reference reads thus:


The reference Matthew here makes, is to Jonah 2.1, or 1.16, depending on the chapter and verse division which varies from translation to translation:


Unlike Matthew, there is only one reference to the same logion in Luke. Luke's parallel to the Matthean pericope about Signs Of The Times (Luke 12.54-56), mentions neither Jonah nor 'three days and three nights':


The Markan parallel has:

There is one further reference in Matthew to the 'three days'. It is immediately prior to his first, and only story of the resurrection, in which the chief priest and Pharisees gathered before Pilate:


In John as we shall later contend, the story of Lazarus intersects with this strand of the tradition, for it functions as the equivalent to The Transfiguration, and it too clearly contains a theology of death with references to the aconscious. There are two references which might contribute to a better grasp of the contents of the narratives before us, the last three Days of the creation cycle, and the three transcendent messianic miracles, and the first of these is given in the first sign:


The only other reference to 'three days' is contained in the introduction The Feeding Of The Four Thousand, the messianic counterpart to the Day 6 story:

There is in Luke's story of The Boy Jesus In The Temple (Luke 2.41-51) also, a reference to the same time interval, which though not immediately relevant here, can be listed:


Our goal is not to enter into any of the explanations or apologetics given for the method of reckoning the amount of actual time between the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is rather to understand the  three transcendent messianic miracles, and by dint of the relation of the entire series to the theology of creation, that half of that story as well, relatively to the tradition of the 'sign of Jonah'. The saying is immediately salient. Having already interpreted two halves of the two narrative cycles, the first three Days of the creation, and the three Eucharistic messianic miracles,  both of which are normative for the remainders of their respective texts,  the remaining body of texts describing mind a propos of the phenomenon of death now remains. What is already apparent is that neither the entire six messianic miracles nor the entire series of six Days of creation, fits the temporal construct of these various sayings about 'three days and three nights, 'in three days', 'after three days', and 'on the third day'. Neither do the six normative categories, the three Days signifying normative transcendence and the three Eucharistic miracles signifying normative immanence. In neither group of six is there any intrinsic connection between these as wholes and an eschatological agenda touching upon the phenomenon of death.

But just such an eschatological link between the categories of the aconscious and death does exist. There is a very clear and intelligible connection between the three transcendent messianic miracles and the three forms of unity as depicted both in Genesis and the gospels. In other words, the 'three days and three nights' of the 'sign of Jonah', as of the passion predictions and other texts, these all refer in the first place to the binary and triadic structures of the aconscious. Their organization maintains the differential of conceptual and perceptual radicals. In conscious mind these were represented as diurnal and nocturnal respectively. The imagery of the first three Days, which begins with the separation of light from darkness, sets the tone for the conceptual polarity, just as does the story of the miracle at the wedding, which begins the messianic series. There is no contradiction of this principle with the admission of the aconscious categories to consideration, even though they appear to counter the first level division between transcendence and immanence. Thus the 'three days' of the sign of Jonah saying is a figure for the three forms of unity, and the 'three nights'  a figure for the three forms of imagination.

An immediate rapport in both cases is evident. As we saw in the second half of the creation narrative: the sub-human realm plays a vital role; and in the transcendent miracle narratives, we found images of sleep; the fantasma appearing to the disciples as walking on the sea; the appearance of two figures, Moses with Elijah, who have both already died, and the latter of whom is connected to a tradition akin to the event of resurrection in some way. The 'sign of Jonah' as put previously, is a set of signs, and these amplify the temporal construct which accompanies the saying, 'three days and three nights'. But if at first we thought that the six messianic miracles, the six signs of the series answering to the six Days, are the referents of this construct, we were mistaken. It is true that the sixfold messianic series is morphologically co-incident with the binary and triadic shape of the expression. But clearly only three of the six messianic miracles are remarkably linked with death; namely the three transcendent episodes denoting sense-percipient imagination. Just as clearly, the other half of the radicals constituting the aconscious belong to this realm, this domain, this order of mind, and they too are not only connected with death, but with what we mean by the term 'aconscious'. So then, I am contending that the sign(s) of Jonah are those components in the theologies of creation and salvation respectively, which reckon the mind in terms of its aconscious structures.

This has the obvious benefit of once more integrating the two canons, not just the two isomorphic narratives of beginning and end. For its fuller argumentation will demand consideration of three books belonging to the Tanakh, which we have already mentioned: Daniel, Job and Jonah. I am also contending as part of the theology of the Word, that is, as part of Christian epistemology and psychology, that these three books encapsulate the three forms of unity categorised in the second half of the creation narrative.  I am arguing that Daniel best encapsulates the significance to theological reflection of the conceptual form of unity space : time; similarly, I am proposing that Job is the best and single exemplification of what we mean by the symbolic feminine; and that Jonah for its part, is a theology of soma, the mind : body. It would be surprising if any interpretation of the 'sign of Jonah' had no recourse to that book at all. But here we are emphasising just such a method; that and more still. For we are taking Jonah in connection with the other two books of the same kind; books which theologically have to do with what we refer to as the aconscious and the theology of death. Just like the second half of the creation narrative, sub-human creatures play a very significant role in all three books, and in Daniel and Job,  'super-human' beings are also present. In due course, we shall comment further on this aspect of the theology of the Word, and the theology of semiotic forms. But it is important to expand the emergent picture we have of the 'sign of Jonah' in its relation to the aconscious categories.

What is pertinent to better understanding the aconscious is its vectoral nature. In the mandala immediately above which pictures the co-ordination of the four gospels in terms of a theology of logos, the Word, we see that the process from an initiating and conative mode of intentionality to a final mode, has not been altered. This can be later understood as the depiction of convergence to the present from ultimate or distal pasts and futures. Thus the link between these processes as the outcomes of their generative categoreal radicals of mind, the logos, has not been altered. The structures whereby the conative modes are instrumental to the cognitive modes is one and the same for the aconscious as for the conscious. But what does change notably, is the flux from the category identified by the same sign in each case. Put simply, during that half of the annual cycle representative of the conscious, the processive transference moves from darkness to light; but during the other half depicting the aconscious, there is a processive transference towards darkness.

Where we might expect the conceptual forms and their resultant intentional modes to be inverted by the forms of unity and their sovereign forms of intentionality, this is not the case. Equally, we might have thought of the relationship between the forms of memory and the forms of imagination, as also that between their respectively corresponding forms of intentionality, representatively given in the above mandala as the rapport between both equinoctial qaurters of the annual cycle, to be likewise oppositional or inverted in some way. But neither is this so. It is here that the second order division intervenes, that of the reduplication within the two basic categories already taxonomised as transcendent and immanent, of this same binary paradigm, transcendence : immanence. As a result, the forms of unity invert the integrated arrangement of the normative immanent radicals; and the forms of imagination invert the integrated arrangement of the normative conceptual radicals. In either case, the pivotal point is that of the two solsitial moments, and these come to signify two defining factors of the conscious and aconscious alike. We shall comment further on these details in the treatments of the four individual gospels, beginning with Luke, in which the soma, the conceptual form of unity, acts as the defining component in aconscious mind. But it is important to point out here the specific relation between the perceptual memory and its 'equivalent' aconscious province, consisting of the forms of unity. There is a reciprocity here by means of which the aconscious appears to invert the temporality of the normative, that is, conscious. So too, there same relation occurs between the imaginal realm and the conscious conceptual order. Imagination is reciprocally related to the normative pure conceptual forms in virtue of its apparent inversion of their integrated temporal organization. This feature is descriptive of the aconscious in its relation to the conscious.

Of all the elements of the aconscious then, that of the body is finally the most salient, the most powerful, the most significant. We can represent these aconscious components of consciousness in terms of a spectrum which begins with the radical haptic imagination. This is as far removed from the former as any component of the aconscious. But the same disparity recurs when we take the cyclical aspect of time as a guiding construct. It is not simply that within the aconscious, haptic imagination and the concept of the body stand relatively to one another with utmost variation, though indeed they do. The very same pattern is repeated in the analogous relations. These can be easily reckoned, and they contribute to what exactly we mean by the disparity. For we can speak in broad terms of similarity and disparity. We have already noted Mark's taxonomy of the three conceptual forms, mind : body (or soma), male : female, and space: time, according to their contiguity, their similarity. We can add to this same presentation by realising its opposite, whereby just two of these constituents of the aconscious throw each other into greatest contrast. If then haptic imagination and the body offer to one another the greatest degree of incompatibility of the elements of aconscious mind, the greatest discrepancy, the greatest relief, the same is true of the following: optic imagination and male : female; acoustic imagination and space : time. These extreme antipathies, as noted, within the aconscious, between what are the formative elements of the modes of intentionality, can also be understood as disposing of the latter themselves in the same way. Desire-to-know and belief-in-desire; will-to-believe and knowledge-of-will, these are intentional modes juxtaposed to the greatest degree of any within the aconscious, as are the two hybrid Pneumatological modes which combine on the one hand desire-to-know and knowledge-of-will, and on the other, will-to-believe and belief-in-desire.

But finally of course, it is between the conscious and the aconscious radicals of mind, as between the modes of intentionality for which they are in turn accountable, that the uttermost differences obtain. So belief-in-desire and belief, even though they are both identifiably Christological forms of intentionality, stand at greatest variance from one another, as do the remaining two Christological modes, desire and desire-to-know. This same pattern is reproduced in the structures of the Transcendental modes, will and will-to-believe; and knowing and knowledge-of-will; just as it is for the Pneumatological modes. These observations will assist us in developing the theology of the two orders of mind, conscious and aconscious. The construal appears to associate the aconscious with death. I know of no secular psychological or metapsychological theories which follow suit. In fact the notion of the 'unconscious' or 'subconscious' itself is obscure in all but its barest outlines, and a major reason for this deficiency is the lack of any coherent and systematic references to the essential links between the aconscious and death.


One immediate and great merit of biblical metaphysics is the clear distinction it draws between the personal or individual and the collective. This also concerns eschatological doctrine, and hence the theology of death. As for the theology of mind, the same differentiation marks not only the perceptual aconscious, consisting of the three forms of imagination, but also correspondingly the conceptual aconscious. Just as it is true of all conscious categories, perceptual and conceptual, and their corresponding forms of intentionality. We have used the biological expressions 'ontogeny' and 'phylogeny' to clarify this basic tenet. It is recorded in the above mandala. These remarks are necessary here in the context of any association we make between the aconscious and death, because they must influence any Christian doctrine of what Berdyaev has called 'being after death'. That is, they will bear on eschatological doctrines such as those of 'personal immortality' so-called. Concerning this in particular, we find therefore not surprisingly, at the very introduction of The Transfiguration:


Effectively the last Johannine miracle, The Raising Of Lazarus (John 11.1-44), tends towards the same purpose, a theology of the ontogenetic self beyond death. But neither narrative proposes that the same physical body, the same soma, as which we presently exist, is identical in all respects, to the body raised from death. The personal relationship between Lazarus and Jesus is congruent with the depiction of Jesus as 'my beloved Son' (or 'my Son, my Beloved', or 'my Son, the Beloved'), whom the 'voice [which] came out of the cloud' identifies at The Transfiguration (Mark 9.7). Thus the 'certain ones', or 'some standing' in the presence of the transfigured Jesus, and Lazarus, both personify the haptic imaginal mind. It should be clear to common sense or to intuition, that if my personal perceptual conscious is given by haptic memory, and that this subtends a certain relation of differentiation from the acoustic, a distinctively phylogenetic order of being, then the same must apply in that sphere of the perceptual polarity of mind indicated by the words 'imagination', 'imaginal' and so on. Haptic imagination constitutes a sense of the self and a mode of intentionality altogether other than acoustic imagination, and the intentionality for which this is responsible. If we think of the uniqueness to the self of occasions which involve haptic memory, then to accept that haptic imagination equally and also generates a wholly personal or ontogenetic self must follow. If touch itself in the form of the erotic, haptic memory, is one of the factors of consciousness which individuates me as me, we must understand that this is only half of the picture. The same sentient mode persists in an aconscious form; that is, there is a centre of consciousness arising from haptic imagination complementary to that of haptic memory, which nonetheless incorporates it. This imaginal  form of haptic sense-percipience defines the aconscious in the same way as its perceptual counterpart determines the perceptual conscious; that is to say, ontogenetically.

All of the Christological categories, those of soma and mind as well as the two perceptual categories just named, dispose of consciousness in this manner. In spite of the existence of other bodies, my body is mine alone. The problem of 'other minds' has been well noted, and it pertains to what we are affirming here. Mind, or logos, is the Christological conceptual radical. Thus the 'uniqueness' of 'the' Son, to whom John refers as 'the only (monogenh\v) Son' (John 1.18), embodies this same quality, this same attribute of mind. At the same time, one of two tenets distinctively essential to Christian doctrine, its insistence on this single event of 'incarnation', for the same reason, best serves the division of the entire temporal evolutionary-historical trajectory into its two complementary halves. Those epochs themselves fit aptly the division of two fundamentally juxtaposed metaphysical understandings of time, as far as we have described them in terms of the eschatological categories. These categories, the masculine and feminine of the conceptual polarity, and the two optic radicals of the perceptual polarity, are deployed in Genesis and The Apocalypse respectively. They remain our best guide in any effort towards a  theological understanding of death. Thus of the three imaginal forms of consciousness, optic imagination is the predominant member, and of the three forms of unity, the symbolic feminine is the predominant member, where the eschatological is concerned. The former, as envisioned in The Stilling Of The Storm, appears to invoke the book of Jonah.

The first step in approaching this book, and in any attempt to integrate it into the comprehensive grasp of the form of the gospel, our primary business here, and furthermore, in the effort towards a theology of death, must first appreciate its formal contours. These are remarkably fourfold, as is the gospel, and the four sevenfold series belong certainly to any hermeneutic of The Feeding Of The Four Thousand, as we have urged. This form is already part and parcel of the hexadic pattern of aconscious categories, and we need to advert to it. The aconscious radicals are six in number: the three forms of imagination, to which optic imagination is central, and the three forms of unity, to which the symbolic feminine is likewise central. These central and Pneumatological categories play a very large role in apocalyptic literature, and this ensures their affinity with eschatological doctrine. The reduction of the six ingredients of the aconscious to a tetrad is a simple matter, and vouched for by the last Johannine miracle, whose relation to The Transfiguration has already been outlined. A link between The Transfiguration and The Apocalypse is is subtended by the story of Lazarus, and it is one which confirms the relevance to the eschatological doctrines of the gospels and The Apocalypse of the sign of Jonah sayings and other sayings of the same kind. This narrative certainly applies to any doctrine of the aconscious in virtue of the same relation. It contains several references not just to 'days' but also to 'hours', and these are as follows:


These references to light and day resonant of the theology of creation, recur to the opening of the gospel itself, John's theology of the Word and the incarnation, as well as to the prior miracle, when, in response to the question posed by the disciples regarding the cause of the blind man's illness:


This miracle story is John's account of optic imagination as a formative element of mind, hence its association with the logos. The eschatological and Pneumatological motifs of the pericope, as the effort of the disciples to grasp the reason for the illness and the redoubled references to the verb 'send' (9.4, 7. 11), are paramount. But the narrative paves the way for what is the final, and as such, most significant of all Johannine signs, involving Lazarus. In which story the other references to days are as follows:



According to the reckoning employed here, there are twelve hours in a day. Hence two of the 'days' during which the body of Lazarus lay in the tomb, must have been nights, making for a total of two actual days and two nights; in other words, a period of forty eight hours. The application of this way of reckoning the temporal figure squares perfectly with the fourfold pattern determining the structure of the aconscious in terms of its four tipping points. That is, excluding the two Pneumatological radicals which intervene between the initial and the final members of both taxa, the three forms of imagination and the three forms of unity, leaves the four radicals which with their normative parallels, comprise those distinctive four points of the annual and seasonal cycle. Those four elements omitted in this procedure, do not add anything novel to the sum total of elemental intentional forms. The four Pneumatological modes of intentionality all combine modes already extant; all four Pneumatological intentional modes of intentionality are hybrids. They utilise already extant modes of intentionality; so any further abstraction from the hexadic to the tetradic contours of the cycle, can dispense with them. We saw the same feature in the Pneumatological narratives which have the appearance of being if not otiose, then repetitive of already existing narratives; The The Stilling Of The Storm being an ostensible duplicate of The Walking On The Water and so on.The pattern here, as also arguably of The Apocalypse, reverts to the  basic tetradic format consisting of just those four moments in the yearly cycle at which the ratio of day to night is distinctive: the two solstitial moments, and the two equinoctial moments. These as noted, are the subjects of the narratives which sit at the centre and the peripheries of the Johannine signs: the two Christological miracles, the first, The Transformation Of Water Into Wine and the last, The Death Of Lazarus, and both Transcendental miracles, The Feeding Of The Five Thousand and The Walking On The Water respectively. It is as likely as not, that if the Johannine signs predate the Markan redaction of the six messianic events, these four episodes were those which were first consigned to written form.

The inclusion of the last Johannine miracle story a propos of an eschatological doctrine concerning the aconscious, death, and the post-mortem state, thus follows the same meaning in The Transfiguration. That narrative speaks of 'six days', and we have correctly read such a reference as securing the homology between the six Days of 'beginning' and the six messianic events. But in itself, the episode marks the ontogeny of haptic imagination, the most highly individuated, that is, 'personalist' element of perceptual aconscious mind. The last of the messianic events like the last of the Johannine signs, therefore has an indubitably eschatological cast. We may treat of the one as of the other. The six radical components of the aconscious can so be accounted for in terms which signal the fourfold anatomy of consciousness itself. The two forms of imaginal consciousness, the haptic and acoustic therefore stand in apposition to the two forms of unity, soma and space : time. These in their respective fields, which we can distinguish in several ways, circumscribe the limits of the aconscious as both ontogenetic and phylogenetic respectively. That there may well be a link between them and the fundamental organizing principle of The Apocalypse, each of whose quarters begins with a sevenfold series, is a proposition worth pursuing, but not so, immediately here and now.

The hexadic structure of the aconscious can be thus reduced so as to yield an even more abstract tetradic form. This results in the emphasis of the two conceptual components, space : time and the soma, the peripheral members of their taxon, its initial and final elements, as well as their necessary conative and cognitive forms of intentionality, which extend from a remote past or future, to converge at a present. The two diurnal intervals of the Johannine pericope, the two days in the tomb of Lazarus, as of the disciple of Jesus, figure these two conceptual components of the aconscious. The same applies to understanding the two peripheral perceptual aconscious components. The haptic imagination and acoustic imagination, along with their respective intentional modes, thus are figured by the two nocturnal twelve hour intervals, the two nights. Rather than 'three days and three nights' then, the Lazarus story speaks of 'four days', by which we understand the two sets of equal intervals, two days and two nights, or two whole twenty-four hour cycles. The introduction to the story which mentioned Jesus staying 'two days longer in the place where he was' supports this reading. Such reckoning of the temporal references in the Johannine narrative accord perfectly with the synoptic traditions regarding the same phenomenon, namely the aconscious. The Christological narratives, The Transfiguration, and The Death Of Lazarus, as well as the overall configuration of the messianic events and the Days of creation, sing in unison regarding these tenets of Christian epistemology and psychology.

A possible link between The Death Of Lazarus and The Apocalypse seems every bit as intelligible as that these 'signs of Jonah', whether we reckon them according to the fourfold or the sixfold structure, provide the basis of a theology of death and more particularly, of the interim state between the same and the final consummation as given in The Apocalypse. It does not finally matter that we enumerate the ingredients of the aconscious in any hard and fast way. What is clear is  its relevance for any beliefs we have concerning death. We have already seen that the Pneumatological ingredients of the aconscious, optic imagination and the male : female conceptual form of unity, frequently best serve the notion of passage. This does not mean 'transmutation' as it applies to the Christological categories, which are clearly associated with love and death, Eros and Thanatos. It means the economy of living entities in virtue of which the governing function of immanence and of the Pneumatological realises its end; and that is, unity. Any eschatological conception of the immediate destiny of human consciousness after death must therefore deal with the reality of life in all its connectivity.

To explore further the relationship between death and the doctrine of the aconscious takes us to the centre of Markan eschatology, where once again, the notion of an animal consciousness, which is also by definition collective, comes into play; hence the recurrence of the familial motifs, and the occurrence in the two outlying narratives of terms such as 'Legion' and 'Syrophoenician', indexes of phylogeny. There is a distinct and important link forged between the aconscious and death. We see it in almost every one of the stories of healings Mark has placed between 5.1 and 7.31, the stories which address animal consciousness and the aconscious conceptual polarity together. That such concerns might belong to the doctrine of the aconscious has been neglected very remarkably by Western psychology ever since the time of Brentano who first put the case for it in the modern era. Philosophical psychology, and more particularly, evolutionary psychology, have thus far failed one of their most sacrosanct obligations. What has already become quite clear is the significance of that Christological half of the equation  entitled to fullest consideration in any discussion of the aconscious, namely Thanatos. This is a topic rarely if ever addressed in contemporary psychology. Its weight, and the metaphysical freight which it bears, are much too burdensome for secularist agendas. Yet if anything, this is the very first characteristic we must contend with in the fuller doctrine of the aconscious.

It is certainly evoked in the several miracle narratives and in the stories of messianic transcendent miracles as it is not in just those rubrics and pericopae which have to do with the conscious. Consideration of the aconscious is necessarily consideration of the meaning of death for consciousness generally, just as it is necessarily the due discussion of the various issues surrounding time, the raison d'etre of the present work. We are not seeking to confine the doctrine of consciousness  in its relation to time and death, to just those narratives which outline the aconscious. But these must demand our attention if not first, then equally to any attention we give to the canonical texts dealing with the normative components of mind. The first point to assess, though we will not do so in any detail here, would be the eschatological one. An account of the biblical doctrine of the aconscious wherever we meet it, enjoins theological consideration of death.

One final point deserves observation, and it is yet another indication of the logical consistency of the narratives. The sex of the individuals involved in the healing miracles which present the perceptual aconscious radicals of mind are of a piece. This sorts with the utmost rigorous logic in keeping with those narrative already examined, the healing narratives in Mark and the synoptics which portray the conceptual aconscious. These of course involve women, even though they do in one sense begin with the story of a man, The Gerasene Demoniac (Mark 5.1-20). This text isolates for treatment the category of the symbolic masculine. It must therefore in one way be ostensibly disconnected for this conceptual form of unity stands apart as taxonomically transcendent. The Gerasene Demoniac himself too stands cut off from his other, the feminine, with which Mark must nevertheless tie his story, and so he does, by the means which we have already detailed above. The Syrophoenician Woman and The Gerasene Demoniac establish the outermost members of the catena or chain of events whereby Mark more thoroughly presents his theology of the conceptual aconscious.

We must not forget the paradoxes native to the symbolic masculine whish stem largely from the fact that of the three pure conceptual forms, as representative of the Holy Spirit and of immanence generally, it is weighted in favour of the immanent. This is the least 'transcendent' member of its class for the conceptual polarity of consciousness. So the theology of the conceptual aconscious is consistently portrayed with female rather than male protagonists: Jairus' Daughter (Mark 5.21-24a, 35-43), the theology of the conceptual form soma; The Haemorrhagic Woman (5.24b-34), the theology of the conceptual form space : time; The Syrophoenician Woman's Daughter (7.24-31), the theology of the conceptual form symbolic feminine. The editing of these narratives complies with their taxonomic status. They select from the twelve categories just those three which elaborate the radical disposition of the conceptual aconscious, and of these the symbolic feminine is treated last, as it was in the creation narrative. Mark has faithfully followed that same, even if, for reasons already discerned, he interrupts the story of Jairus' Daughter, his counterpart to the Day 4 rubric.

So the apparent inclusion of that single pericope about the symbolic masculine, The Gerasene Demoniac, given the inclusive nature of the complementary category, the symbolic feminine, in this chain of healing miracles, is at once perfectly intelligible. It is moreover a tour de force, for which we were prepared by the arrangement by the previous concatenation of miracles, The Demoniac In The Synagogue (Mark 1.21-28), signifying the conceptual category space; Simon Peter's Mother-In-Law (1.29-31), an alternative, albeit very summary portrait of the symbolic feminine; and The Paralytic (2.1-12), signifying the conceptual category mind, and whose link to  The Leper (1.40-45), the story of haptic imagination, we have already determined. We shall say more about this arrangement later. But it is certain that the evangelist thinks of the categories of the aconscious in terms of the Pneumatological category itself, male and female. This is inevitable, since bodies are in the very first place, sexually determined. We can then appreciate that  each of the persons implicated in each half of the Markan theology of the aconscious, submits logically to this distinction; so, whereas the three conceptual radicals of the aconscious are given as the stories of women, as we saw; the three perceptual radicals of the same order are manifestly all about males: The Leper, The Blind Man At Bethsaida, and The Deaf Mute Boy. The second half of John's series of signs is similarly consistent, even if it begins with a messianic miracle, The Walking On The Water (John 6.16-21), rather than a healing event. Thus The Man Born Blind (9.1-12), and Lazarus (11.1-44), both fit also the Johannine theology of imaginal consciousness, the theology of the perceptual aconscious. The contiguity maintained by these narratives in both gospels is therefore another point of contact between John and Mark, or Mark and John as the case may be.

The exorcistic healing of the deaf and dumb boy, whose conclusion we noticed, referred to 'prayer and fasting' (Mark 9.29),  may be said to conform to the Johannine metaphor regarding imagination in so far as it points to the negation of the mode taste. Thus the expression 'fasting' agrees with what we have observed a propos of the metaphor basic to the messianic events, that of assimilation, which it reiterates negatively, since what is at stake is not perceptual memory qua taste, but perceptual imagination qua smell. The location of this story immediately subsequently to The Transfiguration pericope should also be taken into account as supporting the theology of perceptual imagination. We need to further consider this idea before leaving the discussion of the aconscious. The Eucharistic modes, those of smell-taste, are enmeshed already in the Christological functions, those of touch. John and Mark both agree on this point also. Thus both evangelists include references to the olfactory modes of sense-percipience in the last of the miracles:



John no less than the synoptic evangelists, identifies Jesus as the embodiment of that centre of consciousness we are calling 'haptic imagination'. He has arranged this last miracle story in tandem with the first, where the same Jesus was seen as the embodiment of 'haptic memory'. This means of course, that the inclusion of the first Johannine sign in the messianic series as the logical complement to the last, The Transfiguration, is necessary. In this way, John's gospel becomes as necessary to the synoptics as do theirs to his. To read the introduction of the miracle in Mark in tandem with the Johannine construct involving the sentient mode, taste-smell, in John is not only valid, but required. Both miracle narratives portray the perceptual aconscious. Both recur to the J narrative of the 'fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil' in which eating is the central metaphor connecting death and sexual love, Eros and Thanatos. In this way the propagation of animal and vegetable species at the level of husbandry and the assimilation of such living things mutually justify each other. As with Mark's introduction to The Transfiguration, John's story of The Anointing At Bethany, following that of The Death Of Lazarus, again sustains the connection between the phenomenology of the olfactory, if not the gustatory, and death:


The Markan and Matthean recensions of this story contain the same link, although only John carefully does not fail to mention the 'fragrance':


The relationships between Lazarus, Martha and Mary each, and Jesus are qualified by everything we seek to convey by the term 'haptic imagination', they are examples of the way in which this counters the type of relationships put by the first miracle story, the erotic type, which is effected by haptic memory,  although both generate the reality of the self as individuated or 'ontogentic' rather than 'phylogenetic'. The manner in which the gospel of John uses the theology of perception deserves attention here. For the 'Eucharistic' mode of sentience, the combined osmic-gustic mode also evidently infers the distinction between memory and imagination. That is, the sense of smell as distinct from the sense of taste, which the latter almost always necessarily comprises, can and does function in itself and for itself alone. This is one of the most illuminating images we have of the perceptual imagination. Smell and not taste then, signifies in this context, the imagination as opposed to the memory. Of course John is careful to secure the connection of the last with the first sign, both being Christologies, just as Mark also links The Transfiguration with the phenomenon of the crypto-erotic, having used the epithet 'The Beloved' (also translated 'My Beloved'), of Jesus in his last messianic miracle narrative:


We know surely enough that to taste is to touch. This Eucharistic mode is therefore at its heart Christological, even if, in another sense it invokes all three forms of phenomenal sense-percipience in virtue of its generic nature. Consequently, the absence of actual (mnemic) touch, is synonymous with the absence of taste. Their synonymy is a substantial part of the subtext of the two last miracle narratives, both of which represent the transcendent Son. So we cannot ignore the role of the olfactory and gustatory sentient modes. Their primacy for consciousness we know also from the second creation narrative, and we see the very broad sweep of their operation in the conative and cognitive experience of animals, facts brought to light in the healing narratives we examined in Mark, which surely allude to the complicit relation between smell-taste and sexual congress. But the configuration of these two modes, or one mode, depending on just how we account them, is germane to any discussion of the aconscious. The phenomenon of the combination and division of the two, smell and taste, offers us a profound insight into the taxonomic division of sense-percipience into its mnemic and imaginal vectors. We say 'vectors' advisedly, because the real thrust of any significant distinction between smell and taste as analogously related to the imaginal and mnemic, logically resorts to the radical differentiation of future  and past, for which also, the two relata symbolic masculine and symbolic feminine also function paradigmatically. Just as the symbolic feminine is the essential combination of both relata, analogously, the sense of taste is indivisibly bound with the sense of smell. But we have put also that one of the relata stands alone, signal of transcendence, to however limited a degree: the symbolic masculine in the case of the anthropic and conceptual category, and the sense of smell in the case of the Eucharistic and perceptual category. Now this tenet comes into play here since it readily illuminates the doctrine of the perceptual aconscious.

The prevailing construal for the perceptual polarity of mind is given in the Eucharist itself, and in the three Eucharistic miracles prior to it. These all involve actual events of eating/drinking. Where the perceptual imagination is concerned in relation to these, we can invoke the binary form of the Eucharistic mode itself. Taste involves smell; but the obverse does not occur. That is, taste always engages the sense of smell, in the same way that memory always engages imagination. We have argued that the latter are indissolubly conjunct.  However, imagination for its part, does exist in its own right; it enjoys a transcendence of sorts. The image or metaphor for which is just that form of sentience, the olfactory sense alone, which John and Mark  refer to in the transcendent Christologies and John alone refers to in the story of The Anointing At Bethany. This imagery of the sense of smell is ideally fitted to convey the perceptual imagination, and its corresponding modes of intentionality. The imagination stands in a sense as divided from its memory; or at least, as appropriating to itself the trappings of such disjunction maintained by the pure conceptual forms. We should never lose sight of the fact that perceptual imagination is in no uncertain sense abstractive, or reductive in that seeks to overcome the normativity of the perceptual memory of consciousness. For this  same  polarity  is the basis or norm of the imagination, just as the pure conceptual  forms are normative of the forms of unity. Perceptual memory defines what we mean by perception, sentience and so on. The texts consistently represent by means of the metaphor of assimilation, and so more specifically, the sense-percipient mode taste.

But the figures of whom Mark's Transfiguration narrative speaks as 'standing here who will not taste death' square with the Johannine phenomenological vocabulary, and with the metaphorical use of sleep for death in the miracle narrative. Initially this depicts the eschatological dimension of the aconscious in terms of sleep, again consistently with several other texts as we have seen. The two metaphors both say the same thing: sleep is less than waking consciousness, and to perceive an odour is less than to taste its source. The point is that sleep is not the same thing as death, and alternatively, adopting the second metaphor, if to 'taste death' is equivalent to dying, the figure reverting back to the second creation narrative, then neither is this the same thing as what may conceivably be meant by the 'imaginal' ingredient in taste itself, sense-percipience of an odour. Both sleep and the sense-percipient mode of smell rather than taste, are extremely useful metaphors for the imaginal consciousness, as for any doctrine of the ontogenetic mind 'subsequent' to the death of the body. Indeed the metaphors and images of both miracle stories are redolent of the ontogenetic self. Even so, we should not forget that both are metaphors for the perceptual aconscious in its relation to death, sleep and the olfactory sense-percipient mode; both are figures of speech. The two paradigms for the normative and conscious radicals of mind, that is the use of the phenomenon of light to signify the pure conceptual forms, and the use of the phenomenon of assimilation of food and drink to represent the modes of perceptual memory, may be more than just figures of speech. More needs to be said in this respect, for concerning the first alone, the clear link between mind and time, of which light in the creation story is the measure, just as it is in contemporary cosmology, entitles such language to further detailed consideration.

THE TETRAD : TEMPORAL HIERARCHIES

It is here, in preparation for the more detailed study of each of the four gospels, that we must further justify, or better still, explain the reduction of the twelvefold and sixfold structures, to the more concentrated one in which the four canonical ('evangelical') dyads are paramount. This is central to the relation between mind and time as given in the story of Transfiguration, which is necessarily to say, the Day 1 rubric. It pertains to the integrity of the inclusive twelvefold (sixfold) categoreal schema if we acknowledge that mind 'includes' itself; that the whole, of which it is a part, is nevertheless the whole: the logos always involves this resolution of the dilemma between part and whole. The explanation of abstracting from the six to the four dyads acknowledges the fact of sovereignty. There are eight forms of intentionality standing so to speak, at the four quarters of the temporal cycle. These are arranged in pairs, coherent or parallel intentional modes which reflect the ismorphism of the two narrative cycles, the analogous relation between the six Days and the six messianic miracles. We might with equal justification speak of the Pneumatological dyads in terms of sovereignty, that is, canonicity, where intentionality is concerned. But there are several important differences to be accounted for. For one thing, as noted, the intentional modes generated by all four Pneumatological categories of consciousness do not introduce to it anything not previously there. They are in one sense derivative from, even parasitic upon, or at least consequent upon the eight more elemental forms. One way of understanding this is to use the phenomenon of language:


To conceive of optic memory as the means of the written mode of communication, is to concede this argument, and furthermore, to grant the predominant status of the acoustic, or at least, the chronological reliance of optic memory on acoustic memory where language is concerned. The very same truth applies to the individual as well as to the races; that is, the pattern of ontogenetic linguistic development, replicates the evolution of language at the level of phylogeny. No child learns its written language before learning its spoken language. It is perhaps even justifiable to describe the widespread emergence of literacy, and numeracy both, since the latter is virtually entirely optic in its essential character, as teleological, indeed if not eschatological. Such an idea is delivered in The Apocalypse. There are many such references in this book, references to the accoutrements of both forms of language, the written and the spoken:


The final compression of the structures of consciousness to their fourfold aspect can be more than adequately defended on the grounds of the inherent reference to time within the mandala. There are four and only four marked points in both cycles, solar and lunar, which define the four seasons and phases in each case, although it is the first that most concerns us here. The occurrence of the analogues to Pneumatological radicals in the same figures, do not present themselves with the same clarity of identity, the same haecceity as those constituting the ends and beginnings of the quarters, of which there are in all just eight. These eight 'points' arrange themselves as four, since they require the ratio of day to night, if not light to darkness, for their definition. They are transitive just as are the Pneumatological 'moments' of the year; they are preceded by and succeed to certain other durations in the same scheme. But very notably they are unlike the four Pneumatological radicals, for they constitute the course of the annual cycle in a rudimentary and significant way. (Thus in the history of archeoastronomy the 'cross quarters' never assumed a significance equal to that of the two solstices and two equinoxes.) The transitional quality of just these four points however, is pivotal, momentous, and structurally semiological to an exceptional degree.

The tetradic form of the categories analogically to the seasonal cycle, must surely juggle with certain basic characteristics of temporality as these impinge upon consciousness. These are very readily intelligible. It is indeed the intentional forms, which are the product of each of the peripheral or terminal categories of the four taxa, which render intelligible the features. In each case their pattern follows an initiating conatus, a conative mode of intentionality and terminates in a cognitive mode. It is necessary to remember here that we are dealing with the sovereign occasions of the forms of intentionality; that is, with the modes of intentionality in their canonical forms. So haptic memory as responsible for desire, begins the taxon, perceptual memory, which is ended by acoustic memory, responsible for knowing. The transition here is from the conative to the cognitive. It is the same in each case, that is, all four taxa reproduce this same graded transition, with the Pneumatological and hybrid form of intentionality being the intervening mode. The hybridity of the Pneumatological forms of intentionality, in the previous example, desiring-and-knowing, confirms their own innate lack of identity, so that they are other than just those four dyads which are the governing intentional forms of the four gospels. Thus the Pneumatological modes, like their corresponding intervals if not moments, in time, are devoid of singular identity. They all consist of combined conative and cognitive forms of intentionality. Theirs is the business of unity, of immanence, contrastively to transcendence, for which a synonym might well be 'identity'.

But the four dyadic intentional modes which are analogous to the four 'moments' ('point-instants') of the annual cycle are indeed susceptible of sortation. They are radically identifiable, as being either conative (affective) or cognitive (intellective). The unity of the intervening Pneumatological forms of intentionality should not blind us to the fact of their dependence upon these same radical identifiable elemental modes, whether these be simple (conscious) or compound (aconscious). We see this in The Apocalypse, which in a given sense is derivative, or 'plagiaristic', and entirely beholden to the gospel. It is the same with the modes themselves. They introduce ambiguity into what requires clarity; and we begin with them on pain of grossly misunderstanding what is actually primary and original. But these very same hybrid intentional forms play an enormous role in consciousness; consider alone the fact of vision, and how it influences us. The blandishments of beauty are part and parcel of this influence, the strategic value that 'things seen', and just as surely, 'unseen', have; their sheer power over our lives. Whether or not we should consider the Pneumatological radicals and their subsequent forms of intentionality from the point of view of the instant, that is the 'point-instant', or whether it would be better to view their nature and function as exclusively transitional, or durational, can remain a moot point. At any rate, we have to distinguish between the hybrid modes of intentionality and those forms  which are decisively, that is purely, either conative or cognitive. This includes of course all four compound and aconscious modes: desire-to-know, and will-to-believe, both of which are purely conative; and also knowledge-of-will and faith-in-desire which are purely cognitive. We must not confuse these compound intentional forms with the hybrid modes. All four compound modes act in the same way as their conscious counterparts where it is a question of distinguishing the basic, elemental, primary structures of consciousness; these remain tetradic in form.

Concerning the intelligibility of the hierarchical transition from an incipient and conative to a final and cognitive mode, we must here distinguish between degrees of both pastness and futurity. In each case the same fundamental directedness is operative. There is always a convergence towards the present. All purely cognitive forms of intentionality circumscribe either pasts or futures that are tangential to the immediate present. If we say 'tangential' this does not rule out actual contiguity, and so we shall use the word 'proximal' to denote this boundedness between both an immediate past or an immediate future, with the actual present. Here I shall speak in anatomical terms which refer to the phalanges of the fingers. It is possible that the Markan schema was reckoned using the hand. It provides us with so many of the configurations attributable to the categories which lie at the heart of Christian metaphysics. Indeed one learns to count by means of the fingers. The fingers, excluding the thumb, consist of twelve jointed members or phalanges. These are organically related one to another in a triadic pattern to which we refer as distal, medial and proximal. The distal phalanx is remarkable not only for being the terminal joint of the finger, it also contains a nail. The other reason for enjoining this metaphor here in the discussion of memory and the graded hierarchies of both categories, conceptual and perceptual, and both conative and cognitive modes of intentionality, and both orders of consciousness, the conscious and the aconscious, resides in the utility to meditation practice of the hand. Both Hindu and Buddhist schools of yoga employ mudra or hand gestures, as indeed do Christian and Islamic praxes, though to a lesser extent. (We shall say more about this later, since the hand is also the haptikon, the sign according to the mode of touch, for the perceptual radical seminal to Lukan theology, haptic memory, and of course its necessary mode of intentionality, desire.) We shall use the word 'distal' to denote the maximal extent of those pasts and futures from the immediate present. It is at once obvious that these distal pasts and futures are all of one kind, conative. Whether we speak of the forms of will or those of desire, (noting that the aconscious inverts their normative temporal domains), we must note that they circumscribe what belongs to the remotest ('distal') recesses of both the past and the future. The peculiar nature of conation as well as being the initiatory or instrumental to cognition,  locates either remotest pasts or remotest futures.

To these conative forms of intentionality, cognitive modes are antithetically disposed in that they circumscribe those pasts and future which are not only closest to present immediacy, but which actually border it. On account of this, we refer to them as 'proximal'. So we may say that every form of knowing and every form of belief, in all of which there are four, locate what is immediately past or immediately future, and as such bordering on the immediate present. These purely cognitive modes thus diverge from the prior intervening Pneumatological ones, which elide the conative and cognitive modes, and which locate either pasts or futures less remote from purely conative pasts and futures, but still more remote from purely cognitive pasts and futures.







In speaking of a hierarchy we are instantly made aware of the presence of the same in acoustic memory. Here the theology of semiotic forms has to do with the dodecaphonic scale. A scale is intrinsically a systematically graded hierarchy. But rather than enter here into the acoustic semiotic forms, we have taken the correlate with which the acoustic memory as perceptual category coheres, namely the conceptual category space : time. We have already mentioned the vectoral perspective of immanence as the present-to-past in keeping with the notion of memory, and that of transcendence as the present-to-future. Thus this primordial category is already implicated in our discussion. What serves to interpret the scaled gradations innate to the three phenomenal modes of perceptual sentience is their differentiation between pasts. The above icon indicates the canonical forms of intentionality without reference to the varieties within these same twelve modes. But here we must extend their meaning so as to account for the fact that each intentional form ranges over the entirety spectrum of the conceptual or perceptual polarities. So in the case of desire, there are in all six generic species of the same, for there are three radical forms of memory and three radical forms of imagination, constituting the perceptual polarity. This means that the hierarchy implicit within the consistency of the categories themselves determines the hierarchy of occasions of each mode of intentionality. In other words, the species of desire are structured relatively to one another according to the hierarchic principle delineating the modes of intentionality relatively to one another. The canonicity of specific occasions of any given mode, and the further hierarchic arrangement of the remaining instances of that mode are explicable on this basis.

The temporal difference between those two radicals of consciousness lying at opposite ends of the taxon, haptic memory and acoustic memory, is the essential difference between the two intentional modes of which they are the sufficient and necessary conditions. That is, it further explains the shift from conation to cognition, from desiring to knowing. In whichever order of consciousness, perceptual or conceptual, conscious or aconscious, the cognitive form of intentionality remains on the threshold of the present. All four cognitive or epistemic modes of consciousness, knowing, believing, knowing-will and believing-desire, inhabit the boundary of the present with either its past or its future. Thus knowing sits at the threshold of the past-present, belief at that of the present-future; thus also knowledge-of-will sits on the present-future cusp, whereas belief-in-desire borders that of present-past.

Hence in the case of conative intentional modes, there is a distinct and remarkable disparity. All four of these same circumscribe the remote pasts or the remote futures, the reason for describing them in terms of the mnemonic aid of the fingers with their four 'distal' phalanges. Desire is as removed from the present of knowing as it is possible for any two modes of intentionality so taxonomically ordered, to be. So too with belief and will. Nonetheless, we should not fail to grasp that this same taxonomic ordering means that any two  fully juxtaposed modes of intentionality always belong to the same spatial or spatiotemporal domain. Will and belief are both definable in terms of the purely spatial future. (We say 'spatial' here and not spatiotemporal for the simple reason that this future space transcends the immanent space-time of four dimensions, and is accountable in terms of its triadic disposition.) That said however, it is belief and not will, which transmits this future to the very verge of the present as linked to its future. Will determines the remotest outposts of the future - hence we spoke of it in connection with space, or what is the same thing 'heavens'.  To will is to engage the 'distal' future. Conversely desire in its pure canonical form, that given by haptic memory, determines the furthest reaches of the conscious past, a past which is transmitted to the present by means of the compound mode desiring-and-knowing, and which achieves its final phase as knowing. This intentionality is as near as any perceptual intentional mode may come to the present.

The obverse applies to those radicals and their canonical modes of intentionality which are the aconscious. That is, the will-to-believe, as already has been put, reverses the vectoral disposition of actual or true will, and recreates it according to the 'distal' past, and does so paradoxically. The will-to-believe acts compossibly with desire, the other distal conative intentionality, to establish the extents of the furthest pasts. So the will-to-believe and desire are kindred spirits in respect of the fact that they equally establish the remotest or 'distal' past. The following intentional modes can be grouped together on the same basis: will and desire-to-know - the distal future; belief-in-desire and knowing - proximal past-present; belief and knowledge-of-will - proximal future-present. These affinities are important and will be immediately recognisable also in the acoustic semiosis which is fundamentally linked to the concept of a graded hierarchy. There is no counter-intuitive strain in the association between will itself and the future. To will something is in essence a beginning, and a beginning always with the future in mind. It is even conceivable that such willing can involve more or less perpetual deferral, so grafted to futurity is it. On the other hand, we normally, or rather, normatively, associate desire with the recursive iteration of things, events, occasions, which are past, actual, settled, determined. Both factors, repetition, and pastness are characteristic of what the term 'desire' denotes. This, the commonsensical understanding of desire is roundly endorsed by the gospel, only it is supplemented with the conviction that there is a form of desire which is neither conscious, nor recursive, (mnemic), that is, not reiterative. We mean of course mental desire, or intellectual desire, so to speak; the desire-to-know. This is necessarily insusceptible of repetition, as its object lies not in the past, but in the future. The latter must be purely novel, such that it admits of only one final and full satisfaction, in which respect it conforms to the sacramental practice of baptism, envisaged in both The Transfiguration and its precursor, The Baptism Of Jesus. Thus the paradoxical nature of the aconscious is clearly demonstrated by the fact that it 'reverses' the temporal perspectivity of the conscious. In order to use any of the above common language terms with as much technical and philosophical precision as possible, and to acknowledge the primacy of the primordial creative fiat, we define their categoreal application vis-à-vis time.


Process Cosmologies

There is a measure of accord between Markan metaphysics and process philosophy, only its emphasis on process itself should be considered as extreme, because it occurs at the expense of identity, or as we say, 'Transcendence'. 'Presentational immediacy' is one of two modes of 'perception' foundational to Whiteheadian philosophical psychology, or cosmology. But the term 'perception' is indeed troubling because even if it doesn't leave out of court the ideational or conceptual polarity of mind, otherwise mentioned in the metaphysics, it removes this from the centre of attention. The conceptual receives short shrift in this school of thought, so much the worse for its account of the subject-object distinction, of which it nevertheless makes ample use. Any lasting differentiation between the two, subject and object, will constitute a glaring problem for process philosophy. But granting the aptness, or not, of this term to cover the radical alterity between concepts and percepts and the various modes of intentionality proper to them, process thought believes in an equally radical alterity between two ways of assimilating, that is of relating to the environing world. These are 'causal efficacy' and 'presentational immediacy'.

As posited above, the graded hierarchy of categories acts in accordance with the fourfold annual and seasonal shift of time, both to and from its two hemispherical intervals, those of increasing and decreasing light. Any and every initial and distal phase of any and every one of these four processes analogous to the four distinct seasons of the year is a conatus. Thus its generational phase consists of either will (conceptual) or desire (perceptual), in either form, conscious or aconscious. This answers to the Whiteheadian notion of 'causal efficacy'. The remaining four forms of 'proximal' cognitive intentionality, those of knowing and belief, are part and parcel of the modes of 'perception' classified by process philosophy as 'presentational immediacy'. Regarding causal efficacy, Christian metaphysics posits final causation, that is future causation, to the same degree that it posits efficient causation from the past. Final causality is constituted by occasions of willing and desiring-to-know. Causality in either mode, willing or desiring-to-know, is identifiable on the basis of distal futurity. These two causal, or conative, forms of  intentionality instantiate the first relatum of the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence, which relatum is synonymous with the term 'God'.

In sum then, the conative and distal modes, those of will or desire, correspond to 'causal efficacy' in Whiteheadian metaphysics. The cognitive (epistemic) and proximal forms of intentionality, those of believing or knowing, answer to 'presentational immediacy'. However, in  process metaphysics, such a mode of 'perception'  is deemed to be without temporal bias. 'Perception' in the mode of 'presentational immediacy' is supposed to function always within the here and now, the eternal present. The real distinction between the two, causal efficacy and presentational immediacy, is founded on this.

Markan metaphysics accepts that causality has a twofold structure. Thus the word 'then' can be construed in terms of either a past or a future. But this gives the lie to the rudimentary structures of time relative to consciousness if we lump together these two very different  'thens'  and furthermore contrast them with a presentationally immediate 'now'. The real alterity consists not between 'then' and 'now', but between the two 'thens', for indeed there exists no distinct 'now' that is not in some manner related to these. No present is identifiable on the basis of causality, since what occurs within it is neither prior nor subsequent, and such simultaneously occurring occasions must consist in independence of one another. The conative (causal) modes, the four distal modes, conscious and aconscious, consisting of willing or desiring, adopt this very paradigm. The past, inheritable by the present to which it relates continuously, is analogous to the immanent; and the future, which is discretely related to the present, is the transcendent analogue. Non-simultaneous causality reiterates the categoreal paradigm in respect of the polarisation of the continuum. The latter affords two perspectives, a present-to-past, the perspective of immanence, and a present-to-future, that of transcendence. Here is the fundamental disparity between the gospel and process cosmology, and the principle of parsimony demands that we not employ three terms, past, present, and future, where just two suffice. We must add always the proviso that the immanent appropriates the transcendent polarity; which means of course that the future is immanent within the past, even if this is not identical with the transcendent future in itself as represented by the expression 'heaven'. Thus biblical and Christian metaphysics repudiates the presupposition common to Whitehead and others, including Spinoza and Heidegger, that there are three temporal entities - past, present, and future - which are of the same ontological order. The hic et nunc of the 'eternal present' stands for Mark as for other biblical authors, distinctly apart from the past and the future which both converge upon it. This is a fundamental feature of consciousness as of time, without recognition of which we will be led astray in any effort to frame a coherent metaphysics. For Whitehead, who abjured the notion of  'nature at an instant' to have posited such, seems glaringly in defiance of his own agenda.

There is no third entity called a present, a 'now' distinguishable apart from what is already supplied. Markan metaphysics understands the primordial or spatiotemporal aspect of consciousness from the point of view of the categoreal paradigm, transcendence : immanence. The 'eternal present' as a third term, is the specious present. This means that in the categoreal formula, transcendence : immanence, 'presentational immediacy' is represented by the sign for logos, the sign for relation, the sign which means both 'and' and 'or', conjunction and disjunction. Thus the very same pattern, that of transcendence : immanence, is sustained by presentational immediacy. The present is radically informed by transcendence : immanence; how otherwise could any present inherit past occasions, or act as the nexus for future ones? Immediate events even if they consist independently of each other, must be inflected relatively to both pasts and futures. Christian metaphysics in understanding 'presentational immediacy' according to the categoreal paradigm, posits all cognitive, that is, epistemic, modes of intentionality which are operative in immediacy, as therefore polarised accordingly.

Hence those modes of intentionality which would otherwise be definable in process philosophical terms under the banner 'presentational immediacy', are also influenced by the same polarity that determines the causal (conative), distal modes. Thus all four modes of believing and knowing: believing, knowing, believing-in-desire, and knowing-will, these four modes of intentionality are likewise informed by the fundamental distinction between past and future. There is no intentional mode in the purely permanent, or 'eternal' present; no knowing or believing that is, wholly instantaneous, wholly presentational. The four cognitive or epistemic modes, while they are not causal, and not confined to the distal past and distal future as are the conative (causal) forms of intentionality, nonetheless occur according to the same polarisation of the continuum. This is given by their various semeia.

The Biblical doctrine of consciousness construes intentional processes whether conscious or aconscious, and whether conceptual or perceptual, and whether cognitive or conative, in terms of one and the same paradigm, transcendence : immanence, the pervasive, ultimate generality which operates at the most basic morphological level. There is no present consciousness which is not in some way related to either the future or the past, as these are represented respectively by the two terms of that categoreal relation. This is one important respect in which the process philosophical account is deficient. Much of the difficulty lies with its view of the future. For Whitehead, and no less for Santayana, the asymmetry of temporality all but leaves the future out of account. Both appear to understand the temporality of process as a perpetual flow from past to present and so on to future. But where there is such continuity of passage of the past to the present, there is no continuous passage of present to future. If immanent causality is continuous in kind, then transcendent causality is not so. The 'relation' between the present and the future is discrete; and the only way in which there can be passage of the kind which links the present and the future is by means of the immanence of the future within the past itself, as is given by the forms of memory - since these always include the transcendent, that is, imaginal, polarity - and which is given equally by the inherence of  a transcendent polarity in each of the three forms of unity, the most significant of which is the symbolic masculine within the form of unity male : female; notwithstanding the independences of the same. Thus perceptual imagination must nevertheless be said to transcend its relation of conjunction with memory, and likewise the symbolic masculine its relation of conjunction with the feminine.

Let us repeat: cognitive or epistemic processes no less than conative ones, are  at least inflected with respect to the primordial category, space : time. Even though we shall link the cognitive-epistemic with that which Whitehead has called 'presentational immediacy', all four cognitive-epistemic processes must bear some proclivity vis-à-vis the categoreal structure of the present itself. There is no present without either past recursiveness, or precursiveness to the future. Additionally, the vector past to present, as immanent by definition, contains a transcendent component. Hence where the future is ingredient in the present, it is so by virtue of the immanence of the future within the past.  Teleological causality achieves its aim by means of this future within the past. The point is that there is no eternal present, shorn of vectoral or perspectival quality. That is a specious present. Hence if the future and the past ingress within the immediate present, they do so in diametrically opposed ways. This means that those modes of intentionality which we are here equating with 'presentationally immediate perception', the four modes of knowing and believing, both conscious and aconscious, must be disposed in the same two radically juxtaposed ways. Thus the cognitive or epistemic forms of intentionality which are given above as the final or completed phases of processes initiated by conative modes, no less than the latter forms, are inflected according to either temporal vector; past-to-present in the cases of knowing, and believing-desire, and present-to-future in the cases of believing and knowing-will.

THE EVANGELICAL COMPASS

This is why we emphasise the radical morphology of the gospel, its nakedly tetramorphism shape which is that of Christian eschatology as well. It is what we mean by 'the competing claims of consciousness' and the arrant heterogeneity of the gospels which faithfully reflect the same. In this much we once again follow the principle of parsimony. Hence we have urged the immediate precedence of the fourfold over the sixfold paradigm. We ought now to further explain this preference as following its structural disposition. That is, those four ingredients in mind we may describe as 'pivotal', 'turning points', 'tipping points', and so on. In that they correspond with the rudimentary form of the annual cycle, they are clearly other than the transitive and Pneumatological categories. These latter occur within the same four marginal points which determine the utlimate contours of the temporal compass. Each of the four evangelical dyadic arrangements of intentional forms - for example, in the case of Luke, the dyad consisting of desire, springing from haptic memory, and belief-in-desire, springing from the concept of the body - one of only four radical point-instants in the year is marked. In this example, it is that of the winter solstice. There is a clear and analogous relation between the aconscious and conceptual category, soma or the body, as concept, along with its intentionality, belief-in-desire, and the diurnal interval at just that point-instant, midwinter; and an equally clear and complementary analogy of the conscious and perceptual category, haptic memory, with its own intentional form, desire, and the midwinter nocturnal interval. One is at its minimum:  the aconscious and conceptual form, the body believing as it does in desire; while the other, the conscious and perceptual form, haptic memory, responsible for desire simpliciter, is at its maximum. There can be only four such occasions in the year if we duly acknowledge the successiveness of night to day and so on. This rules out of consideration the transitive points, the so-called 'cross quarters', two of which, lammas and imbolc, nevertheless mark festivals in the Christian calendar.

By 'isomorphic' we refer to the same relation as is described by the word 'parallel' of the radicals or categories which underlie as the sufficient and necessary conditions, the various forms of intentionality. Thus we find The Transfiguration acting as the analogue of, or isomorph to, the Day 1 rubric; The Walking On The Water as also parallel to the Day 2 rubric and so on. There are four such analogous, isomorphic or parallel sets  which we must investigate a propos of the four gospels. Further to which we can survey also the remaining two incidences of isomorphism between the two narrative cycles, those which concern the Holy Spirit. In all of this, what most occupy us are not the actual radicals, that is categories, of consciousness themselves, which the two narrative cycles categorise, but their proper modes of intentionality, which as noted, act across the entire range of the two basic taxa, transcendent and immanent, conceptual and perceptual.

Although The Transfiguration topically itemises haptic imagination, it nevertheless defers to the Day 1 story, the first portrait ever in biblical metaphysics that we possess of mind, the normative category of the two, transcendent Christological categories, mind and haptic imagination, the intrinsic manifestation of transcendent good. This deference, the normativity of the Genesis rubric, ensures that mind be essential to the meaning of The Transfiguration. This too follows from the meaning of the opening phrase of the miracle story, as clear an index of creation metaphysics for the synoptists as is the opening to the fourth gospel for its evangelist: 'In the beginning ... ' (John 1.1). The Transformation Of Water Into Wine also involves the figure 'six'. But whereas The Transfiguration places perceptual categories in relation to conceptual categories with the result that the latter, the conceptual, are the outcome, the things into which sense-percipient temporality is 'transfigured', the first miracle story posits a different relation between the two categories: conceptual forms and perceptual forms. There, the event issues in the perceptual, or sense-percipient polarity of consciousness.  Thus The Transfiguration as depicting time and death highlights the outcome as involving the entire spectrum of conceptual forms; but the obverse applies to the first miracle, where the outcome involves the entire range of perceptual categories. In other words, the relation of God to the world - 'transformation' - and so too, that of the conceptual-to-perceptual poles of consciousness, and the relation of the world to God -'transfiguration' - and so too that of the perceptual-to-conceptual poles of consciousness, are not to be understood as transitive. But we must nevertheless comprehend them as part of a whole,  since their central event is one and the same: change, passage, or transmutation. The two same reciprocal processes are envisaged in the remark of Jesus qua Son of man to Nathanael at the outset of the sixfold messianic miracle series:

And he said to him,"Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." (John 1.51)

We therefore have in these two Christological events the answer to that very apparent paradox logically outlined in Genesis 1.1.s, which we referred to as a 'polarity of polarities', the antithesis of forms of antitheses, succinctly denoted by the central figure of the categoreal paradigm, the sign for ratio, the sign for logos. So in the case of the Day 1 rubric and its apparently immanent counterpart, Day 4,  we asked "What is the relation between the 'dyad' light/darkness, and the dyad day-night?" The answer can only be found in the gospels, since it is there that we find the effective summation of the immanent categories, which the Day 4 rubric in this instance portends. So the adjunction of two modes of antithesis, one transcendent or disjunctive, and the other immanent or conjunctive, will be explicated only by the messianic series, where the final exposition of the immanent is given. The polarity of polarities in this case is between mind, the topos of the incipient rubric, Day 1, and the subject of The Transformation Of Water Into Wine, haptic memory; and so too, between their canonical forms of intentionality belief and desire. We shall say more about this later. We have already drawn attention to their antithetical natures as maximally contrastive.

Hence we need to emphasise the New Testament Christological narratives and the doctrine of intentionality as this functions at the level of the inscribed texts. That is we need to make clearer and more certain still, just what the two episodes of change or process - transmutation - reveal about the intentional modes themselves as shaping the theologies of salvation, and furthermore, the eschatologies of The Apocalypse.  Because although the radicals differ in each of the four instances, the two relational patterns obtaining between them, patterns which reveal the reciprocity of their proper intentional modes, are the same. These are described in the two Christological miracles as processes of change, transition,  or becoming. We have previously referred to various obvious points of contact between the first and last of the messianic miracles. The essential correlation is however the crucial one, and it is that of change or becoming. In avowing that the two correlates are intelligible as the relation of Transcendence to the world in the first event - and the relation of the world to Transcendence, depicted in The Transfiguration, by the last term, Transcendence, is meant not only the Transcendent ("the Father"), but of course all three identities in 'God', the Transcendent, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Thus the numeral 'six' in both miracles recurs to that of the creation; and as already observed, the formal radical features of both series, creation and salvation, are the triadic and dyadic. Both miracle narratives, The Transformation Of Water Into Wine, and The Transfiguration, posit the connexity between the conceptual and perceptual radicals of consciousness by means of the idea of process, change, transition, or transmutation, referentially to the doctrine of intentionality, and do so in a manner which proscribes any final reification of the twelve modes of intentionality.

We may say of these that there are indeed twelve distinguishable pervasive modes of intentionality, as listed above. That is the meaning of the numerical figure 'twelve' in The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, and it is equally the delivered in theology of semiotic forms, as it incorporates the acoustic memory, the subject of that narrative. But we should resist any tendency to entify the forms of intentionality in a way which denies or undermines the fact of change. Between each of the four sets of isomorphic modes of intentionality there is an equal and opposite reaction, given in the two Christological miracle narratives. Between each of the four sets of isomorphic modes of intentionality there is an equal and opposite reaction, given in the two Christological miracle narratives. This is why we have construed them as the countervailing processes whereby God enters the world and the world itself is conveyed back into God, and also why we have simultaneously read them as theologies of birth and death. We have used a variety of expressions to describe the one-to-one correspondences that obtain between the story of Days and the messianic series; analogous, isomorphic, parallel, counterpart, dyadic, and so on. But the expression coherence may do justice for all of these and at the same time bring before us the essentially Christological character of the relationships. We mean by Christological, meaning itself, as suggested by 'coherence', and as explicitly denoted by the Johannine term 'logos'.

'Coherence' is used here synonymously with 'analogous', 'parallel', isomorphic' and so on, in reference to the dyadic structure of the modes of intentionality governing each of the four gospels. In every case, the two, one conscious the other aconscious, are mutually necessary to one another, but neither are they reducible, one to the other. And just as we noted previously, their relationship is neither one of derivation. This requisiteness, whose reciprocity is the central subject of the two Christological miracle stories, is one of many relations subtended by members of the two orders to one another - the six conceptual forms and their six perceptual 'equivalents' or cohering radicals. The relations between such radicals of consciousness as given in these stories, do indeed affect the entities in question. But the basis of their relationality, the rationale of their cohering is axiological. That is, it defers to one of the three forms of value into which the triadic rationale of the cycles is finally resolvable. Thus the body, both as ontological event and the conceptual radical soma, are, in the words of Genesis, 'good', as is equally the phenomenon of sexual satisfaction, equally forthrightly avowed by the miracle narrative. Their difference is that of normativity, and this is more or less synonymous with the differential subserving the distinction of aconscious and conscious. For the former, the conceptual form soma, is non-normatively and extrinsically expressive of immanent goodness, whereas the latter, the perceptual radical haptic memory, is intrinsically and normatively expressive of the same value, immanent goodness. This distinction fits every one of the four cases involved in determining the specificity of the gospels, and moreover, the remaining two instances of cohering conceptual forms and perceptual forms. So in the case of the Pneumatological forms, optic memory is normatively or intrinsically expressive of the value beauty, whereas the symbolic feminine - noting as always that this comprises masculine and feminine - is the extrinsic expression of the same value, immanent beauty; and conversely the symbolic masculine intrinsically expresses transcendent beauty, and optic imagination equally and coherently so, but this time extrinsically. So then, the relations between the two things in question do not determine the entities themselves, even though they may affect them.

We began this essay with an epigraph from the opening of one of the Johannine epistles, taking it in reference to the doctrine of the word. We can resume that theme here in further developing the relationship of coherence between the conceptual and perceptual forms, in advance of a more detailed consideration of the four specific instances of these which pervade each of the gospels inseparably from its soteriological and eschatological perspectives.

In The Function Of Reason (p 67), within the context of a useful distinction often made in the interests of epistemology, that between theoretical and practical reason, A. N. Whitehead discusses coherence as follows:

(For a critical discussion of these criteria for rational coherence, see Dorothy M. Emmet, Whitehead's Philosophy Of Organism, Macmillan & Co., London, 1932, pp. 15-23.) In the first two gospels which will occupy us, those of Luke and Mark, there is an obvious logic to the parallelism. This has been noted by other philosophers, for example Susanne Langer has commented on the affinity between hearing, what we are terming acoustic memory, and the concept of time. So in the case of Mark, we are met with the clear-cut parallelism between acoustic memory and the conceptual form of unity space : time. But in the case of Luke however, we have an even more insistent and readily available incidence of what the isomorphic coherence between the two stories of beginning and end are seeking to convey. For there we have to deal with the clearly correlated entities haptic memory and the body. We have briefly put the case above why the soma is not identical with what we mean by touch, and here of course we are referring to mnemic touch, as signaled by the immanent messianic miracle story. Even if as a form of unity,  rather than a purely conceptual form, the body (soma), is ambiguous, paradoxical, ambivalent, especially as regards its determination in the face of the categoreal paradigm transcendence : immanence, even if, in certain respects and some measure, it looks undeniably all but identical to just what we mean by the haptic (memory), it is not so. For it  remains nevertheless a concept, an idea. It can be presented to us in thought at any point, and does not require the tangible experience denoted by haptic memory. We can think the body of an object, an animal, a person living or deceased, without needing recourse to touch these things, and without the experience of ever having done so which would have resulted in a memory of the kind we describe as haptic. The epistemological-psychological status of the entity in question can therefore be settled; it is to all intents and purposes an idea, and functions in tandem in consciousness with the other five such entities of its kind or class, although it sits at one end of a spectrum which, when juxtaposed with that containing the pure transcendent forms of space and mind, we might refer to as ostensibly concrete rather than abstract. Here it keeps company with the symbolic feminine.

The dyadic, coherent relations between haptic memory and the body, determine the psychological/epistemological entities which characterize, imbue, permeate, pervade the gospel of Luke in a way that is fundamental and illustrative of his own theological concerns, and although to a lesser degree, those of his co-evangelists. For the very same two processes outlined in the two Christological miracle narratives refer to the isomorphic equivalence between the two Lukan radicals, haptic memory and soma. So it is that isomorphism is tantamount to coherence. The conceptual form of the body requires the perceptual form haptic memory and vice versa. The same applies in each of the six cases which correlate the conceptual and perceptual categories. The use of the term 'inherence' and its cognates to describe the common axiological ground of these same coherent radicals of consciousness, to which we have referred all too briefly thus far, is intended as party to this same feature of Christian epistemology. That is, in the case of Luke for example, we have proposed that the conceptual form soma or the body, is the inherent expression of the value goodness, just as are the occasions of haptic memory. This value of course also entails the corresponding disvalue. Fundamentally then, though the former is non-normative and the latter normative, or as we have said, the body qua conceptual form manifests the value/disvalue good/bad extrinsically, whereas the coherent radical, haptic memory is inherently expressive of the same, but normatively, or intrinsically. Coherence then, or what is the same thing, the fact that the formal contours of these two narrative cycles are isomorphic, analogous, homologous, rests upon the theory of value; the fact that one and the same value along with its disvalue, is inherent within now a conceptual form and now a perceptual form.

ORDER OF CONSCIOUSNESS	LUKE - winter solstice	MARK - spring equinox	MATTHEW - autumn equinox	JOHN - summer solstice
conscious	desire (nocturnal)	knowing (nocturnal)	will (diurnal)	faith (diurnal)
aconscious	belief-in-desire (diurnal)	will-to-believe (diurnal)	knowledge-of-will (nocturnal)	desire-to-know (nocturnal)

This pattern of analogy between the four cardinal, dyadic intentional modes, already inferred for us in the Day 4 narrative, and the paradigm of the four seasons, was set out above. It honours the ontological and transactional connection between time and mind, a key tenet of The Transfiguration, which stands as a premise to evolutionary theory, and evolutionary psychology. As set out above, the form of intentionality believing, has as its aconscious counterpart the desire-to-know, and similarly, that the counterpart to the form knowing is will-to-believe. The other two instances seem to vary this pattern, for they consist of the form desiring and its aconscious parallel faith-in-desire; and willing with its aconscious parallel knowledge-of-will. In the latter two cases, we see the repetition of the term for the simple mode within the aconscious compound mode. (These have been written in italics to make the point clear.) At first glance this may seem inconsistent. But these modes are already unlike the former two. For the former two consist totally of the same polarity. Will and believing are both functions of ideas or conceptual forms, hence the compound or aconscious mode, will-to-believe, can be described as pure. An alternative description would be 'theoretical'. So also, desiring and knowing are functions of the perceptual polarity of consciousness. Hence the form of intentionality desire-to-know is also pure. Once again, we might just as well describe this as a 'theoretical' mode of intentionality.

The parallel relatedness of the will-to-believe with a mode of intentionality, knowing,  that is neither willing nor believing, is consistent with the previous two cases, just as is the order which binds together the two parallel forms belief, faith, and desire-to-know, even though at first sight, their parallelism is not evident. For the latter is purely perceptual. The reason why the overall arrangement is fully coherent, and only appears to be less than so, is that the function of the aconscious is in each of the four cases to act as a bridge. This must follow after all from the fact that the non-normative and aconscious forms of intentionality appear to alloy the paradigm transcendence : immanence. Every time we met them, we had to deal with their equivocation if not evident mitigation of the fundamental distinction between pure conceptual and pure perceptual polarities. Thus even though we decided finally in favour of the categoreal definition given for the forms of unity, that these are essentially conceptual, and that for the forms of imagination that they are definitionally immanent, that is, perceptual, we nevertheless cannot avoid the fact that both possess ambivalent characteristics in the face of the first order categoreal differential. This very ambivalence now becomes highly intelligible. For without it, not only could there never be a full appreciation of the ambivalent quality of the aconscious, but there could never be any interlocution between conscious and aconscious processes.

Such ambivalence enables interchange, transaction between the two realms, conscious and aconscious. For the task of those four forms of intentionality inherent in the equivocal, conceptual and perceptual radicals is one of connectivity. This is why in every set of parallels there is an affiliation of conceptual-perceptual or perceptual-conceptual. Let us take first the two impure compound modes, and their conscious parallels: faith-in-desire and its axiological parallel, desire, and secondly knowledge-of-will and its axiological parallel, will. Faith-in-desire is a conceptual prehension of a perceptual prehension: it is a mental feeling of a physical feeling, to use process philosophical terms. As such, it can lay no claim to being other than pure where this distinction between polarities, conceptual and perceptual, is writ. It is in a given sense 'practical'. But it performs a vital function. For it acts as the substrate in the aconscious to any process of desire simpliciter, promoting the essential connexity between the same polarisation. This cuts to the very core of the shared morphology of the two narrative cycles, creation and salvation.

The same is true of the parallels knowledge-of-will and will proper. For the former consists of a perceptual premise, knowledge, and a conceptual datum, will. Since it is the perceptual assimilation of a conceptual form it is impure, since it is equivocal as to the true (pure) differentiation of conceptual and perceptual which we find in the conscious modes of intentionality. This impurity relegates it to the aconscious, casting it as practical rather than theoretical. Even if the final adjudication of values does belong to the conscious, with its normative or intrinsic realisations of the three forms of transcendent value and three forms of immanent value, the fullest force of paradox belonging to the aconscious will be necessary to any understanding of desire proper. Just as will cannot function without the nurture it obtains from physical, perceptual,  experience, desire is necessarily connected to mentation, that is, to the conceptual polarity of consciousness. The roots of desire are to be found elsewhere than in sheer physical, perceptual, experience. They lie in the conceptual form, the body. It is finally the body, an idea or conceptual form, which provides desire itself with its antecedent. For desire to operate as it does in consciousness, must require a connection of this kind, a connection between the otherwise disparate zones, perceptual and conceptual.

Now let us address the remaining two instances: desire-to-know vis-à-vis belief, and will-to-believe vis-à-vis knowing. There is no disturbance of an emerging pattern here, but rather its completion. For we now see that in every case, the conscious modes are linked with aconscious modes in the antithetical polarity. Noting the categoreal premise in the cases of compound modes, the full pattern is either conceptual-perceptual, as it was for belief vis-à-vis desire-to-know and will vis-à-vis knowledge-of-will, or it is perceptual-conceptual, which is so for knowing vis-à-vis will-to-believe and for desire vis-à-vis belief-in-desire. This  emphasis on the role of the first element, the premise, or as we have also termed it, the co-efficient of the compound intentional forms, underscores their triadic ('Trinitarian') rationale. Hence desire-to-know is emphasised as Christological, equally with the Christological mode desire, and so on.

The next stage of enquiry will be to examine the first of the four gospels, Luke, in relation to the overarching content of the doctrine of intentionality. That is, we shall pursue the thesis that its governing intentional modes are those of desire and faith-in-desire, the latter of which will require some elaboration. We shall also invoke certain sections of The Apocalypse in this effort. It is obvious from the patterns presented by the semeioptika how closely integrated are the sets of  Pneumatological categories with the sets of Transcendental and Christological categories determining the gospels. That is to say any Christian understanding of desire and faith-in-desire necessitates reference to desiring-and-knowing and the hybrid intentional mode which fuses the will-to-believe and faith-in-desire. For these eschatological forms of intentionality complete the soteriological ones which lie at the heart of the gospel of Luke.


 
Updated 25.10.2022.

Copyright MM Publications.

© All rights reserved, including international rights.